#ethicsrepresent

[ethiscsrepresent-blog]

An Ethically Challenging Item

Here is a small sampling of the things I find ethically challenging. There are many more but lets just start with this for now. 

I also thought of a million other ethically questionable things. Such as BodyRock TV, Suicide Girls and the history of the Community Living Society and Mental Institutions in Canada. 

1. BodyRock TV-

My issue with BodyRock is in how it is represented. A couple years ago my boyfriend and I were looking for cheap resources to get into shape and BodyRock at first seemed great. For anyone who doesn't know what BodyRock is , it's a free website that provides 12 minute workouts for people to do at their homes.

When we first got into it, the people running it were this girl Lisa, and her Boyfriend Freddy. I believe that Freddy originally started the site with his previous girlfriend Zuzanna, but I don't know enough about them, their relationship and how the site was run back then to speak critically of how BodyRock began. Anyways, Lisa was the star of the workouts and was this skinny, but fit white British woman, and was bright cheery and passionate. She spoke about her struggles as a teenager of being bullied and teased for being so thin and being called anorexic and bulimic along with all the pressure she felt to fit in. She explained her roots in becoming a personal trainer, and why she felt it was important to get into shape- for one's health and emotional wellbeing, which is something I can respect and connect with.

As the years have gone on however I feel that BodyRock has lost touch with this mission of total wellbeing and is now focused on aesthetics and is contributing to the societal pressure of fitting in.

The images used to promote BodyRock overly sexualize the trainers (mainly Lisa), and Lisa has since has had a boob job, nose job and her lips enhanced ( possible other cosmetic surgeries but that is all that I am aware of) Part of me wonders whether Lisa's transformation has to do with her boyfriend, who's last girlfriend also had a lot of cosmetic surgery. 

The site is getting a lot of flack on Facebook for Lisa's changes especially considering her message being that of accepting yourself, being yourself and loving yourself the way you are. There is also a lot of negative feedback about the pictures taken of the woman as being so sexual, and it made many people uncomfortable to look at.

It looks like they are starting to listen though... but we shall see

http://www.bodyrock.tv/

http://www.dailyhiit.com/

2. Suicide Girls

I feel like this one is obvious to see where the ethical issues lie. The suicide girls was formed by a woman photographer who felt that there was not enough range in the bodies shown in the media and took it on to create pinups of "alternative" bodies. However her methods of doing so perpetuate the issues that she claims to be fighting- her models still follow similar codes to actual model standards for both plus sized, petite and regular model standards and uses a user voting system to decide who becomes a Suicide Girl. It also has become (or always was?) soft-core porn, as it is required that the suicide girls must take nude photos.

I feel like this would be not quite as bad as it is if it didn't also take up the practice of using the male gaze and sexualizing woman in the way it does. The woman who founded the Suicide Girls wanted there to be diversity, and the ability for women to be proud about their bodies but has not done anything to allow for a safe space where the women involved to be anything other than become sex objects, which is unfortunate. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuicideGirls

3. CLS and Riverview/ Mental Instutionalism

First I should preface this with my own relationship with disability and hospitalization. 

When I was 2 I had many surgeries and was expected to be in a wheelchair or use cruches for the remainder of my life as a result of complications with my right leg ( I had a similar issue to Gregory House from the TV Show House) I remember being child relearning to walk, being in a wheelchair, going in and out of the hospital for multiple surgeries, and having a very real sense of illness and my own mortality at a very young age, and realizing that this was an experience or view point that many of my peers didn't understand or could relate to.  i am also deaf in my left ear, and as a result miss a lot of what is being said in conversations which makes me feel isolated at times. I also have a history of depression, and have many friends who were suicidal, had many mental health issues and have had two friends commit suicide. This is to say Mental health and medical issues, disability and all that is very important to me and a large part of who I am.  

My mum worked at Riverview Mental Health Institution when I was young.  Two years ago I had the honor to work with a  wonderful non-verbal lady with cerebral palsy as a community support worker with the Community Living Society (aka CLS). 

While I was working at CLS I was required to take part in a 3 day workshop about the history of CLS and how to support the people we worked with. 

Part of this training included a documentary and newscast about the issues surrounding institutionalization of people with mental health issues. 

http://www.communitylivingsociety.ca/about-us/history/woodlands-parents-group

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ablism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclusion_(disability_rights)

http://www.straight.com/news/woodlands-justice-doubt

http://www.communitylivingsociety.ca/about-us/history/brokerage-model

  the whole training weekend, while well intentioned, seemed to have the wrong language around responding to inclusion issues. I felt odd as someone who sat in between being able-bodied and yet also having experience with disability. I felt that co-workers I met with treated their clients as sub-human almost either talking down to them (which is somewhat understand able seeing as it is sometimes hard to tell whether or not the person you are working with knows or understands what you are talking about as they cannot reply.) or underestimating their ability. I also discovered how ingrained my own ignorance was even though I felt like in someways I could relate to being atypical from the usual abled bodied person, and how much stereotypes and assumptions play a role in how we communicate with people who have different levels of ability. 

One of the main things I had an issue with CLS was though that it was very important to them that the people that they were caring for did not just have friends who also had disabilities. I met a woman who had worked for CLS in the past and had wanted to help some of her clients form an art collective with facilities that were designed to help them with all of their needs. However CLS seemed to think that this would be considered as segregation and wouldn't allow the project to move forward. I felt that this was an issue because people of able bodies can't really relate to people who have serious disabilities. and I feel that people generally tend to find the best companionship with people that they can relate to and connect with on a deeper level due to understanding their experiences. 

4. I didn't mention this one before but its something that bothers me. There is this show called Switched at Birth which is a story about how two girls were switched at birth and brought up in the wrong households. One of the girls in the show is deaf, and a lot of the show centres around deaf culture (which before I saw this show didn't know existed) All the characters in this show that are deaf are actually deaf in real life. the main girl that is deaf (Daphne) has a unilateral hearing loss (like me), which would be fine except the fact that she is made to have a "deaf accent" to play up the fact that she is deaf.  this bothers me because of how many times I get disregarded as joking or a liar when I say I am deaf because people don't believe me due to the fact that I don't have an accent and usually don't wear hearing aids, and usually they react badly if I ask them to repeat themselves to many times or say never-mind, which continues the feeling of isolation I sometimes feel perpetuated in how this character is being created . 

[ethiscsrepresent-blog]

Thoughts on Truth and Reconciliation in Canada

The Truth and Reconciliation Events held in September in Vancouver were an odd thing for me to experience. 

As a white female born into a middle class family, I am well aware of the privilege I hold- my parents paid completely for my schooling (at Emily Carr University no less), I have excellent health care (the government even paid for me to go to Chicago to have surgery when I was 15) and I generally live a life free of abuse, harassment and prejudice. 

I grew up in Northern BC, Prince George to be exact. The racism to First Nations people is rampant there, and I am sad to say that a lot of my family and friends share these views. One of the better things about living in the North though, is that there is a lot more information about the atrocities that occurred in the residential schools- although it is still played down a bit. 

One of the more uncomfortable things I felt when I was exploring the PNE fairgrounds where the TRC events were being held was when I was talking to people from some of the churches and organizations that were originally part of the Residential schools. Many of them  were older white ladies. The pictures on the presentation boards they showed us showed pictures of smiling happy children- which in contrast to the stories being told in the gathering spaces seemed slightly horrific, and very out of place. 

In correspondence with these events, we were asked to read the article Unsettling the Settler by Paulette Reagan. While all of it was very interesting to read the part that really struck home with me was the end. 

"I am highly skeptical of the vision of reconciliation that is currently embraced by most Canadians. There is a growing sense, nationally, that, as we accept apologies and payments for the crimes of the residential schools, or jobs and contracts in exchange for stolen lands, forgiveness is implied. What is the message – that material compensation can address the crimes of colonialism? Yes. Most Canadians believe that, once money is paid to a Native or “Natives” in general, these questions are dead, and we

will be able to move on. What is this notion of reconciliation doing for Canadian society, and what is it doing for Native people? More than any- thing else, it is obscuring. "- Unsettling the Settler, Paulette Regan

This is exactly what kept coming through my mind as I was walking through the TRC events. People were selling some of their art- some which seemed to be appropriate (though I am not entirely sure as there are various rules on who owns and can use what images and symbols in their artwork in First Nation culture) but there seemed to be some of the stereo-typical "cowboys and Indian" type of things there as well (again that is part of my perspective through little knowledge of Native artistic production). The people running the booths that gave people information about each specific school seemed excited to talk about the events that occurred in the Residential school system to a point of being ignorant of how horrible it was, almost in the same way you see people doing with charity work ( the sense of "look see I can't possibly be responsible for this happening because Im helping educate people about this issue")

Also there were many people outside of my school that had no idea that this was even going on. This fact alone makes me question the motives of the TRC.

The question I wonder is how do we take responsibility for this now? Is it little to late? I think a lot of people feel so disconnected from the fact that this happened because of how hidden it was for so long, and because of how history is written to favour those in power. I have no idea myself how to comprehend the thought of taking on the actions of my colonel ancestors- especially since I am partly fourth generation Canadian (my mum was born in France but is Portuguese and moved to Canada when she was 12) 

If anything though the TRC had to have been healing for the people telling their stories- many of them had never spoken about what happened in the schools, and I think that being able to finally talk about it was cathartic- or at least that was the impression I got from watching the few people relate their stories on stage. And watching them cry and tell their stories was heartbreaking, inspiring (in the form of the courage they showed in being able to tell such personal stories in public) and eye-opening.