Sex Modesty Sells

On You Tube I watched Ashley Tisdale’s new music video for "He Said, She Said" and I have to say I was both impressed and surprised because it isn’t really the “Family Channel” Ashley we are used to. While watching the Family Channel you may see one of Ashley’s older videos such as her remake of "Kiss The Girl" from The Little Mermaid. Both these movies are completely different, but I still think they were both made well. She seems to have grown up a lot and it is now showing in her songs and videos. In her new video she’s at a club with her friends and she is trying to get a guys attention the entire night. I personally enjoyed this music video and I was impressed that she could still make her video sexy while still keeping it classy. What I mean by that is that she didn’t have to take her clothes off and wear a skimpy outfit to make her look good. She was trying to get the guys attention and she did so, but she still kept her dignity by doing so. She didn’t have to look like a tramp to do it. Her outfit was classy yet still sexy. She didn’t have to dip as low as Christina Aguilera in “Dirty” or Britney Spears in “Toxic” to look good. The outfits she was wearing, I could have seen walking down the street. They weren’t trashy, but they weren’t “little kid” clothes either. In a recent interview with Cosmo Girl Ashley claimed, “ I don’t mind being a Disney girl. I think you can be sexy without taking your clothes off.” I think that Ashley is putting out a really good message to girls at a young age. Her along with other young female singers such as Hilary Duff, Miley Cyrus, Aly and AJ and so on are good role models to younger girls. They haven’t fallen for the “have to be sexy to sell” phase and I think that’s really important.



In Ashley’s new video while she’s in the club she’s wearing a white tank top, black vest, shorts, knee highs and sneakers and in another shot when she’s singing by herself she is wearing a gray strapless dress and a black leather jacket. Now in one of the last scenes in the video Ashley is sitting in a white room by herself with a white backless dress on. Even though the dress is backless it’s still a classy dress that would see at any award show or on any red carpet. All three of these outfits are the type that you could see girls wearing on a night out or even at school. She kept her video tasteful yet still very stylish.


When listening to the lyrics of her new song it also shows that she has moved on from remaking Disney movie songs, to making songs that she find important to her. She wants to writes songs that are fun and that gets people excited to buy the rest of her album. This is that beginning of her song “He Said, She Said”;


“Boy walk in the spot, he's so fresh
He got what he needs to impressin'
Just look at the way that he dressin'
Ain't no question chicks like oh.

Girl walkin' the spot, she stop traffic
She blowin' your mind with her asset
So Jessica Alba fantastic,
Instant classic boys like oooh.”

(Click here for the rest of the lyrics)


I don’t think the song is inappropriate at all and I think that it would be fine to show on the Disney Channel. Ashley Tisdale is going places with her career and I think that she should keep on track with how she’s going and not fall for what the media thinks is sexy.


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Click here for Ashley’s video “Kiss the Girl”
Click here for Britney video “Toxic”
Click here for Christina’s video “Dirty”
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"Ashley Tisdale." Yahoo! TV Canada . 15 Aug 2007. Yahoo! Canada Co.. 16 Jan 2008 http://l.yimg.com/img.tv.yahoo.com/tv/us/img/site/21/11/0000042111_20070815142659.jpg. "Ashley Tisdale and Brenda Song." HSM. 01 Jan 2008. 16 Jan 2008 http://us.movies1.yimg.com/movies.yahoo.com/images/hv/photo/movie_pix/walt_disney/the_incredibles/_group_photos/brenda_song22.jpg.

Photo Illustration by Michelle Leng

"Ashley Tisdale : He Said, She Said." Music Downloads. 28 Nov 2007. 16 Jan 2008 http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/8526/sshot2ol9.png.

"Ashley Tisdale : He Said, She Said." HSM is Perfect. 30 Dec 2007. 16 Jan 2008 http://images.starpulse.com/Photos/Previews/Ashley-Tisdale-wb12.jpg.

"Ashley Tisdale." Blogger.com. 20 Sep 2007. 16 Jan 2008 http://poderosa-ashley.blogspot.com/2007/09/aqui-ashley-como-capa-da-revista-da.html.

Celebrity Juice, Not from Concentrate

Twenty nine year old Mario Armando Lavadeira Jr, also known as Perez Hilton, is the renowned celebrity blogger that everyone loves to hate. He was born Miami Florida, but moved to LA to be an actor. When that failed he went into journalism at the gossip rag Star where he wrote for the celebrity gossip column Pagesix. He then went off to the internet to start his own gossip blog called Pagesixsixsix. After being named "Hollywood’s Most Hated Website", receiving death threats and lawsuits, Mario made a new gossip blog and give himself a new online identity; Perez Hilton.

After being up for less then three years http://www.perezhilton.com/ gets about 5 million hits a day. On the website you'll see everything from top celebrities such as Britney Spears getting either praised or ragged on to different everyday stories you hear in the news. On a recent interview on The View, Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Sherri Shepherd sat down with Perez and got the dirt on his website. Perez claimed that the reason he writes what he does is that he wants to push the envelope and he wants to get people talking. He's all about equalizing and normalizing. "Why should I not report about Lance Bass and his boyfriend, the same way that US Weekly reports about Jessica Simpson and who she’s dating?" says Perez. He wants people to know what's really going on in celebrity news, not just what celebrities' reps want the media to know. In the interview Sherri asks Perez where he got his information and he claimed that everything that is coming from his sources are 100% true and everything else he gets from magazines and other sources. So can you really take in what he says to be true or is it just because it’s from Perez Hilton it has to be true? Well on the website Askmen.com, Perez claims “I get stories because people know that I will never lie or make things up or pay for information,” he says. “I apply a journalistic standard to my work.” After reading this you kind of get a notion that he is doing his job as a blogger, he’s not trying to sugarcoat things or make them worse, he’s telling it how it is. But this causes alot of controversy with the public and the celebrities on the site. Is he reporting celebrity gossip or is he just being rude?

In the interview on The View, Elisabeth points out that on the site there are a group of celebrities that Perez praises and a group that he cuts up weekly. Is that fair? Should he be able to get away with writing the things he does? I personally think that people love what he does and if they didn’t he wouldn’t be getting 5 million hits a day. I think he gets praised for writing things no one else has the guts to say and people love that about him. To be blunt Perez Hilton gets paid to kiss and kick celebrity ass.

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"Tight headshot of celebrity blogger, Perez Hilton.." ABC News. 23 Apr 2007. ABC. 16 Jan 2008 http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200704/r139160_476527.jpg.

"Perez Hilton." AskMen.com. IGN Entertainment Inc.. 16 Jan 2008 http://ca.askmen.com/men/business_politics_60/87_perez_hilton.html.

"Perez Hilton." PerezHilton.com. 2008. PerezHilton.com. 16 Jan 2008 http://perezhilton.com/.

Fulla vs Barbie

Fulla is the Muslim version of the original doll we know as Barbie and was produced by NewBoy Design Studio. She is extremely popular in places such as Saudi Arabia and in Muslim homes. In a toy-outlet in central Damascus, Fulla is out selling Barbie 40 - 1. NewBoy has sold 1.5 million Fulla dolls since November 2003, which shows just how popular Fulla is becoming. You can now buy Fulla clothes, Fulla CD player or even a pink Fulla bicycle. Fulla has become much more popular and will probably continue to grow with the upcoming Doctor Fulla and Teacher Fulla.

The purpose of Fulla was to bring a more cultural view to the average Barbie. By doing so not only is Barbie being sold, but to those families who would not buy their children Barbie, can buy them the doll Fulla. And when a lot of people buy Fulla many people are benefiting from this, especially NewBoy Design Studio. When creating this doll, NewBoy did a lot of work to create something that would appeal to one ethnic group, but could also apply to many others. They wanted to show that Barbie doesn’t always have to be skinny, have blonde hair, blue eyes, big boobs, and white skin to be considered pretty. Fulla on the other hand has darker skin, auburn eyes and covered with a abaya and is still equally as gorgeous. This is a great message for girls of this ethnic diversity. This is why NewBoy made Muslim girls the target audience so not only the Caucasian girls can see beauty through a doll, but so can Muslim girls.

Just like Barbie, Fulla has come out with a video ad of the doll. In the Fulla video you can see some of the aspects that she does that makes her different from Barbie such as the praying and the abaya that she wears out in public, but is taken off in the house. You can also see the obvious language difference between each video. In the Barbie video you see Barbie wearing much more skimpy clothing as well as the young girls in the video. You can really see a huge cultural difference between the two dolls.

Barbie commercial



Fulla commercial



I personally think we should keep going with this idea and not only make Fulla dolls, but other dolls of other ethnic groups and religions. I think it would be a really good profit and a good self-image boost for young girls of other religions and ethnic groups.

PLUS!

Click here to check out the very first Barbie commercial from 1959! Notice the difference in music, clothing and price of the doll and commercial.

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"Barbie...or really a Baddie?." Telegraph.co.uk. 29 June 2007. irPublish. 16 Jan 2008 http://my.telegraph.co.uk/VirtualContent/93583/20070629113745.jpg.

"Fulla, la Barbie musulmane." Such a Blog. 13 Apr 2006. Such a Blog. 16 Jan 2008 http://www.suchablog.com/images/2006-avril/fulla-gd.jpg.

MacKinnon, Mark. Barbie Meets her Muslim Match." The Globe and Mail [Damascus]27 Oct 2005: A21.