Blog 20: Room Creativity

1.  I plan on posting pictures around the room of people and things who are considered beautiful in our society's eyes on one side of the room, and on the other i will post pictures of  things that are beautiful, but not the conventional type of beauty.

2. For my answer 1 (influence from the media) I want to do an activity involving advertisements, and how there is only 1 type of women that ever gets put on them. Im not sure exactly what the activity will be, but it will center around that.

Blog 19: Answer 2

EQ: What is most significant when perceiving beauty in the U.S.?
Answer 2: Youthfulness


Evidence:1/3 of all cosmetic advertisements are for products that make women appear younger
Source: Media Awareness Network


Evidence: 28% of all women say they are much younger then they actually are when online dating
Source: MSNBC.com


Evidence: In 2009, there were over 9,000,000 plastic surgeries preformed to make women appera younger (botox, lipo, ect.)
Source: Juvamedspa.com

Blog 18: The Product

My product as of March is completing my pageant. 

I did it for my service learning and completed over 50 hours of rehearsals, fundraising, and promoting for the pageant, as well as competing in it. 

I was awarded a certificate from assembly member  Hernandez's office for my contribution to my city, and was awarded $50 for  my success in getting advertisement for the program. 

Certificate:

 Myself and the other contestants in the newspaper:

Blog 16: Ind. Component 2 Approval

(1) I will find out how the women around me define beauty. I will interview them, asking them questions like "who do you think is beautiful? how is it defined? how has your idea of beauty changed as you grew older? etc." I will get the views from all different age ranges, from 6 year olds to 60 year olds. and find out how all of their ideas match up. I =n the end, I will create a scrapbook, showing all of the women I intervied and what they said. 

(2) How will it meet the 30 hr requirement?

I plan on interviewing 15 women, spending at least an hour talking to each of them. It will then take me at least an hour to put together each individual scrapbook page.

(3) How does your independent study component relate to your EQ?   

My EQ is about the perception of beauty in our society, so it will be helpful to know how these individuals define beauty, and how it differs from person to person.

Blog 17: 4th interview questions

1. How do you define beauty?
2. How does beauty differ between a man and a women?
3. What are some factors you take into consideration when perceiving beauty?
4. What role does the media play in our society's views on beauty?
5. When it comes to facial beauty, why are symmetrical faces more attractive than a-symmetrical?
6. How is beauty subjective?
7. Who would you say exemplifies beauty? why?
8. Are we, the american society, more superficial when it comes to beauty and looks than other cultures?
9. Is beauty important?
10. How do you think our view on beauty and looks affects the younger generations?
11. What influences your views of an attractive person?
12. Why is the term "ugly" used so much in out vocabulary?
13. Why is being beautiful or attractive, so important to our society?
14. When did women begin to strive for beauty?
15. Does beauty ever have a true definition? What is it?
16. How, or when, is beauty universal?
17. How is the beauty of art different from the beauty of a person
18. What is most significant when perceiving beauty?
19. How is our societys view on beauty different from others?
20. What gets a women further in life, inner beauty or outer beauty?

Blog 15: Independent Component

LIA:

Literal

(a) S: “I, Brittney Morales, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 30 hours of work.” 

(b) I created a video series on how to successfully compete in pageants. I Researched 5 topics, filmed videos on the information, and edited each video to show the research i did on competing in pageants.

Interpretive

This componet was basically a research compont, with the end result being a video series. I had to spend about 10 hours looking up different websites and blogs to find good information on pageants. When I found good information on different areas of competition, i would talk to my service learning contact to make sure what i was finding was correct and made sense. I also had to teach myself how to edit videos, which didn't really come out as good as i expected. 

Applied

With my topic being Miss America, pageants are a big part of what im studying this year. I wanted  this component to help answer my essential question, but also help me with my service learning, and it did. My essential question is all about how one perceives beauty, and this video series is basically telling the viewers how to make the judges in pageants see you as beautiful. This helped me to see that people in our society are so used to changing themselves to fit the ideal vision of beauty. I do it when im trying to win a pageant and need the judges to see me as a winner, and old ladies do it when they get botox to look younger. This component helped me to see that there is more than just one side of the story. My EQ only asks about the person perceiving beauty, but this helped me to learn about the person being perceived, and how they change themselves to be seen in a better light, so to speak.

30 Hours:

Log of work

Evidence:

Video 1- Background

Video 2- Evening gown
Video 3 - Interview
Vid 4-platform and talent

(Im having some issues with youtube not wanting to upload my last 3 videos so they'll be on here by friday night!)

Blog 14: Presentation 2 Rough Draft

20 minute lesson plan

Blog 13: Answer 1

What is most important when participating in the Miss America Organization?
Answer 1: Knowing what Miss America represents is important for anyone that is associated with the organization.
Evidence: Miss America represent not only the Miss America Organization, but she also serves as a goodwill ambassador for the Children's Miracle Network.
Source: Missamericaforkids.org


What is most significant when perceiving beauty within the U.S.?


 Answer 1: The media


Evidence: The media dictates what we perceive as a "normal", beautiful person. When our society see's someone that is not stick thin, and doesn't have a perfectly shaped face, its hard to see them as beautiful. The media has transformed what we see as beautiful by showing thousands of advertisements of women who have been photo shopped to be the ideal beautiful women. Our society usually bases a persons beauty off of what they see in the media, advertisements, ect. and if the person does not fall in line with what we are contantly being told is beautiful its hard to see the beauty in them.


Source: online, "Beauty and Body Image in the Media"
http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/issues/stereotyping/women_and_girls/women_beauty.cfm

Blog 12: Service Learning

For service learning, I am participating in the Miss Covina Scolarship Pageant.
My contact is Katrina Moramarco, the executive director of the pageant.
As a participant of this pageant, I go to practices every Saturday for 3 1/2 hours, where we go over everything we need to know for the pageant. We learn interview skills, walking patters, as well as how to fill out our resumes and write our platform papers. So far I have gone to 2 of these meeting, along with a 2 hour orientation, and I've spent about 3 hours with Katrina putting up flyers for the pageant and finding advertisment for our program book.
I've completed a total of 11 hours.

Blog 11: Third Interview Questions

1. What do you think is the most important thing Miss America does throughout her year with the title?
2. What is the most important thing you've done with your title?
3. What is one thing that most people don't realize Miss America does? (ie: working with Children's Miracle network)
4. How can winning a title change the life person?
5. What new things have you learned since you've won your title?
6. If you won Miss America, what would you be most excited for?
7. Who does Miss America serve as a role model for?
8. What do you think are the most important factors a girl needs to win a title at the local level? is the state level any different?
9. Whats your favorite thing that you've done since reciving your title?
10. If out president represents our country, then who do you think Miss America represents? 

Blog 10: Self-Reflection

(1) How do you think you are doing so far in your senior project and why? 
AP.
I think my senior project is coming along well, but my research hasnt quit been up to par. Because I chose to do my project on miss America, it's hard to find articels with a lot of depth. I believe my research checks are the only things keeping me from reaching a P, or AE.

(2) What one thing do you think you have done well on and why?
I think I have done very well with the first presentation. My presentation went great, giving me an AE, which I believe is because I have a lot of experience with my topic, since I have been working with the miss America organization for about a year now.I have done a lot of research on miss America, and have spoken to different people about it (ie: my interviews) to help me understand everything iPad mentioned in my presentation.

(3) What is one thing you would like to improve on and why? 
I need to improve my research checks. Ihave just been looking at the surface of miss America, but am planning on changing my focus so I can do more in-depth research.

Blog 9: Science Fair Proposal

1. What is your hypothesis?
If perfection is beauty, the most beautiful past Miss America's will have symmetrical features in their faces.


2. Identify the dependent (produced), independent (manipulated) and control variables in your hypothesis.
Dependent: beautiful Miss Americas 
Independent: symmetric feature 
Cotroled variables are the people i will be asking to rate the women biased on their beauty.


3. What is the connection between your science fair project and your senior project EQ?
My essential question is about the positive effect young women get when participating in these pageants. Young women receive things like interview skills, self confidence, posture, and other things of that nature.  My science project will help me find out if winning the pageant is about more than just the things it teaches you, if it is, in fact, about a women's beauty. 


4. How will you perform the experiment?  Include the equipment you plan on using.
First, I will go to a public place, such as the mall or the park, and ask random participants to rate pictures of the past 50 Miss Americas, on a scale of 1-5. 5 being the most beautiful and 1 being the least. Then, i will use the points for preference method of ranking vote to find the top rated pictures. Once i have 1/3 of the top rated pictures, I will see if there are any symmetrical features to their faces. If my hypothesis is correct, the highest rated picture over all will be a symmetrical face.


5. Which category will your project be listed under?  (For a full list of categories, go to the iPoly Physics webpage, then to the Science Fair tab.)
Behavior Science