In a Barbie World

This week there has been some controversy over the new 2014 Sports Illustrated: Swimsuit Edition because this year they are spicing up the issue by adding a picture of Barbie in a striped bathing suit. Critics have gone into hysterics over this because they believe that those two things are the most degrading things to women in society and to pair them together is crossing a whole new line of offensive. Feminist and media critic, Lisi Wade, speaks out against this saying, "Both Barbie and the swimsuit issue have been making women and girls feel inadequate for decades. It's a perfect partnership." 
I would have to agree with Wade on the issue because the comparison of real life woman to an inanimate object is literally objectifying them. Furthermore, this object to which they are being compared has the body that would be extremely unhealthy if Barbie were a real woman. There is research that shows that if Barbie were a real person, she would be 5'9''' and weight 110 lbs which means by her Body Mass Index of 16.24, she would be anorexic.

The cover of the magazine as you can see above features the typical looking barbie doll, however this is a limited edition that is supposed to resemble the first Barbie doll ever released on the market, who was wearing a zebra swim suit similar to this one. That is why the caption to the left of the picture says, "The doll that started it all." But what did this doll really start? An ideal beauty and body image for women that is detrimental to your health to try to achieve?
But we cannot blame the doll for all the problems with body image and objectifying women in the media frequently in America today. Barbie is just one of the many many offenders. However, it is interesting that The Sports Illustrated: Swimsuit Edition and Barbie, some of the largest sources of media and culture that receive a lot of criticism for objectifying women, would want to band together. This "perfect partnership," as Wade puts it sarcastically, makes it 2x clearer what a problem there is in the media today in regard to the portrayal of women in America.

The Right to End Rape

An issue that has been receiving nationwide media attention lately is sexual assault, and on college campuses in particular. I have always heard that when terrible things like this occur, you have to come forward and tell someone so that the culprit cannot walk free and potentially hurt someone else in the future. After going to a self-defense class with my advisory on Thursday my eyes were opened to the truth behind how the cases actually turn out when a man is charged with sexual assault.

As you can see from the bar graph above, in reality 97% of people charged with rape will walk free, and I'm guessing a lot more than 3% of those charged are guilty. This is because of the sad fact that when many women come forward, the authorities are not able to prosecute because of insufficient evidence. This lack of evidence is caused either by the girl waiting to long after the event, or the authorities not taking the proper precautions to preserve or collect the evidence.

There have been many questionable cases at certain universities in which the authorities may have purposely with-held evidence for periods of time or even knowingly failed to collect evidence in order to help the university in some way. One of the most well-known example of this is the sexual assault charge on the Florida State quarterback, Jameis Winston, that was dropped because of the authorities collecting insufficient evidence. Some believe it was purposeful because the star quarterback was probably bringing in millions of dollars for the school and it would benefit them greatly to drop the charge. You can read more about that here.

However, a more recent example is in the news as of this week and it features the story of Joanna Espinosa, who is attempting to convict her ex boyfriend of sexual assault. The authorities have been the opposite of cooperative seeing as when she reported it to the Edinburg Police Department near her Texas-Pan American campus this is how they responded, "they told her that her case would be difficult to prove and took her phone number. She never heard back from them." The authorities couldn't be bothered to even explore the possibility of Espinosa having a case. They wouldn't give her the time of day, let alone a simple phone call. In America today 1 in 5 girls will encounter sexual assault on their college campus, yet why are they treated like the suspect instead of the victim.
This is only one of many flaws in our justice system today and the fact that the justice system values money over the well-being of innocent girls like the victim of Winston shows that the flaw stems from greed. The justice system should value for once what is right instead of what pays and start living up to their expectation of being "just" and fair like their name would suggest.