I was born with a progressive hearing loss. My hearing did not worsen until after most of my speech had developed, so I speak with no impediments. Therefore, I am privileged in my experience with this disability. This has been a double-edged sword. While it is indisputable that deafness is a disability, when it isn’t […]
Television distorts, mocks and marginalizes fat people. Fat characters are reduced to caricatures whose stories and identities aren’t developed and don’t matter. TV audiences look down on fat characters because they are made fun of on the shows they are shown in (Himes 2007:713). Not only is the representation of fat people overwhelmingly negative, but […]
When I was eight years old, I started training as a competitive rhythmic gymnast. As the only girl of color on a team composed exclusively of Russian members, I faced a constant struggle for acceptance. I was called unkind words like “kakashki”, which means poop in Russian by my teammates and was even told by […]
For women, deciding to have sex involves much more than the physical act itself. Their decision also includes the use of contraception and the best way to protect themselves and their partner against unwanted pregnancies. Finding what forms of contraception work for their bodies can be a complex, confusing, and exhausting process of trial-and-error. In […]
The amount of medication that Americans take to combat mental illness is astounding. In recent decades, the pharmaceutical and medical industries have convinced a large number of people that drugs are a cure-all for mental illnesses. This increased reliance on these drugs is part of rising pharmaceuticalization in the United States. Pharmaceuticalization has been defined as […]
As a female athlete in college I noticed many of my teammates and other friends (who also happen to be athletes) frequently comment on their body weight and defects, and the food they allow themselves or not to consume. After some research, I found that my friends are in a gray area, where they don’t […]
While mental health has been a problem for millions of people around the world, it is typically seen as a personal problem, rather than a societal problem. Since the beginning of quarantine, life in America has drastically changed. Schools have moved online. A lot of stores only allow a few people in at a time […]
About 40% of the world’s population, three billion people, use social media. In the last decade, the development of online networking has been so rapid, and its impact so vast that it is unclear how much it has affected normal aspects of human behavior and psychiatric behaviors. However, several studies have indicated that the prolonged […]
By: Alexa Bosco By using magazine cutouts in a collage technique I have made a what is known as a “Zine”: short for magazine, a zine is a homemade work that brings to light a social issue. In this project I aimed to explore the growing mental health crisis and drastic increase in anxiety throughout […]
