Featured Blog Posts – June 2012 Archive (83)

It's been one month since my last final, yet I am still not on "vacation." This summer I decided to take a summer intensive course and so, this has kept quite busy. It's pretty sad to have all of these plans for summer and see nearly none getting accomplished. I was being unrealistic, though, on thinking I would get to read, draw or spend more time with my family. In the bright side, I am enjoying the accumulation of new knowledge. The course that I am taking is a literature course with a…

Sophia Vergara???? Many would know her as the beautiful Colombian Actress, comedian, television hostess, and model. Not to long ago she was apart of an article showing her interview with Esquire magazine were she was discussing a few different things on Latina woman.…

Who's to say what true beauty is nowadays? Society has manufactured our perception of beauty with softwares such as Photoshop to "perfect" an image that is unrealistic. Many models are made thinner and transformed into characters that do not naturally look like themselves. So what does this say to younger girls seeking for role models in magazines such as…

"Wearing clothes seems like an easy thing to do each day? Well not for today’s youth. Some youths even believe wearing the ‘wrong’ clothes can lead to social suicide. Statistics* say 77% students have been bullied mentally, verbally, or physically. …

The Keep it Real Challenge is an amazing protest against the misrepresentation of women in the media. Women come in all shapes and sizes but the only shape magazines seem to care about is the tall, thin, and size zero shapes. These women interest magazines are supposed to care for the young girls and women but they are the ones who cause the most harm. They all come out with articles about how to put a cute outfit together, how to paint your nails creatively, fun ways to do your hair for the…

Today is the second day of the Keep It Real Challenge; time to talk about how this issue affects me personally. 

My whole life, I've been surrounded with girls and boys saying the same things: "I have to lose weight," "I need to to work out," "I wish my nose looked different," and especially, "I wish I looked like (insert name here)." I myself would say things like that as well. Because we were surrounded by the media yelling at us that no matter what we do we'd never reach…

     By now you've probably heard of the Keep It Real Challenge. Keep It Real is an organization that is encouraging people to tweet, blog, post and fight for popular magazines to feature less Photoshop-dependent images. It's hard to find a nationally distributed magazine that doesn't have an airbrushed or otherwise manipulated picture of a woman's body. Even Seventeen and J-14, both of whose readership consists of preteen to teen-aged girls, depend on Photoshop to…

Yesterday, June 27th, me and my 7 other fellow campers along with help from our "camp official" filmed a video called Keep it real. You can search Keep it real latinitas and its on the latintas magazine channel!

We all had an idea for this video after we heard about the #keepitreal campaign/movement on twitter yesterday. If you don't know about it, here's a little bit about it. Four organizations, Miss Representation, SPARK Movement, Lovesocial, and I Am That Girl.…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0udLHJSEok&feature=youtu.bewe made a video about "keep it real" and we wanted the magazines to have one picture unphoto shoped picture of a women. i want everyone to share the video and watch it so mabye we can make a change.people should care because some kids read these magazines and they think their a person that they should look up to them. i say just to be…

I went downtown to Lincoln Park last night and noticed the amazing murals under the Spaghetti Bowl. Many of them illustrated Chicano figures and low-riders. After gathering some information, I realized a grand majority of Chicanos in the 70's and 80's were really attached to their glamorous cars which is why El Paso dedicated the mural area to Chicano lowrider pride. If you've ever been to a car show in El Paso, you will find the polished vehicles dressed in shiny rims and bumpers that…

First, I apologize for leaving my blog stagnant for so long. I've really enjoyed the summer and pretty much thrown all of my cares to the wind, which is kind of a problem.

I guess I will fill y'all in with my camp (mis)adventures. 

Have you ever felt super unfit in a social setting? I usually mesh well with new people, but while I was at camp it was painfully obvious that I was the only Latina and that I came from a completely different economic bracket than those around me. I…

Every one has had those crazy moments that when you look back you think "How embarrassing!" Well thanks to my mom I had one of those mixed with fear and anxiety. It was when I was in third grade and I wanted to be in a basketball team just like my brother Alex. Since the basketball team at my elementary school was just for sixth graders, my mom wanted to surprise me by putting me in a city team. And boy did she surprise me!

You see, she did put me in a basketball team with kids my…

  I love the women's fashions from the 40's/50's era. If I had it my way I would throw away my jeans and t-shirts and switch them out for a closet full of voluminous, midi-length skirts, pencil skirts, silky button up blouses, skirt suits, casual gloves, glossy pearls, of course, hats! I would trade in my boring, everyday pony tail for flouncy pin curls and my overrated two piece swim suit for a retro- one piece suit. Ah yes, the apparel in those days, though more modest than…

Photo by:Joaquin Sarmiento of the New York Times

One of the things that was brought to my attention a few days ago, while skyping with my friend from Colombia, was the incident that happened a few months ago in Cartagena,…

I heard about the Keep it Real 3-day challenge and immediately I thought it was a wonderful idea. This is a movement to get magazine editors to stop using Photoshop on models and actresses, transforming them into an unattainable beauty that sets unrealistic expectations for girls and women across the world. Through the use of social networking tools such as Twitter, blogs, and Instagram, the Keep It Real Challenge urges women to get their voice heard and protest the 

The three-day…

State Farm® is launching a Celebrate My Drive t-shirt design contest for students age 15 to18-years-old. The winning design will appear on hundreds, if not thousands, of t-shirts across the U.S. and Canada.

Contest guidelines will be posted soon on the Celebrate My…

In commemoration and celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, the National Park Service (NPS) announces a nationwide art competition in three categories: photography, poetry, and digital short films. The competition is open to students ages 13 to 18 and will be juried by professional artists. Submissions of artistic works are required to explore personal meanings of freedom and relate to nationally significant themes. The first-place winner in each…

For the past few days I have been obsessed with making food items "in a jar".  I totally 100% blame this on my addiction to Pinterest and ability to be productive when putting things off.  I spent most of the past few days dedicated to my new cooking hobby.  Here are links to my tumblr page where I give you a how to on 2 recipes- Pizza in a Jar and Eggs and Biscuit in a Jar.…

Since this is my first blog, I think I should tell everyone a little bit about me.

My name is Maria Fernanda Ruiz-Pineda, but most of my friends call me Marifer. And family is the most important thing in my life. I am an only child and sometimes when I was little I was kind of lonely. But thank goodness I had my two cousins,Tury and Alex, who honestly weren't my cousins, but my brothers. Tury is six years older than me, and he was always the brother that I looked up to. He just always…

Today I had the oppurtunity to view the film; Fantastic Mr. Fox. I went in with an open mind and no preconceptions, in order to come back and write a quality and accurate review.

My review:

                Fantastic Mr. Fox is a PG rated family film that was released to theaters throughout the USA on November 25, 2009.The award winning film was directed by Wes Anderson, the novel was written by Roald Dahl, and the screenplay was written by Wes Anderson…