3.

For a few days ago I read an article about India, an expert talked about the clothing industry and he said that when red was a trendy colour it coloured the rivers in India red. I think that this says something about how we treat the countries that are supplying us with fabrics and clothes. Today you can find a trend in how we should behave and what we can do to prevent change of climate. The stores encourage us to by ecological/organic clothes and ecological food. I wonder if this is a trend, or if it really has its origins in a more consciously concern about the environment?

First of all I think that most people want to contribute to a better environment but doesn’t know how they can contribute to a better world and work toward a zero-emission. People can also easily be mislead and this happens all the time, for a couple of months ago we all were chocked by how down were picked from living geese. Another thing was when stores like Indiska and H&M had children working in their factories in different developing countries. This makes it hard for a consumer to trust stores when it comes to buying clothes which are both made without toxics and not made by children. I think that we are easily misled by the clothing industry because we fall for trends and right know ecological-thinking is a trend.

The other side of this is that the stores might have another agenda which is to earn money. They want to sell clothes and sometimes I don’t think that they care about where or how the clothes are made. As long as you can buy them for a low cost and then sell them for a higher price, the most important thing is that they make a good profit. The question is if money or the environment is the most important thing, because without the resources from nature it can be hard for different industries to even be able to manufacture clothes in the future. As a consumer it is hard do decide if you are to trust stores like H&M and Indiska when they have betrayed your trust before, they set the trends and sell clothes to make profit not to set a good example.

Finally, clothing and climate change are two factors that people don’t think about because we don’t have the factories that produce the clothes we wear in our countries. Maybe some of the big manufacturers of clothes should work more towards making ecological/organic clothes for other reasons than for trends. Because the situation right now is that I as a consumer can’t trust the clothing companies when they say that their clothes are made in a fair-trade and in an ecological way. But as consumers we also have a responsible but I’m sorry to say that we just can’t stop buying these clothes either because then we might en up sending developing countries into more poverty. This is a complex subject without any easy answers but one thing is for sure and that is that we all have a responsible to save the earth and use its resources in a more careful way. Zero-emission must be a goal for the industries of today at least as a vision for them to work towards.

2.

I have a complicated relationship with TV series (so I’ve heard) and there are only a few of them I have the patience to follow. I start watching but after a while I tend to stop watching. Why I have difficulties to follow series is because I think that at some time the happenings in different series get really ridiculous and the same problems occurs again and again, it is a never ending story.

At one time I used to watch Desperate Housewife but after a while I lost the interest and got bored so I just stopped watching. Sometimes I feel that TV series get stuck in a “hamster wheel” and tends to become like the soap opera Days of our lives, a real long runner without an end. That is why series in the crime genre suites me better because an episode often stands by itself and you can see an episode and then miss one out, but still you can follow it without problems. I like when you watch something that have a solution and ends so that you don’t have to wait a week or so to see what is going to happen.

But of course as with everything there are exceptions, there is one TV series that took my breath away and made me into at totally addict. This TV series had everything though it wasn’t in the crime genre and didn’t have episodes that stood by themselves. I am proud to say that I have seen every episode of the eight seasons of the amazing and extraordinary series called Six feet under. Of all the series I have seen or at least tried to see Six feet under is the best of the best. I can’t really explain why but I never got bored or thought that the happenings in the series never got ridiculous or boring. Maybe it had the perfect mix of everything, when I saw the last episode of all the seasons I felt totally empty inside because I really loved it. But as I mentioned sometimes a series should end because then you remember it as positive and maybe the series avoid getting a “soap opera stamp” like Days of our lives.

Another thing about watching series is, when I saw Six feet under I borrowed the boxes from a friend which meant that I saw an episode when it suited me and therefore I didn’t have to wait for a week for the next episode to be broadcasted. And there we have another thing when it comes to me and TV series, I don’t have the patience to wait a week and sometimes you even have to wait months for the dissolution, I don’t like cliff-hangers. Then a third and important thing for me is that I really don’t want the TV controlling my life because I am aware that if you get addicted and stuck to a TV series you chose the TV before other things.

Finally, the TV series I like to watch today is CSI, The Midsomer murders, Family guy, Flight of the concords, and I am really weak when it comes to different reality shows like Project Runway. But if I were to choose I’d rather buy or borrow boxes with the TV series which means that I can see how many episodes I want and when it suites me. A new form of watching TV programmes is by the internet and here you can se different TV series whenever you want. Many of the Swedish TV channels use the “play” function these days and that is something I really like.

1.

Since I grew up in the early eighties the society really has changed a lot, and now as a grown up I have difficulties to understand how it is to grow up in today’s society. But one thing that I really think about a lot when I meet younger children is that they are so conscious about their appearance, they wear make up and designer clothes especially girls. When I was ten years old I played with Lego and played a lot outdoors with kids in my neighbourhood. We never discussed things like music, celebrities, make up or clothes like many children do today.

We wore the clothes our parents bought and clothes were never really important, except maybe when we went to birthday parties. I can’t say if their childhood is worse than mine but there is a big difference between these childhoods of today and my childhood almost twenty years ago. I also think that this is a very regional difference because I grew up in the countryside where there were no possibilities to go shopping or to be affected by huge cloth companies like H&M and JC.

According to my experiences I think that children today deal with other problems than we did as we grew up. Today the media and different advertisements turn directly to young children and today it is more common to have a lot of more TV-channels and a “new” invention, the internet. When we grew up we were very sheltered from advertisements, because we only had three channels, 1, 2 & 4 and only on of them allowed advertisements. Today you really are surrounded by advertisements in the internet, in commercial television, advertising bills, advertising brochures, and also in newspapers and in different radio programs. I Think that this affects both young children but also grown ups as well.

I would like to have more discussions especially in school about how different Medias affect our life and the way we see ourselves. I think that it is very important to work with self-esteem and self-confidence with younger children, because I think that you can get very positive affects in the classroom if you have students with a positive “think” about themselves. Everyone is different but that’s a very positive thing that you as a teacher must promote as a positive thing and secure it in your classroom and in your students.

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