Toronto: Ontario's Shopping Mecca

The Eaton's Centre, an enormous shopping centre, home to hundreds of stores.


Toronto's Chinatown offers plenty of places to shop. You can buy anything from Chinese cuisine, to the latest Anime/Manga dolls.


Small concession stands cover the streets in Toronto, this is just one of many that line the sidewalks on the major streets.


Inside the Eaton's Centre. Big name stores like Sears must make enormous profits in locations this big


More big name brands in the Eaton's Centre


And yet again, big name brands raking on tons of money at a prime shopping location.


Brandon Sarabdial says "Where do I sign up?" You don't have to sign for anything, just go to Toronto and shop your heart out.

Negative teenage stereotypes

I'm sure that most people in our media class has been a victim to some sort of stereotype put on you by adults. Adults tend to think teenagers are; alcoholics and drug abusers, criminals, bludgers, lazy, complaining and aggressive, but no one ever tells us why we're seen this way. The stereotypes on teens are getting so bad, that a 1994 edition of Extra! Magazine says "Today's media portrayals of teens employ the same stereotypes once openly applied to unpopular racial and ethnic groups: violent, reckless, hypersexed, welfare-draining, obnoxious, ignorant."

So, if American and Canadians put so much stress on preventing racism, why do they turn around and stereotype people due to age? Isn't that the same thing?

Teenagers aren't the problem, ignorance is. The San Francisco Chronicle polled adults on how much crime they believe is caused by youth, in the end, the people blamed youth for 43% of violent crimes, yet FBI statistics show youths responsible for only 13% of violent crime, much less than the people surveyed thought. The worst part about this though, is the fact that 65 percent of the people polled said they get their perception of crime from The Media. So isn't it nice to know that all youth are being seen as criminals, or violent? The Chronicle also states "In reality, crime data show youth are much more likely to be victims than perpetrators. For every violent or sexual offense committed by a youth under 18 years of age, there are three such crimes committed against a youth by adults."

So who is really to blame for all the crime in the world?



Here are 2 videos showing a policeman in Hot Springs Arkansas violently attacking teenage boys, and a teenage girl, just for skateboarding.





And what became of all of this? The cop was cleared of ALL charges put against him, and the skateboarders had to appear in court.



As one boy quotes in the video "There's people out there robbing stores and selling drugs, and we're getting arrested for riding pieces of wood down the street." How do these people think they can justify attempting to choke a young boy and a young girl?

Another stereotype put on teens is that apparently we're all sexually driven, and all the girls are getting pregnant due to teenagers having too much sex. So if this is true, why does Extra! magazine report 71% of teenage mothers, have partners over the age of 20? In fact, men over 20 cause 5 times more pregnancies in junior-high girls than junior-high boys do, and 2.5 times more pregnancies in high school girls than high school boys do. Who's to blame for all of this? "Even though many more pregnancies among teenage females are caused by men older than 25 than by boys under 18, media reports and pictures depict only high schoolers. By their choice of terms and images, the media blame the young and female while giving the adult and male a break."

Would it surprise you to know that the number one worry of teenagers is getting a good job, and the number one expectation is completing their education. Teens are also proven to hold jobs better than adults, 58% of teens hold their jobs, and 69% of teens regularly work around the house.

So, it really makes you wonder doesn't it? how bad can teenagers really be? I'm not saying all teenagers are nice people, but you can't find a single demographic of nice people. Focus your attention on something worthwhile, rather than expressing so much hate to the future leaders of the world.

Shut Up and Sing: Dixie Chicks Controversy

I think Paul Martin is stupid

Oh no! I guess everyone's going to hate me now. Actually no, I don't think so, I have an opinion, and I said it, I'm allowed to because of free speech. That's one of the many things that I love about living in North America, I have free speech.

So, how come Americans, who are also entitled to free speech, are so hostile to other Americans that voice their opinions, especially when it comes to politics. Let's look at the Dixie Chicks for example, on March 10, 2003, when the United States was on the brink of a war, lead singer Natalie Maines stated "I'm ashamed that President Bush is from Texas" during a concert in London, England.

A London Newspaper "The Guardian" came out the next day with an article about Maines' bold statement against her president. The news quickly spread to North America, and in just one short week, the Dixie Chicks number one single fell dramatically on the charts, some radio stations went as far as banning the song from airplay, because people were claiming they would boycott any radio station that played their song.

There was also a large boycott of Lipton products, Lipton sponsored the Dixie Chicks, but due to their lack of sales, Lipton had to terminate their contract with the Dixie Chicks to save themselves.

The Dixie Chicks were under massive amounts of controversy, yet, they stayed strong, and refused to apologize. However, this cost the Dixie Chicks many fans, especially considering the fact that they're a country music group, and the majority of their listeners were Bush supporters. The Chicks decided to finish their tour despite controversy, and stayed off the radar for a few years until the controversy died down. But in 2006, they came back with a new album.

During their break, the Dixie Chicks decided it was time for them to stray away from their country roots, and find a new fan base, so their 2006 release, "Taking the Long Way" was released on the pap charts, and their single off the album, "Not Ready to Make Nice" showed to everyone that they still stand behind what they said, and they have no intent on apologizing, or stopping.

Photo Manipulation in the Media

Millions of people see pictures from the media every day, and we all know how much the media influences us in almost all, if not everything we do. Now, this is already wrong enough, but what makes it worse is the fact that almost all of these pictures we see aren't even real themselves.

Now, these pictures may not be completely fake, but, they really do stretch the truth on how things, or people look.

The question I have is, why? why do people have to look a certain way to be famous, then their pictures are edited even further? Cant people just be happy with what's in front of them anymore?


This commercial by Dove, shows the effects of photo manipulation


In the commercial, not only do they cover her in makeup, and change her hairstyle to make her look "more beautiful" but even after that, they continue to change her appearance in ways that aren't physically possible, making her neck thinner and longer, her eyes bigger. In the end, we're not even looking at a photo anymore, it's an illustration, an illustration of a fake person who looks too perfect to be real

Photo manipulation is just plain wrong, all it does is try to make something good out of nothing special, then it makes a bunch of people mad when they find out that they were tricked into believing it was real. People and things should be portrayed how they are, not "how they should be." It creates a degrading standard of what things should be like, and it deserves to be stopped.

Hey Hey, You You: The Epic Controversy

"Hey Hey, You You, I don't like your girlfriend." A phrase I'm sure most of us have heard, but a big question on many people minds is whether or not it's plagiarized. Yes, 1970's power pop band The Rubinoos has brought up a copyright lawsuit against Lavigne claiming that her song "girlfriend" is a complete rip-off of their song "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend." Now, one could see how these songs are similar, for a few seconds at least, but is it truly copyrighted? Avril Lavigne claims that she's never even heard of The Rubinoos before learning they were trying to sue her. I'm going to try to pick apart these songs and give my most educated opinion on this (mind you I missed this part of class)

Let's start out with the beat of this song, it was one thing that claimed to be suspiciously similar to The Rubinoo's song, now that, is very understandable, because it's an immensely popular beat used often by Southern California "surf-punk" bands. But Avril is Canadian you say? doesn't she live in southern California? in my personal opinion, I'm going to have to say, I've heard enough music to know that the beat of these 2 songs is a very generally used beat, and as far as I know, no one, at least no one who's suing Avril, owns the copyright to it.

Now on to the lyrics, Yet again “Hey hey, you you” a common form of annunciation in songs. There have been plenty of artists who have sang in this way; it was only a matter of time until the same words were used. To add to that, it’s two lines of song, can that really be so much harm? Personally, The Rubinoos need to think a little bit more rational for a minute and realize how common the lyrics and beat is.

Avril Lavigne has stated she had never even heard of the Rubinoos, there was also a professional musicologist hired by Avril’s record company who studied both songs extensively and concluded that there was no copyright infringement, a tiny similarity, but nothing too noticeable or worth disputing. If anyone really wants something to talk about, we can turn this all around on the Rubinoos, does anyone seem to notice how the Rubinoos just decided to reform in 1999, right around the time Avril was just starting to make a name for herself. How do we know that the Rubinoos never copyrighted anything, after all, they did release a record made entirely of covers, were all those credited? I guess no one will know, until lawsuits are filed…