What is the latest Hollywood scandal?  If you haven’t heard, it’s Dakota Fanning’s appearance on the upcoming February edition of Cosmo.  Who is Dakota Fanning?  Unless you live in a bubble… oh wait, we do, Dakota Fanning is known for playing some VERY mature starring roles in some of Hollywood’s biggest movies.  Not only does Dakota have a perfect reputation in the acting business but is known by many in the fashion world.  This girl gets an A+ for her reputation, and has been in the spotlight for ages.  Maybe it has something to do with never making an appearance on Disney Channel… With that point aside, why so much scandal?? Well for one thing Cosmo is known as one of the more “racy” magazines, but is still one of the most respected women’s magazines of all time.  Back to the question again, why so much scandal?  Another reason for all the scandal is that Dakota Fanning is currently only 17 years old, and some people feel the magazine is too mature to have an underage girl representing them on the cover.  Some people feel the headlines surrounding Dakota are too risqué for her only being 17.  She was also in a Marc Jacobs perfume advertisement that got some negative attention for being a little racy.  But personally I feel like this scandal has been blown way out of proportion and is a ridiculous amount of attention on a perfectly respectable girl.  She is properly dressed in a beautiful dress, has her hand on her hip and has straight hair.  This picture could easily be on any teen magazine and flow perfectly.  Back to the age issue, yeah she is 17, but she turns 18 in the month of February, which is the same month this issue is being released.  Dakota has done an awesome job about staying out of the gossip spotlight throughout the many years of her success, she obviously knows her goals in life and has accomplished them, she said in this specific February issue that, “Since I was young, I’v always known who I was.”  Couldn’t have said it better.  Now the question is why Dakota Fanning on the cover if Cosmo knew there may be some gossip about it… Dakota was voted “Fun, Fresh, Female of the year”  for Cosmo.  She is an obvious role model for many, and some reporters think being on this cover at such a young age will change that.  Hmm, lets look back at some Cosmo history.  Dakota is the youngest girl that has been on a Cosmo cover since 2000.  But who was their youngest?  Brooke Shields in 1981 at whopping age of 15.  I don’t know about you but it makes me chuckle, Brooke Shields is not only considered still as one of the most beautiful people in the world, but is known for having some of the best “morals” out of all the celebs.  She didn’t have kids at a young age (she was actually 38 years old when her first was born) she’s never been to jail, and is still currently an amazing role model.  This just goes to show, when celebrity’s say they know who they are, they mean it.  So I say lay off Dakota, she looks amazing on the cover and is seems always confident with her decisions, so that means her fans should be too!!

Marc Jacobs ad:

Yes, instead of describing all the quality features of this ever so precious Infiniti vehicle, the commercial decides to just make it look really good next to a BMW. How do these producers go about doing this? They show the guy, who comes off as a jerk, getting into his BMW and throwing a snowball at another guy who owns an Infiniti. The next scene shows the Infiniti pass the BMW on the road, and when both of them get home (apparently they are neighbors), the Infiniti guy’s son got all his friends in the neighborhood to throw snowballs at the BMW guy. I must say that I do not feel compelled to buy an Infiniti, but those were some pretty impressive snowball throws.

Now I want to tie this in to more serious matters. Politics. Yes, we have all seen those 30-second commercials where the candidate bashes another candidate. But I have a problem with this. If you are trying to get elected, I think it would be much more beneficial for the public to describe how awesome you are, and that you’ll do such a good job in office. Promote yourself, that’s fine. But these days, they are spending millions of (our) dollars putting other candidates down. It’s not about finding the best person to be president; it’s finding the guy who was shown in the least negative light. I haven’t been keeping up with all the campaigning, but I’ve heard the Republicans are doing a great job attacking each other. That’s first of all not classy, and second of all whatever happened to “mind your own business”? If the candidate’s best strategy is to put the other person down, then I don’t think the candidate has the qualities we need in a president. Because when he’s in office, we only heard so much about how awful the other guy is, and we need to cross our fingers that we’ve made the right choice.

Here’s another example. When a person applies to college, they should try to promote themselves, as all students should. Flaunt good qualities and talents. What a student shouldn’t say is “you should accept me into this university because everyone else isn’t good enough”. That’s not true, and the college doesn’t know anything about this student except that they are an A+ jerk.

I am ashamed at what political campaigning strategies have come to. Now, I know that these candidates do in fact promote themselves, very convincible to the point of lying, but when I see those thirty second clips of just negativity, it really makes me look down on that particular candidate. Show America why we should vote for you and not why we shouldn’t vote for the other guy.

I have just recently created an account, and I have already signed about ten petitions. Some petitions are more popular than others, but even the ones with fewer supporters can easily gather more! I know that not all petitions created on this site will be “won”, but I can’t begin to explain how good it feels to click the “SIGN” button. The site also allows you to give a reason why you signed the petition.

Also, I love how the site gives tips and guides for how an online petition works, starting an online petition, how to promote the petition, and more. The websites name pretty much describes everything. Registered users want to make changes to the world we live in today.

The website is easy to navigate, and easy to use. I would highly encourage anyone to check it out. You don’t even have to make your own petition. I plan on writing one someday, because I sure have a lot of ideas, but for now I enjoy reading other people’s petitions, and I smile when I see how much they want to make a change. I can’t help but support someone who is passionate about a certain issue…especially if I agree with them.

Anyway, here’s the site, and please at least check it out!

www.change.org

The opening slide was an introduction, and the first point was that every five hours, a child dies from abuse or neglect in the US. The statistics didn’t really shock me, what did shock me was that America has the worst child abuse record in the entire world. Our child maltreatment death rate is THREE TIMES that of Canada and ELEVEN times that of Italy. Give me a break, America.

Now, I have to say that this was a well-done presentation. Because US reporters did not do this, there was not one part of the presentation where they tried to justify the child abuse and neglect in America. Not one excuse, in fact, the reporter, who was British, seemed ashamed of America. I have to say that I am too.

One of the sections was titled “Expert View”. This was more of an article about why America has a bigger problem of violence against children. Well, again, the results didn’t shock me.
Here’s the direct quote from the article-
“Part of the answer is that teen pregnancy, high-school dropout, violent crime, imprisonment, and poverty – factors associated with abuse and neglect – are generally much higher in the US.”

Shocker? Not in the least to me. We even have reality TV shows about teen pregnancy! It’s like the United States glorifies it. And of course, we hear about the other factors on the news all the time. So the results of more child abuse are not surprising. I just think it’s sad that another nation is investigating this story and exposing it to the public eye rather than us. I’m sure someone somewhere is working on some sort of solution…. hopefully. The presentation says that in Washington, politicians are beginning to recognize this as a national crisis. Better late then never I suppose.

This was mentioned in the article too, but I know that child abuse is hard to detect. Parents/guardians can be great liars, and our court system isn’t always efficient/ effective *cough * Casey Anthony *Cough *.

It’s really easy to get frustrated at society and start blaming the government- you know, the usual procedure Americans take when something is wrong on the local or national level. But BBC made great points that actually supports this- they say that some people believe it’s the federal government’s drive to keep families together that is the problem. When I think about this, I have to maybe agree. We do value family here in good ol’ America.

One of the video clips showed an interview with a man, unfortunately I do not know who he is, but he had an American accent. He said something that scared me because it’s true. He said, “We are breeding an army of future child abusers”. Unfortunately, it doesn’t take a crystal ball to predict that one. It’s a cycle; “you abuse me so I’ll grow up to abuse someone else”. In Psychology class today, we actually learned the name of this defense mechanism. It’s called “Identification with the Aggressor”. A person will start projecting qualities of those who abused them because the more they act like the aggressor, the less they act like the victim. This is easily applied to bullies at school, but it can also be amplified to describe a situation with a child whose parents abuse them. It’s agreeable to believe that if you were abused growing up, the odds of you abusing your kids are higher than someone else who wasn’t abused.

This issue is so frustrating for me because there is very little action that takes place until the child is actually dead. I always felt that way about America- like we have to wait until someone dies to convict someone of abuse/ address the problem. Maybe it’s that way all over the world? I have no idea. But, I am really ashamed at what this issue has become. I saw this article as if BBC is scolding America, and I think we deserve that. The problem is, I can talk about how awful child abuse is and people need to do something about it all day, but I don’t have a solution. Who has a solution?

I do believe that we, as citizens, have responsibilities. We have the responsibilities to protect our family, our friends, the ones we love, etc. But in my opinion, we don’t always take this seriously. Also, there are obviously people in America who don’t take this responsibility at all, because if they did, they wouldn’t abuse their children.

I know America has major economic issues at the moment, but BBC took the time to do an entire investigation and create an entire presentation about OUR OWN problem of child abuse. That says something about us and our priorities.

Ms. Dorsey received her undergraduate degree from Northeastern University in Electrical Engineering. She then worked for Motorola for fifteen years. While working there, she was a substitute teacher and tutor at Algonquin Regional High School. This is where she developed a passion for teaching.

With her new inspiration, Ms. Dorsey enrolled at Framingham State College, now known as Framingham State University, to pursue teaching. Westborough High School was a convenient teaching opportunity because she had already been a student teacher for a few months.

Her inspiration to be the hardworking teacher she is came from a fourth grade teacher Ms. Zia. Ms. Zia is now a children’s book author who was very devoted to working individually with each child and his/ her family. Ms. Zia’s willingness to work with the children is reflective in Ms. Dorsey’s teaching style.

Aside from teaching, Ms. Dorsey enjoys gardening and going out to dinner with her family. She loves planting perennials, and her favorite restaurant is Romaine’s in Northborough.

No longer working in a cubical, Ms. Dorsey is content substituting for Mrs. Tramontozzi. Ms. Dorsey is a wonderful addition to Westborough High School.