UNIT 4 LAB QUESTIONS

Warrior’s Cry Against Child Marriage

1. How are cultural practices regarding courtship, family roles, and personal relationships different in Malawi compared to where you live?
2. What health issues, whether physical or emotional, may result from the cultural practices of the initiation camps in Malawi?
3. What traditions or practices in your community do you feel may influence unhealthy behaviors? What practices within your community may influence healthy behaviors?
4. Memory Banda fought against the cultural norms in her community and was able to get a law passed to change the legal marriage age for girls in Malawi. If you could change a law or create a new law relating to health within your community, what would it be? What would you hope to accomplish with your new or changed law?

Looks Aren’t Everything

1. How do you feel that our perception of beauty is influenced by the media in our country? Do you feel that as a model giving a TED talk about “looks aren’t everything” that Cameron Russell should have addressed this more?
2. How might this unrealistic perception of beauty portrayed by the media negatively impact the physical and emotional health of young adults and teens? How does Cameron Russell address this when talking about how the media retouch photos and showing photos of herself as a child?
3. Do you have any personal experience with the negative impact that the media’s portrayal of beauty has on young women? Do you have any strong feelings one way or another about young girls aspiring to be models? Do you feel that Cameron Russell’s simulated responses to hypothetical questions from little girls aspiring to be models were appropriate?
4. What do you think the dream of becoming a model is like for young girls who perhaps did not “win the genetic lottery” as Cameron Russell says? Do you agree with her comment, “Barring surgery, or the fake tan that I got two days ago for work, there’s very little that we can do to transform how we look. And how we look, though it is superficial and immutable, has a huge impact on our lives”? Why or why not?
5. In comparing the first video to the second video, what are some of the major differences in the issues that Cameron Russell discusses in terms of beauty and young women in the United States to the issues that face young women in a country such as Malawi? Do you feel that one is more significant than the other, health-wise?