The News Cycle

                  Well looking online for some interesting news to write about, I noticed a complete lack in anything that could actually educate me on the issues today is facing. Those articles are out there, but I found I had to dig through the useless articles like “Awe inspiring recipes”. This really has no relevance to anything so does it really need to be front-page news and why is it right beside an article on a mass murderer? On the other hand, I am a teenager, and to be completely honest I’m not that interested in “CP Rail union, Tories battle over collective bargaining”. I didn’t even open the article because it has nothing that interested me in the title. And that would be the problem. A huge group of Internet users are teens and young people like myself, many of whom have the same interests and those interests are not politics. So are the people producing the media and news to blame or is it our increasing lack of interest in real problems. I’m a bit ashamed to admit that although world issues interest me, as I’m sure they do most people, I don’t go looking for them or read the news to find them. This could be because the media industry has given us so much else to focus on such as the Kardashians and Brad Pitt and all the drama they bring to the table. I think this is a, what comes first the chicken or the egg, type situation; what came first the lack of interest in the issues or the lack of issues being shared. Where did this cycle start?

Transgender Miss Universe

                  I’m sure everyone’s heard about the Miss Universe Canada controversy that has been in the news for a while, but now that all the drama is over I wanted to take a look at the outcome. The story is, transgender contestant Jenna Talackova was kicked out of the competition because of a qualifying rule that stated all contestants must be a naturally born female. She was later allowed back into the pageant, as she received overwhelming support on many social media sites and gained many fans. Of course along with fans she got a lot of negative attention as well. Beauty pageant contestants have to fit a very rare criterion of extreme beauty. They have height and weight limits and overall there’s a very small select group of women who make it to the top of this industry. York’s Gilbert said the pageant is trying to “fit everyone in a pigeon hole.” And that the world’s view of transgenders is very negative. I think that there is lots of room to open up beauty pageants to more people and different types of beauty, so why not let transgenders compete, and open up this pigeonhole. However Gilbert is correct in saying there’s a negative aura around transgenders, which may have been the real reason the pageant kicked her out in the first place. But if we don’t start treating transgenders as equals and as the specific sex they have chosen rather than some sort of weird male/female combo, people’s opinions will never change. When the competition did allow her back in, they ultimately decided to look at Jenna as a female as opposed to someone who used to be male and I think that this is the outlook the rest of the world is starting to adapt.