Image courtesy of nytimes.com By Emma Sewell
Staff Writer One of the most controversial toys to this day is getting a HUGE makeover. That’s right, we’re talking about Barbie. Mattel has been spending years fighting Barbie’s unrealistic proportions of an impossibly tall, thin and curvaceous woman as they try to bring the brand back in order to fit modern expectations. “This is about drawing a wider demographic that has turned away from Barbie back to Barbie.” said Jim Silver, the editor of TTPM, a toy reviewer site. For the most part, it looks like it’s working. Along with the Hello Barbie, Mattel is updating their once popular doll brand to appeal to more girls, giving the new Barbies more variety. They are currently available to order on Barbie.com and will start hitting major retailers such as Target and Toys ‘R’ Us on March 1st. Can adding new hairstyles, skin tones, and body types really help Mattel back to the top along with Lego, Disney, Hasbro, and other famous brands? "Kids are just bombarded with images that are really just not true to nature," Evelyn Mazzocco, senior vice president and global general manager of Barbie says. "It can potentially damage your self-esteem or limit your world view." Mazzocco adds that it's important for young boys to understand women's bodies come in all shapes and sizes because "they grow up expecting girls' bodies to look a certain way." Mr. Dickson has been pushing Mattel’s marketing campaign more towards Barbie’s career ambitions than her body image. It’s inspiring to see Mattel take steps towards a better company. It seems like years since Barbie has tried new looks. Of course, why haven’t we seen Ken try something new then? Kimberly Culmone, VP of Barbie design, says Ken's body has already had some minor changes over the years, including a beard-growing Shaving Fun Ken phase. "We're looking at ethnic diversity for Ken dolls, and potentially (his) body," Culmone said on the phone. "This is a time at Mattel where we're very open to rapid change." I’m glad that this brand will be better represented in the future. Hopefully, Barbie, Ken, and all of their friends will once again become popular. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.org By Summer Mickey
Staff Writer Last year, on December 25, the movie Concussion, an American biographical sports medical drama film, was released. The movie was directed and written by Peter Landesman and the starring cast includes: Will Smith as Dr. Bennet Omalu, Stephen Moyer as Dr. Ron Hamilton, Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Prema Mutiso, Alec Baldwin as Dr. Julian Bailes, Eddie Marsan as Dr. Steven DeKosky, and Luke Wilson as Roger Goodell. “If you think about it, Concussion has a killer comic cast, and it's probably why this manly melodrama narrowly escapes Landesman's heavy hand. The cast curls the edge of tragedy just enough to let us feel the human condition in all its screwed up wonder,” says Katherine Monk from Ex-Press.com. The plot of this story takes you through the tragedies of CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) and the rollercoaster that the first doctor to discover it, Dr. Bennet Omalu, goes through in hopes to spread the word about this traumatic head disease usually found in athletes with a history of repetitive head injuries. “Works very well, first drawing us into Omalu's pursuit of understanding ... and then into his fight to get the NFL to recognize his research and stop covering up the dangers of professional football.” Says James Kendrick from the Q Network Film Desk. It all starts out in 2002, when a former Pittsburgh Steelers player, Mike Webster was found dead in his pickup truck because of severe brain damage. Dr. Bennet Omalu, a forensic pathologist with the Allegheny County, Pennsylvania coroner's office, took on the challenge of finding out the reason of his death. Omalu inferred that the reason of the severe brain damage was because of several blows to the head in football, which led to CTE. Although, over the next few years, Omalu discovers that three other dead former NFL players, Terry Long, Justin Strzelczyk and Andre Waters, had deadly symptoms very similar to the one he was researching. Dr. Omalu persuades a NFL commissioner, Roger Goodell, to show his findings to a committee on player safety in the NFL. However, the NFL does not take him and his research seriously, and they don't even allow him to be in the room for the presentation, forcing Dr. Julian Bailes to give it for him. Afterwards, Omalu is put to considerable pressure to back down from his efforts on the CTE case. Then, soon after, Omalu's wife, Prema, suffers a miscarriage after being stalked in their dream home outside of Pittsburgh. The Omalu’s are forced to leave Pittsburgh and move into Lodi, California, where Omalu takes a job with the San Joaquin County coroner's office. Omalu is vindicated when former NFL Players Association executive Dave Duerson commits suicide from growing cognitive problems. Fortunately, Omalu is then allowed to address an NFLPA conference on concussions and CTE issues, and then the NFL is forced to take more action on concussion and brain injuries. Lastly, Omalu is offered a job as chief medical examiner for the District of Columbia, but decides to turn it down in order to continue working with autopsies. Image by Reuters By Gabriella Markley
Staff Writer A student at Riverside Elementary School in New Jersey found a stray lizard in a bowl of greens at lunch time. The lizard was three inches long and green. Riverside Elementary School science teacher Mark Eastburn told NJ.com “a 3-inch green anole lizard was found by a kindergartner in a bundle of tatsoi greens.” The lizard had been cold and lifeless for days while living in a refrigerator. The people were told “The tatsoi had been bought from Whole Earth Center, a natural foods store in Princeton.” The officials from the farm said the lizard probably wouldn’t have made it into a non organic box of greens. People later realized that the vegetables were grown around many bugs and animals of different species. Image by rottentomatoes.com By Gracie Kuhn
Staff Writer This movie is about an inspiring true story where Joy Mangano invented a miracle mop with help of working in her dad’s auto shop. Joy Mangano has always wanted to invent something in her lifetime and she was finally able to. Her mom and dad divorced at a young age, so she felt sorrow growing up. Shortly after college she married someone, and soon after that she had divorced her husband. Her husband had nowhere to live, so both of them lived in the same house, but Tony lived in the basement and she lived upstairs. Jennifer Lawrence (Joy Mangano), Bradley Cooper (Neil Walker), Robert De Niro (Joy’s dad), Edgar Ramirez (Joys ex husband), Virgina Madsen (Joy’s mom), and Diane Ladd (Joy’s mimi), all did a great job of acting in this movie and making it an inspiring movie for consumers. After Joy’s dad and mom divorced, joy’s mom lived in her house causing lots of maintenance for joy. Joy’s mom did not move out of her room on the main floor for the whole time in her lifetime and did not see her ex-husband for 15 years. She was glued to the tv in her room everyday. One day, Joy’s mimi visited them and gave her an inspiring achievement that she could do. Joy said, “Some of us are fortunate enough to have somebody that believes in us, even before we're able to believe in ourselves," says Mangano. Shortly after that, Joy got a roll of yarn and started to rap it around her hands. She decided that she could create a mop and invent something to not get her hands dirty. One day, Joy’s dad showed up at her house and he was poor and had no money. This is when he wanted to move into joy’s house with everyone else in debt. Joy said he could live downstairs with Tony. Right when Rudy got downstairs Tony and him started fighting. Joy went downstairs and separated them with a piece of toilet paper. The next day, Joy started to advertise her mop in a parking lot with her kid and no one would buy it. Joy told her kid that she was a failure and said, “Christie, look at me. I want you to remember something cause a lot of times people get nice things and they start to think differently. We got here from hard work, patience, and humility. So I want to tell you, don't ever think the world owes you anything because it doesn't. The world doesn't owe you a thing.” When she went home, she told her ex-husband about her failure and started to cry. He cheered her up by telling her, he worked with someone that considered to sell things that people invented. This person was Neil Walker (Bradley Cooper). After Tony told Joy this, she went to Neil Walker’s office and told him about her miracle mop. He said that it was a good idea and he would consider it. If you want to learn more about the movie, then watch it! It is a great movie and one of my favorites. |
LJHSLakeridge Junior High School is an award- winning academic institution located in Lake Oswego, Oregon. Archives
October 2018
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