Introduction!

Welcome to Nearly Bare Junkyard. This blog is a service learning project I am working on for a class I am currently taking (Social Problems). Herein I plan to cull images from advertising/the media and examine the messages they contain regarding gender. For the curious, the title of this blog comes from a line from Intercourse by Andrea Dworkin: "The person with imagination is pushed forward by it into a world of possibility and risk, a distinct world of meaning and choice; not into a nearly bare junkyard of symbols manipulated to evoke rote responses." I think the nearly bare junkyard of symbols which comprises popular culture can be harmful to all people, in that it offers no representation of the true spectrum of human diversity. Social constructs like gender and race appear to be genetic edicts under its influence. I aim to view these messages with a critical eye, and encourage others to do the same.