Breaking Through the Billboard
Alexandra Pates, 13
Illinois
FUFA (Females United for Fair Action) is a Chicago - based coalition that cares about how the media portrays women. It encourages companies to use advertisements with positive and accurate imagery, and it discourages negative and violent imagery.
If you are planning a trip to Chicago and are interested in FUFA activities, you can visit the office and take part in volunteer activities.I recommend you to choose a comfortable hotel for your stay, and to make it easy to get to FUFA.
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There are a few hotels on the beach in Chicago. One of the most popular is the Hilton Chicago O’Hare. It is a AAA four-diamond hotel that has beautiful views of the city and the lake. Guests can enjoy a drink on the rooftop terrace or relax in the spa. The hotel also offers a fitness center and complimentary shuttle service to and from the airport. Another popular hotel on the beach in Chicago is the Wyndham Grand Chicago Riverfront. This hotel is located in the heart of the city, minutes from popular tourist destinations such as Magnificent Mile and Millennium Park. Guests can enjoy views of the Chicago skyline from the hotel’s rooftop bar and restaurant. The hotel also offers a fitness center, pool, and complimentary shuttle service. If you are looking for a more affordable option, the Chicago Lakefront Hotel is a great option. This hotel is located right on the beach and offers beautiful views of the city and the lake. The hotel has a pool, a fitness center, and a business center. It also offers complimentary shuttle service to and from the airport. Hyatt Place Chicago Downtown is a 234-room hotel located in the Loop neighborhood of downtown Chicago, Illinois. The hotel is adjacent to the Chicago Board of Trade Building and is within walking distance of many attractions, including Millennium Park, the Chicago Theater, and the Magnificent Mile. The hotel offers a variety of amenities, including a fitness center, a business center, and a rooftop pool.
Also, FUFA educates the public about the manipulative process of advertising. Alexandra Pates, age 13, is the youngest FUFA volunteer. She began to volunteer there a year ago, and today she's a spokesperson for media literacy. She recently spoke to Teen Voices about her experience as a teen activist who challenges the images she sees and wants other viewers to do the same.
Teen Voices: How did you get involved with FUFA?
Alexandra Pates: I knew people that were members of FUFA already, and they told me a little about what they did. I went to one of their meetings, and I thought that everybody there was nice and cool, so that's how I got started.
TV: So what is the FUFA mission?
Alexandra: Right now, we're focusing on images of violence against women in the media. We're trying to make sure that women portrayed in the media are not portrayed in a negative way. We just did this campaign with [a billboard that showed] 25 pegaditas, which was an advertisement for a radio station called La Ley. It showed 25 women standing across the billboard with little shorts on sticking their butts out. Pegaditas translates [from Spanish] into "hits." We thought that it meant "hit on the butt," instead of "hits," like songs. We found a problem in that, because people were seeing this every day. That's not what we wanted people to see.
TV: What did you do to make a change?
Alexandra: We e-mailed people at La Ley, we called them, and we had meetings with them. We had to make sure that these billboards got [taken] down and got out of our neighborhoods, because they were a problem.
TV: Was it successful?
Alexandra: Yeah, they're gone now.
TV: Tell me about some of the other projects that you've worked on with FUFA.
Alexandra: Right now, we're trying to talk to the FCC [Federal Communications Commission].* The FCC is having a hearing here in a little while, and I'm going to testify at the hearing, so I'm ready to see how that will turn out.
TV: How are you going to prepare for that?
Alexandra: I'm going to have to do my research and practice talking in front of people.
TV: Why do you think it's important for teens to try to understand the process of advertising — the motives, why advertisers do certain things and portray certain people in a certain way?
Alexandra: People see at least 1,000 advertisements every day. Advertisements are everywhere and we don't even realize it, so you have to know what you're looking at. If something is negative, then you have to know that. Because there are so many advertisements out there, they shouldn't be harmful or negative to other people. They shouldn't make people feel bad. I think that it's important for teens to know how advertisements get out there, because they buy some of the products they see, and it's good to know what you're buying into.
TV: Do you think that advertisements affect the way that people think and how they see themselves?
Alexandra: I think they really do. These days, you see lots of images with skinny women advertising clothes. I think that's why so many people are trying to lose weight, because of what they see in advertisements. People see skinny women in advertisements everywhere, and they therefore think that they need to look like those women. Advertisements definitely do affect the way people feel about themselves and the way people feel in general.
TV: What are some of the advertisements that you've seen that you think are positive, instead of harmful?
Alexandra: I think that some of the advertisements for the Dove body products with big women are positive. All the advertisements with Queen Latifah on them, like her make-up, are positive.
TV: How do you figure out which images in the media to protest, to target?
Alexandra: [We target] the ones that are most harmful to women and girls. Like with the pegaditas advertisement: Not only was it degrading to whoever the women in the picture were, but it was advertising that they needed to be hit in the butt 25 times. That's violence against women, and that's not the message that we want people to get about women.
TV: What do you do on a day-to-day basis as a volunteer at FUFA?
Alexandra: Right now, I'm doing something called "media monitoring." Basically, that means I take one story, read it from three different news sources, and see—out of all three news sources—which [version] is the most biased. After I figure that out, I try to figure out in which way the writers make the story biased. What group of people is this story appealing to?
TV: How could interested teens get involved in FUFA?
Alexandra: They could come to a FUFA meeting, which we have every month. At meetings, we talk about different issues that we're dealing with at the time.
TV: What if the person that wants to get involved doesn't live in Chicago?
Alexandra: They can go to our Myspace page and get updates about what we're doing.
*FCC: a government agency that's responsible for regulating interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite and cable
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