First Day.

The first day of English 1A was much better than i expected. This was my first class in a college environment and i must say it is quite a different feeling from being in a high school class room.

Well anyways, let me share my thoughts on the Tommy Hilfiger ad from today's class discussion. I can understand all the little details that Tim was mentioning about the history of African Americans and how the perfume bottle is shaped and placed in a specific location but i personally do not think that those were the intentions of the creators of the advertisement for Tommy Girl. I think the image they were trying to express to the public was just a simple and trendy girl who seems to be happy probably because of the smell of the fragrance she is wearing which mostly likely is Tommy Girl since the ad is for Tommy Girl. Although that is probably the simple message that Tommy Girl is trying to get out to people who see this ad, the use of the African American female as the model makes me think twice about this ad. The discussion about how Tommy Hilfiger is considered to be racist is something i have heard before even on Korean television and i think that by using an African American female as the model, the creators of this ad probably thought they would be able to clean up Tommy Hilfiger's image as a racist person. Many of us are used to seeing beautiful white females model for most of the designer perfume ads and so that is why this Tommy Hilfiger ad would leave a lasting impression in someone's head because we are not used to seeing a minority as a model for such ads. Has Tommy Hilfiger succeeded in trying to clear up his image as a racist by using this Tommy Girl ad? In my opinion, this ad did nothing to change my view on Tommy Hilfiger and all i could really get out of it was a pretty "American" girl wearing with a great smile on her face with her body language showing some sex appeal to catch the attention of the readers. I honestly think we see way too many of these kinds of ads in magazines and they dont really do much to show what the product they are selling is really about which i find is quite useless as an ad considering that the goal of an ad is to try and promote the product and not the person in the ad.

Moving on...The activity we did outside with the the shade was quite interesting because it made me think on the spot what my views on certain topics were. I was quite surprised at the responses for certain issues such as the abortion question and the voting question. Overall, today was quite a fun day and I'll see everyone tomorrow!

-Sean.