Fast Forward - Lauren Greenfield

This reading was different than other readings that we'd done this
semester. Primarily because it wasn't so much a reading. The pictures
illustrate the extremely different lives and experiences that teenagers
in LA have from each other. There are some experiences that are
difficult for people who have not gone through them, or even have known
someone who has gone through them to understand. For example, the
bar/bat mitzvah picture, where parents will spend 15-90k on their 13 year old's
birthday party! It reminded me of that show on MTV, My Sweet Sixteen. I
guess I could say that this was something that I did not understand, or
more so could not comprehend. I also agree with one of the comments on
this pictures:

"It seems like everyone is in a rush to be an adult. It's not cool to be a kid."

Majority of the pictures she took supported this theory. Nose Jobs at 16. Go go dancers at birthday parties.

It
also showed the other side of LA. The poorer side. One of the teens
spend 2 years saving up for one night, the prom. I feel like this side
is all over America, and wasn't a new idea for me. I almost feel like
she captured this side, to

Overall it showed me personally how
drastically different the teenagers years can be for different people.
LA is a diverse place, compared to what I'm used to. There the extremes
are shown more, theridiculously rich, and the poor. Here we don't have
any Hilton kids living down the street. So other than in the tabloids,
we don't see how real life is different for teenagers in those
situations, other than on MTV. Not only are a lot of these kids (like
most) growing up as fast as they can, they have the means to makepermanent
changes, like a nose job. Throughout our lives, we're all had something
physical about ourselves that we'd like to change. Sometimes the desire
to change it lasts for awhile, sometimes not very long. However, if we
could change it, and go through with it, it may be something we regret.


One of the things I also noticed in one of the pictures was
this skinny skinny girl, hanging out with her parents and friends while
standing on a scale. At a young age girls are taught that they should
be concerned about their weight. The only thing this girl should be
concerned about is gaining it. Granted there was nothing in the caption
about it at all, I just feel the way this was photographed it wassupposed to illustrate that this is what girls do when they hang out.