Pressures of society on celebrities free essay sample

My topic focuses on societal pressures on celebrities and people. While research may confirm that both celebrities and people have the same problems, you can’t help but notice that celebrities are more judged. This is a highly controversial topic because we are so quick to judge someone based on their actions without really knowing them. While some people think celebrities are a bad influence some still think they can also have some benefits to the community. People and celebrities go through some of the same problems, the only difference is celebrities have no privacy in their personal lives and they are put on a higher pedestal. However, we may never know if the high pressures of society will ever change and be more open minded before judging people based on their outside appearance and mistakes. Jack Marshall’s article, â€Å"The Sexualization of Teen Celebrities Is Ethically Questionable,† discusses young teens that idolize stars and want to be just like them so they dress and act the same. We will write a custom essay sample on Pressures of society on celebrities or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Similarly, Julie Mehta article, â€Å"Celebrity Culture Promotes Unrealistic Body Images,† discusses how the younger generations want to look like celebrities and view that their bodies are not as fit or thin enough. Despite the fact that the articles bring up different questions about how we look up celebrities too much, the authors both argue celebrities are idolized too much. Marshall does this by stating, â€Å"The early sexualization of TV actresses whose fans are young teens and pre-teens has a strong rippling effect across the culture, encouraging girls to go where their idols appear to be going†. This statement points out that the younger generation wants to be their idols so much that they start mocking what they do. Mehta begin her argument by saying, â€Å"Perfect images of perfect celebrities are everywhere, and it’s enough to make anyone feel insecure or envious. † (Mehta. ) The article describes the flawless images of celebrities in the media can disturb one’s thought about body image and self-esteem.. She goes on to state, â€Å"Seeing all those artificially perfected images can hurt your body image- the way you see and feel about your body and the way you think others see you. I feel like that will get us closer to the glitz and glamor of their life. Another source that talks about the pressures of society is Chris Hedges’s article, â€Å"Celebrity Culture is Harmful. † He discusses how celebrity culture only results to self absorption and materialism. This also connects to the main point of Emily Stimson’s article, â€Å"Celebrity Culture Harms Teens. † Their article sheds light on the obsession of celebrities and how dangerous their influence really has on the younger generation. Both articles talks about celebrities’ fame disturbing our society. Hedges and Stimson both talk about star’s lives as only the matter about wealth, fame and don’t have a touch of reality. He states that, â€Å"gossip and chatter dominate what really matters in the nation † (Hedges. ) With this statement one could say he is right, people are more bound to watch television talking about the latest sandal with down spiraling celebrities than watching Fox 4 news talk about the war in Iraq. Stimpson states that, â€Å"American teenagers are obsessed with celebrities and becoming famous, which has negative emotional and social consequences† . The authors go on to fully detail what is wrong with our community and their reasons they think that celebrity culture has ruin our society. In conclusion, this research may be used to support that celebrities are idolized too much and once they make a mistake, we throw it out of proportions, and we criticize them for it. While some of the articles focus more on celebrity obsession, the other articles take into consideration that maybe it isn’t their fault that they are so corrupted, but because of the pressure of being perfect that corrupts them. When will we realize that we put too much pressure of stars? How will they be able to make a mistake, when to them it feels like they are walking on eggshells? And once they make a mistake we are there to judge them and talk down on them, because they got caught. No one is perfect, so why do we have such high standards for them to be? We yearn to be center of attention, to be noticed and admired. We build social media sites only for the sole purpose to present our image in the world. Why are willing to give up our privacy to become famous? We have become so infatuated with celebrities and their fame that we watch everything they do so we can do our best to be just like them. Has our society become so obsessed with money and power that we have lost track on what is really important in the world? That is a better question.

The Impact of Wheeled Vehicles on Human History

The Impact of Wheeled Vehicles on Human History The inventions of the wheel and wheeled vehicles–wagons or carts which are supported and moved around by round wheels–had a profound effect on human economy and society. As a way to efficiently carry goods for long distances, wheeled vehicles allowed for the broadening of trade networks. With access to a wider market, craftspeople could more easily specialize, and communities could expand if there was no need to live close to food production areas. In a very real sense, wheeled vehicles facilitated periodic farmers markets. Not all changes brought by wheeled vehicles were good ones, however: With the wheel, imperialist elites were able to expand their range of control, and wars could be waged farther afield. Key Takeaways: Invention of the Wheel The earliest evidence for wheel use is that of drawings on clay tablets, found nearly simultaneously throughout the Mediterranean region about 3500 BCE.  Parallel innovations dated about the same time as the wheeled vehicle are the domestication of the horse and prepared trackways.  Wheeled vehicles are helpful, but not necessary, for the introduction of extensive trade networks and markets, craft specialists, imperialism, and the growth of settlements in different complex societies.   Parallel Innovations It wasnt simply the invention of wheels alone that created these changes. Wheels are most useful in combination with suitable draft animals such as horses and oxen, as well as prepared roadways. The earliest planked roadway we know of, Plumstead in the United Kingdom, dates to about the same time as the wheel, 5,700 years ago. Cattle were domesticated about 10,000 years ago and horses probably about 5,500 years ago. Wheeled vehicles were in use across Europe by the third millennium BCE, as evidenced by the discovery of clay models of high sided four-wheeled carts throughout the Danube and Hungarian plains, such as that from the site of Szigetszentmarton in Hungary. More than 20 wooden wheels dated to the late and final Neolithic have been discovered in different wetland contexts across central Europe, between about 3300–2800 BCE. Wheels were invented in the Americas, too, but because draft animals were not available, wheeled vehicles were not an American innovation. Trade flourished in the Americas, as did craft specialization, imperialism and wars, road construction, and the expansion of settlements, all without wheeled vehicles: but theres no doubt that having the wheel did drive (pardon the pun) many social and economic changes in Europe and Asia. Earliest Evidence The earliest evidence for wheeled vehicles appears simultaneously in Southwest Asia and Northern Europe, about 3500 BCE. In Mesopotamia, that evidence is from images, pictographs representing four-wheeled wagons found inscribed on clay tablets dated to the late Uruk period of Mesopotamia. Models of solid wheels, carved from limestone or modeled in clay, have been found in Syria and Turkey, at sites dated approximately a century or two later. Although long-standing tradition credits the southern Mesopotamian civilization with the invention of wheeled vehicles, today scholars are less certain, as there appears to be a nearly simultaneous record of use throughout the Mediterranean basin. Scholars are divided as to whether this is the result of the rapid dissemination of a single invention or multiple independent innovations. In technological terms, the earliest wheeled vehicles appear to have been four-wheeled, as determined from models identified at Uruk (Iraq) and Bronocice (Poland). A two-wheeled cart is illustrated at the end of the fourth millennium BCE, at Lohne-Engelshecke, Germany (~3402–2800 cal BCE (calendar years BCE). The earliest wheels were single piece discs, with a cross-section roughly approximating the spindle whorl- that is, thicker in the middle and thinning to the edges. In Switzerland and southwestern Germany, the earliest wheels were fixed to a rotating axle through a square mortise, so that the wheels turned together with the axle. Elsewhere in Europe and the Near East, the axle was fixed and straight, and the wheels turned independently. When wheels turn freely from the axle, a drayman can turn the cart without having to drag the outside wheel. Wheel Ruts and Pictographs The oldest known evidence of wheeled vehicles in Europe comes from the Flintbek site, a Funnel Beaker culture near Kiel, Germany, dated to 3420–3385 cal BCE. A series of parallel cart tracks was identified beneath the northwestern half of the long barrow at Flintbek, measuring just over 65 ft (20 m) long and consisting of two parallel sets of wheel ruts, up to two ft (60 cm) wide. Each single wheel rut was 2–2.5 in (5–6 cm) wide, and the gauge of the wagons has been estimated at 3.5–4 ft (1.1–1.2 m) wide. On the islands of Malta and Gozo, a number of cart ruts have been found which may or may not be associated with the construction of the Neolithic temples there. At Bronocice in Poland, a Funnel Beaker site located 28 mi (45 km) northeast of Krakà ³w, a ceramic vessel (a beaker) was painted with several, repeated images of a schematic of a four-wheel wagon and yoke, as part of the design. The beaker is associated with cattle bone dated to 3631–3380 cal BCE. Other pictographs are known from Switzerland, Germany, and Italy; two wagon pictographs are also known from the Eanna precinct, level 4A at Uruk, dated to 2815/-85 BCE (4765/-85 BP [5520 cal BP]), a third is from Tell Uqair: both these sites are in what is today Iraq. Reliable dates indicate that two- and four-wheeled vehicles were known from the mid-fourth millennium BCE throughout most of Europe. Single wheels made of wood have been identified from Denmark and Slovenia. Models of Wheeled Wagons While miniature models of wagons are useful to the archaeologist, because they are explicit, information-bearing artifacts, they must also have had some specific meaning and significance in the various regions where they were used. Models are known from Mesopotamia, Greece, Italy, the Carpathian basin, the Pontic region in Greece, India, and China. Complete life-sized vehicles are also known from Holland, Germany, and Switzerland, occasionally used as funeral objects. A wheel model carved out of chalk was recovered from the late Uruk site of Jebel Aruda in Syria. This asymmetrical disk measures 3 in (8 cm) in diameter and 1 in (3 cm) thick, and wheel  as hubs on both sides. A second wheel model was discovered at the Arslantepe site in Turkey. This disc made of clay measured 3 in (7.5 cm) in diameter and has a central hole where presumably the axle would have gone. This site also includes local wheel-thrown imitations of the simplified form of late Uruk pottery. One recently reported miniature model comes from the site of Nemesndudvar, an early Bronze Age through Late Medieval site located near the town of Nemesndudvar, County Bcs-Kiskun, Hungary. The model was discovered along with various pottery fragments and animal bones in a part of the settlement dated to the early Bronze Age. The model is 10.4 in (26.3 cm) long, 5.8 in (14.9 cm) wide, and has a height of 2.5 in (8.8 cm). Wheels and axles for the model were not recovered, but the round feet were perforated as if they had existed at one time. The model is made out of clay tempered with crushed ceramics and fired to brownish gray color. The bed of the wagon is rectangular, with straight-sided short ends, and curved edges on the long side. The feet are cylindrical; the entire piece is decorated in zoned, parallel chevrons and oblique lines. Ulan IV, Burial 15, Kurgan 4 In 2014, archaeologist Natalia Shishlina and colleagues reported the recovery of a dismantled four-wheeled full-sized wagon, direct-dated to between 2398–2141 cal BCE. This Early Bronze Age Steppe Society (specifically East Manych Catacomb culture) site in Russia contained the interment of an elderly man, whose grave goods also included a bronze knife and rod, and a turnip-shaped pot. The rectangular wagon frame measured 5.4x2.3 ft (1.65x0.7 m) and the wheels, supported by horizontal axles, were 1.6 ft (.48 m) in diameter. Side panels were constructed of horizontally placed planks; and the interior was probably covered with reed, felt, or woolen mat. Curiously, the different parts of the wagon were made of a variety of wood, including elm, ash, maple, and oak. Sources Bakker, Jan Albert, et al. The Earliest Evidence of Wheeled Vehicles in Europe and the near East. Antiquity 73.282 (1999): 778–90. Print.Bondr, Mria, and Gyà ¶rgy V. Szà ©kely. A New Early Bronze Age Wagon Model from the Carpathian Basin. World Archaeology 43.4 (2011): 538–53. Print.Bulliet, Richard W. The Wheel- Inventions Reinventions. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016. Print.Klimscha, Florian. Cultural Diversity in Prehistoric Western Eurasia: How Were Innovations Diffused and Re-Invented in Ancient Times? Claroscuro 16.16 (2018): 1-30. Print.Mischka, Doris. The Neolithic Burial Sequence at Flintbek La 3, North Germany, and Its Cart Tracks: A Precise Chronology. Antiquity 85.329 (2011): 742–58. Print.Sax, Margaret, Nigel D. Meeks, and Dominique Collon. The Introduction of the Lapidary Engraving Wheel in Mesopotamia. Antiquity 74.284 (2015): 380–87. Print.Schier, Wolfram. Central and Eastern Europe. The Oxford Handbook of Neolithic Europe. Eds . Fowler, Chris, Jan Harding and Daniela Hofmann. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Print. Shishlina, N.I., D. S. Kovalev, and E. R. Ibragimova. Catacomb Culture Wagons of the Eurasian Steppes. Antiquity 88.340 (2014): 378–94. Print.Vandkilde, Helle. Breakthrough of the Nordic Bronze Age: Transcultural Warriorhood and a Carpathian Crossroad in the Sixteenth Century BC. European Journal of Archaeology 17.4 (2014): 602–33. Print.