I thought this was brilliant! This virtual career fair organised by careerone.com.au allows anyone to visit and apply for jobs from anywhere and anytime! You can upload your resume, browse employers online, and apply for jobs. They also have representatives from different companies to chat online during the day so you can ask them any questions about prospective jobs. You can also take a compatibility test online to see which employers are a match with you. There are also webinars, videos, skype, and career advice. Pretty cool, I must say, and convenient too!

Perfect for students and graduates who are PR holders or citizens! For international students like myself, however, there are very limited choices…I guess it also depends on which industry you’re interested in. But overall, it’s a good place to check out if this is your final year of study. 

The fair’s from 14th to 27th march and all you need to do is register online and you can browse everything online! :)

Just came across a video on Ogilvy on advertising. It’s a 5-minute clip showing how, on a normal day, we are all exposed to tons of media messages.

Well I’m sure most of us, as communication students, are already fully aware of the amount of advertising that we’re exposed to in one single day. There aren’t any statistics online about how many ad messages Australians are exposed to in a day, but Americans are exposed to 3000 ad messages each day (source), and if you see from the video above, it’s not hard to believe because it’s everywhere! It’s in our homes, on public transport, it’s everywhere we go.

This exposure to advertisements is inevitable, but I guess one of the problems that come out of it is when ads affect the way we think and behave.

For example there was the whole debate a few years back (in 2006-7?) about skinny/underweight models being used in fashion ads and on the catwalks after the death of a model due to anorexia, which led on to psychologists and media experts talking about how skinny models in ads create a pressure for women, and especially young girls, to go on diets or even starve themselves to be thin. Research have shown how girls as young as 9 have started dieting (here’s the storyof 8-year-old anorexic, Dana), and how many women, irrelevant of age, social class, education, or race are all affected by these ads and are under pressure to be unrealistically skinny. This pressure to look good and the media’s influence on negative body image not only affect women, but men as well, and studies have revealed how men also feel the pressure to be skinny, to a certain extent, and muscular, and are subjecting themselves to diets, and over exercise, to the extent that it is unhealthy.

I say that most images of models and celebrities that we are exposed to are unrealistic because most, if not all of them are photoshopped.

Here are some examples:

(source)

that’s Eva Longoria, after and before Photoshop. Hey she looks pretty good in the 2nd (before) picture! But they just had to Photoshop her to make her have a waist, and to make her butt bigger!

(source)
Jessica Alba. Before and after photoshop.

and here’s a really unrealistic and “grotesque” photoshopped pic of a Ralph Lauren model

(source)

AND if you have no idea what Photoshop is capable of, here’s a videoto show you. (and there are plenty of them all over youtube)

Well, hope you enjoyed that video! So remember…the next time you see an image of a hot skinny chick in a magazine, know that she probably doesn’t even look like that in real life.

//update//
an interesting article I just came across….  talks about how women are hardwired to have body concerns…whereas men aren’t. kind of contradicts with what I said in my post about men being pressured to look a certain way… but I stand by my point, because this article only looked at brain scans and fMRI imaging, and not at attitudes and behaviours, which obviously cannot be detected on fMRI… interesting read, though.