Frontline

I’m doing autumn edows. Down below you can find some information about her.

Autumn Edows:

Autumn Edows started put her pictures on the internet because no one was talking to her when she was Jessica. When she became Autumn Edows everyone started to comment positive things about her. I personally think that what she did is wrong because the only reason she did this was because no one was talking to her and no one likes to be a loner and everyone likes a good comment. She was being her real self on the internet. When her parents found out about Jessica they sat behind her and made her delete all of her pictures. I think what they did is wrong because making her delete her pictures was like making her delete her own self. She started to put a lot of dark makeup on her pictures. Most people are themselves on the internet. She was also called the “Goth Girl”. Down below you can find her interview from a website (http://pbs.gen.in/wgbh/pages/frontline//kidsonline/inside/publicprivate.html). 

AUTUMN EDOWS
Artist and model

When did you start creating your own online images?

When I was about 13, that’s when I started getting more into photography. I started out with self-portraits, and I kind of trained myself. And after a while, when I was about 14, that’s when I started doing like photo shoots, and my friend Justin, who I actually met off of the Internet and I dated for some time, he was the first person to take pictures of me, actual photographs, and they turned out really nice. I was very surprised. …

What kind of pictures were they? Where did you put them?

They were pretty much simple, self-portrait-type shots. That was when I started getting into makeup a little bit. So I [would] buy purple eye shadow or something drastic and just take a bunch of photographs and make like a mini-collage, and I’d just upload them on a free Web site. And then I’d send the link to my friends so they could see it, and then that’s when I got a bit more praise for it. And I think that that’s when people really started to become interested in it a bit more.

People you knew?

Some, yes. Others, mostly people I didn’t know, but it was still encouragement, so it still felt good. It felt like I already knew them, and I felt like I didn’t need people from the small town to be the ones who cared. As long as someone out there said one good thing, that was enough for me. That made me feel good enough at that point in my life, because … my self-esteem was pretty much non-existent at that point.

How did they find you?

All over the place. I mean, mostly chat rooms; yeah, I was a chat room junky, just trying to look for someone, anyone. Didn’t really care who. Just as long as it wasn’t a pervert, obviously, but just somebody to talk to. …

How many were there?

Oh, god, there were hundreds of people. Literally hundreds, because I was on so many different vanity Web sites that I would attract maybe like 50 people per site. There were people that would read my LiveJournal, and that’s where I got a lot of fans from. And then of course I would link on each Web site like, “Here’s my journal,” which had pictures and my writing and my poetry and all sorts of things.

So that’s when it like really got big. I mean, it got to the point where I was on the computer literally all day replying. Like, I would hit the refresh button and there would be 10 more comments. It was crazy, it was so crazy, but I loved it. … To have somebody support you and not even actually know you was a very empowering feeling.

Being famous, was that something you’d thought about before this, something that you wanted? …

I just I wanted to be well-known. I guess that really is fame.

Identity

I was going to do my project on Autumn Edows but I don’t think I’m going to do it anymore because a lot of people are doing her. I’m going to do Evan Skinner instead. Evan Skinner was a mom who cared a lot about her kids. I personally think that she should really give them some privacy and not be behind them 24 hours a day. She should learn to trust her kids. From reading her interview I would say that she is over protective. If any kids have parents like her then they will start to hide their facebook and stuff from her so she’s just making things worse for her and her kids. 

Evan Skinner says:

My fear isn’t that I have bad kids; my fear is that my good kids will make a bad decision, one bad judgment and pay for it permanently, whether that’s a pedophile, whether that’s a stalker, whether that’s having an inappropriate photograph on Facebook that’s then used as a screening device for college admissions or future employment. Kids learn from making mistakes, but they shouldn’t be penalized for those mistakes forever. And the computer — I mean, somebody once said to me, “If it’s on the Net, it’s open to anyone. There are no safeguards. Someone can always find everything.” …

Do I think that my kids are having sketchy, inappropriate sharing of communication on Facebook? Yeah, probably, in the same way that I did on the phone, locked in a closet when I was sixteen and living at home. So I do feel that we need to give them a little bit of space. It is their phone; I mean, it is where they share.

But going back to my fears about the permanence of that information, there’s a middle ground someplace that I think is tremendously polarizing between parents and kids. I think that kids feel like, “Stay the heck out of this; this is mine; get out, get out, get out.” And parents are like, “Let me in, let me in, let me in.” And there’s hardly any way to get in.

Georges Vanier Secondary School

Georges Vanier Secondary School is for students studying grades 10-12. It is an excellent school with education and fun mixed together. It is looked as one of the top 21 schools across Canada. The principal of this school is Ms. Karen Jackson. This school was named after Georges Vanier who was the first Governor General of Canada. Georges Vanier offers a lot programs for students with a lot of types of academic background. You can find information about all of the programs offered in Vanier i f you click on the link that says special programs.