Socialization and Identity Project
My Essay and Reflection for this Project.
What are Our True Colors?
What has ‘Society’ done to influence our ever day lives of the average teenage girl? Stereotypes are all around us but are they really what we want them to be? We have been socialized from the minute we are born to be influenced into liking and disliking topics and genres. Walking through the store and you see all of those magazines in the checkout line; those people aren't real they have been edited to look that way. Not all girls like having to do our hair and makeup every day, we would like to have the ‘tomboy’ look but that is not what is expected of the gender spectrum. Maybe this is the reason why there are so many eating disorders and teens are running away. We aren't who we ‘think’ we are, but what ‘socialization’ has made us to be. Are stereotypes making people act the way they do because of what society think of them? When you walk around town and you see a homeless person you probably think either ‘Why is the world so cruel?’ or you could think ‘They deserve what they got.’ Or when you see an African American, you would probably think they were from the ‘Ghetto’ but in reality they live in the suburbs, and they are your neighbor(s). I have a theory; where because of one group of people, society decided that is what their ethnicity background is, and so when society starts to stereotype them that ethnicity starts to act more and more like that stereotype because that is what they had grown up hearing what they should be like. In the movie ‘Mean Girls’ they have different social categories, like the ‘Cool Asians’, the ‘JV Jocks’, the ‘The Plastics’, et cetera. That is exactly what society has done, it has organized us into social groups that we do or do not want to be in. The video clip ‘A Girl like Me’ many of the girls said that their families had started to tell them that they should bleach their skin so they would be more ‘normal’. Those girls didn’t bleach their skin because they liked who and what they were, and they didn’t want to change who they were for society. Society has created a mold for everyone to fit in, and once they have been molded to perfection society puts that person into a category and that is a way how we keep people in organization. What if we are who we are because of how we were socialized, and we are forever evolving in our social groups, changing likes and dislikes, what to do, and what to wear. From a young age we are taught who the money maker is and who cleans the house and picks up after everyone. As we grow up we start to befriend people and we soon find ourselves finding more friends and you have a variety of them. Whether they like something or you don’t, just know that you have been socialized to be that way. With different friend groups, you have different ‘Mask Identities’. Mask Identities are more of how you act around certain people, and what you do with them. I for example, I wear a funny and outgoing mask with my friends, but with my parents and teachers I wear more of a nice and polite mask. We all have a looking glass self, the person you are when no one is around, and if you try to really look than maybe you can find out who you really are and maybe you don’t actually like what you thought you liked. We are very diverse individuals, and we should not let society shape who we are, we need to break out of the mold. All of those magazines with the model on the front cover looking perfect, those are all fake. That company had a photo shoot and decided that they would use the software called Photoshop, all of those models that are perfect in every way, they have been cropped, cut, filtered, and anything else to look the image of perfection. This video on vemeo was created to show you how that all of those people are frauds, and how they are average people but getting paid to be photo shopped. After all of the editing, they are just perfected to the touch and those pictures are ready to be put into a magazine. Where everyone can see how perfect they are and so that some of those people can start to starve themselves and start throwing up, just they could have that ‘beauty’. All of those ‘gorgeous’ models are just ordinary people, who are paid highly to have their pictures taken, but it’s not the model that makes the difference, it’s what they edit her to be that makes them different. Being a girl may be the hardest thing to do in society. They have high expectations of what we do and how we do it, and what we say, and what we wear. In Will Roscoe’s book ‘The Zuni Man Woman’ Roscoe states ‘Biological sex did not dictate the roles individuals assumed.’ In our society we have to be polite in public, because we do not want to stand out of the crowd and we care what people think of us. If we were rude to people then we wouldn’t have any friends and no one would ever respect us in the slightest. If we didn’t watch what we did in public than we could be looked down upon and that is something that you don’t want to do either, you want to try to impress everyone and seem like you are a very well brought up person. Guys only have to worry about their body odor and how their breathe smells. Girls have to do all sorts of things to at least feel good about themselves, we have to have our eyebrows waxed, shave our legs, have our hair in a perfect style, put on makeup every day and take it off every night, dress in clothes that are stylish, and if we have glasses we should probably need to get contacts. We do this because we want male acceptance, almost every one of us has at least wondered what our wedding will be like and who we will be marrying. A lot of us would prefer to be a ‘tomboy’ because that would be a lot easier than doing all of that stuff every day, even if they do get picked on because they don’t do all of that stuff that is the ‘norm’ for girls. Throughout this project, my perspective has changed and I have decided to put all of that into my mask. My second mask represents how we feel on the inside and how we are trapped in this society. My symbolism on my second mask is the colors, blue to pink, with the color purple in between. That represents how we can vary in what we feel and how we show it. On my first mask the tape over the girl’s mouth says perfect on it because we really have no say in what we should look and act like. The hair represents what we are hiding behind; if we are uncomfortable we let our hair fall down, to cover our face. So I have concluded that we are under control of society, that we have been ‘brainwashed’; and we need to break the cycle before it gets worse, or else we may not even have an opinion before too long. |
Project Reflection
I have been to a PBL (Project Based Learning) school before this and it was not that different from what I was used to, but this was a high school level project and it was a little bit harder than what I was used to. I think I need to work on Perspective because I was a little strong about my opinion while I was giving my presentation. If I were to change my perspective a little then I would be able to see a whole lot more, and see it from different people’s views. I am proud of the symbolism that my mask holds, because I could relate to it the most, I was surprised when a lot of people who saw my mask were saying that I was, “Extremely passionate about this project, and could see me making a difference.” I was very proud of myself because then people were telling me that they got recommendations to come see mine, and I really felt proud of what I was doing. In my conclusion of my essay I say, “So I have concluded that we are under control of society, that we have been ‘brainwashed’; and we need to break the cycle before it gets worse, or else we may not even have an opinion before too long.” I am proud of this because it is the stone cold truth about our society, and I feel that we are in love with this idea that being perfect is the best thing since sliced bread, but it’s not. I want to remember how everybody who came to see my mask only thought there was one layer, and when I lifted the first layer so they could see the second layer, and how they were shocked and when I was done presenting they would be shocked and they would be thinking about how what I said was true. |