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Sociology Essay and Mask
My mask for the sociology project.
Today, in America there are high expectations for who to be and who to socialize with, for how to act and how to dress...All these things are promoted by the media, family, friends, religions, churches, and even schools. Women are targeted and bombarded by the media, resulting in pressure to look right in order to fit in to the norms of our culture. Some common female norms, instilled at a young age, all serve to lower a girl’s self-esteem and push women into a box of limitations. Examples of these stereotypes for teenage girls are: girls should shave, have long hair, and cover their faces with coats of makeup. There are also clothing requirements: girls should wear tight clothing, and begin to wear things that enhance their body’s features when they reach middle school, rather than wearing what makes them comfortable. I believe that women are highly targeted by the media to be perfect, and wear all the right brands. The media also targets men and leads them to believe that there actually are women just like the advertisements portray. As a woman, throughout history there have always been differences in our privileges and men’s; in the modern day there should be more equality that ever before, as we are evolving more and more.
When we learned about Victorian norms, and the history of Durango in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, a few norms stuck out like sore thumbs, unfair, and frankly, ridiculous. One of these is the norm that ladies must be very careful of their conduct and language. Ladies, our great grandmothers, grandmothers, and great aunts all lived under the rule of men. They were controlled by their husbands, and told that it wasn’t proper for them to think of new things. In the modern day, these patterns and limitations, though improved, still exist. Why should we stay in this restricted pattern? We have the power to break out of it, why don’t we? What happened to the ideas that women hold in their “pretty little heads”? Why are we so suffocated and disregarded? I feel that the way our world is going, there needs to be less pressure on how to look, and more focus on how to solve our world’s issues because women have valuable ideas.
From a young age we are socialized by our parents and close family friends and through them we learn basic norms of society. These agents of socialization build expectations, perceptions, self-concepts, and the roles that we must play.According to The Cycle of Socialization by Bobbie Harro, the next steps are institutional and cultural socialization, which is where more agents of socialization, the groups that help teach and shape an individual in society, start to influence us. After that, there comes the enforcement of the cycle. Harro states, “It may seem logical to ask why people don’t just begin to think independently if they don’t like what they are seeing around them.” Well this is because people don’t see it, which brings me to the point that the constant overload of media causes us to believe that it is okay for women to be weak and only look pretty similar the common saying, “children should be seen but not heard.” I see that one of the norms that is subtly enforced in our society is that women must look perfect and keep their ideas to themselves. My mask is a representation of how I personally am breaking this negative socialization pattern, pushing for women to be able to freely express themselves and share their ideas with the world without being ridiculed for speaking out or punished for thinking independently.
The Cycle of Socialization is heavily enforced through the media surrounding us every day and perpetually affects women. Magazines, television shows, posters, commercials, ads, even simple food labels advertising less calories all exert pressure on women to be the ideal lady that they see all around them. “Dove Real Beauty,” a video we watched in class showing the work that gets put into making an ad for a billboard, which includes Photoshop, is proof that the ideal woman is just an illusion. The media should not be something that limits women and smashes them into the strict confines of what is acceptable, then shuns them when something is done that is not acceptable. The looking glass self, a concept created by Charles Horton Cooley, is a perfect relation to how women feel in society. The idea of the concept is that a person forms themselves based on others judgment rather than what they believe and desire through three steps. The first step is imagining how we appear to other people. After that, we imagine their judgment and ridicule. The final step is how we act on our beliefs of their judgment. We develop ourselves through our understanding of what they expect and their criticism. For example, when I go shopping for school clothes, I consider what my peers will think rather than if I feel confident and comfortable in the clothes. Once when I was shopping, I found a pair of black skinny jeans, which generally wasn’t my style at the time. I wasn’t feeling like myself in those jeans, and couldn’t imagine myself being confident in them. Then, on the other hand, when I pictured myself with my group of friends, I saw that they were they type of jeans that my friends and the “popular” girls would approve of and in the end of the whole process, I broke down, and bought the jeans because I thought that they were what was expected of me. Even though I would like to try to make decisions solely on what I enjoy, deep within there is a level where I perceive others judgment of me and tend to meet their expectations more often than not. Likewise, women see the overwhelming signs from the media and force themselves to be what the society expects. After all of the alterations that women make to themselves, they end up completely masking over who they really are just because that is what the media is telling them to do. Is this logical? Is this how we want our children to grow up, masked and fake? I feel that a lot of us will answer no. My mask shows how I personally want to break this socialization, and promote a healthy and completely real culture.
I’m not saying that it’s the rest of society acting in this discriminating way and that my family and I are completely innocent. In fact, my brother and father have assumed that because I am a girl, I am weaker, which is usually true, and always need help, which isn’t true. Once when my dad needed help loading up boxes of CD’s into his car he asked my brother and me to help him. While carrying two boxes each, they both passed me and asked if I needed help with a box half the size of theirs. There are two ways one could analyze this; either they were helping me because they sincerely thought I needed it and were just being kind or they needed to prove how strong they were. I would like to think that they were just acting out of compassion, but I am sure that part of their underlying, subconscious thought-process was to show the girl up and be the strongest. Just the other day during lunch, a few guys were telling inhumane jokes demeaning women. They could casually act insensitive because they weren’t the ones being targeted. The sociology concept of agent groups and target groups is that there are two types of people in this world. There are the agents, who are privileged at birth and are the “norms” of society; basically the world is built for agent groups. Then the targets are the minority of society, and often victimized by prejudice. Women are a target group because they tend to have less power in society, and have fewer privileges than men. Although men have these privileges, they just take them for granted. This idea of the privileged not realizing how easy they have it is the invisible knapsack sociology concept. Part of this concept states that agents have privileges that they don’t recognize. For example, men can walk down the street at night without being scared about harassment and they can always be sure their idea and voice will be heard. As a woman, I am in a target group and those boys didn’t realize that their jokes were offensive to me. Another example of how my brother and I have been socialized is how we watch television. One night, we were surfing the channels mainly keeping our eyes out for sports. After checking through all of the sports channels, and not finding anything, my brother decided to play a sports video game instead. A while later, I headed upstairs, only to find out that women’s college basketball was on and my brother had blatantly skipped over the channel because he didn’t find it interesting enough. I know that an eight year old can’t purposefully be acting sexist towards women, so obviously it comes from my grandparents and parents. To someone who wasn’t thinking about it, it would seem completely normal, I mean, it’s just the way he was socialized…right?
The front of my mask is a visual representation of how women are treated. The back ground of the front mask is composed of monotonous and dull colors to represent lack of expression in females. The dead tree covering the mask has a meaning similar to that of the dreary background. Although the tree is dead, it has active roots, which are strangling the mouth and voice of women in society. I feel that in order for women to be thought of as intelligent and listened to we must try harder than men have to. “Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.” (Charlotte Whitton, retrieved 9/19/11 from http://www.quotegarden.com/women.html). The eyes of the mask are veiled because women are required to look at the world with limitations and act a certain way. The tattered feather on the check of the front of the mask indicates how women’s “wings” are broken and battered because we are unable to freely express ourselves. Also, I put crosses representing Christianity in the branches of the trees. Although it may seem irrelevant to the gender social identity category, it is important because it represents how I grew up and how I was socialized. The crosses indicate my socialization because growing up everyone went to the same youth groups, the same churches and then at school they hung out together because they already had connections. This caused me to feel pressured to believe in the same thing and attend their gatherings even though I didn’t believe in the same religion as them. This symbol on my mask later transforms when the mask is opened. Finally, the lightning bolt across the face symbolizes the dehumanization of women being cut down, and opens onto the second mask which shows expression and freedom.
The inside mask demonstrates how I wish to be in society and how I feel women should be treated. The background is created with vibrant and bright colors in contrast to the monotonous colors on the front mask, symbolizing freedom of expression. The mouth of the mask is a magical aquifer to sustain the tree. On the underneath mask the eyes are open and made of a thin plastic, decorated with the world as the iris, which shows that when women are allowed to express themselves, a whole new world is open, and they are free to share their ideas with the rest of the world. An enhancement of the eyes is that they light up which reinforces the acceptance of women’s ideas in humanity. On the inside of my mask I maintain the tree symbolism with a juniper tree which is short like me. I relate to the juniper because I am shorter than average and have experienced the disadvantages of my height, yet both the juniper and I are growing and thriving in other ways. The juniper tree characterizes a reverse looking glass self, because rather than society telling me who I should be, I have shown them who I am: a strong and powerful woman who is confident in herself. The juniper tree is also on my mask as a symbol of the area I grew up in; a small Colorado mountain town surrounded by nature. In the branches are many religious symbols which epitomize the need for diversity in our culture and also depict what I believe as a Unitarian Universalist. The multiple religious symbols are also a way for me to represent how I want my children and the next generation to be socialized; with open minds and hearts for all religions, and all types of people.
Marilyn Monroe said, “Well-behaved women rarely make history.” I think that this is a very accurate quote. Although there are some extremely powerful and strong women in our world, they are less appreciated then the powerful men and sometimes completely overlooked. Just two examples are Marie Curie and J.K. Rowling. Although these women are recognized, unlike many, they are still not frequently mentioned. In science classes there are often references to Albert Einstein, and comments such as “who are you? Einstein?!” that become part of our conversations. Marie Curie was an amazing physicist, but no one use comments like “the Curie of the class will over think this…” I find that insane, when she was one of the first people to suggest radiation to treat cancer and she also discovered the two elements, radium and polonium. J.K. Rowling is a highly credited author and makes millions, but do you know how many people thought she was a man for the longest time? Trust me, there were tons of them. Why don’t we learn about these women in school? As a change to negative socialization, there should be more lesson plans based around women that have also heavily impacted our world.
One solution I see is acceptance of natural beauty. Women’s voices are often strangled, and not heard over the loud, strongly supported ideas and dominant voices of men. It saddens me that the main “values”, if they can be called that at all, that the majority of women strive to achieve are being as perfect, thin as a model and being able to manipulate men solely by their looks. This pattern hasn’t recently developed because of advances in society, in fact, throughout history this case has improved, but women have always had fewer privileges and less of a voice than men.
My mask, through the two layers, demonstrates a transformation that I wish to see in our culture and society. Although nothing directly pops out as an immediate solution to negative female socialization, it subtly hints at expression of voice and freedom of thought. So here’s my proposition for our society: women, let’s stand up, speak out, let’s be real with ourselves and the world and let us not back down! Men, don’t smother women’s ideas, think of them as what they are: your equal. This transition will take time, cooperation, and persistence, but where’s the harm in trying for complete women equality?
When we learned about Victorian norms, and the history of Durango in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, a few norms stuck out like sore thumbs, unfair, and frankly, ridiculous. One of these is the norm that ladies must be very careful of their conduct and language. Ladies, our great grandmothers, grandmothers, and great aunts all lived under the rule of men. They were controlled by their husbands, and told that it wasn’t proper for them to think of new things. In the modern day, these patterns and limitations, though improved, still exist. Why should we stay in this restricted pattern? We have the power to break out of it, why don’t we? What happened to the ideas that women hold in their “pretty little heads”? Why are we so suffocated and disregarded? I feel that the way our world is going, there needs to be less pressure on how to look, and more focus on how to solve our world’s issues because women have valuable ideas.
From a young age we are socialized by our parents and close family friends and through them we learn basic norms of society. These agents of socialization build expectations, perceptions, self-concepts, and the roles that we must play.According to The Cycle of Socialization by Bobbie Harro, the next steps are institutional and cultural socialization, which is where more agents of socialization, the groups that help teach and shape an individual in society, start to influence us. After that, there comes the enforcement of the cycle. Harro states, “It may seem logical to ask why people don’t just begin to think independently if they don’t like what they are seeing around them.” Well this is because people don’t see it, which brings me to the point that the constant overload of media causes us to believe that it is okay for women to be weak and only look pretty similar the common saying, “children should be seen but not heard.” I see that one of the norms that is subtly enforced in our society is that women must look perfect and keep their ideas to themselves. My mask is a representation of how I personally am breaking this negative socialization pattern, pushing for women to be able to freely express themselves and share their ideas with the world without being ridiculed for speaking out or punished for thinking independently.
The Cycle of Socialization is heavily enforced through the media surrounding us every day and perpetually affects women. Magazines, television shows, posters, commercials, ads, even simple food labels advertising less calories all exert pressure on women to be the ideal lady that they see all around them. “Dove Real Beauty,” a video we watched in class showing the work that gets put into making an ad for a billboard, which includes Photoshop, is proof that the ideal woman is just an illusion. The media should not be something that limits women and smashes them into the strict confines of what is acceptable, then shuns them when something is done that is not acceptable. The looking glass self, a concept created by Charles Horton Cooley, is a perfect relation to how women feel in society. The idea of the concept is that a person forms themselves based on others judgment rather than what they believe and desire through three steps. The first step is imagining how we appear to other people. After that, we imagine their judgment and ridicule. The final step is how we act on our beliefs of their judgment. We develop ourselves through our understanding of what they expect and their criticism. For example, when I go shopping for school clothes, I consider what my peers will think rather than if I feel confident and comfortable in the clothes. Once when I was shopping, I found a pair of black skinny jeans, which generally wasn’t my style at the time. I wasn’t feeling like myself in those jeans, and couldn’t imagine myself being confident in them. Then, on the other hand, when I pictured myself with my group of friends, I saw that they were they type of jeans that my friends and the “popular” girls would approve of and in the end of the whole process, I broke down, and bought the jeans because I thought that they were what was expected of me. Even though I would like to try to make decisions solely on what I enjoy, deep within there is a level where I perceive others judgment of me and tend to meet their expectations more often than not. Likewise, women see the overwhelming signs from the media and force themselves to be what the society expects. After all of the alterations that women make to themselves, they end up completely masking over who they really are just because that is what the media is telling them to do. Is this logical? Is this how we want our children to grow up, masked and fake? I feel that a lot of us will answer no. My mask shows how I personally want to break this socialization, and promote a healthy and completely real culture.
I’m not saying that it’s the rest of society acting in this discriminating way and that my family and I are completely innocent. In fact, my brother and father have assumed that because I am a girl, I am weaker, which is usually true, and always need help, which isn’t true. Once when my dad needed help loading up boxes of CD’s into his car he asked my brother and me to help him. While carrying two boxes each, they both passed me and asked if I needed help with a box half the size of theirs. There are two ways one could analyze this; either they were helping me because they sincerely thought I needed it and were just being kind or they needed to prove how strong they were. I would like to think that they were just acting out of compassion, but I am sure that part of their underlying, subconscious thought-process was to show the girl up and be the strongest. Just the other day during lunch, a few guys were telling inhumane jokes demeaning women. They could casually act insensitive because they weren’t the ones being targeted. The sociology concept of agent groups and target groups is that there are two types of people in this world. There are the agents, who are privileged at birth and are the “norms” of society; basically the world is built for agent groups. Then the targets are the minority of society, and often victimized by prejudice. Women are a target group because they tend to have less power in society, and have fewer privileges than men. Although men have these privileges, they just take them for granted. This idea of the privileged not realizing how easy they have it is the invisible knapsack sociology concept. Part of this concept states that agents have privileges that they don’t recognize. For example, men can walk down the street at night without being scared about harassment and they can always be sure their idea and voice will be heard. As a woman, I am in a target group and those boys didn’t realize that their jokes were offensive to me. Another example of how my brother and I have been socialized is how we watch television. One night, we were surfing the channels mainly keeping our eyes out for sports. After checking through all of the sports channels, and not finding anything, my brother decided to play a sports video game instead. A while later, I headed upstairs, only to find out that women’s college basketball was on and my brother had blatantly skipped over the channel because he didn’t find it interesting enough. I know that an eight year old can’t purposefully be acting sexist towards women, so obviously it comes from my grandparents and parents. To someone who wasn’t thinking about it, it would seem completely normal, I mean, it’s just the way he was socialized…right?
The front of my mask is a visual representation of how women are treated. The back ground of the front mask is composed of monotonous and dull colors to represent lack of expression in females. The dead tree covering the mask has a meaning similar to that of the dreary background. Although the tree is dead, it has active roots, which are strangling the mouth and voice of women in society. I feel that in order for women to be thought of as intelligent and listened to we must try harder than men have to. “Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.” (Charlotte Whitton, retrieved 9/19/11 from http://www.quotegarden.com/women.html). The eyes of the mask are veiled because women are required to look at the world with limitations and act a certain way. The tattered feather on the check of the front of the mask indicates how women’s “wings” are broken and battered because we are unable to freely express ourselves. Also, I put crosses representing Christianity in the branches of the trees. Although it may seem irrelevant to the gender social identity category, it is important because it represents how I grew up and how I was socialized. The crosses indicate my socialization because growing up everyone went to the same youth groups, the same churches and then at school they hung out together because they already had connections. This caused me to feel pressured to believe in the same thing and attend their gatherings even though I didn’t believe in the same religion as them. This symbol on my mask later transforms when the mask is opened. Finally, the lightning bolt across the face symbolizes the dehumanization of women being cut down, and opens onto the second mask which shows expression and freedom.
The inside mask demonstrates how I wish to be in society and how I feel women should be treated. The background is created with vibrant and bright colors in contrast to the monotonous colors on the front mask, symbolizing freedom of expression. The mouth of the mask is a magical aquifer to sustain the tree. On the underneath mask the eyes are open and made of a thin plastic, decorated with the world as the iris, which shows that when women are allowed to express themselves, a whole new world is open, and they are free to share their ideas with the rest of the world. An enhancement of the eyes is that they light up which reinforces the acceptance of women’s ideas in humanity. On the inside of my mask I maintain the tree symbolism with a juniper tree which is short like me. I relate to the juniper because I am shorter than average and have experienced the disadvantages of my height, yet both the juniper and I are growing and thriving in other ways. The juniper tree characterizes a reverse looking glass self, because rather than society telling me who I should be, I have shown them who I am: a strong and powerful woman who is confident in herself. The juniper tree is also on my mask as a symbol of the area I grew up in; a small Colorado mountain town surrounded by nature. In the branches are many religious symbols which epitomize the need for diversity in our culture and also depict what I believe as a Unitarian Universalist. The multiple religious symbols are also a way for me to represent how I want my children and the next generation to be socialized; with open minds and hearts for all religions, and all types of people.
Marilyn Monroe said, “Well-behaved women rarely make history.” I think that this is a very accurate quote. Although there are some extremely powerful and strong women in our world, they are less appreciated then the powerful men and sometimes completely overlooked. Just two examples are Marie Curie and J.K. Rowling. Although these women are recognized, unlike many, they are still not frequently mentioned. In science classes there are often references to Albert Einstein, and comments such as “who are you? Einstein?!” that become part of our conversations. Marie Curie was an amazing physicist, but no one use comments like “the Curie of the class will over think this…” I find that insane, when she was one of the first people to suggest radiation to treat cancer and she also discovered the two elements, radium and polonium. J.K. Rowling is a highly credited author and makes millions, but do you know how many people thought she was a man for the longest time? Trust me, there were tons of them. Why don’t we learn about these women in school? As a change to negative socialization, there should be more lesson plans based around women that have also heavily impacted our world.
One solution I see is acceptance of natural beauty. Women’s voices are often strangled, and not heard over the loud, strongly supported ideas and dominant voices of men. It saddens me that the main “values”, if they can be called that at all, that the majority of women strive to achieve are being as perfect, thin as a model and being able to manipulate men solely by their looks. This pattern hasn’t recently developed because of advances in society, in fact, throughout history this case has improved, but women have always had fewer privileges and less of a voice than men.
My mask, through the two layers, demonstrates a transformation that I wish to see in our culture and society. Although nothing directly pops out as an immediate solution to negative female socialization, it subtly hints at expression of voice and freedom of thought. So here’s my proposition for our society: women, let’s stand up, speak out, let’s be real with ourselves and the world and let us not back down! Men, don’t smother women’s ideas, think of them as what they are: your equal. This transition will take time, cooperation, and persistence, but where’s the harm in trying for complete women equality?
Project Reflection
Now that you have finished your first project, how is Project Based Learning (PBL) different from or similar to what you have experienced before? Give at least 3 specific ways it is similar or different.
When I first visited Animas High School, I was wary and concerned that because there was so little projects being done and all of the projects they were doing were taking so long, I wouldn’t learn anything. After completing my first project at animas it is really great to see how much I am learning, which is loads more than I first imagined. The project based learning is really beneficial because it helps me connect the content to my actual life rather than wrought memorization and test that only come up later in the exit exams. Through PBI I feel that I am learning more and experiencing more that I would have in an average high school where the projects aren’t the focus, and the subjects are rushed through. A lot of teaching these days seems to be more the teacher demanding something of the students and them having to complete it in a certain amount of time. At animas the culture and whole teaching environment is more open and allows there to be plenty of room for creativity and new ideas. In the businesses and corporations of America, there is high demand for workers that can create new and innovative ideas rather than just following orders and the project based learning at animas really promotes that.
Which habit of heart and mind do you need to work on in your next project to get better at PBl? Show don’t tell why you need to improve and how that hoham will help you.
I feel that in my next project I can work on incorporating perspective more. In this particular assignment, I chose to do a well-worn topic and take it a slightly different route than many. I feel that in my next project I can work on perspective and trying something completely new and original rather than using an idea that has been expressed in so many ways. Another hoham that I feel could have helped my project and supported my ideas was evidence. I chose a topic that I didn’t have extremely clear personal connection to but when the next project rolls around I wish to include how specifically I have been affected, or how the whole class content relates to my life.
What are you most proud of about your mask? Why?
On my mask I have many unique features including actual branches, a light in the back, and an opening mask, but the feature that I am most proud of isn’t clearly evident. I feel very proud of the way my mask opens. It is cut zigzagged across the face of the second mask to represent lightning. The front of my mask just shows how women are not freely allowed to express themselves and basically can only be ‘pretty’ in society. The lightning bolt cuts down that negative socialization and the tree and then opens into the bottom mask which shows freedom and acceptance. I am most proud of this feature because I feel that it was a creative way to join the forces of the opening feature of the whole mask and still make it relate to the whole cycle of socialization.
Quote the section of your essay that you are most proud of and describe, in detail, why you are proud of it.
“Even though I would like to try to make decisions solely on what I enjoy, deep within there is a level where I perceive others judgment of me and tend to meet their expectations more often than not. Likewise, women see the overwhelming signs from the media and force themselves to be what the society expects. After all of the alterations that women make to themselves, they end up completely masking over who they really are just because that is what the media is telling them to do. Is this logical? Is this how we want our children to grow up, masked and fake? I feel that a lot of us will answer no.” I am most proud of the certain section of my essay because it give room for the reader to become involved with the paper and have their own ideas about the topic rather than me, the author, telling them what I thinking and trying to get them to believe the same. I also like this part of my essay because I managed to use words that I feel I don’t utilize enough and make the whole section feel sophisticated rather than using boring words to describe my point.
What do you want to take with you and remember from this project?
I want to remember it all. I feel that the whole sociology unit, on top of taking psychology, has really benefited me because of all that I learned about human nature and behaviors. One important thing that I would like to take with me from this project would be acceptance of diversity. This was a large part of my mask project too. In advisory we were talking about bullying and came to the conclusion that on most occasions’ people tend to become a bully due to ignorance and lack of knowledge of the other person. For example, if I was black, I may be bullied by white people because they are unfamiliar with me. I feel that through this sociology unit I have learned how to accept people more and become less ignorant about other social identity categories. I want to take this skill of acceptance with me and spread it throughout those that were once in the same position of not knowing as I was.
When I first visited Animas High School, I was wary and concerned that because there was so little projects being done and all of the projects they were doing were taking so long, I wouldn’t learn anything. After completing my first project at animas it is really great to see how much I am learning, which is loads more than I first imagined. The project based learning is really beneficial because it helps me connect the content to my actual life rather than wrought memorization and test that only come up later in the exit exams. Through PBI I feel that I am learning more and experiencing more that I would have in an average high school where the projects aren’t the focus, and the subjects are rushed through. A lot of teaching these days seems to be more the teacher demanding something of the students and them having to complete it in a certain amount of time. At animas the culture and whole teaching environment is more open and allows there to be plenty of room for creativity and new ideas. In the businesses and corporations of America, there is high demand for workers that can create new and innovative ideas rather than just following orders and the project based learning at animas really promotes that.
Which habit of heart and mind do you need to work on in your next project to get better at PBl? Show don’t tell why you need to improve and how that hoham will help you.
I feel that in my next project I can work on incorporating perspective more. In this particular assignment, I chose to do a well-worn topic and take it a slightly different route than many. I feel that in my next project I can work on perspective and trying something completely new and original rather than using an idea that has been expressed in so many ways. Another hoham that I feel could have helped my project and supported my ideas was evidence. I chose a topic that I didn’t have extremely clear personal connection to but when the next project rolls around I wish to include how specifically I have been affected, or how the whole class content relates to my life.
What are you most proud of about your mask? Why?
On my mask I have many unique features including actual branches, a light in the back, and an opening mask, but the feature that I am most proud of isn’t clearly evident. I feel very proud of the way my mask opens. It is cut zigzagged across the face of the second mask to represent lightning. The front of my mask just shows how women are not freely allowed to express themselves and basically can only be ‘pretty’ in society. The lightning bolt cuts down that negative socialization and the tree and then opens into the bottom mask which shows freedom and acceptance. I am most proud of this feature because I feel that it was a creative way to join the forces of the opening feature of the whole mask and still make it relate to the whole cycle of socialization.
Quote the section of your essay that you are most proud of and describe, in detail, why you are proud of it.
“Even though I would like to try to make decisions solely on what I enjoy, deep within there is a level where I perceive others judgment of me and tend to meet their expectations more often than not. Likewise, women see the overwhelming signs from the media and force themselves to be what the society expects. After all of the alterations that women make to themselves, they end up completely masking over who they really are just because that is what the media is telling them to do. Is this logical? Is this how we want our children to grow up, masked and fake? I feel that a lot of us will answer no.” I am most proud of the certain section of my essay because it give room for the reader to become involved with the paper and have their own ideas about the topic rather than me, the author, telling them what I thinking and trying to get them to believe the same. I also like this part of my essay because I managed to use words that I feel I don’t utilize enough and make the whole section feel sophisticated rather than using boring words to describe my point.
What do you want to take with you and remember from this project?
I want to remember it all. I feel that the whole sociology unit, on top of taking psychology, has really benefited me because of all that I learned about human nature and behaviors. One important thing that I would like to take with me from this project would be acceptance of diversity. This was a large part of my mask project too. In advisory we were talking about bullying and came to the conclusion that on most occasions’ people tend to become a bully due to ignorance and lack of knowledge of the other person. For example, if I was black, I may be bullied by white people because they are unfamiliar with me. I feel that through this sociology unit I have learned how to accept people more and become less ignorant about other social identity categories. I want to take this skill of acceptance with me and spread it throughout those that were once in the same position of not knowing as I was.
Animas High School 3206 North Main Avenue Durango, CO 81301 (970) 247-2474
My Contact Information: [email protected]
Updated on: 11.15.11
My Contact Information: [email protected]
Updated on: 11.15.11