Monday, May 17, 2010
HW 56
1. Do you consider your parents' desires when making important decisions (who to date, where to go to college, ect.)?
2. Is betraying your parents' trust worse than betraying the trust of a close friend?
3. Do you feel you owe your parents for raising you, if so what?
4. Would you put your parents in a nursing home?
to be continued....
HW 55
What is the root of one's feelings of loyalty, obligation, and devotion to one's parents, specifically, one's mother?
Monday, May 3, 2010
Homework #52
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
HW 36- Comments
After reading your rough draft I understood your main idea to be that all the efforts one makes to be cool are merely done to deny the true self and hide feelings of emptiness.
By discussing hair and tattooing, you covered two major ways we try to make ourselves cooler. To go along with the idea that "all the world's a stage," these act as the costumes. They are the first thing, often the only thing, the audience can see and analyze about the character being portrayed. If the viewer can be tricked into seeing only what you want them to see, cool is achieved. The mask has successfully done its job by hiding our big ugly void, even to the point where we can fool ourselves.
To be considered:
1). I feel you could make your arguments more clearly connect to the thesis.
2). The first couple paragraphs focus on the "mask," while the later paragraphs focus on feelings of emptiness. Because feeling empty is a major part of your thesis, the paper might read better if you weave the two ideas together throughout.
3). I was confused about your views on henna vs. permanent tattooing, could you expand on that? Maybe explain the differences, if any, in what message each puts out to the world.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Essay Outline
Facebook friends, unique tattoos, new apps on your iPhone, clothes from a hip store, gossip magazines and a big screen TV provide some relief from what would otherwise be a grey hopeless misery. Unfortunately, any sense of relief will be temporary and leave us wanting more. Being cool, or trying to be is masochistic.
I. the hamster wheel
a. celebrity worship
b. cool hunters
II. living dangerously (sex, drugs, rock n roll)
a. young, famous, dead
b. maintaining your badass
III. physical- choosing appearance over health
a. tattoos
b. lengths gone to be thin (women) or muscular (men)
Sources:
· The Cool Hunters by Malcolm Gladwell
· Merchants of Cool
· Anatomy of an Attitude by Dick Pountain and David Robbins
· Rebel Without a Cause
· No One Here Gets Out Alive by Jerry Hopkins
· Interviews with tattooed peers
Need sources for:
- Drastic measures to be thin or muscular
- Celebrity worship
Monday, January 4, 2010
HW 32 - Tattoos & The Presentation of the Self
I can only speak for myself, but the search for a "cool" appearance is much like the hero's journey archetype. We start with our bodies in their original form, just a mass of organic material. When we develop a sense of self awareness, this can feel boring, and thus the journey to invent ourselves begins. "The hero starts off in a mundane situation of normality from which some information is received that acts as a call to head off into the unknown (wikipedia.com)." The information is awareness of both ourselves and the possibilities our world offers. For example, a young girl may one day notice that she has a large nose and desperately want to change it. She knows that her large nose is not considered classically beautiful, and will limit her possibilities in life. Fortunately, she does not have to be stuck with the face she was born with. She can take control of her body by making the decision to get a nose job.
Monday, December 21, 2009
HW 30
Feeling empty is uncomfortable and confusing. It is usually followed with self- doubt, lowered self worth and other negative emotions that no one wants to have. An immediate response to feeling empty is a desire to feel full, but accomplishing a sense of fullness is hard work.
Gaining a sense of fullness involves soul-searching, effort to improve yourself, and give back to the world. This takes serious time and energy. Balancing school, work, social life, and family take up so much time as it is, who has time for enlightenment?
Being cool is easier because it doesn't take as much time and energy. First of all, when searching for cool, one already has an idea of what they are trying to achieve. They can look at those around them and point to something they want. Trying to fill the emptiness is not this simple, whatever fills the hole cannot be bought at Abercrombie. Secondly, being cool is all about whats on the surface. No one has to know your true thoughts and feelings as long as your outsides match up. It's like that toy for babies, where one has to the shape into the right hole. Trying to force a triangle through a circular hole won't work, thus that triangle is uncool.
Even though achieving cool does not get rid of the emptiness we all have inside, it makes sure no one else can ever see it. Some people are so good at convincing people they're full AND cool, they can sometimes forget the hole is there. This is immediate gratification, which is the easy way out, but only lasts so long.