The Perfect Image

Once upon a time, long and far ago, perhaps even back to the time of Jesus, there must not have been ideal social images than women were forced to fit. However in today’s modern day and age, everyone is physically expected to fit into our perception of beauty in order to feel liked by others for who they are. For example as portrayed even by something as simple as a toy doll that girls grow up with, the concept that they must be long legged, sleek, or have a “Thirty-nine-inch bust and a twenty-three-inch waist,” are simple norms that are faced in growing up in today’s day and age. This leads to much insecurity within ourselves as we struggle to inch closer to images that are created through shaping plastic, or extensive computer editing. Though irrational, the train of thought is very simple. This is how people on magazines look; this is how I should look. This train of thought is what sets today’s standards as high as they are, and what keeps them always just one step above our reach. Even when considering standards set for males, it is still hard to expect everyone to consist of: A chiseled face, sharp jawbone, abs, and so on. Overall today’s beauty standards are as unreachable as pink elephants, and no matter how much we try to chase the perfect image, or how much of ourselves we sacrifice for it in the end it will always be just another step away from us.

The seen and Unseen

In our daily lives, our race and ethnicity and two very different things that end up determining a lot about us as people, both to all of those around us, and also to ourselves. As concluded in our class discussions this past week, race tends to be knows as how an individual is referred to by other people or how an individual person is stereotyped by public views and perceptions. On the other hand, Ethnicity tends to be seen as how we are viewed culturally or religiously within ourselves or within or families and friends. The public tends to create how we are seen from the perspective of race, often through categorization through skin color or looks etc. In that sense it is not possible for us to change our race, as we are simply to make due with what is given to us and how it is publicly acted upon. Our ethnicity however is not something that we are born with or bound to. It is something that we learn from those close to us in our upbringing and something we look to for internal self definition through our lives. Our ethnicity is not decided for us by society unlike, how as we concluded in class, our race often times seems to be. However despite the social constraints to something as key to our identity as our race, "It doesnt define who we are as a person, because any way of defining it is easily constructed."

Artie's emotional Comic

In Art Spiegalman’s story Maus, the author tells the story of a mouse Arthur and his father’s experiences in the holocaust as repeated to him by his father.  His father tells him how he lived through wartime and the era of the Nazi’s and all the challenges that he endured as his son takes notes in order to create a comic he hopes to sell about the suffering faces by Jew’s during that historical period. During his father’s stories however, there generally seems to be a rift in tone between Arthur himself and his Father. At points it seems as if both of them are each on their own extremes as far as what they want out of their conversations with each other, where Arthur seems to simply want a story, and his Father seems to need company and someone to talk to. However much more of Arthur’s emotional side is revealed when his old comic “Prisoner on the Hell Planet” is found by his Father and Mala. As the comic is shown to the reader, it reveals the struggles that a character (seemingly portraying him) faces when having to cope with his mother’s suicide. This comic is very insightful to the character of Arthur himself in the story as it shows that despite the attitude that he takes on in front of his father, that he feels immense guilt at the death of his mother due to how he treated her the night before, as he stated he “Turned away, resentful of the way she tightened the umbilical cord,” and also how in his comic the voices in his head were given life under the form of other people that told him how it was “His fault” and how he “Had better cried while your mother was still alive.”

Dreams vs. Reality

Dreams vs. Reality

            As perfect as a situation may be in our head, many times it never carries over into the real lives we live in our everyday life. As shown in Kingston’s vision in the chapter “White Tigers”, she views herself as being ferocious, brave, and fearless. She is seen climbing a mountain to meet a new family and to learn techniques to become strong warrior. I believe however that this was simply her way of coping with the issues and injustices that she faced in her real life; Her dream of her being a ferocious warrior was how he managed to compliment the emotional strength that she lacked so much in her real life. This is seen in the difference in how the author addresses herself in her dream as opposed to how she addresses herself in real life. For example how Kingston sais “I leapt on to my horse’s back and marveled at the power and height it gave me”, it is her own subconscious way of giving herself power, and she goes on to imagine all that she would do with this power given to her. She however in reality is forced to submit too many others in her life due to her own lack of power. She is treated poorly by her parents and by her boss at work, and even though it helped her find how she can create long term change for those in her position, no amount of wistful dreaming could help her gain the power and strength to successfully demand what she wanted out of others, unlike her warrior self who was able to. 

Order by Chaos

Order by Chaos

Throughout the discussions this week on Henry David Thoreau’s work, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, as a class we talked through many of the ideas and concepts he demonstrated in this piece on how he viewed the government and how he thinks the American citizens should act toward it.  His central idea, around which many of his ideals were based on, comes from the motto he refers to in his work, “The government is best which governs least.” At the time in which Thoreau was alive, this idea was simply a concept of how an optimal government should be handled. Even in today’s day and age with our social and technological advancements, a nation run by those ungoverned is still an idea far beyond our grasp. So under which circumstances then, would Thoreau’s ideal government then work in? The way that Thoreau intended his motto to be viewed is that in a perfect world, and a nation filled with perfect people, who commit no crime or injustices, and always manage to reach important decisions together, are the people for whom the government that “Governs least” is intended. However even here in 2016 we are far from this endpoint described by Thoreau, and as a society we cannot function without a functional government to provide the nation with a stable backbone.

Equality in the Land of the Free

         Equality in the Land of the Free

            Throughout the course of American history, equal rights for all have always been a hotly debated topic. Even in today’s day and age, there are many groups that still feel that they are treated unequally. For example, there are women who still believe they receive unequal pay, blacks who are convinced that they are primary targets of our society’s criminal defense system, and many more (Including Natives, Asians, etc.) However, in defense of our founding fathers and the words spoken in the Declaration of Independence, I will try to approach this topic from a different point of view. Our founding fathers had, In their mind, only one concept upon which they based the document, that being, “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Now looking back on this we can easily claim that this statement was in a sense one hypocritical to make, as even within our nation we practiced slavery, and women played very minor roles in our society, with most property and riches belonging to the men. However, in this same sense the Declaration of the independence never specifically took away from women or from blacks. In fact those “minorities” (Quotations as I don’t see women to be a minority as they are fifty percent of the human population) were probably better off in a free America than they were in an America struggling for its independence.

At the end of the day the inequality faced by Women and Blacks, though unfair by all means, are social issues of how the world operated at the time of our countries independence rather than an issue faced only by America.

The Joys of Week One English

            In a world as expansive as the one we find ourselves living in, there are many breathtaking beauties and wonders all around us. From everything, spanning from the Grand canyon, to others as simple as the rising and setting of the sun, beauty really has found its way into our daily lives. Perhaps the most beautiful phenomenon of them all however, is the first week of English here at troy high. It is full of many wonders, such as acquiring a notebook, alphabetical seating, and the annual “First Vocab Quiz” that always seems to have alliteration as one of the terms to learn. The list goes on and on, but nothing else can even hope to compete with the occurrence that has come to steal my heart, Summer Reading. There’s just too many layers to the beauty of what is known to us as “summer reading”, for me to fully describe its elegance. But to put it simply, I can’t be the only one that spends every day of my summer going to bed with the comforting thought of three books and three essays looming in the near future in my head. I can’t be the only one who finds the concept of reading gripping and relatable classics – such as “The Good Earth” by Pearl S. Buck, or “In the Time of the Butterflies” by Julia Alverez – to be anything short of exhilarating! And these joys are only the half of it. I can’t be the only one who finds joy in scouring 1200 pages worth of sheer and utter brilliance, searching for a couple of quotes. I can’t be the only person who spent the last few days of his summer (not there is ANYTHING else in this world and its entirety that I would rather be doing, mind you) vigorously re-reading my assignments over and over to ensure that they are perfect to every last letter. The best part to this journey spanning three months however, is knowing that the joy and hard work that I poured into these assignments was well rewarded. In fair exchange for the countless hours of bypassing the stories of the three wonderful novels assigned to me in order to find several usable quotes for these assignments, I am rewarded with the satisfaction of being able to claim that (If my mathematical calculations are correct) each assignment, assuming that for maximum enjoyment of reading throughout the summer I read a book a month, took roughly four weeks to complete, and that they are worth roughly Fifty Percent of our first weekly vocab quiz, while taking roughly four times more to prepare and write! (Wow, run on sentences that you can’t focus through, sounds like the SAT reading section.) That’s roughly four times the work for half the number of points! Well I hope that moving forward we can all learn to appreciate the smaller beauties in life, like summer reading for example!

P.S. Sorry if individuals who dislike summer reading took offence, I just find that to be a very un-relatable stance on this subject.