Repeating the Beauty Myth

Repeating the Beauty Myth.

Recently, I've talked about whether it would be better for a women to be living now or say fifty years ago. I pretty much summed up my opinion (although not based on any actual experience) that life for a women would be better today. While I thought the choice was reasonably clear, it did get me thinking about a similar issue. Will life as a women be better now, or in around fifty years time? 

            The first thing that I am reminded about when I asked myself this question is the subject of teenage morals. Multiple times, I have heard that, kids who are much younger than me already have a fairly bad reputation regarding lack of morals. I know for a fact that, many people in my age group agree that, these kids are far worse than we ever were. Possibly also than we are now. Three or four years may not sound like a lot but, when it comes to teenage children, it can make quiet a massive difference. The fact that, these kids are doing the same kind of things that my age group is doing is very significant. We certainty weren't doing that sort of thing when we were entering our teenage years, or at least not to this degree. This means that over the last three or four years, the general idea of what is and what isn't socially acceptable for a single age range to be doing, has been powerfully changed. 

            Is this a one time occurrence, or is this a continuous change of social norms? Is this the work of one single generation, or is everyone to blame for this? In three or four years will they be saying the same thing about the kids four years younger than them? This could be one time thing or the first of many changes in social norms.

         Why is this related to my original question? Because if this isn't a one time thing, than the answer to my question will undoubtedly be that life for a women will get worse for women. If morals continue be reduced throughout the year groups, then all sexual objectifying that women experience today will only get worse. All the advertisements than show women as objects for a profit will continue. The vast majority of problems women face today stem from a lack of morals. If this trend of teenagers continue, and morals become harder and harder to find, then women (especially teenage girls) will never see an improvement. 

Problems with culture

Problems with Culture

      Many people define culture as an important part of peoples individuality. It is something that brings together thousands of people and gives them something in common that they can be proud of. Like our family, it is something we are born with and something to embrace. It can help us connect with people we would have previously new connection. We can experience culture that isn't our own which helps understand different people.

          Yet, despite all the positives culture has on the human race, it can just as easily be a problem. It has the power to bring people together, but it has just as much power to separate them. It commonly starts conflicts and is the starting point to many cases of violence. Whether it be the Holocaust or civil war in Rwanda, it can be argued that culture is more of a plague on humanity than it is a means for celebration. 

            Regardless to your view on culture, it is something that isn't going away any time soon. For good or for bad, it is a massive part of our history and part of our DNA. It is impossible to get rid of something that has been along around as long as the human race. In theory, culture will always be around to rear its head and start some form of conflict. In an increasingly diverse world, culture will have more of an opportunity to cause issues, whether they be small or large. In London, for example, you can experience massive changes during a few minutes walking. Different cultures in such proximity with each other, in a species as susceptible to violence as humans, are likely to cause many different issues. With our history, humans will continuously be a victim to our cultural differences.

           Culture effects us in more ways than we care to think. It causes issues even between males and females of traditionally the same culture. India can be a great example of this. In the novel 'Jasmine' by Bharati Mukherjee, the main character Jasmine lives in almost a completely different world from that of her male counter parts. Even with men of her same race, their cultural experiences are miles apart. She is expected almost to be sold to a respectable husband by her farther and then take the role of what is more or less a servant wife. While he is expected to be given a wife who will take care of his laundry, food, children and more, while he goes off to be successful in his career. Despite all their similarities, the culture they share will very much separate them and make one of them worse off. 

Final Blog (Oppression)

Virginia Wolf Blog assessment

Recently, the issue of oppression has been brought up to me. Normally, it isn’t something I pay a whole lot of attention to. Unless you have been ‘oppressed’ in a serious manner, or know someone that has, it something you will probably connect with far off lands and different cultures.

                For me, the word brings up images of Africa. What with various different dictators being attacked in the public eye, whether it be literally as is the case with Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, or verbally like Robert Mugabe. Not to mention the history of slavery on the continent.

                I have been to Tunisia once on holiday. Though I’m pretty the holiday resorts and tourist towns have little to do with the conflict in the country. None the less, I have an extremely small amount of experience of this area of the world. I believe I have never been farther east than Greece and that country has a whole different set of problems going on right now.

                So, when I do hear the word ‘oppression’, and these images of Africa do come up in my mind, there is very little that I can use to connect these images I see on the news with my Western life.  Last summer’s riots aren’t even that close to the types of violence and the causes of this violence, not that it matters because I wasn’t even in the country at the time.

                So it’s no surprise that simply hearing the word ‘oppression’ doesn’t bring out a powerful emotion from deep within me. However, if you go by simply the dictionary definition, it is a much more relatable word. Not just for me, but for everyone in a similar situation.

                “The state of being subject to prolonged, cruel or unjust treatment or control”, as you can see, the dictionary definition of the word has no mention of dictators or slavery. If most people think hard enough they could probably come up with some example of their own oppression. To some degree.

                Obviously the common feeling most people get during their teenage existence is un comparable with the holocaust during World War II. Technically, however, they are by definition the same thing. As someone with red(ish) hair, I feel on a much more insignificant level, what some people are still feeling due to the colour of their skin or their religion.

                 There are thousands of examples, on both extremes of the spectrum, of cases of oppression. Which means, that this is a word that has far more significance in our every-day lives than we would have thought. Which makes it far easier to talk about. 

                And just because the examples I used were, to put it nicely, petty, it doesn’t mean that our ways of experiencing oppression should be completely ignored. It doesn’t mean that cases of discrimination due to social standings are completely worthless compared with discrimination due to racism or sexism. It just makes it less complicated for us to understand and do something about.

                However, the type of oppressions we experience are far more likely to go un challenged than the ones we only hear about on the news. Because, when we hear these stories, most human beings have an inert desire to stop these types of suffering. They become political issues and take up so much of our interest that at times we start even more conflicts over them.

                I’m obviously not saying that we should ignore them, but I just find it interesting that the types of oppression we do ignore, we have far more ability to fix than others.   One of the main differences between the forms of oppression we experience and the forms we only see on television, is that we, as humans, generally find it easier to ignore the forms that surround us.

                Why is that? It most certainly isn’t a ‘one or the other’ situation. We have plenty of ability to attack both problems, we just seem to find it easier to muster the effort to try and fix foreign forms of oppression.  While I do believe that the more severe forms of oppression should be higher up our list of priorities, I also believe that we should far more effort in fixing the lesser, yet still very serious, forms of oppression that are closer to home.

                There should be a much closer number of charities dealing with the oppression of women or poor our own country as there are in a similarly populated African country. After all, the oppression of women, for example, happens in a very similar manner and to a similar degree of violence in England as it does in certain African countries. It’s just not as out in the open in England as it would be other places.

                Oppression to a serious degree can happen to almost anyone regardless of the country they live in. And no matter who it happens to, it can have an equally detrimental impact on their mental and physical well-being.  Just because it isn’t as out in the open in certain places of the world doesn’t mean that there should be an less effort to protect the victims of the same extremes of oppression. 

Lining up

Lining Up 

While recently studying issues between the two genders, I've started to notice these problems coming up in real life. However, I've also noticed that not all these issues are as simple as originally stated. An article in The New Yorker, 'Social Animal' by David Brooks, looks at a multiple of social issues and problems in modern day life. While gender related ones are included in these, they are not by any means the focal point of the article and so it helps put these issues I've studied into a greater perspective. 

                  What is so great about this article is that these situations need to be put in perspective before  it is possible to properly judge a person, let alone an entire gender. People don't, or at least I don't and have no knowledge of anyone who does, go around with thinking about all the gender problems in the world. Most people have a lot more that they are thinking about. It is perfectly possible for someone, to view someone else of the opposite sex as an equal and not purely as a girl/boy. Not every action that someone commits has to be against a girl/boy, they can simply be against another person. 

                  While the evidence to his arguments can at come over with a sense of arrogance, they are perfectly reasonable (at worse) arguments for actions of some people. Not every thing a man does has to be a 'sexist' action, it can be completely physiological. It can be just as natural as a mother's reactions to her baby child. Peoples' lives don't turn around their relationship with the opposite gender, and neither do their actions.
                 So why so some peoples’ perceptions of individuals completely depend on their gender? Why are people stereotyped and pigeon holed for their gender to such a extreme degree? Any idiot will tell you that not all girls are exactly the same and neither are all boys, so why are treated like we speak for our entire gender?  A boy and a girl of the same age will have far more in common than a child and an elderly person both of the same gender.
          And this is by no means harmless, some of our biggest day to day conflicts arise from the way we separate genders in our mind. I’m not saying we should separate people at all, but if you are going to, there are far more logical ways of doing it than male and female.

Grandmother interview

Going back to the question whether or not it is better to be a women now or fifty years ago, I decided that one of the best ways to answer that would be if I was to talk to a women who had had experienced both lifestyles. If I had gotten my first choice then I would have talked to Queen Elizabeth II, however, for obvious reasons this was not quite possible. Instead I chose the more realistic option and interviewed my own grandmother.
           After asking her a series of questions about her past and lifestyle, the first thing I noticed was how much her life reminded me of the famous movie Greece. After that however, I started to notice some far more significant regarding society. After a while it became quite clear to me that my twelve year old sister already has more freedoms than my grandmother claimed to experience in her entire teenage life. Of course, this may have something to do with the fact that my sister is only twelve and not yet into the world of a teenager. Not to mention she goes to a posh girls only school on the outskirts of London.  However, she is still treated fairly similarly to the way I was treated at that age while my grandmother and a boy of the similar age would have almost been living in separate worlds. Of course, there are differences between the way me and my sister are treated my our parents and by society as a whole, some of them justified. Everyone is far more protective of her than myself. It should be said that when I was twelve I was very tall for my age and I went to school right in  the center of London, not to mention I was faster and more responsible than she is. It is more than fair to say that I would be less of a target than she would and if I was confronted in some way I would be far more able to protect myself. This is not to say that she can't take care of herself. But, there is definitely a logical reason in the difference some people are treated.