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youth and challenges of peer pressure
how are gender roles shaped by the media
youth and challenges of peer pressure
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The hardest part of adolescence is never knowing which direction to take. Adolescents question who their real friends are and what a real friend is. Most importantly they question, who they are. They're surrounded by so many stereotypes and struggle to fit the expectations of their middle school or high school peers. Some will do whatever it takes to fit in with the crowd and community. In focusing on young women particularly, some may look up to the image of the ideal woman, which would be the perfect body, intelligence, and wifely personality. Then there are those young girls that want to detach themselves from what society expects from them creating themselves to be who they want to be. These are just some of the issues that arise in Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak. In Speak, Melinda's adolescent experience is shaped through the struggles of maintaining the traditional female role, which portrayed by the majority of female characters in the novel while the protagonist is also trying to defy the gender norms of society. One of the struggles Melinda is faced with that shapes the way she experiences adolescence, is through the people she encounters in high school who reflect the obvious and stereotypical role of women. Upon not having any friends during her freshman year of high school, Melinda befriends Heather, meanwhile Heather wants to be a part of The Marthas. Attempting to stay friends with Heather, she pressures Melinda: “She corners me after Spanish and begs me to help her. She thinks the Marthas have given her a deliberately impossible job so they can dump her (43). Melinda being soft-spoken doesn’t reject her proposal and rather continues to help Heather. In this specific example, the Marthas reveal the typical female ... ... middle of paper ... ...ng the social norm makes it more difficult in molding the person. Melinda faces obstacles in only her freshman year choosing what path to take from the many that she’s faced with in the hallways. From Heather, The Marthas, the Cheerleaders she struggles to decide whether or not to be like them. She’s also conflicted as she strives to be like the image that Maya Angelou and the suffragettes reveal. These different women that Melinda comes across allow her to experience and learn from them through the challenges she’s faced. The lack of friends and communication shape her to be submissive to others. When looking at what the suffragettes and Maya Angelou symbolize for women, she takes action upon that too showing how she’s growing and learning from past adolescent experiences. It’s only from the challenges that society brings upon that shape the adolescent experience.
Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson, is a story written in the first person about a young girl named Melinda Sordino. The title of the book, Speak, is ironically based on the fact that Melinda chooses not to speak. The book is written in the form of a monologue in the mind of Melinda, a teenage introvert. This story depicts the story of a very miserable freshman year of high school. Although there are several people in her high school, Melinda secludes herself from them all. There are several people in her school that used to be her friend in middle school, but not anymore. Not after what she did over the summer. What she did was call the cops on an end of summer party on of her friends was throwing. Although all her classmates think there was no reason to call, only Melinda knows the real reason. Even if they cared to know the real reason, there is no way she could tell them. A personal rape story is not something that flows freely off the tongue. Throughout the story Melinda describes the pain she is going through every day as a result of her rape. The rape of a teenage girl often leads to depression. Melinda is convinced that nobody understands her, nor would they even if they knew what happened that summer. Once a happy girl, Melinda is now depressed and withdrawn from the world. She hardly ever speaks, nor does she do well in school. She bites her lips and her nails until they bleed. Her parents seem to think she is just going through a faze, but little do they know, their daughter has undergone a life changing trauma that will affect her life forever.
Anne Moody's story is one of success filled with setbacks and depression. Her life had a great importance because without her, and many others, involvement in the civil rights movement it would have not occurred with such power and force. An issue that is suppressing so many people needs to be addressed with strength, dedication, and determination, all qualities that Anne Moody strived in. With her exhaustion illustrated at the end of her book, the reader understands her doubt of all of her hard work. Yet the reader has an outside perspective and knows that Anne tells a story of success. It is all her struggles and depression that makes her story that much more powerful and ending with the greatest results of Civil Rights and Voting Rights for her and all African Americans.
1) The major theme of the book is respectability. In the 1950 's Rosa Parks became the symbol for black female resistance in the
The contrast between how She sees herself and how the rest of the world sees Her can create extreme emotional strain; add on the fact that She hails from the early 1900s and it becomes evident that, though her mental construct is not necessarily prepared to understand the full breach against Her, She is still capable of some iota of realization. The discrimination encountered by a female during this time period is great and unceasing.
The lives of men and women are portrayed definitively in this novel. The setting of the story is in southern Georgia in the 1960’s, a time when women were expected to fit a certain role in society. When she was younger she would rather be playing ...
The speaker repeats herself and states, many times, that all females should always have to behave and act like classy women and not “sluts”; here is an example, “this is how to behave in the presence of men who don’t know you very well, and this way they wont recognize immediately the slut I have warned you against becoming; be sure to watch every day, even if it with your own spit; don’t squat to play marbles – you are not a boy”(Kincaid 33). Kincaid points out specific actions that determine how a lady should act and must undergo to be “classy” in her own perfect world. Kincaid’s narrator puts female teens through a different perspective and environment where they should even be thinking of boys or men, instead, they should be learning how to sew or cook, iron and clean the house. In our generation, society plays a big role where females are subjected and labeled as “house slaves”. They are viewed as workers that must maintain the house impeccable, always have the food ready for the husband and take care of the children.
The popular teen movie “Mean Girls” accurately portrays several concepts from Chapter Two including Interaction Appearance Theory and Undue Influence, just to name a few that allow teen viewers to see the type of communication there is or will be in high school. Through the interactions with her new peers, Cady Heron is able to communicate and experience several of the concepts learned in Chapter Two thanks to the interactions she had with the deceiving Regina George.
Teenage rebellion is typically portrayed in stories, films, and other genres as a testosterone-based phenomenon. There is an overplayed need for one to acknowledge a boy’s rebellion against his father, his life direction, the “system,” in an effort to become a man, or rather an adult. However, rarely is the female addressed in such a scenario. What happens when little girls grow up? Do they rebel? Do they, in a sudden overpowering rush of estrogen, deny what has been taught to them from birth and shed their former youthful façades? Do they turn on their mothers? In Sharon Olds’ poem, “The Possessive,” the reader is finally introduced to the female version of the popular coming-of-age theme as a simple haircut becomes a symbol for the growing breach between mother and daughter through the use of striking images and specific word choice.
Her realization that she is not alone in her oppression brings her a sense of freedom. It validates her emerging thoughts of wanting to rise up and shine a light on injustice. Her worries about not wanting to grow up because of the harsh life that awaits her is a common thought among others besides the people in her community. As she makes friends with other Indians in other communities she realizes the common bonds they share, even down to the most basic such as what they eat, which comforts her and allows her to empathize with them.
To the urban lifestyle of growing up in the ghettos and the hardships. She depicts the usages of drugs, gang, crime, poverty, teen pregnancy and mostly how it effects the community. But also shows how the outside violence comes into the home and can devastate the natural order of the household.
Adolescents is a time of significant life transitions in which young adults learn to cope with changes that are brought about by physical and emotional maturation (Sands and Howard-Hamilton, 1994). During this time girls begin to become more aware of themselves as females, and learn to identify society’s signals to conform appropriately for their gender (Sands and Howard-Hamilton, 1994). The highschool girls that are present in this writers program are starting to unders...
"Her name was Connie. She was fifteen and she had a quick, nervous giggling habit of craning her neck to glance into mirrors or checking other people's faces to make sure her own was all right" (1). This quote shows the reader an astonishing truth about Connie. It shows her true insecurity that is rarely demonstrated to the outside world. Although she does not necessarily show this to the average bystander, by taking a closer look at her premature idea of acceptance, it also shows her constant yearn for approval from others to help boost her ego. At only the young age of fifteen, she is already attempting to prove her maturity and show that she can be independent. She does this by showing off her sexuality and strutting around. By showing off her
In the short story, “Girl,” the narrator describes certain tasks a woman should be responsible for based on the narrator’s culture, time period, and social standing. This story also reflects the coming of age of this girl, her transition into a lady, and shows the age gap between the mother and the daughter. The mother has certain beliefs that she is trying to pass to her daughter for her well-being, but the daughter is confused by this regimented life style. The author, Jamaica Kincaid, uses various tones to show a second person point of view and repetition to demonstrate what these responsibilities felt like, how she had to behave based on her social standing, and how to follow traditional customs.
Adolescence is the stage in life when you are no longer a child, but not yet an adult. There are many things that still need to be explored, learned and conquered. In the film Thirteen, the main character, Tracy Freeland, is just entering adolescence. While trying to conquer Erikson’s theory of Identity vs. Role confusion, Tracy is affected by many influences, including family and friends that hinder her development. Many concepts from what we have learned in class can be applied to this character from identity development, to depression, to adolescent sexuality and more. In this film Tracy is a prime example of an adolescent and much of what I have learned this year can be applied to her character.
While growing up, many girls could not see their selves beyond the age of twenty one, they had no image of their own future, of themselves as women. Young girls were afraid of growing up and being like their mothers. They were afraid of being a teenage mother and having to stay home all day taking care of the house and their children, as shown in the literary work by Alice Walker. The Color Purple introduces us to the life of a young woman that was given away by her stepfather in order to work in the fields and take care of her new husband’s children. “She ain’t no stranger to hard work. And she clean. And God done fixed her. You can do everything just like you want and she ain’t gonna make you feed it or clothe it” mentioned her stepfather as he gives her away without considering she is a human being and refers to her as a meaningless object. After years of being dominated by men, women felt there was a need for a new identity. A battle for women’s freedom began, to participate in the major work and decisions of society as the equals of men and began to deny their nature as women. An act of rebellion and a violent denial of women identity led the passionate feminist to forge new trails for women. Women had to prove they were humans just like men, they were not a passive, empty mirror, not a useless decoration, nor a mindless animal