A self-portrait or selfie cannot identify a person. You may say, “This is me, this is who I am,” but you must go beyond a selfie to let other people know who you are. You cannot tell very much about someone by looking at a picture of them. A picture can be worth a thousand words, but it will never fulfill your identity. The world of the internet plays a big role in self-identification as we express ourselves through selfies. Social class, race, and gender play a strong role in shaping yourself.
First, your social class shapes who you are. Your class determines where you live, where you go to school, and where you work. People can determine how you look and act by the places you are at. Religion plays a big role when it comes to identifying yourself. We are defined in several ways like the people we hang out with or the clothes we wear. This tells people about our personality when looking at this stuff. The Internet offers us to be able to self-identify ourselves in whatever way we want. You can be one person on the Internet and portray another side of you in person, which shows people how you really act. Social
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You can identify yourself by your biological sex or gender identity. I agree with the codes that tell you how to conduct yourself. People, movies, and celebrities make you feel like you should be someone you are not. Those gender codes are very real and try to shape your gender identity. Transgender people are also transforming the traditional gender roles. Same-sex marriage is an effect as well because it throws off the mainstream of the gender roles. But to say the least, I do agree that gender codes have not disappeared from our culture. Commercials advertise ways that men and women should act towards each other. For instance, one famous Axe ad featured a swarm of passionate women running frantically toward a bench where a single man stands dousing himself in Axe fragrance… (“My Selfie, My Self”
The way I view gender is a way to express yourself. ...Gender is just a doorway, and so is sexuality, race and age.
The clusters of social definitions used to identify persons by gender are collectively known as “femininity” and “masculinity.” Masculine characteristics are used to identify persons as males, while feminine ones are used as signifiers for femaleness. People use femininity or masculinity to claim and communicate their membership in their assigned, or chosen, sex or gender. Others recognize our sex or gender more on the basis of these characteristics than on the basis of sex characteristics, which are usually largely covered by clothing in daily life.
Paul Haggis’ film Crash (2004), demonstrates how people can adopt a dominant and subordinate role concurrently, this is illustrated through the character Jean Cabot. When people look at Jean they see an affluent White female. As a result of the way a person looks their actions are scrutinized due to social construction. Jean is White, so people assume that she leads a charmed life. Although, Jean’s racial identity and class allows her to be a member of the dominant group, her gender she does not have as much power as White males; Jean builds her life around the racial identity that is assigned to her and participates in the social construction that plagues American communities.
The human species is qualified as a man and women. Categorically, gender roles relative to the identifying role are characterized as being either masculine or feminine. In the article “Becoming Members Of Society: Learning The Social Meanings Of Gender by Aaron H. Devor, says that “children begin to settle into a gender identity between the age of eighteen months and two years (Devor 387). The intricate workings of the masculine and feminine gender roles are very multifaceted and at the same time, very delicate. They are intertwined into our personalities and give us our gender identities (Devor 390). Our society is maintained by social norms that as individuals, we are consciously unaware of but knowingly understand they are necessary to get along out in the public eye which is our “generalized other” and in our inner circle of family and friends which is our “significant others” (Devor 390). Our learned behaviors signify whether our gender
In the past twenty years the way society looks at the word “gender” is a totally different perception than what they did years ago, according to the Webster’s dictionary, the word “gender” is the state of being male or female. The word gender use to mean male or female, but now it has become this word that people are taking “offensive”. For example, at schools all around there having to make things gender neutral because a group of people are taking things and twisting them to where it can seem offensive. Society is accepting to anything that’s different and not “how it’s supposed to be” because that equals more publicity. Everyone wants to make everything equal to whatever you want to
The essay How You See Yourself by Nicholas Mirzoeff discusses the evolution of art. The author discusses the use of art to represent changing identities over the years including cultural practices and societal expectations. The selfie, according to Nicholas Mirzoeff’s essay, is the equivalent of a self-portrait in the previous centuries preceding the technological development required for the present day selfie. The essay explores the different periods and the significance of art, particularly self-portraits, the selfies of the time, and their development over time. The author focuses on different themes including heroism, gender definition, and the focus of an image. Mirzoeff effectively provides examples illustrating and reinforcing the themes he highlights in his essay.
In the past, individual’s identities were often assigned to them by the hegemonic culture, largely based on their conceptualization of sameness. The hegemonic culture dominated identity discourse by drawing distinct boundaries between racial and cultural groups, separating and defining them. Modern discourse however, has seen individuals taking the power of assigning identity signifiers for themselves often in periods of great social change. While times of resistance are often the most easily recalled examples of this, subtle trends in society a tremendous impact, often without the conscience knowledge of the society. In the past two decades, Western Culture has been witness to a radical transformation in identification processes. Technology has become increasingly pivotal to popular culture, and as such, it has had a profound influence on the way we create and affirm our sense-of-self. Identification categories have become less rigid compared to thirty years ago, and people are on average more open to identifying across boundaries. The process of blurring identity lines between distinct groups has re-distributed the power of assigning signifiers from the hegemonic element of popular culture to the individual. Means of instant information distribution and exchange, discourse and academic retrieval, such as instant messengers, social networking sites, Wikipedia, et al are perhaps some of the most influential because of their instantaneousness. While the lines have become blurred on a social level, individual identities are often affirmed.
Throughout today’s society, almost every aspect of someone’s day is based whether or not he or she fits into the “norm” that has been created. Specifically, masculine and feminine norms have a great impact that force people to question “am I a true man or woman?” After doing substantial research on the basis of masculine or feminine norms, it is clear that society focuses on the males being the dominant figures. If males are not fulfilling the masculine role, and females aren’t playing their role, then their gender identity becomes foggy, according to their personal judgment, as well as society’s.
Gender is not about the biological differences between men and women but rather the behavioral, cultural and psychological traits typically associated with one sex. Gender is socially constructed meaning it 's culturally specific, it 's learned and shared through gender socialization. What it means to be a woman or man is going to differ based on the culture, geographical location, and time. What it meant to be a woman in the US in the 19th century is different than what it means to be a woman in the 21st century. As cultures evolve over time so are the ideals of what it means to be man or woman.
There you are holding your camera an arm’s length away from your face, posing in the most flattering position to capture your best angle. There you are taking a photo of yourself to share with all of your Facebook friends. Taking a self-portrait photo, also known as a selfie, is something almost everyone has done in this new generation. This action is typically done without a second thought. In Alex Williams’ article “Here I Am Taking My Own Picture” that second thought is provoked through exploring the quickly spreading trend of self-portrait photography. In the article while Williams’ provides interesting examples on a changing generation as this trend progresses through social media and modern technology; Williams also leaves something to be desired within the article due to a lack of direction in the author’s stance on the topic.
In this article, Shaw and Lee describe how the action of labels on being “feminine” or “masculine” affect society. Shaw and Lee describe how gender is, “the social organization of sexual difference” (124). In biology gender is what sex a person is and in culture gender is how a person should act and portray themselves. They mention how gender is what we were taught to do in our daily lives from a young age so that it can become natural(Shaw, Lee 126). They speak on the process of gender socialization that teaches us how to act and think in accordance to what sex a person is. Shaw and Lee state that many people identify themselves as being transgendered, which involves a person, “resisting the social construction of gender into two distinct, categories, masculinity and femininity and working to break down these constraining and polarized categories” ( 129). They write about how in mainstream America masculinity and femininity are described with the masculine trait being the more dominant of the two. They define how this contributes to putting a higher value of one gender over the other gender called gender ranking (Shaw, Lee 137). They also speak about how in order for femininity to be viewed that other systems of inequality also need to be looked at first(Shaw,Lee 139).
When someone says ‘gender categorization and identity’, I think of the 1950’s and places where women aren’t worth as much as men. They hold some negative connotations for me, but they aren’t bad in their essence. Categorization is placing things into classes, to organize them. We categorize gender as children because of our culture. A doll is assessed as a girl because it wears a dress, yet it cannot be female. People are assigned the most basic identity in gender, no matter who they are. A black male would be categorized differently than a black female would be. Erving Goffman takes this debate a step further to say that some behaviors are “somehow inherent in their sex” (qtd. by Tannen; 63). Behaviors of men and women seem to fall into patterns with their corresponding genders. Not everyone fits into these neat little boxes. This does, however, show gender categorization. Gender identity is the opposite of gender categorization. This is the way we see
Before the internet, our characteristics such as style, identity, and values were primarily exposed by our materialistic properties which psychologists define as the extended self. But people’s inferences to the idea of online self vs. offline self insisted a translation to these signals into a personality profile. In today’s generation, many of our dear possessions have been demolished. Psychologist Russell W belk suggest that: “until we choose to call them forth, our information, communications, photos, videos, music, and more are now largely invisible and immaterial.” Yet in terms of psychology there is no difference between the meaning of our “online selves” and “offline selves. They both assist us in expressing important parts of our identity to others and provide the key elements of our online reputation. Numerous scientific research has emphasized the mobility of our analogue selves to the online world. The consistent themes to these studies is, even though the internet may have possibly created an escape from everyday life, it is in some ways impersonating
The sex and gender binary is a socially-constructed classification of sex and gender into two distinct and biological forms of masculine and feminine. The binary is a restricting concept that enforces the ideology that solely two genders exist—it is a social boundary that limits people from exploring gender identity or mixing it up (Larkin, 2016). As Mann depicts it, the binary constrains us to take on one gender identity, and to follow through with the expected roles assigned to that gender. The implications are that it compels people to fit into the binary and follow the patriarchal, heteronormative traditions of society (Mann, 2012). However, the binary was not always so clear-cut, but certain concepts from scientific research such as the
...le or female actually identifies with their prescribed role depends on the socialization process and the way they identify with society’s expectations of them. The social construction of gender and sexuality all rely on the measure that people believe there is a difference between the two sexes, once this emphasis is taken away, is when gender roles will no longer play an integral role in the structure of society.