We Are The 99 Percent

Reading the blog on Tumblr about a 3 1/2 month old baby who was born with club feet made me have so much sympathy for the people who are struggling to get by.  The baby, Olivia was struck with misfortune of being born with club feet. Unfortunately, caring and fixing club feet is extremely expensive. The family she is in already has three boys and her dad is a disabled war veteran and her mom is trying to get a degree so she can get a better job to help her family. This situation is so unlucky because the family works so hard and when struggles come their way they aren't in the financial situation to deal with the problems properly.

 It really shocked me looking through these posts and seeing how ridiculous and sad some peoples situations are. Some of these aren't even in the working poor class which really shows how hard it is to be successful in America without being born into money. It is shocking that these type of situations is what 99% of the country has to deal with every day.

Social Class

Do the rich get richer and the poor get poorer? That is a question our society constantly asks themselves. America is supposed to be a place where if you work hard enough you can go from rags to riches but its not that simple. Purely hard work isn't enough for those lower class people trying to make more money and a difference in their life. In the show we watched the lower class woman, Tammy really displays that hard work isn't enough to improve your lifestyle. She wakes up early every day and walks miles just to get to work (rain or shine). She does everything in her power a single mom can do and the family still barely gets by. Tammy doesn't have connections to the working world because of the way I assume she was brought up. On the other hand, Wasp (the rich, cocky man in the show) was probably born into money and makes his living off of family connections. This is a perfect example of how unfortunately in many cases the rich really do get richer and the poor really do get poorer.

Deviance

After the deviance assignment was given I thought long and hard as to what positive deviant act I could do. I couldn't think of anything so I thought I'd just let something happen. Wednesday at school I was traveling to the other building with my friend thru the crowded and loud Stevenson halls. Right as we passed the testing center one of my guy friends looked at this kid in front of me and loudly said, "yo retard". I yelled back, " Use a different word please!!" as nicely as I could. My friend who yelled the R word just looked at me and said, "Alright chill I was kidding". I knew my friend meant it in a joking way but ever since I went to the Special Olympics I've tried to stop saying the R word- even in jest and I am slowly trying to get other people to stop saying it as well. After I did this I felt a little embarrassed but proud at the same time. I didn't want my friend to think I was annoying or a goody goody but deep down I did feel good about myself.

"He must be gay!"

The stereotypes that are associated with males and females are extremely different. Females are expected to be things like- sensitive, classy, unintelligent, and maternal. Where as males on the other hand are expected to be things like- tough, insensitive, smart, competitive, and athletic. If a male or female has qualities that are looked at as not "normal" such as a girl being tough they would be titled as, "manly".

Many toys that little kids play with are very gender specific. For example, dolls and dress up clothes are for girls and play cars and action figures are for boys. What if a boy wants to dress up in a princess dress? This is exactly what happened when my brother was about five years old. I was seven at the time and had a lot of princess costumes. One day my younger brother decided he wanted to wear my Ariel princess costume. We had recently just moved into our new house and hadn't met our neighbors yet. The day my brother decided to dress up in my costume we decided to go to the park down the street. A couple boys around the age of eight or nine looked at my brother oddly and I heard them whisper, " that kid must be gay!" and they started laughing. My brother had no idea that what he was wearing was girly or made him seem "gay". I didn't really understand at the time but now looking back on it I find it very sad that this is how society has shaped us to think. My brother wasn't wearing my costume because of his sexuality at the age of four. He was simply copying what I wore. He was too young to understand and all he was trying to do was be more like me because I was his role model. When I brought this story up with my mom a few days and asked her how she felt about my brother wearing that costume she replied, "It was just a phase Bari- he was trying to be like you his cooler older sister! It had nothing to do with his sexuality.He was too young to understand what any of that means anyway."

My brother is now fourteen years old and is straight. He wears soccer jerseys, shorts, and nikes everyday- no more dress up costumes :). He laughs looking back at the old pictures of him when he use to wear my costumes and says laughing, " what was I thinking!?"Now its just a humorous memory but still portrays a stereotype that our society has of what girls and boys should act like and wear.

American Dogs are Treated Like Royalty

I didn't have to get on a plane to Mexico or Europe to experience culture shock. All I had to do was drive down the street to my best friends house to notice something that her family did completely different than what I was use to. When I got to my friends house she had me go in through the garage. This was the first time I had been in her garage because usually I go through the front door. I had always noticed her three dogs would always be outside but I never really observed the fact that they were never indoors. Anyway, as I went into the garage I noticed there was some sort of wall built in the corner of their garage where her dogs lived when they weren't outside. I asked my friend if her dogs lived there and she replied, "yeah, obviously...they aren't allowed inside." I was taken back by this- but it seemed like a completely normal thing for her. Her parents are from Poland and I thought that might be something that they do in Poland and now that they live in the U.S they do that same exact thing. It wasn't weird at all to them. I later asked my mom about it and she was explaining to me that other countries don't treat their pets like royalty like most of the families in the United States do. I realized then that just because my friends dogs don't sleep indoors on a Juicy Couture dog bed get groomed weekly like my dogs doesn't mean she is being cruel to her dogs at all. Dogs are wild animals and seeing them sleep in a garage shouldn't really be shocking to me at all. One of my moms best friends from Yugoslavia once told her, "Everyone from Yugoslavia says in their second life they want to come back as an American dog." The only reason it was weird to me is because I wasn't accustomed to seeing dogs living in a garage because that isn't a "norm" of the American culture. This experience really opened my eyes to how other cultures live and that you don't have to leave your own country to experience culture shock. 

Power Awareness

The three main sociological theories we learned about in class this week were conflict theory, functionalism, and symbolic interactionism. It is really interesting to think about how these three theories can relate to many things in my life.

Our society is split up into cliques with different amounts of power. Whether it's social class split up by how much money you have or your popularity at school. In my life, I have definitely noticed a clear difference in the amount of power a student has at school. For example, in my classes where there are kids that are considered to be "cool" or "popular" you always notice something different about their attitude. They have a cocky way about them and always seem to be more comfortable around others. This might not be an obvious awareness of power, but other people in the class that don't consider themselves as cool as these particular people most of the time wouldn't to dare argue or tell them to do something. 

It is intriguing to think how Facebook can be associated with power. On Facebook, people can gain power by going to the extreme by planning a strike, overthrow, or some other political movement. Also, cyber bullies can bully others through facebook. On the other hand, most of the time people post things on facebook to try and increase their popularity and power. This relates to my life because I have a facebook and have noticed my facebook friends and I probably post things on facebook to get other peoples attention and don't even realize it. Ones facebook can determine someones popularity or power by simply posting photos or statuses to make others envious or even having a lot of friends on facebook. 

Thinking about how someone is perceived to be powerful or not powerful is something I never really thought about before this class and found it very interesting. 

Time

Why is every American always on the go and in a rush? Our society is so caught up in worrying about the future we never fully live in the present. We are never fully concentrated on where we are at the moment because we are thinking about how we are going to get to our next destination on time. But why are we like this? I think our obsession with time definitely plays a major role. 


I am guilty of always being worried about what I have to do later and I constantly am looking at my phone or a clock to see what time it is to plan what I have to do next. In class we talked about what if there was no time? What if everyone showed up to school when they wanted and left when they wanted? I had never thought about this. Time is structure and without time our society would have no structure what so ever. Even though time gives our world structure it increases everyones stress levels. 


Every time I have been to another country I have noticed their lack of concern for the time. For example, in New York City taxi drivers are beeping and rushing through the streets where as in Jamaica everyone on the road is very calm and takes their time to get everywhere. 


Time is definitely something that has been constructed for me since I was little. My dad has always told me "Early is on time, and on time is late."