You Are What You Make...

In class this week, we discussed social class and watched a film about the many classes that make up our society as a whole. Although we may not pick and choose our friends based on what class they are in, what jobs their parents hold, and in what way they dress, we have subconsciously become a product of the class we are in. When in a certain class, one has the mindset of what kind of job they will hold in the future, whether or not college is or is not an option, perhaps even when the next getaway to Paris will be. In each crevice of society is somebody and that person will belong to one class or another.
The determinant, at least I believe it is, is the money one is making and the work they're doing to get this money. There is no breaking a barrier in classes because although we want to look to everybody as an equal, we set certain standards for ourselves that we then believe everybody else should abide by. However, everybody may be in a different financial situation, in a different "class" then ourselves, and they can't go about making the same goals as we do, because maybe their goal is just to get by.
Some of us are just lucky to be able to make big plans in this life, some of us are lucky enough to get a vacation in sometime during the year, but some of us are just trying to get through it all, one meager meal at a time.
So when you look all around you, where do you fall in? Where do your best friends fit in? Where do we all fit in?

the revolving door

This past week in class, we've been watching an episode about the US prison system and how so many people find themselves back behind bars once they've gone through them once. Sadly, the upper-middle class can find its way out of these situations, but the poor keep comin' back for more. I'm sure it's not the life they would choose for themselves or a lifestyle they would endure but I see it in a couple ways.
Some agents of socialization could be where they were raised and the life they had always known, because you and I both know that if we were living in the South Side of Chicago, we probably wouldn't consider going to college, costing our families 40 grand a year because that kind of money wouldn't even be available to us. What our day to day struggle would be there is much different than it is here.
In a sense, I feel like some of these people fall back into patterns of prison life because it's consistent; they get a bed to sleep in every night and food to eat three times a day. I don't necessarily agree with the US prison system, in fact I find it very unfair and after having read Courtroom 302, I have lessened respect for authority because of their reign in power. Before people are even convicted of a crime, they already tell them they have no chance at winning their case. I think in this respect too, people fall into the "revolving door" of prison. When constantly beat down and told that you will never amount to anything, a person begins to listen and sometimes they go down the wrong path.
It's too bad that the rehabilitation program that was shown in the Virginia prison isn't as prominent elsewhere, and I think that it would be useful if some of these "convicts" were shown a way out and taught that there is something more that they can do with their lives. Unfortunately American society has a long way to go in advancing its prison system and its enforcement in general.

Deviance in our Society

We read an article about two different groups of boys in the same school; one being the Saints and the other, the Roughnecks. Both of the groups did the same sorts of illegal activities, be it drinking under-age, pulling pranks, and other such things. While one group was able to get away from town because they had more money to spend and their own cars to drive, the other was constantly in the town's view. It was the Roughnecks that were considered as such because everybody considered them the lower-class kids with bad habits and the kids who were going nowhere; they weren't all-star athletes and honors students. But while these boys did the same things as the Saints, because those boys were the all-star athletes and honors students, they were able to get away with their illegal activities. So why is this? Why is it that when one has good credentials and enough money, they can get away with just about anything? But when doomed to fail, one little slip up has everyone talking?
I've seen it among us Patriots as well, with the right amount of sweet gestures, smiles, cash, and decent grades, it seems like there's kids who can get away with it all. But if everyone knows you're headed down the road to nowhere, anything "bad" you do will be used against you. How do we fix this cycle of deviance? How can we as a society look past class and race to see that no matter who commits the crime, it's the same crime? Why is it that some can get away with it while others cannot?

Never Quite Good Enough

Just a couple weeks ago, we had talked about how men and women differ; men being masculine through toughness and women vicariously living through magazines and TV ads, trying to perfect their images to those unrealistic ones they see all around them.
While in Mexico this past week, these differences were so much more prominent to me. As all of us girls would sit along the beach or watch a show, how skinny or in what shape a girl was in was something we couldn't help talking about. We would look at our own selves and compare to those of the dancers in the shows or the other girls on the beach and yes, even to those in a magazine, always finding a way in which to "fix" ourselves. It's as if nobody was ever truly happy and content with every aspect of themselves. There is always something more we could do, one more work out we could get in, one less thing to eat, in order to perfect a certain image that we have been programmed to endure. And then there were the boys, how do they prove that they're tough? From what I saw in the past week, I think it's through the number of girls they can get with and the amount of drinks they can sustain. It's always a competition of who can get more and be more and do more.
Why is it that in our society we haven't been brought up to just be happy with how we are? We have instead been programmed to feel a certain way based on how we look and what we do? The media gets a kick out of all of this, and what do we do, we just eat it allllll up.