Susan Bordo's "Beauty (Re)discovering The Male Body"- Sex Roles using Plato's "Symposium"

   Plato's Symposium is the ideal book about young boys being pursued by older men. In Greek culture it was custom for men to sleep with still developing boys. Men are expected to play upon their desires, as well as woman since the Greeks believed that woman were animalistic in nature; only that in modern times it has been socially and culturally shown that men tend to lead with their impulses and woman are more taimed with emotions. This leads into how men are dominant in their society, they can sleep with who they want and must be the masters of their wants. These full-fledged male citizens were the ones who had to be active. The main point leads to the behavior of the dominant man and what is expected of them. Symposium uses many speeches to express the different sexual behaviors that are deemed appropriate for older men to perform on beautiful, sensual young men who were desired for their looks rather than their intelligence. This idea becomes the battle between a dominant and passive male. In Greek culture this is an example of what is expected of these roles and thus supports how times have not changed, and the ideals of male expectations in behavior have clarified the ideal of what it means to be an active and passive male.
     The Journal of Marriage and Family published an article in 1975 titled, "Sex and Sexism: A Comparison of Male and Female Sex- Role Attitudes." The article is essentially how men and woman view themselves due to expectations and societal values. Many of these views are affected by stereotypes and thus can reinforce how woman view their expectations of their husbands for example, and how men believe their wife should act in different scenarios. A man's dominant role is explored in the article and it really shows how a man views himself in society and how they believe they must behave.

Plato, and Plato. The Symposium. New York: Penguin, 2006. Print.

DFW-Commencement Speech: The Truth About Life

       This speech is definitely not your conventional commencement speech that you would hear during any type of graduation. On the other hand, this is exactly the type of speech which is able to tell people the harsh truth of life and the way it actually works. I know that in my high school commencement speech all I heard was about how we are going to strive in life because we are hard workers and that we are exemplary students for finishing a task that many people actually do not even get the chance to finish. However, not once in any speech given did I hear about the obsticles we would face in life. Being so far away from home is incredibly hard for me, I feel alone and am experiencing things that I have no explanation for; I am not wise enough to feel that I can solve my own problems. I feel that is where Wallace's speech was heading with his story about the fishes and the water. As young teenagers or young adults we are not so experienced with life, even though we want to think we are. We have only been taught basic knowledge that we are suppose to use in our future endeavors because it is deemed with importance. Yet when the older fish passed by and said "how's the water?" the two fish were in a state of discomfort swimming fast away from the older fish and then questioning the fish's question. I feel as if I just relived what my mom does to me all the time. She has a tendency to throw all this information to inform me and I just look at her as if she has lost her mind, doesn't know what she is talking about. But the truth is that with age comes better recognition of your reality, and at such a young age you may not know everything like someone who is twice your age. Of course you can have better mastery of a topic, subject, and product than someone who is older than you, consequently it does not mean that you are knowledgeable about the world.
       Another topic I enjoyed reading about was Wallace's statement and example about being charitable. We as Americans live in a world where it is all about self-gratification and we never stop to thing about others and how our actions affect others. Ambition is a terrible vice to have, and it can actually be very self destructive and can lead to envy, greed, pride, etc. Wallace says that by sacrificing we achieve freedom and I agree with him. We are the slaves of the corporate world and sometimes even the slave to our ambition. But humility is what can release you and allow you to see the world for what it is. Although it is a bit cheesy, sometimes even the cheesiest things can spurn some truth. You will never achieve true happiness if you do not allow yourself to give something back to someone or even to your society. Everyone wants to be succesful, ok, it has a lot of benefits. However is it really worth losing yourself and your integrity in the process.

The "Banking" Concept of Education- Becoming

            One of the most interesting ideas I have come across in this essay is Freire speaking of becoming. The idea of becoming is one of several examples from Freire's idea of problem-posing education. Becoming is defined as men and woman in an unfinished, uncompleted stage with a likewise unfinished reality. Apparently we are aware of our incompleteness and this unfinished character of humans and the transformational character of reality necessitate that education be an ongoing activity. I definitely agree with this idea! I feel that my education continues because I need to keep learning. I feel incomplete without that knowledge and I am sure many of us feel that way as well. We go to college with the hope of receiving some higher learning, hoping that we would be able to fulfill more gaps in our minds in order to feel complete.
          However, no matter how much we strive to go and look for more education, our learning never ceases to stop, thus our lives are just filled with more gaps. When we have a child, as a parent you start to learn how to manage the necessities of a baby. You are educating yourself in a real life scenario rather than just reading in a book how to manage a child. Day in and day out we are all learning about something new, no matter how old you may get, or how "educated" you may feel, there is always something new to be learned. That is where Freire is trying to get with the concept of becoming. We are trying to be the most educated versions of ourselves and we learn in so many different ways. That is why becoming is in the form of a gerund, because it is a verb and a noun. We are doing the action of becoming, but at the same time it is the subject of our lives. To be able to be that person, the person with more knowledge than some.

Research Prospectus: Reality Television

Reality television has been around for at least twenty or so years. This type of live television just mesmerizes the viewer into wanting more. Now in the 2000s, reality television has become more addictive than ever. It has even turned your ordinary person, into a household name capable of being recognized by a person within a mile away. Just three years ago when you heard a Nicole Polizzi, you probably would have thought just another generic name with an Italian last name. In 2011 when you say Nicole Polizzi, everyone knows who that is: Snooki. It is just amazing how the average person becomes so involved in the everyday life of the average person. Just seeing a married couple fight on television is enough to just make you stand in front of the television and glance at the screen amazed with the action. That is what makes reality television so addicting, and such a fascinating topic to learn and discover more about. Why is it that these people receive so much attention? Is it perhaps because we can see ourselves in their situations, we can relate with their struggles, or is it their antics that just defy normal cultural conventions. That is why I want to know how effective is it to be a reality television star and become a marketable brand in the entertainment industry.

Of course it is such a vast market of people, so I am going to focus on a little family called the Kardashians. The Kardashians have been around for less than a decade and already they are taking the world by storm. Nobody really knew who this family was, only that their father was a big name lawyer who worked on the O.J. Simpson case, and that the matriarch of the family married Bruce Jenner an Olympic gold medalist. Now when you say ”Kardashians”, the names that pop into your mind is Kim, Kourtney, Khloe, Kris, and Robert. How is it that this family became so big due to a simple reality show? And that will be the focus of this research, to find out how effective their careers are due to their fame and branding. Yet a problem could be how sometimes stars become fads in a matter of seconds. This can be a problem facing the Kardashians. If their reality show ends, will their fame also plummet as well? Or are they capable of being so marketable and likeable that even without a reality show, they are capable of maintain their fame five, ten, fifteen years down the line. There is so much research that can be done about the Kardashians. These girls have a business, Dash, and you can examine how their little boutique has expanding in business since the beginning of their fame. Also Kim Kardashian has been an up and rising model since her fame began. To examine how her modeling career has expanded and who she has worked with can also benefit how their television fame is capable of booking them jobs.

Sources for referencing include the book “Understanding Reality Television,” which will help to see how reality television first began and how it has branched out since its initial inception. “How real is reality TV?” are a compile of essays which help to illustrate how some television shows may be portraying accurate information of the lives of these stars, or if they are manipulated to act a certain way because of ratings or money. “Reality TV: Audiences and popular factual television” will help to realize how reality television influences the lives of the television viewer. Such as if the audience repeats a catch phrase and mixes it into their vocabulary, if a certain fashion worn by these individuals’ crosses into the wardrobe of the viewer. Reality television is just a way to feel as if your life is normal and to make you feel even more secure about your actions. You leave your living room going, “thank god I’m not that stupid.” It is just a clarification of your own intelligence and social standards compared to this individual who is in an unnatural situation.

"The Achievement of Desire"- Richard Rodriguez : The Scholarship Boy

         The selection written by Richard Rodriguez is one I can relate to. Being latino and brought up in an American environment, it can be difficult to assimulate to the culture as well as the language. However, I have seen on several personal accounts Cuban immigrants who have landed in Miami not one week passed, already transferring to a school where everyone speaks English. You can see the fear in their eyes, "how will I survive?", "will I meet anyone like me?". Fortunetely for them, unlike Rodriguez, Miami is a latino friendly environment where everyone speaks Spanish. Rodriguez grew up in a more difficult setting, perhaps an unfriendly setting for "fresh-off" latinos whose primary language is Spanish.
        One phrase Rodriguez repeats often is "the scholarship boy," a phrase and definition that I myself feel like I can define myself by. At first, I too was not to fond of school but as I began making friends, learning English, and understanding my homework, I wanted to go to school everyday. I grew up in a low-income household with a single mom. I knew that if I wanted to succeed, it would have to be by applying myself in my studies and working hard. To me the phrase 'the scholarship boy/girl" is that individual child that wants to dedicate themselves to their future, their education because they know that in order to succeed and go to college/university they will have to rely on their education. Yet one of the things that Rodriguez also noticed with his education was his growing distance with his parents. As I continued my education I noticed that I became more knowledgeable then my mother in different subject areas. I could never really talk to her about school and what I was learning, I felt that she was incapable of understanding what I was learning and going through. However I feel very fortunate that she was involved in my education, unline Rodriguez's parents which seemed to lack that passion for their child's education.

"The Pain Scale" by Eula Biss- Is having pain hell?

Eula Biss raises many fascinating point in her essay "The Pain Scale", but the most fascinating topic that I find is her allusion to hell. "The deepest circle of Dante's Inferno does not burn. It is frozen. In his last glimpse of Hell,... sees Satan upside down through the ice (172)," as I read this line I became quite facinated and intrigued to learn more about what exactly is Dante's Inferno is and how does Biss allude this ideal to her essay about pain. The most that I knew about hell and pain, is about the eternal suffering you receive for not repenting for your sins.

As I looked up Dante's Inferno, the one thing that stuck out to me were the levels of hell. Never in my life did I think of hell as a place that consisted of a level, I always thought hell was just one place crowded with sinners and evil people who are being tortured, laughed at, and abused by demons and devils for their own cruel behaviors on Earth. But then I began to realize, is Biss trying to say that pain is hell? Dante's Inferno has nine levels, each worse then the previous one and some levels are even divided into a sublevel. The essay is divided into a threshold number for pain, with zero being no pain at all, and 10 being an unbearable pain. You have 11 numbers for pain in Biss's essay, but only 9 levels in Dante's Inferno. So if I mix the ideas of this allusion to Biss's essay, 0 pain must be Earth in Dante's Inferno, and 10 in pain must be being the actual Devil.

But the biggest question of all is why hell? How is hell like pain? Then I realized that each just gradually gets worse and sinks you in deeper to a point where you cannot return; you cannot even tell the difference because of how unsure you are of where you are and how you feel. The torment is so great that you cannot possibly try to leave behind this torment. Whenever I have a serious pain, that feeling of being stabbed by a knife I recall that I always somehow say "I feel like hell, like I'm in hell!" The funny part is I have never been to hell and I have never been stabbed by a knife (nor do I want to). So why is it that pain and hell always correlate. Of course one does not cause the other; is it an ideal that we all just grow accustommed to. Growing up around a religious point of view, you know what or learn what hell is and what happens there. Torment and pain is what happens in hell, so is it an automatic ideal that pain is hell. Does our cultural assimilation make us view this very idea as one?

But then you have the idea that pain is a natural thing, you cannot live without it, it is a pleasure seeked by some. A pop-cultural example are the guys from Jackass, they entertain themselves with wild, crazy stunts that clearly cause bodily or physical harm. Yet they continue to perform these crazy stunts as if it gives them pleasure. There are also sexual forms of pain that people find pleasurable, this is known as S&M, a very popular pop-singer even sang a song about this art form. Biss may argue that the pain scale for these people is a simple game of how far can you go, or it can be how they just don't feel anything like how her father when he "broke his collarbone it didn't hurt (180)." So could pain actually be bearable and a way that makes you feel alive and adventurous. Or does it have to be only for torture and making your life miserable? Some may argue one, some may argue both. However, pain is a natural human phenomena that can be taken in many several ways.

"Why Bother?"- A summary about a man's question of the effectiveness of being "green"

     Michael Pollan raises the big question about climate change, a topic that has been pandemic around the world. The article begins with Pollan describing his feeling  after watching An Inconvient Truth. "Al Gore scared the hell out of me, constructing an utterly convincing case..."(88), it seems that this documentary cause Pollan to question his own cause and effect on how to help prevent the continuing rise of climate change. " I turn my life upside-down, start biking to work, plant a big garden,......, trade the station wagon for a hybrid,..."(89), these are all the ways Pollan sees that he could possible make a difference. By going the opposite direction and being more eco-friendly by diminishing his carbon-footprint and his own pollution in the air. Pollan continues to ask himself now about overseas imports and makes a reference to a New Zealand study which shows how they reduce the carbon footprint of food. The article also contains a very alarming bar graph which shows how anxious countries are when they view global warming as a problem. Brazil is the country with the most concern, while Egypt is the country with the least concern; the United States lands in the middle (90). Pollan continues his essay with a summary of a "blunt analysis" made by Wendall Berry.  He notes that Berry saw that specialization was the biggest issue, the "disease of the modern character." (91).
     Pollan then shifts his essay towards the audiences effect of being environmentally green and how their own effects can create a rippal effect. "If you do bother, you will set an example for other people" (92). Pollan believes that people will essentially begin to care about the environment and be more prudent with their own behavior.  However rebuttals his previous paragraph by stating this idea of going green as a "passing fad and will lose steam after a few years, just as it did in the 1980s" (92). Pollan concludes his essay with the idea that people should take Vacel Havel (an communist Czechoslovakian) ideal and "conduct themselves as if they were to live on this earth forever...." (93), and begins to describe how the little things, like planting a garden, can make a world of a difference.



Pollan, Michael. "Why Bother?" New York Times 2008
Ramage John D., Bean John C., Johnson June. The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Writing
New York: Pearson, 2006 (88-94)