HW 31 - Exploring Methods of M,M,C,A, & Aggrandizing the Self

Part A
So for my homework, I decided to ask my mom about her method of adorning her face with cosmetics. Below is our conversation, word for word.

So mom, I see that you wear makeup, and you don’t like to leave the house without it. Why is this so?
Because I always wore makeup since I was a teenager, I feel I must always have something on my face otherwise I will feel naked like I’m missing something, like wearing clothes. The other reason is I don’t like the way I look without makeup. Makeup makes me feel presentable in public. I also think without makeup, I look blah.

What do you think makeup does for one’s self-esteem levels?
It builds up one’s self-esteem, it project confident to one’s self. When a person likes the way they look, they will feel better about themselves and that will help them be able to interact with others with confident.

Did you always wear makeup, even when you were younger?
Yes, I started wearing makeup when I was a teenager. At first, it was just playing dress-up, but later it was because I did not have any self confidence and I did not think I was pretty and was plain. So I wore makeup to make myself feel prettier.

Do you think there are certain age groups of people who should not wear makeup?
Yes, I don’t think kids or teens should start wearing too much makeup. When they overdo it, it just makes them look worse than better. Wearing a subtle amount is fine if it make you look natural. Also makeup ruins people’s skin, I also learned that the hard way and it was too late to change that when I figured it out.

Shockingly, my mother did not give me the standard "Because I like it, it's for me, not for others” answer many of us are use too. However, this does not mean she did not tell me something along those lines. She did say that she wore makeup to boost her self-esteem level, which made her feel better about herself. She explained that have a high level of self esteem makes human interactions easier, which plays into the whole “others” part of the above statement. When I heard my mother’s answers to these questions, I was actually surprised. I never thought she wore make up to boost her self-esteem level, I only thought she wore it to impress others. I learned something new about her through these answers.

Another thing my mother’s answer made me think of is the way little kids like to play dress-up in their parents clothing. They are still adorning their bodies with materialistic items, even though they are young and do it for fun. All through our life we are constantly trying to improve our self-image, trying to add or remove items from our body to make us accepted by others. Ever since we were little, our parents dressed us up and showed us off, as a way to impress their friends with their children. Once we got older, and into our teenage years, we developed our own styles and what we believed was cool. Some people got tattoos and piercings, while others spend a ton of money on clothing. Moving past the teenage years, adults also feel the pressure to be accepted by others, while in their companies they work at or by their friends. We always adorn our body in order to impress others, and make ourselves seem “cool” in other’s eyes. We might not realize it, but we all do it.

Part B
After listening to my mother’s answers to my questions, I began to question my own reasons for wearing makeup. As I stated above, people of all ages adorn their body, in order to impress others. I wear eyeliner and lip-gloss because I feel that I am prettier with it. By adorning my body with cosmetics, I am boosting my self-confidence levels (as my mom said), while changing the way others see me. Along with wearing some makeup, I also adorn my body with clothing that if find others will approve of. If I dress the ways others do, or wear the brands others do, I feel that I would be more accepted by others.

As Shakespeare said in As You Like It, “All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players”. This quote represents our society today. We all have roles in this world, our role depending on who we are and what we do with our lives. By adorning our bodies, we are creating roles for ourselves in this massive stage. By applying makeup, I am playing the role of the teenage girl who tries to impress her friends and others. By wearing clothes that I feel others will approve of, I am playing the role of a teenage girl who wants to fit in instead of standing out. I am constantly changing my apparel and look because I want to impress the people around me. I know it sounds ridiculous, the whole question of “why do you care what others think” coming into play, but we all care what others think. Some people may be in denial, but every time we get dressed or look in the mirror we think about what others think of us. My methods of adorning my body helps me boost my confidence levels, and makes me feel as if I am more accepted by the people around me.

Homework 30 - Psychological and Philosophical Theorizing of Cool

What is emptiness? Is it the feeling of a bottomless pit in your stomach, or is it the feeling of something physically or mentally missing? When people say they feel lonely, do they feel empty? Are they looking for that lost piece that will make them feel complete? What is emptiness exactly?

There are many views on what emptiness entails. Our human mind wants us to believe that emptiness is the feeling of missing something. According to Dictionary.com, emptiness is “containing nothing; having none of the usual or appropriate contents”, or “destitute of some quality or qualities; devoid”. There are several more definitions, but these two stand out to me the most. Even the dictionary tells us that emptiness is the feelings that nothing is there, that we are devoid of something. We are convinced emptiness is when something is missing. For example, a solid object such as a cup, is used to contain things, such as liquid. A cup filled with liquid is considered full, while a cup filled with liquid is considered empty because it does not have anything inhabiting its physical form. However, according to http://www.thebigview.com/buddhism/emptiness.html, this cup is not empty. “We usually say that a cup is empty if it does not contain any liquid or solid. This is the ordinary meaning of emptiness. But, is the cup really empty? A cup empty of liquids or solids is still full of air. To be precise, we must therefore state what the cup is empty of.” (http://www.thebigview.com/buddhism/emptiness.html) But our human mind is so one tracked that we only look at the cup in a physical sense containing physical matter. We classify things as empty or full depending on their physical form or state. When we feel empty, we feel that we are missing something from our lives. Something we believe will make our life whole again, whether it be a materialistic item or a certain someone. We search for that special something to make us feel whole again.

But what is emptiness according to psychologists? The great prophets advocate Buddha believes that “"form is emptiness; emptiness is form". Emptiness is a key concept in Buddhist philosophy, or more precisely, in the ontology of Mahayana Buddhism. The phrase "form is emptiness; emptiness is form" is perhaps the most celebrated paradox associated with Buddhist philosophy.” (http://www.thebigview.com/buddhism/emptiness.html) When reading this quote, I took this key concept to mean one important thing. We as humans need form to help us live; we need structure in our lives to help us feel organized. We keep planners or organizers to schedule our meetings and what we have to do that day. But Buddha says that “form is emptiness”, meaning our structure we so carefully put together for ourselves is nothing but emptiness. He’s saying we don’t need forms to live our lives, we can just live. “Emptiness is form” because we got rid of that daily structure, and now we are finally living.

Buddha also tells us that being empty means being devoid of inherent existence. (http://www.thebigview.com/buddhism/emptiness.html) What exactly does this mean? Inherent existence means there is nothing inhabiting the cup. We are partly right when saying that a cup is empty when not containing any liquid or solid, but we mean that in the physical sense. Buddha says that this cup is always empty because it is devoid of inherent existence. This doesn’t mean Buddha doesn’t think the cup exists, he knows the cup exists, but to a certain extent. “The cup exists, but like everything in this world, its existence depends on other phenomena. There is nothing in a cup that is inherent to that specific cup or to cups in general…The cup's properties and components are neither cups themselves nor do they imply cupness on their own. The material is not the cup. The shape is not the cup. The function is not the cup. Only all these aspects together make up the cup. Hence, we can say that for an object to be a cup we require a collection of specific conditions to exist. It depends on the combination of function, use, shape, base material, and the cup's other aspects. Only if all these conditions exist simultaneously does the mind impute cupness to the object. If one condition ceases to exist, for instance, if the cup's shape is altered by breaking it, the cup forfeits some or all of its cupness, because the object's function, its shape, as well as the imputation of cupness through perception is disrupted. The cup's existence thus depends on external circumstances. Its physical essence remains elusive.” (http://www.thebigview.com/buddhism/emptiness.html) The cup exists because of all these external forces or circumstances, these conditions that make a cup a cup. Just like we as humans exist because of conditions that make us human. So is this cup empty? Yes, if it is devoid of these circumstances, but then it would not be a cup.

Buddha says that anger is nothing more then just that...nothing. We are so consumed by the feeling of wanting to feel something that we classify and label what we want to feel. When we have "feelings" of anger towards someone or something, we are feeding into the concept of anger. Anger is nothing but a concept we are trying to force ourselves into believing, a physical state we want our minds to believe we are in. By classifying our anger as "my anger" or telling ourselves "I am angry", we are labeling nothing. Buddha says that if we were to just let our "anger" pass through and not react to it, we will realize that anger is nothing but a void we are trying to fill with our own emotions. This plays into the sense of emptiness because we take what we think we are feeling and fill it with our emotions, causing our minds to over think what is really nothing all along. We get ourselves so worked up these feelings of emotions that we make ourselves believe what we are feeling is real, even when it is nothing all along.

But why do we as humans feel the need to fill this empty void we feel, instead of embracing it? We always want to be whole, to feel as if our life is complete. We look at our emptiness as a negative force acting against us, something we must get rid of as soon as possible. We don't embrace this feeling of emptiness as something good. We need to understand what Buddha says about emptiness, and understand that we are all empty unless we have all these conditions making us whole. It is not a bad thing to feel empty or have a life with no structure. It’s also not a bad thing to stop labeling things as “I”, because by not labeling ourselves using the word “I” we are taking away the concept that our perception is all that matters.

Links Used

http://www.thebigview.com/buddhism/emptiness.html

http://www.viewonbuddhism.org/wisdom_emptiness.html#6

http://www.hinduwebsite.com/buddhism/essays/emptiness.asp

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/emptiness

Homework 29 - Merchants of Cool

Recently in class we watched the movie “Merchants of Cool” from Frontline. This movie was about how corporate companies manipulate teens into buying their mass produced products. The movie investigates what teenagers believe cool is, and how companies can market cool to teenagers in order to get them to buy their products.

It is a known fact that corporations manipulate teens into buying their products, all while pretending not to, as shown in “Merchants of Cool”. Companies hire people to go “cool-hunting” for them, people who will find those 20% of teens who set the trends, who make their own style, who don’t feel the need to confine to the next best trend. They take pictures of these teens, and sell them to companies so that companies know what teens find cool. But once companies market off these styles to be cool, it is not cool anymore. Everyone says that in order to be cool, you must be yourself, and have self-expression. But when buying mass produced products, how can one be cool and be yourself at the same time? We all want to appear as if we don’t care about being cool, and we don’t care what others think of us, but while doing this there is a part of us that seeks that attention and approval from our peers. Companies, as shown in “Merchant of Cool”, know this, and decide to subtly sell off their products without overselling the product. Once something “new” comes out, such as a new trend, teens flock to it. They gobble up the merchandise, spend millions of dollars on their new wardrobes, all trying to confine to the definition of “cool.” This works out in the companies favors, because they’re making millions of dollars. Once that trend dies out, something new will pop up, gaining a company more money.

Does this make corporations evil? Are they the enemy in our lives, always trying to sell us the next best thing? Or are they our best friends, the ones who show us the next greatest thing, the new trends that make us seem “cool” to our peers? I don’t believe it is evil that corporations manipulate the minds of young people for the sake of profit. Yes, when put in that sentence, corporations seem like the enemy, the ones who want to take our money and make a profit. But think about it…marketing is the process where people sell a new trend or product, and make money of off it. Isn’t this how our society works? We buy mass produced products, making corporate companies richer, and making ourselves happy because of our new products? Companies are actually smart for manipulating the minds of young people, because they know that young people follow the trends the most. They know we always want the next best thing, the things that will make us appear “cool”, and feed off of that. So maybe they make a profit of off it…isn’t that how capitalism works? It’s a cruel world, it’s true.

Should advertising to young people be banned? From watching “Merchants of Cool”, we learned that by the time young people are eighteen, we will have viewed over 10 millions advertisements. That’s a lot, isn’t it? But how would you want advertising to young people? Everywhere we go, we are smacked in the face with a new advertisement. Whether it be in the subways or on city buses, or the bright lights of Times Square. How can you get rid of that? Advertising to young people is what tells young people what they should wear. It helps us find new trends, or find items that we want and like. Advertising helps both corporations and us teenagers, because it keeps us up to date, while generating profit for them. In this Capitalist society, money talks and we listen.

I don’t believe that manipulating our young minds is wrong. It is just how our society works. Corporations know that teens always want to have the next best thing, to be perceived as cool by their friends. As told to us in a lecture by Matt Fried, teens want to be viewed as cool by their friends. He explains that teens are always craving that attention or approval from others, and companies supply teens with that. They boost our confidence levels by selling us products that they know will make us feel better about ourselves. Okay they’re making money, but aren’t we all happy? Think about that next time you call corporations evil.

Homework 28 - Informal Research

"Cool (aesthetic)." Wikipedia. 04/12/2009. Wikimedia Foundation, Web. 5 Dec 2009. .

This article explains the overview, theories, and origins of the word cool. It also shows what is cool in different regions of the world. Along with giving a reason why the word cool has no meaning or definite definition, the article explains what goes into being or making someone cool.

This article bought up a very good point about the word cool, one that I have not heard before reading this article. Stated is the fact that cool does not have a meaning or definition because of the constant evolution of what cool is. This article explains what goes into being cool, and gives the generic normal answers, but then explains that cool changed per decade/new fad, which is an interesting point.

Fenichel, Michael. "What is "Cool"? (What's Hot? What's Not?)." Dr. Michael Fenichel's Teaching Tools. 2008. Wikimedia Foundation, Web. 5 Dec 2009. .

What is cool? This article works to explain what cool is (according to children and teenagers), and then incorporates the author’s point of view’s on what cool is. This article ties together self-esteem, peer pressure, and social experiences, to name a few, with the word and definition of cool. On the bottom are interviews the author had with girls and boys about what cool is.

An interesting point that this article brought up that has not been brought up by other sites I visited or people I spoke to was the fact that peer pressure and self-esteem played a big role in being cool. Yes we did touch on the fact that being cool involves being popular or being liked, and having confidence in one’s self, but we never explained how it impacted people with low self-esteem, or how people feel pressure to be cool.

Buehler, Doyle. "You're not cool - I am. What is cool & finding the cool factor. ." Fast Company July 24. 2008: n. pag. Web. 5 Dec 2009. .

This article is extremely interesting on two different levels. First, the author perceives himself as cool and likes to say that he is cool than anyone else reading this article. He then explains why and how he perceives himself as cool. The second interesting thing he does is he gives a formula or breakdown for how one can become cool. In this formula, the biggest slice or variable is what people think about you, taking up 99% of the 100% the formula adds up to. This seems rather true. The author then explains that there is no universal definition of cool; it’s all up to a person’s point of view or perception.

Like I said before, the interesting point of this article was the formula to be cool. This can definitely be used as an argument in a paper or in a discussion, or as steps to how people can become cool. The author also brought corporate companies into the article, which also can be used in an argument.

Homework 27- Informal Research - Interviews and Surveys

What does it mean to be cool? In class and on our blogs we discussed our views, but we never asked our family members or strangers on the street what they thought cool meant.

During class on Wednesday, we ventured onto the streets outside of school, and cornered strangers going to work or class. Following one guy pushing a stroller with a baby in it, Henry (with me tagging along), asked this man his opinion on what cool is. While pushing the stroller and walking at a steady pace, the man replied that he thought kids were cool. (How fitting, considering he was pushing his child in a stroller...). Henry then commented on how that was an unusual answer, considering mainstream media likes to tell us that children aren't cool. Defensively (in my opinion), the man replied "I don't care what mainstream media thinks, I think kids are fun and cool." What a good father, huh? After saying thank you to the man pushing the stroller, Kate and I quickly stopped a guy rushing to class. He looked to be in college, and was reluctant to answer our questions until we told him what we were studying. Suddenly he seemed to come alive. When asked what he thought cool was, the guy gave us a shocking and confusing answer. "A manufacturers desire", he replied. When asked to expand on that statement, he replied "it's self-explanatory." What, did he think he was cool by giving us that answer? But when asked if he thought he was cool, he said no. Before leaving, he gave us one piece of advice. He recommended a book called "A noble writer sound of words" by Wallace Stevens, and told us it would help us in our class. We thanked him for his time, and off he went. Two interesting point of views from our first two interviews, who's next? Oh yes, the man in the blue leather jacket, blue sunglasses, and blue hat. Trying to make a statement or resembling cookie monster? Either way, he answered our questions for us. He gave us a generic answer to what his definition of cool was (just being yourself...how ironic since he was resembling a character from a child's television show), and didn't believe that he was cool. He also said the way you dress makes you cool (also ironic). When asked who was cool, he replied "entrepreneurs or people who make a lot of money." When asked which celebrity he believed was cool, he replied Jay-Z, since he made a lot of money. Carrie asked if the sunglasses he were wearing were cool, and he replied "no, I just wear them to avoid eye contact." I'm assuming eye contact is not cool in his opinion...although Jay-Z makes eye contact with many on a daily basis. Finally, we asked a female jogger who was taking a rest while waiting for someone. In my opinion, she was the coolest stranger we interviewed today, because her answers were extremely thought out and she didn't give us generic answers. She believed that being cool wasn't about "popularity or power, it was more about being passionate about something you love." In her opinion, standing up for what you believe in is cool. She believes that she is cool because she stands up for causes she believes in, such as preventing human trafficking. When asked which celebrities she believed were cool, she replied Susan Surander and Gloria Stein, both chosen because of the way they gave back to the community and how they stood up for what they believed in. She also believed that integrity was cool, and that men and women have different views on what cool is. She thinks men associate cool with power and receiving, while women associate cool with giving back and standing up for what they believe in. This seems to be true, to a certain extent, depending on the person in question.

After the interviews on the streets, I asked my friend Yang, who isn't in our school, about her definitions of cool, who (in her life and celebrities) is cool, and if she is cool. Her answers were "Being cool can be phrased as relaxed, easy to be with, stress free, hip, in style, awesome or good. Its a positive word that can describe a person, location, object style and much more. It can also mean laid back, mellow and something, somewhere or someone u would like to be associated with. Honestly I think I can be cool at times but not always like when I am in a bad mood or tired. I can be cool when I'm with close friends and having a good time but when I am stressed I can be very moody. I think current mood & stress level has a lot to do with "coolness". The coolest celebrity would be Robin Williams. He makes others laugh and gives people a good time. He's a great entertainer and keeps away from scandals and such, so he isn't an attention seeker. I would say I know a lot of cool people in my life. among those would be my close & best friends who are there for me when I need them and I can be myself with them because they are cool with how crazy or moody I can be at times and still love me for who I am. When we hang out we have a lot of fun and if we fight we always make up. My parents can be cool when they aren't being strict or nagging about school or curfews but they aren't always cool. I guess those are some of the cool people in my life.

Finally, I asked my mother the same questions I asked Yang. Her answers were "cool is being able to relate to people from the past and present generations. Be open minded about cultures, beliefs, fads, current events without imposing your own feelings upon others. Cool can also be anything that is the newest and must haves that everyone wants. Yes, I do think I am cool. I always wanted to be the cool mom, someone my kids and their friends can feel comfortable talking and being with, and being able to relate back with them. I like their musics and most of their taste in things. I feel and act young and that makes me cool too. I can fit into all different generations. In my opinion, the coolest celebrity is...hmm...this is a hard one, but I think I would say Donny Osmond. After seeing him in Dancing with the Stars and having him win makes him the oldest winner to date so that's cool. He is ageless and timeless in his celebrity status. I known him and liked him most of my life and he is still the same person as when he was young and that makes him the coolest in my opinion. In my life, I think the coolest person is my husband. This is because he is giving back to the community at the moment. I asked him to simplified and get rid of his stuffs he accumulated and does not need. He is giving his books and office supplies to the City Councilman office to donate to our oversea troops and also to the neighborhood school who can use the supplies more."

Strangers on the street, friends, family members, classmates, students, it doesn't matter who you are, we all have different views on what cool is. Some answers maybe be generic, some may be astounding. But what does our media and mass corporations say about what cool is? Lets save that for next time(: