When you are cleaning out Teaching Resources and Harddrives...

A Little Me

            My name is Carmelo Bono, I am twenty-two years old and have been in Thunder Bay for the past five. I am originally from the rural areas outside of Hamilton where I grew up on a farm in a traditionally Italian family. I am heterosexual and have not practised anything that would make people think otherwise, however when I was younger my friends and family were unsure at times (as much as they were reluctant to say it to me). I do not have anything against being a homosexual, but I think it just really hurt that they were thinking I was a homosexual, and were not openly willing to ask me about. It is really quite silly to think that from being a young male who can’t keep a relationship, hangs out with just as many girls (who are friends) as he does guys; wears slim fit button up collared shirts; and likes the colour pink; people automatically assume the boy is gay. I know I am a little guy, I am small, short, I don’t have the deepest voice and I certainly do not have the muscle mass that most of my friends are blessed with; but does this give people the right to make their presumptions, not only about who I am but what my likes and dislikes are before evening learning my name? I was insulted by my family, my friends and teachers, yet I never said a thing.

            I let people think what they want, if they were my friends, it wouldn’t matter and if the girl I liked, turned around and liked me back, I would try to kiss her. I actually once had a girl who I went in for a kiss with and she asked me “Aren’t you gay?” I laughed, got up to walk away, she stopped me quickly and said “Oh hey, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that, I just really like you and I didn’t expect that from you.” I ended up dating her, but people still had their doubts which were because of how I dressed which by today’s standards now is pretty damn good!

            I played football all through high school and near the tail end of my time I began to adopt a rougher look. I was convinced that maybe if I didn’t seem so prim and proper; if I came across as a little tougher by wearing plaid, backwards hats, band shirts, and etc. that this stigma of my fashion would come to an end. Unfortunately I lost a lot of the look I used to appreciate, but I can still clean up damn good when I like or need to. I don’t think I can spend a week without saying I am happy with the way I look if I do not get some plaid into my fashion some how. I identify strongly with how I dress, whether it is comfortable, “hot” or professional, etc. I wish I didn’t but it was just such a heavy impact on my self-image that I am aware of it, but it still makes me uneasy when stepping out of my “comfort clothes”. I don’t ever allow anyone to make those judgments of me nor do I judge people based on the way they dress either. I do not like it, I do not appreciate it and as much as I dislike uniforms in schools, I feel that they are a food thing to have to stop such confusing matters of identity in youth.

            Self-policing is best described and analogized as Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon. The Panopticon is a prison structure in which reinforces self-policing within the cells of inmates. The prison structure is characterized by the main building encircling the recreation yard and a guard tower that stand tall in the middle of the recreation yard. The inmate cells would be facing the inside of the recreation yard open to be seen by all within the circle. The tower would be many two way mirrors so that the inmates could not see into the tower but the guards can see out of the tower. This idea is to create constant psychological paranoia; this is because the inmates do not know when the guards are watching them. This paranoia is used to make the inmates worried about being caught for something wrong they do. Without knowing when and who is looking, will they risk do something wrong. We see this constant surveillance of self or self-policing, everywhere today. Our technological age also heavily reinforces this through “random” Youtube videos, Vine, Facebook, America’s Funniest Home Videos, etc.

            In current day media this self-policing is exemplified by through the reinforcement of what is male culture versus that of what is considered female culture. The music video by for the song “He Can’t Even Bait a Hook” by Justin Moore is a video that speaks strongly out about what features in a man attract a woman, which features are manly to have and how having these features do not make you a real man somehow, thus the “He Can’t Even”. The song is a country song which holds a stigma in itself as it is normally associated with blue collar, boring/too crazy of people; also says to its audience that not wearing plaid is unmanly, and that if you are an academic you must be a fool because they do not do anything with their hands. The song tries to associate “manly” activities with life experience and that you can only have life experience if you are a hard working blue collar man. I personally do not associate with the video myself, however in the end the man who can’t even bait a hook, does get the woman. The reason I still do not appreciate the course of the music video is because the video was making

            It is hard to believe that teenagers and adults alike can be so easily fooled into thinking that a person’s personality can be so easily determined based on such a superficial analysis. Parents do it to teenagers just as often as teenagers do it to other teenagers. This could be understood as a consequence to television show stereotypes or even one’s own schematic knowledge. Schematic knowledge is a term regarding the cognitive functioning of the human brain. It is the ability to read things around one and draw conclusions/presumptions regarding results and pretences as to the context of the object or event. Most schematic knowledge comes from or is influenced over consistent occurrence after a long period of time. In some modern cases it is safe to say that a lot of television shows have influenced people’s schematic knowledge regarding social cues and personality traits that are stereotypically associated with each other. These stereotypes can come from a number of different sources but the most common ones are evidently from drama genre television shows like 90210, Gossip Girl, and The O.C. For example, on a show called One Tree Hill a character who no one expected was gay turns out to be gay and the justification given by a character is “Oh! Well it all makes sense now. Why he was so quiet, why he was so withdrawn and so friendly towards the girls…No wonder he was so nicely dressed.” We are given forcefully without any solid factual evidence, the classic attributes that are associated with a closet homosexual male. It is not fair to the individuals who are categorized as such that do not actually act that way, nor is it fair to those that act in a similar manner but need not be classified as such an individual.

            We may never be able to return to a neutral self-image; but then again after some time we might be able to. It is hard to say and impossible to know, however which way one argues, it is undeniable that it will be a long and controversial transition from conservative to liberal, to whatever may come of the synthesis between this thesis and antithesis.

            So in my future teaching career, regardless of where it will be, I will support the choice for uniforms in a school. I think this is a great idea because even though it can still be manipulated, it is relatively gender neutral, aside from the Kilts; but even those are really gender neutral. If the kilts were meant for just girls, they would have actually been called skirts. When I am out in the teaching realm, and I am up in front of thirty or twenty eager students to pick apart their new supply teacher for wearing hot pink shirts or white jeans; I will not only be sure to prove to them that a personality is a personality and fashion is a fashion. I mean when I say personality is personality, fashion is fashion; is that one does not have to reflect the other even if they sometimes do.