I have an aunt who suffers from schizophrenia. When I was a child, I wasn’t aware of her diagnoses, I was too young to understand what it meant. I remember thinking she was a little odd. I never understood why she talked to herself when she did the dishes, or why she would burst into laughter randomly, I loved her very much because she always made sure I was fed. As I grew older, my aunt began to disappear randomly. My grandma and I would go on drives and we would see her walking on the side of the road, I wondered why my aunt wasn’t able to drive. I would ask my grandma if we could give her a ride, she would often declined and by saying “My sister likes to go on walks, we should leave her alone.” As we got older, my grandma taught us not to open the door for her if she came knocking. I wasn’t yet aware of her diagnoses so I didn’t understand why. Over time, I started to see my aunt less and less, once I was old enough to understand, I was told that she had been placed in a mental hospital.

When my aunt was a young woman, she suffered abuse at the hands of a family member. To prevent being exposed, her abuser argued that she was insane and needed medication. Following her false diagnosis, my aunt suffered a lot of emotional trauma, which the medication only made worse. By the time she escaped her abuser, my aunt had developed schizophrenia. Upon realizing she was schizophrenic, my perception of her changed drastically. Rather than being afraid of her, I felt a lot of sympathy for my aunt as she is often seen as the “crazy” one in my family, when she is a victim of abuse. Mental illness is taboo in my family, I often avoid talking about my mental health for the fear of being rejected by my family members. A lot of times when we hear the word schizophrenia, we immediately relate it to serious crimes such as murder. This is not the case however as it is possible to live a good life even with such a diagnoses. This excerpt by David L. Rosenhan made me how one diagnoses, a false one at that, can change a persons life.

In his excerpt, The Pathology of Imprisonment, Philip G. Zimbardo discusses a study that he conducted to investigate the relationship between prison guards and inmates. He did so upon receiving a letter from an inmate who had recently been released from solitary confinement after having been abused and stripped of his basic human rights for a total of 37 months. The experiment was shut down after a total of six days when the experimenters observed that the participants were no longer able to differentiate between role playing and self. The “inmates” displayed signs of severe depression, confusion in thinking, and hysterical crying. The “guards” started to display horrific behavior as they began to take pleasure in being cruel and treating the inmates as if they were “despicable animals.” The study was confirmed to be an accurate representation of the United States prison system as inmates are often dehumanized, offering little hope of rehabilitation.

Currently, there are about 200,000 people aged 55 and older incarcerated in the United States. Most of these inmates will eventually die in prison, driving up the amount of tax payer money needed to maintain the prison system. Older inmates are more likely to suffer from chronic illnesses and therefore require special medical attention which tax payers are held accountable for. If prisons were to release their senior citizens, this money could be used for other things such as the rehabilitation of it’s younger inmates. Our prisons are plagued with hate and violence as inmates are treated as animals and are therefore filled with even more resentment, resulting in an increasing corruption rate upon release. If the government used tax payer money to provide these inmates with education, therapy, and other forms of rehabilitation, they would then become valuable members of society upon release.

I once went on a date with someone who told me that cannibalism was acceptable. Had I driven my car to the date, I would have immediately fled the scene in fear of being eaten alive. I had no choice but to stay and make conversation so I asked him, “What makes you say that?” My date told me that he believed cannibalism could end world hunger. In places where food and resources are scarce, he argued that if a community were to kill one of it’s members, they would then have enough food to survive another day. I didn’t have much to say about his opinion, I firmly believed that cannibalism was wrong, regardless of the circumstances.

In this excerpt, James M. Henslin discusses the events that occurred in 1972 when a plane crashed in the brutal terrain of the Andes Mountains. The remaining survivors of the F-227 crash expected a speedy rescue but instead were left to fend for themselves for a total of 72 days. The events that followed the crash are shocking, due to a lack of resources on the airplane, the survivors had to rely on cannibalism as a means of survival. In these 72 days, the passengers created a system that governed their behavior and allowed them to maintain a sense of a “good self.” This sense of a “good self” was vital in maintaining their sanity as they were aware that cannibalism is condemned by most, if not all, members of society. Upon returning to normal society, the use of cannibalism by these passengers of survival was kept a secret from the public. When the secret was leaked, the world turned it’s heads in repulsion, shock, and disbelief.

I’m sure, at the time, many might have argued that they would never result to such horrific behavior, regardless of the circumstances. The story however makes me wonder, what would I have done in such a situation? I have never been left in the cold for 72 days so it’s difficult for me to form an opinion on the matter. I understand, however, the reasoning behind such behavior as hunger and desperation can erase years of socialization against cannibalism and the belief that a human corpse is to be respected. The passengers of the F-227 applied a new definition to the human corpse, they saw their deceased loved ones as a means of survival, arguing that the soul had left the body and therefore cannibalism, in this case, was acceptable.

As much as I like to believe that I’m an open, accepting person, I often find myself falling into the trap of judging others based on appearance. It is often advised not to judge a book by its cover, but one cannot deny that you can learn a lot about a person just by looking at them. Of course, appearance doesn’t decide whether or not I interact with a person, what follows after the initial encounter is usually where I base my judgment.

I was waiting in line at the Goleman library the other day when I saw a man spinning around on one of those chairs they use in the computer lab. After standing in line for some time, I noticed the man staring at me, I made the mistake of turning my head when we made eye contact for a split second. The man stood up and started walking towards me in line, he wasn’t very good at walking, he struggled to do so in a straight line. Once we were face to face I noticed a few things about him, his eyes were red and extremely low, meaning that he was either high or extremely tired. He had about 9 piercings on his face, which moved every time he talked making it difficult to concentrate on the conversation. The first thing he said to me was, “You’re very pretty by the way,” which felt uncomfortable considering the fact that we were in a library and he had said it very loud. I said thank you and continued to mind my business, I didn’t look at him or give him any more attention. I noticed he had slurred his words a little bit, he was definitely either drunk or on something. It was my turn to go up to the circulation desk, I walk up to turn in my book when I look back and see him standing right behind me. He has his phone out and I already know what’s coming, before he even asks for my number I lie and say “I have a boyfriend.” He’s doing this all while I’m talking to the librarian, she doesn’t say anything, she seems uncomfortable but she continues to do her job. He keeps insisting saying that we can be “friends”, but at one point I get tired of him insisting and I say “No. I’m not allowed to have friends.”

At first sight, I thought this man might have been a little weird. I first noticed him spinning in the chair over and over again which is something that usually isn’t done by grown adults. The piercings also stood out to me as something that isn’t always socially accepted, I assumed he was probably a junkie just based off of his appearance and the way he was behaving. When he complimented me, I welcomed it and said thank you, had it been someone who I was attracted to, I would’ve probably agreed to give out my number. The line was crossed when he followed me to the front desk and continued to bother me even as I was talking to the lady at the front desk. It doesn’t matter who it is, this kind of behavior is socially unacceptable. I don’t think that there would ever be an instance where I would act the same way he did. I appreciated this man’s kindness but his pushiness made me a bit uneasy, leading me to believe that he was “weird”.

The white picket fence is symbolic of middle-class suburban life in the United States. If you Google search this phrase, you’ll come across an image of an attractive white family, usually consisting of two children, heterosexual parents, and possibly a dog. The modern American family looks and acts nothing like this, many have argued that Americans have completely lost their sense of family values. It is often said that today, families are worse off and children are growing up in environments that are setting them up to fail.

In her excerpt The American Family, Stephanie Coontz explains how American life has changed since the 1950s. She explains that there is a common idea among Americans today that we have lost our traditional way of life, as families are no longer staying together. Coontz argues that the reality of the situation is that conditions were much worse during the period some people thought of as ideal. She mentions specifically that women had fewer options as they were expected to stay home while their husbands brought in the household income. Because it was so difficult for women to find good-paying jobs, they often had to depend on their husbands for support making it difficult to leave an unsatisfactory marriage. Coontz also mentions that in the 1950s, wife-beating wasn’t taken seriously by authorities, there was a lack of resources for abused women and children. Today, there are far more job opportunities for women that make it possible for them to have choices that were unavailable fifty years ago. Higher paying jobs, daycare, and an increase in college education have shown women that they can be more than housewives.

The lessons I was taught as a child are very different from what my mother was taught growing up. My mother grew up in a household that emphasized the importance of marriage, getting married was a way out of poverty for women in Mexico, like my mother. Today, my mother has her job and brings in more income than my father does. She taught me not to depend on a man, she emphasized the importance of being independent before ever getting married.

The older I get, the less I want to get married. I used to always fantasize about what my wedding day, I would imagine the typical white wedding on steroids. I wanted everything to be over the top, down to the very last detail. I pictured myself in a wedding dress that would take up a ridiculous amount of space, now that I’m older I can’t exactly see myself in this dress anymore. My wedding dreams were inspired by TV shows and movies that depicted unrealistically beautiful weddings, movies like Twilight were especially influential in my childhood. Once I started to be in long term relationships, these fantasies were even stronger as I had found out what it was like to love someone. At this point it became more than just a wedding, I began to understand what the wedding itself meant, to marry someone you had to be willing to spend the rest of your life with them, the wedding was just the cherry on top.

After going through a few breakups and realizing that commitment is a lot more complicated than it seems, I no longer see myself getting married. It’s not that I have trouble committing to people, I just don’t think that being with one person for the rest of your life is realistic. The white wedding no longer appeals to me because although it is visually stunning, the reasons behind it aren’t meaningful to me. It seems to me that most people want to get married to have a wedding. They spend months preparing for this day by calling caters and flower shops, but they put less emphasis on what will happen after the wedding itself. The idea of being “given away” has also never appealed to me, a woman is treated as a piece of property on her wedding day. Sometimes when I tell my mom that I’m not getting married, she doesn’t take me seriously. This is probably because she has also fantasized about my wedding day, only to find out that it might never come.

In the year 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that limiting marriage to heterosexual couples violated the 14th amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law. There was a lot of controversy surrounding this decision as nearly 30% of Americans are opposed to gay marriage. This decision drew a lot of attention to the nation, it is often forgotten, however, that the United States was not the first country to legalize gay marriage.

Fifteen years before the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision, The Netherlands became the first country to legalize same-sex marriage stating that same-sex couples had the right to marry, divorce and adopt children. For the most part, gay marriage is widely accepted by the Dutch Public. The countries that followed in decriminalizing gay marriage were mostly well-developed countries, such as Canada, Sweden, and Iceland. An increase in education may be what makes developed countries so accepting of gay marriage. There is also the possibility that developed countries are a, which tend to bring in immigrants, are filled with people from different cultures and religions. There is no single religious structure shaping the ideas of Americans or any of these other countries that decided to legalize gay marriage.

On the other hand, there are countries like Qatar, Iran, and Sudan all have laws that prohibit any same-sex relations all of which can be punishable by death. In Sudan, religion plays an important role in the lives of its citizens with nearly 97% of the population practicing Islam. Much like the bible, the Qur’an has been used as a weapon of oppression against LGBTQ people. The Qur’an states that men who participate in same-sex relations should be punished, however it does not specify what punishment would be considered appropriate. Being gay in such a country can be incredibly difficult, as mentioned by one of my classmates who felt she couldn’t come out because her religion, and her country, prohibited it. Extremist groups, such as Isis, have targeted the LGBTQ community by performing public executions in which men have been thrown from tall buildings or stoned to death. In countries where Islam is the religion of many, even coming out of the closet can be life-threatening.

I often find myself getting my feelings hurt easily, especially when it comes to interacting with the opposite gender. I grew up in a household with mostly females and therefore adopted a style of communication that took the feelings of other people into account, sometimes even above my own. This style of communication, however, does not always work with everyone that I meet. In my close friendships and relationships with men, I often find myself being misunderstood.

When in a relationship with a man, I often get told that I apologize too much. To a certain level, apologizing is a way to cope by with insecurities, I often apologize if I feel I’ve spoken too much or said something wrong. The partner I’m currently with will tell me something like, “you don’t have to be so self- conscious all the time.” To a certain extent, he’s right, the apologies I insert into conversations are often unncecessary but for some reason I feel like I have to include them. This miscommunication can be traced back to my childhood, in which I was taught that as a woman I must be gentle and submissive with my words. The same can be said for men who are often taught to be confident and unapologetic. There are also times in which a man apologizes to me for something he has done, but the apology itself doesn’t meet my standards and fails to resolve the conflict. If I feel like the apology isn’t enough, for example if the man simply says “I’m sorry,” I will fail to move on from what has happened until I feel like I have received an honest apology.

To continue, my humor often does not mix well with the opposite gender. My humor is often self-depreciating to not hurt other people’s feelings. This self depreciating humor is often sarcastic and should not be taken seriously. However, I’ve had partners in the past that have commented on it by saying things like, “Why are you so hard on yourself?” My humor isn’t derived from a lack of confidence but instead is a way for me to laugh at my flaws. I often find myself using self-depreciating humor as a way of coping with stressful or sad events. This often makes it seem as though I don’t take things seriously enough, when I do. The way men joke around often hurts my feelings because I am the kind of person that takes things personally. Unless I am told that something isn’t personal, I will more than likely take things to heart. Although there are many conflicts between the two communication styles, there are ways in which men and women can learn to understand each other. I think it’s important that both sides avoid taking things literally, rather than jumping to conclusions based on face value.

Sexuality and Gender in Children’s Daily Worlds, presents research done by Barrie Thorne and Zella Luria that explores the lives of pre-adolescent children and their gender-based interactions with one another. The interactions described between the children in this research are very similar to what I experienced from the ages of nine to eleven, and are still relevant in today’s elementary schools.

The friends I had in elementary school were almost always from the same sex, interaction with the opposite gender was unheard of, unless it was school organized interaction. I maintained the same two “best friends” throughout my last three years of elementary school. As mentioned by the researchers, girls are more likely to play games that take up less space and require less people. We only interacted with each other at recess and would typically play imaginary games or do tricks on the jungle gym. The boys, on the other hand, would generally play either on the basketball courts or on the field. Their games were more violent and aggressive and except for one tom girl, girls were never allowed to participate. The only time boys and girls would interact with one another during recess was while playing four-square, which tended to be a gender neutral game. This was a game that everyone could take part in, there were sometimes arguments between boys and girls about what was fair and what wasn’t. If tensions were to become too high, the girls would break off and start their own game of four square. At lunch time, like mentioned by the researchers, boys and girls typically did not sit together. This was because of the different dialogue that occurred within groups, us girls tended to be grossed out by whatever the boys would talk about, which usually had something to do with sex.

Elementary school, as described by the researchers, is a time in which children learn heterosexual scripts that they will follow into adulthood. For me, this was the period in which I started to gain an interest in the opposite sex by forming crushes on boys. The first boyfriend I ever had was in fifth grade, I remember having a crush on him for the longest time when I found out that he also had a crush on me. In the most cliche way possible, he wrote me a note asking me to be his girlfriend which I responded to with a yes. In elementary school, dating consisted of saying “hi” to each other every morning and saying “bye” to each other every day after school. There was no kissing, no holding hands, and no hugging. This would serve as practice for any future relationships I might have. Elementary school was a defining time in my life because I learned how to form and maintain relationships.

To develop a systematic account of beauty concerning gender, race, ethnicity, and skin tone, I identified about 50 Vogue covers all of which were taken in the last ten years. My first observation of the magazine was that they rarely ever feature men on their cover, unless it was a Vogue Men’s issue. If a man was ever featured on the cover, he usually was dating the woman who was pictured next to him. Examples of men on covers would include the 2019 cover of Hailey and Justin Beiber as well as the Kim and Kanye cover. Both covers showcase the woman’s beauty while typically positioning the males body to where it is less noticeable. Aside from gender differences in this analysis, I found that the majority of the models in these magazine covers were, or appeared to be, white. I counted about fifteen models out of fifty that were black, the rest were either LatinX, Asian, or Middle Eastern. I used Vogue USA for my analysis as I assumed it would be more diverse, since it is often said that the United States can be compared to a melting pot. My results contradicted the “melting pot” idea as the majority of cover girls were white, making it very clear what is considered beautiful in the fashion industry. I also noticed that none of the models would be considered overweight as there was no visible body fat presented in any of the shots. There were curvier women as cover girls but even then they were photo shopped to achieve a smoother look. For the most part, this high fashion magazine showed minimal skin, compared to other magazines like Maxim and Sports illustrated that portray woman as sexual objects.

After analyzing these covers, it is very clear what is considered beautiful in the fashion industry. There was nothing natural about these shots as they were all noticeably photo shopped to minimize flaws. Natural is no longer considered beautiful as most of these women were smothered in makeup, expensive clothing, and jewels. I also noticed that some of the shots that included women of color were lightened to minimize the color of their skin. There is a great deal we can learn from gathering data like this, there is very little inclusion and diversity in the fashion industry.