Making a Change One Person at a Time

1. Positive deviance is when you go against a social norm in a way that has positive results (especially for others). Diaz responds to the mugger with an act of positive deviance by offering both his jacket and later to go out for dinner after he was mugged. This is positive deviance because he responded the complete opposite of how most people would act to have a positive influence upon someone else.
2. When I was buying lunch one day, someone was trying to buy lunch but they didn't have money on their card to pay for it so they were going to put it back and not eat anything for lunch. Instead, I offered to pay for their lunch even though I did not know them. This is a positive act of deviance because most people are too frugal and selfish to pay for someone else's lunch if they weren't going to get payed back. Plus, it helped them out by being able to eat for lunch.
3. When I offered to pay, the student at first just stared at me in disbelief as if she was unsure of what I just said. Then she responded, "No that's ok" but I insisted. She gave me one more look and said, "Are you sure?" and after payed she said thank you. She seemed very grateful that I was paying even though it appeared she felt kind of bad. The cash register person didn't even make an acknowledgement to what was going on. I felt really good about myself afterwards because I knew how thankful she was and that I would be happy if someone did the same for me on the days I run out of money. This event has made me realize that just because something is a norm (everyone for themselves in this case) isn't always right and people should not be afraid to break these if it is in a positive fashion.

State of mind

This week we learned about how we associate words with certain attitudes just because that is what are society is telling us (Socially constructed). One commercial that I have seen recently that actually tried to fix one of these socially constructed words was about high fructose corn syrup. When the main character asked someone else why they were against it they would only say, "You know what they say" as if to prove they are only told it is bad for them and that is it. This commercial actually laid out the facts to show how exaggerated the idea of high fructose corn syrup is. Another thing that I have noticed the most around me that is socially constructed are grades. If you really think about it, grades are just letters on a page. In America, people think of this as either a life-or-death situation or it is a measure of their worth. Our society has drilled the importance of a grade into kid's heads so much that in most cases when they are asked what will happen if they get a B they respond that they, "will never get into a good college" and when asked about the problem with that they say they, "won't get a good job" and I ask them what a good job is and they respond, "one that makes a lot of money". Finally when I ask if money makes people happy and what is the point of all of this if you end up dead anyways they just give me a blank stare. Socially constructed things are ones that we are told to think in a certain way and we never actually think about it for ourselves. It is sad that we just go ahead and believe things and don't question them because then how will we ever be able to understand our values if we do not make them up?

Gender

The challenging part about the gender role given to me by media as a teenager is definitely either the fact that girls are supposed to be so skinny and perfect looking or the fact that your supposed to be all girly and fragile. The problem with the whole fragile/girly one is that especially around my friends, I am the complete opposite of that and so often people just joke around about how manly I am, which is no big deal but it does get a little annoying. One thing about my gender role that I like is that I am allowed to both show my feelings and be a woos sometimes and no one can say otherwise because that is what is expected of a girl. Media definitely advocates being heterosexual as many jokes are targeted at gay men and really aren't usually put into a show unless they are being made fun of. This is why many gay people are picked on so often because that is what people see on the media. As far as a relationship between a man and a woman goes in media, people are influenced for the man to be the strong reliable one while the woman does cleaning and needs to be supported by the man. This becomes a problem esspecially when a man loses his job and then feels like less of a man because he felt like it was his responsibility to suppor the family.