Blending in With the World Today Is Not Easy to Do

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Blonde haired, blue eyes, thin, lean and beautiful. Life should come easy to any person who fits this description according to what we learn from society. Society brainwashes us by telling us what we should look like to make it in the world. Often times people fall into society’s pressure and transform themselves. So I ask myself, what about the people who start out accepted and then fail at meeting society’s standards? To get an idea of such a concept, I interviewed Leena Smith, a family friend for over 6 years. Leena fits every description of society’s ideal woman. I decided I would interview Leena about her life as a society image and her career. To my surprise, I did not get the answers I went looking for. Leena had been raised in a lower class family. Her dad left her family when she was young and her mom was a janitor at a local school in their hometown of Richmond, Virginia. When Leena started working when she was fifteen. She got her first job as a waitress at the local Waffle House. All this time I thought Leena’s appearance would have gotten her noticed by a modeling rep or make everyone want to hire her. But it didn't. She stated that employers always assumed she was a little rich girl trying to make jokes about getting a job. Little did they know that her decent looking clothes were from a thrift shop and that she lived in a beat down trailer with her mom. Leena mentions that some of the best years of life were spent working at the Waffle House diner. Someone gave her her first chance at a job there. She met her husband there. She even worked hard enough to help with parts of her college experience. Leena is now a nurse’s aid and enjoys living the life society did not intend her with. How does one make it in soc... ... middle of paper ... ...erstood that in their society they had to ““love they neighbor as thyself”” (Phillips 7). Being kind can either be a way of life or something we do because everyone else is doing it. Blending in with the world today is not easy to do. There are habits people are expected to act out and rules set out to follow. Enrenreich, King, Hallie and Phillips each ask us to question the social scripts and rules of society. We learn to realize if or jobs are only making us seem worthless and making it harder for us to make it with low income jobs. We start to determine if judging a person on their skin color seems acceptable anymore. Understanding why people would go against the law of their town and aid aliens makes one wonder what type of place creates such people. We decide if being kind then becomes something we learn or if it is the root of how we function as people.

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