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Social media and its effect on young people
Social media and its effect on young people
Cry baby bridge story legend
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Cry Baby Bridge
When talking to students around campus about urban legends they knew, many of them were quick to recite a story that they once enjoyed hearing. Most people all knew at least a couple stories. Almost everyone knew some variation of the most popular urban legends. When talking in the dorm with a twenty year old female student, I learned that she knew several stories from her hometown. I found most interesting the story involving a bridge named Cry Baby Bridge. The story was specific to her home town. She had heard it in a similar situation as me, in the dorm atmosphere from one of her friends from her hometown. This is the story she told me, as close to verbatim as possible:
One day back home several years ago a teenage girl got pregnant. She was able to keep her pregnancy secret from her dad but when she gave birth her father was unhappy and ashamed of what she did. Her father kicked her out of the house, and she was left with no where to go. She was really sad and had no idea what to do. She drove to a single-lane bridge by her house and got out of the car with her new born baby. With the crying baby in her hands, she jumped off of the bridge, instantly killing both of them. Ever since then the bridge is now called Cry Baby Bridge, and if you go at midnight, turn off your lights and get out you can hear the baby crying, and her car will come from behind you and run you off of the road.
While telling the story she talked slowly and seriously. It seemed as if she believed in the story, but when asked after, she said she just thought of it as a good story from back home.
After hearing the story, I found variations online. One variation had the boyfriend, instead of the father, reject her (...
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...e not accepted. In this respect, this fear could go beyond teen pregnancy and be applied to topics involving either sex, such as homosexuality, drinking, smoking, and more. People begin to learn and see sex, alcohol and homosexuality during young adulthood. This is the same time when urban legends are most popular. Since so many people hearing the story share the fear of rejection, they are more interested and more likely to tell the story to others. In conclusion, the story displays young people’s fears surrounding premarital sex, teenage pregnancy, and rejection.
Works Cited
Siwak, Christine. University of Maryland Legends Collection. October 2004. http://www.wam.umd.edu/~dschloss/Legends/crybaby.htm
Schlossman, David. University of Maryland Legends Collection. April 2005. http://www.wam.umd.edu/~dschloss/Legends/crybaby_westminster.htm
The storyteller had not witnessed the strange happenings at the school but claimed to know someone who had seen the disturbances. As a performance, the telling of this story was very matter a fact and my friend did not self-aggrandize; the performance was quick, to the point, but not particularly dramatic. The storyteller told the legend as fact and was not melodramatic about her role as storyteller.
“No,” I answered hollowly. “I can’t say you did.” Her eyes looked down to the floor until she built enough courage to continue her story that I knew I couldn’t avoid.
we are told that this story is about a girl or a woman and perhaps her
Pepper Schwartz opens Why is Everyone Afraid of Sex? with "In spite of the visibility of sex in the media and popular culture, despite a widespread acceptance of a variety of sexual practices, Americans still hold a deep-rooted fear of sex." (252) Schwartz then goes on to explain the surprising, but obvious truth. American society portrays a sexual attitude, but is actually hiding a fear of the activity. Schwartz does a great job of showing both sides of this argument. She mentions how sex seems to no longer be a completely taboo thing within the media and society today. Within television, magazines, articles, movies, etc, sexual themes are all over the place. Another factor is that premarital sex is becoming more and more acceptable these
In April I sat down with a friend at my house and asked about any urban legends or ghost stories he had encountered. After a couple legends he had seen in movies, he mentioned a haunted bridge about ten minutes away from downtown. He is a twenty-one year-old White male; his father owns an appliance store and his mother helps out with the books. He first heard this story in the ninth grade from a couple of friends. Supposedly, they had heard from kids who had actually been to the bridge and heard strange things at night. The bridge is located off of Uniontown road, between a couple old farms. He has not encountered the bridge first hand but still remembers the story surrounding it:
This story was recounted to me by a 20 year old female student at my University. She is a Communications major, coming from an upper middle class family in the rural suburbs of New Jersey. I interviewed her in her apartment sometime in the late afternoon in an informal setting. Although she is skeptical about things such as urban legends and ghost tales, she explained to me that this story always unsettled her in an inexplicable way.
Her father was a huge part of her life. She had never had a boyfriend, nor would her father have allowed it.... ... middle of paper ... ...
When I was a small child, I remember my parents crossing the James River on the ferry in Surry County while taking my brother and me to Jamestown. At the time, I thought it was thrilling to ride the ferry. It was fun to stand out at the bow and watch as we went over the river to the other side where the boats are docked at Jamestown. We fed the birds on the front deck, and I also remember going up into the top of the ferry where they had a seated area that allowed someone to get out of the wind and still be able to see out. As an adult, I no longer have this glowing admiration for the ferry services in Surry. It never fails that when I am approaching the dock; the ferry is pulling away. Thereafter, it will be at least a thirty-minute wait for the next ferry to arrive. As well as, the actual ride across which could be an additional thirty minutes depending on which ferry pulls into the dock. One ferry is extremely slower than the other is. I will go to great lengths to avoid the ferry services to cross the James River to Williamsburg and will rather drive around Newport News than to use the ferry. My husband and I moved to Surry County two years ago, and it would be nice to be able to travel safely to Williamsburg without the added time it takes to cross the James River on the ferry. There has been talk over the years about replacing the ferry services with a bridge; however, those notions are always disregarded. The residents of Surry County would be better served if a bridge were put in place of the ferry at Scotland Wharf.
...t of time spend with the Wampanoag tribe. It is also very unlikely that she could remember such details about her experience, seeing as she must have been in a shocked state of mind. The many struggles that she suffers are very evident in the narrative, but the biggest one is her attempt to refrain from contradicting herself.
Planned Parenthood is a non-profit organization that aims to provide healthcare for women and educate people of all ages about sexual education. Their website (www.plannedparenthood.org) allows both women and men to learn about reproductive health, find a health center, and discover more about the “mission” of Planned Parenthood. “Virginity” (https://www.plannedparenthood.org/teens/sex/virginity) is the title of one of the articles in the Info For Teens section of the website. This article loosely defines virginity and addresses some of the common fears teens may have about the subject. Another article, “Am I Ready?” (https://www.plannedparenthood.org/teens/sex/am-i-ready), serves to give advice to those who are thinking about having sex for the first time, or just being physically intimate with another person for the first time. Both of these articles leave very little out in terms of different sexualities, genders, and other minority groups. They also both explore the ways power relationships (in this case, boyfriend and girlfriend) can affect sexual relationships. As a result, Planned Parenthood creates information that can be applied to almost any person, male or female,
Imagine a scenario of a young teenager who has this overwhelming desperation to figure out who they are and where they came from. Someone who has been kept hidden in shadow from the truth for whatever the reason; they are still told the story of the stork, or another situation where someone has been taught their whole lives to avoid sexual confrontation because it is the “worst thing you can do” However, when faced in the heat of the moment, they might actually be more inclined to pursue sexual activity to discover who they are because they face everyday, through relentless ambiguity, what everyone sa...
...ve begins generating rumors for male peers who do not qualify as a stereotypical male. For instance, Olive pretends to have sex with a male peer during a popular house party (Gluck, 2010). This imaginary hook-up benefits the male peer’s bullying dilemma. Again, gender policing occurs between men when masculinity is questioned (Kimmel, 2008). “One survey found that most Americans boys would be rather be punched in the face than called gay” (Kimmel, 2000, p.77). The gender police govern Olive’s and the male peer’s status in social standings. America’s obsession with sex disregards if a girl truly sleeps around.
Due to the girl’s current lifestyle and behavior, the mother is focused on sharing the value to save her daughter from a life of promiscuity. The mother fears her daughter will become a “slut” and insists that is exactly what the daughter desires. Moreover, the mother is very blunt with her view when she uses repetition with the statement, “… the slut you are so bent on becoming.” (Kincaid92). It is very clear that the mother holds a reputation to such a standard that it could determine the overall quality of a woman and her life. Therefore, a woman’s sexuality should be protected and hidden to present the woman with respect and to avoid the dangers of female sexuality. The mother is very direct in calling out certain, specific behaviors of the daughter. Such as, the way the daughter walks, plays with marbles, and approaches other people. The mother is very persistent that the daughter must act a certain way that can gain their community’s respect. She fears the social consequence of a woman’s sexuality becoming
Teenage pregnancy has always been present in society. There is research stating that about half the women, born between 1900- 1910, who were interviewed were non-virginal at marriage (17 Ravoira). This contradicts some thoughts that premarital sexual behavior is something new. There was another study done in 1953, it found that one fifth of all first births to women were conceived before marriage (17 Ravoira). Even before our modern openness in discussing sexual behavior and acceptance that it does occur, it was quite routine. In earlier society, the incidence of teenage pregnancy was a moral problem. This was because people looked at the child as filius nullius (nobody's child), or illegitimate and the mother as bad, immoral, over- sexed, etc. (18 Ravoira). The child was being blamed for mearly being born, this is unfair to the child who had no fault in the matter (18 Ravoira). The real problem that was seen was the fact that the children were born out-of-wedlock. People seemed to have real difficulty accepting that the baby is still a baby no matter what conditions it was born under.
“The media may be especially important for young people as they are developing their own sexual beliefs and patterns of behavior and as parents and schools remain reluctant to discuss sexual topics (p.26)”.