If our government is not supporting upward mobility than who is? What, if anything, makes America conducive to upward mobility? Is America's economy enough to advance socioeconomic advancement.

source: Blog by Nose Cone

If a person is rewarded with a promotion because they suck up to the boss, what does that say about the equality of upward mobility? How does money help a person suck up to the boss? Does being able to wine and dine the boss support the facts, that the most likely group to move upwards in socioeconomic class is the upper-middle or upper class.

Source: Cartoon Stock

Upward mobility is an essential part of the American dream. Its promise attracts people from far and wide, encourages Americans to work hard and long, and ultimately is not achievable for many of its seekers. Why does upward mobility so often lurk out of grasp of people who work for it harder and with more determination than many of us can imagine? What are the social consequences of this myth circulating in our country, being passed from generation to generation?

Discrimination in the workplace acts as a force against upward mobility. Even if a person works towards a goal, fulfills requirements, treats colleagues, managers, and employers with respect, prejudices still plague America’s workplaces and can hold them back. Walmart is currently involved in a lawsuit in which they are being sued for consistently paying women less and providing them with fewer opportunities than men. More than one million women are involved in the case, as Walmart has employed millions over its lifetime, and although 65% of the employees at Walmart are female, just 33 percent of the managers at Walmart are women (1). Women at Walmart are sustaining discrimination, preventing them from advancing in socioeconomic status, and moving upward.

Many racial minorities experience discrimination in the workplace as well, as do homosexuals. The Boston mbta was accused in February of paying Hispanic employees less money than white employees. An article for Boston magazine discusses the reasons behind the lawsuit saying, “Several minority employees who spoke at the meeting are carpenters and laborers who work part time at the T and said they were denied permanent jobs that were instead given to white workers with less experience and qualifications (2).” Discrimination in the workplace is an evil that is deserved by no one, but when it is directed towards working class Americans, it can severely impair their ability to move into the middle class and achieve upward mobility.

While women, racial minorities, and homosexuals are experiencing discrimination that hinders their advancement in the workplace, economic forces also acts against working-class Americans, preventing advancement further. Matt Miller, a writer for Fortune magazine, wrote of a potential eye opening experience for the public, in which Barack Obama tells us all the truth, saying, “… here’s what no one wants to tell you. Structural changes in our economy, and new competition from countries like China and India, mean that we’re in a different world now. That pattern we once took for granted, in which our incomes basically kept rising across the board, turns out to be something we can’t sustain. Many of you are earning less than your parents did, and the truth is, many of your children will earn less than you do (5).” While an admission of this by a politician is not soon to be heard, Miller reveals that our economy is not always in support of upward mobility. Our economy is at a terrible low and it doesn’t look to be improving. Parents might believe that upward mobility is achievable for their children, if not for them, but in reality, it is far from guaranteed. We seem to believe that America will inevitably provide us with advancement in socioeconomic class. As Joel Kotkin of the New York Times writes, “The implicit American contract has always been that with education and hard work, anyone can get ahead (4).” Kotkin’s statement has been proven inaccurate, as he goes on discuss further and as an increasing amount of columnists, writers, and curious students of American life have discovered.

In many ways American culture is based upon the American dream, of which upward mobility is a crucial aspect. If our cultural and social lives are built upon these dreams, which often play out as myths, what are the social consequences of their circulation? American is viewed as a place where anyone can advance with hard work, intelligence, and perseverance, but at this point, upward mobility is higher in a lot of European countries than in America (5). Our country was built from Europeans fleeing aristocratic, hierarchical societies in which they worked and toiled with no hope for themselves or their children to gain economic advantage or freedom of any sorts. As Michael Kinsley of the Los Angeles Times explains, “Where you are is the best predictor of where your children will be. And immobility over generations is what congeals financial differences into old-fashioned, European-style social class (3). These days in America a parent’s socioeconomic class will likely be passed to their child, forming a paradigm that goes against the American idea that personal achievement and gains will advance one’s status and provide the foothold for one’s child to lead a better life.

There are a few positive outcomes of our belief in upward mobility, especially an emphasis placed on hard work and individual intelligence and ingenuity. People who are able to create new things often find themselves advancing in economic and social standing. While many Americans might be working harder with the hope that they will achieve upward mobility of some kind socioeconomic advancement is often not achieved, so where does that leave our society? One of the negative outlooks could be found on a small scale, in the way family dynamics are shaped by this myth. If a family has two working parents who work say 12 hours a day at a minimum wage job, they might not have the time or energy to be with their kids. They might be depressed by their inability to give their children everything they want, and family life might be negatively affected. This is just one negative aspect of this durable myth being eternalized in our society.

The term downward mobility is gaining more and more meaning as of late. Kinsley writes of this phenomenon, “The national myth imagines the ascent from poverty to the middle class as a ratchet. But sliding out of middle-class prosperity is getting easier every day (3).” Not only is the achievement of upward mobility not smooth, steady, and machinelike, it actually can easily reverse and move in the opposite direction. While upward mobility is still advocated, downward mobility in our country is being produced by many of the same forces that we fought against to achieve upward mobility in the past. Some Americans really do achieve upward mobility, but now it seems as though more and more are moving down in social class, and the consequences of this movement on our country’s social and economic web are unknown. If studies show that downward mobility is occurring at a pace rivaling that of upward mobility what will that mean for the American identity and culture? Will Americans ever come to terms with the fact that hard work and perseverance might not lift them from poverty or from the working class? What would be the political, economic, and social consequences of such a mass realization or acceptance? What would Americans demand of the American government post this realization? How would the identities of American men and women shift and change?

Is the true myth of upward mobility that it is not attainable for many people or is the true myth that upward mobility ever existed? Miller discusses another aspect of the upward mobility myth, equal opportunity, and links this to the idea that the phenomenon of a specifically virulent American upward mobility has always been a myth. He discusses early America and the advancement of the lower class into the middle class as a result of hard work and equal opportunity, “Yet all this individual opportunity might have meant little had America’s early years not coincided with the kickoff of the Industrial Revolution. The made the idea of economic progress something that applied on the grand scale, not just to particular people with moxie and drive (5).” There are many other coincidences between successes in America’s economy and the inflation of the myth of upward mobility. Miller also cites that the post World War 2 flourish could have been made to look specific to America, when in reality, America was the only country to emerge from the war with a functioning economy (5). Have Americans immortalized and mythologized times of increased economic status for all as something greater, something inherent to American politics, culture, and life?

Many trends point to a future situation in which upward mobility is becoming less attainable, but has the American upward mobility myth always been just a myth? Kinsley writes, “The problem, in short, may not be that reality is receding from the national myth. The problem may be the myth (3).” Was the myth of upward mobility ever a reality for Americans or has it always been something we have used to convince ourselves that the futures of our families will be better than the reality of our lives and that with the power of our hands and determination we will be able to transcend our current socioeconomic level.

Bibliography:

1. Greenhouse, Steven. “Wal-Mart Gender Case Divides Court.” Nytimes.com. NY Times Co., April 2010. Web. 25 May 2010.

2. Noah, Bierman. “New workplace complaint against T.” Boston.com. NY Times Co., February 2010. Web. 24 May 2010.

3. Kinsley, Michael. “The Upward Mobility Myth.” Articles.latimes.com. Los Angeles Times, June 2005. Web. 23 May 2010.

4. Kotkin, Joel. “The End of Upward Mobility?” Newsweek.com. Newsweek, Inc., January 2009. Web. 20 May 2010.

5. Miller, Matt. “The upside of downward mobility.” CNNMoney.com. Cable News Network, A Time Warner Company, December 2008. Web. 22 May 2010.

As I read the Washington Post this morning, I stumbled upon an article discussing the "new baby boom," present in many American cities. I was interested to know what the article was adressing and where this baby boom was taking place, so I clicked on it. The article (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/15/AR2010051503637. html?hpid%3Dtopnews&sub=AR) discussed the clash between single adults and parents in cities such as New York, Washington, and Boston, which have experienced an increase in families with children moving into city district neighborhoods. The article started with a story of a man who was walking with his child in a park in Capitol Hill when a dog jumped on his child and was not immediately called off by the owner. The two adults argued over the incident, and Linda, the dog owner, commented to the journalist (Annys Shin) that she found it aggravating that parents did not stay in a closed of play area where dogs can not go. She described parents as "tyrants," who feel entitled to the world because they have children. Apparently, parents whose children get in the way of goings on in neighborhoods such as Capitol Hill are facing forms of discrimination. Businesses are asking parents not to bring strollers into stores and single adults are becoming aggravated with the size of strollers and children oriented contraptions present in neighborhoods where families are moving in. One man quoted in the article said, "People should think about how they're going to get their food once they have a child before they have a child. Maybe have your neighbor watch your kid for an hour or two.... Maybe mover closer to a store so you can walk...Maybe don't have kids." The man was responding to parents whose large strollers take up space on buses and public transportation because parents feel they can not both fold their stroller up and carry groceries at the same time.

As I read the article I looked for trends that Faludi adresses in the Terror Dream. I was wondering whether or not this article would be pro-family or would go against the trends and support the single adults. I knew the journalist would not outright take a side but I thought I'd be able to weed out which side was being victimized and which villainized. Quotes such as the one above make parents seem somewhat entitled, but also make single adults in the area seem whiny and childish for complaining about a stroller and going so far as to say people shouldn't have kids if they don't have a plan for going grocery shopping with a stroller. Some bars in areas of cities that are experiencing an increase in families with children are having "Baby happy hours," to the chagrin of some single adults. Apparently, babies are ruining the mood for adults trying to mix and mingle. One of the bartenders quoted in the article argued that these singles should just come after eight oclock if they wish not to be in the presence of children. Eight oclock is not exactly late, and children characteristically go to bed early, so these people whining in the article about children ruining bar atmosphere makes the singles seem nasty and silly.

A lot of the quotes made parents in these neighborhoods seem to be the innocent victims. Not many parents were quoted in ways that made the reader balk at their self-righteousness or sense of entitlement. The statement made by the dog owner that parents should confine children to a playground area was posed as an injustice to the parents. They were trying to enjoy the outdoors and animals were being allowed to attack their children. The overall mood of the article, while well disguised, was that parents who were trying to move into cities were being met with hostility and grouchy middle aged singles. The article made all adults, single or married without children, in the areas of increased family moving ins, seem incredibly self-righteous and naive. It overgeneralized how people feel about children and parents, and left the parents blameless. If someone repeatedly tripped over a parents' stroller on the subway it would be very annoying and potentially dangerous. Yet, the families are the ones being victimized. The whole article left me feeling as if I should be rooting for the parents, and encouraging them to hang in there. It was a pro-family article, balancing traditional family values of parents spending time with their children with modern trends of families with kids moving back into cities. It definitely followed a few of the trends Faludi discussed as appearing in the media in post-911 America, as it placed an emphasis on the family and parents doing traditional things with children, like taking them to the park. All the families discussed in the article seemed loving and kind, and the single adults seemed bitter and cold. The safety risks and inconveniences posed by parents who feel entitled to the world were hardly addressed. I was driving through Boston last weekend and a woman cut across the street with her child in a stroller even though the walk sign was off and it was a green light. Of course, I was going to stop the car, but the fact that she endangered herself, her child, and the motorists was striking. Parents who feel that kids give them the ability to do whatever they want, because kids are so hard to deal with or because children should be the number one priority of every American, is an issue, one that wasn't addressed in the article even though it easily could have been.

What it means to be an American hippie.

What does it mean to be an American hippie? My friends and peers call students on campus "hippies" sometimes, yet I haven't pinpointed what it means to be a hippie in the United States. I feel as though we Andover students use the terminology to cover anyone who cares about the Earth or who feels slightly different about the college process. These are the two applications of the word that I hear most often. The original hippies were the teenage Civil Rights fighters in the 1960s. The hippie culture that extends from those original hippies seems to have changed. The media's portrayal of hippies is especially interesting as they so often have to over-exaggerate the different characteristics in order to portray the hippie message. That's the thing with being a hippie, so many people embody part of the spirit. There are people on campus who care about the environment and who didn't get caught up in the college madness, instead choosing to go to a state school or a "random" school somewhere in the middle of nowhere, who don't get called hippies. The people who get called hippies are the ones that look as if they care about the environment or tell their friends to recycle or look/act like "slackers." It seems some of this typecasting has come from the media's portrayal of hippies, which has permeated many popular teenage-oriented television shows. A lot of people don't use "hippie," as a derogatory term. It's often used on campus as a loving way of acknowledging a person's crunchiness or differences, but I'm still interested in studying why we are so eager to typecast people as hippies and where the stereotypes come from.

Above is a video featuring Che, the half-nudist, guitar-playing hippie who was in the last season of The O.C (he's the one wearing the red, green, and yellow striped hat). Che is eager to save the world, knowledgeable on some issues, and often clueless, but he's completely lovable. Interestingly, most hippies on modern television shows are completely nice. They are always kind and welcoming and never do they show their angry or mean sides. Che's garb is especially important, as it sets him far apart from the preppy and artsy kids that surround him on the O.C.

The new show 90210 has also worked to capitalize on hippie stereotypes. They've developed a character named Richard who acts and looks a lot like Che, but whose picture is apparently non-existent in Google Images. Richard is a really nice guy who one of the main characters on the show, Naomi, uses in order to try to get into college. He never yells at her even though she stomps on his heart in her thousand dollar high heels, and he graciously accepts that she has moved on to his jock roommate within minutes of ending things with him. Ivy (below) is another "hippie," on 90210. She dresses in floaty cotton/linen clothes, an has a mother who dates rock stars, dresses in floor length cloth dresses, and smokes weed constantly. Ivy doesn't "style" her hair like the other girls on the show, she surfs and hangs out on the beach. She isn't a great student, but is super "chill."

Without using stereotypes it could be hard for the creators of television shows such as these to capture the attention of teens and give them characters that they can relate to. The hippie stereotypes shown on television bother me excessively because a key part of the hippie lifestyle is missing from these portrayals. The hippies of the sixties seemed to have actually affected change. They were dirty because they were protesting wrongdoings by our country's people and government, not because they didn't want to shower or hated soap. They weren't a bunch of high school kids whose only mission is to surf and sit around and not care about school. Sure, I bet there were a bunch of people in 60s who capitalized on the acceptance of such practices as not bathing and skipping out on work and school without fighting for a cause or doing much of anything, but in general the real hippies changed the way our lives are lived today. Without protesters many Civil Rights bills would have gone ignored. Teens who flooded to Woodstock opened doors for the independence we teenagers experience today. They literally ran away from home for a music festival, and defied the standard that teens stay in the house until college or marriage and generally don't stray from the home. The real hippies of these times seem so much more noble than the versions of hippies on television and the people we describe with hippie terminology. My friends call me their hippie friend because I try to recycle and take short showers, yet compared to the teens of the sixties I am the most spoiled, preppy, "unchill," and least capable of changing the world, person on the planet. Here I am griping about a time period filled with people I neither experienced nor knew, but it bothers me to see a term that used to describe young activists being thrown around so generously, coupled with stereotypes that are often inaccurate.

A final little tidbit about the "ways to be a hippie," courtesy of Youtube.

I wouldn't say I'm a part of the Sex and the City generation, but I've experienced the tail end of the whole spectacle. Sex and the City troubles me as I'm confused by what these women symbolize in our culture. They certainly aren't run of the mill women, women who don't dress up in designer clothes every day and don't go out every night. The show definitely targets upper-middle class women, and I'd like to delve into all of the stuff, things, messages, ideas, etc... that I see in the Sex and the City television series and movies. The women are not domestic at all, they're independent, and live on their own most of the time. They're all working, as a publicist, an author/columnist, a lawyer, and an art gallery manager. They wear beautiful clothes constantly, and go out almost every night. While these women seem like single ladies living it up in New York, they're constantly talking about men and show an extreme reliance on having men around. These independent women are miserable when they haven't found the one, and then they're miserable when they have. They certainly face problems that seem endemic to the female gender or actually anyone mixing and mingling and settling down in a modern world. They worry about weight, and image, and they've addressed the subject of STDs, cancer, and other worries that often appear in an adult's life, (or that I assume appear in the lives of adults). The independence that Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, and Samantha demonstrates is decidedly temporary. They live for the future men in their lives, and look forward to settling down and living their lives with a partner, usually a financially stable one. Even Samantha, who is by far the most free-spirited and least likely to settle down of them all, ends up spending five years in a monogamous relationship with a movie star before breaking free and getting back to her man-eating ways.

The one thing they never seem to worry about is money. They live decadent lives that are stable. Their apartments are beautiful, their clothes flawless, and constantly regenerating. They eat out every meal at fancy restaurants and attend over-the-top events. Money, something that dictates the lives of most Americans, even those in the middle class, doesn't even come up in the show. It's easy to absorb oneself into the narrative and sparkle, but there is one key thing missing in these women's lives, the worry about money.

Another interesting part of this television show is how the writers address the topic of children and the roles children play in a woman's life. Children in Sex and the City are like accessories. They don't get in the way of all the glamour. In the first movie, Lily, Charlotte's adopted daughter sits around while they discuss "grown up" stuff and then answers a phone call by saying "sex." She clearly has spent a lot of time sitting with the women as they discuss what they almost never stop discussing. In the trailer for the second Sex and the City movie, Carrie tells Lily that their lives are like the Princess Jasmine, except "with cocktails." Domestic life doesn't disallow Miranda and Charlotte, who have children, from traveling to Abu Dhabi for a major vacation in the second movie, even as Charlotte complains about how overwhelming motherhood is. Middle class women can't fly to Abu Dhabi with a bunch of girlfriends on a whim, and it seems questionable that the rest of them, who are not stay at home mothers but who work, are able to free themselves from their lives as easily.

I'm wondering how Sex and the City contributes to the idea of the New York woman and her life in the city that pervades my generation's goals and plans for the future. For starters, let's say that four normal, real girls were able to secure the jobs that the women in Sex and the City are lucky enough to have. They probably wouldn't be able to afford the apartments that these women have, in such great locations, and the clothes, nor would they so readily meet men of such different backgrounds. Working women in New York seem to be very busy, and probably mingle primarily with men in their offices or in their trade. My friend's sister works as a second year lawyer in New York, and works from 6 to 10 some days. She doesn't get to go out to parties or balls every night, and while she has a beautiful new apartment, she doesn't have a relationship and hasn't met many people since moving to New York from Yale law school. So many girls dream of ending up in New York one way or another, whether it's as an actor or singer or a lawyer or doctor. I have many friends who aspire to life after college in New York. They literally dream of things found in Sex and the City, of glamorous parties, and fashion shows. Two times at Andover, I've had friends compare a group of people to the women from Sex and the City. Freshman year I was Charlotte, this year I'm Samantha. I have little in common with the women, yet at some point someone thought I had "mannerisms" like Charlotte, and looked like Samantha and these things instantly secured a spot for me in the Sex and the City fantasy. A lot of my friends will probably end up wealthy, like these girls, and will end up with wonderful jobs, but they aren't going to fall into them after Andover.

At Andover, we've spent four years as very privileged people. Our parents give us monthly allowances so that we can go into Boston, and go downtown. We have activities planned and paid for us by the school, and we live in a beautiful place surrounded by people who are intelligent and thoughtful and push us to think for ourselves and to think about the world. When we look into the future it looks like it'll be similar to the life we live now in terms of financial stability and intellectual pursuits, yet that just doesn't seem to be realistic. My parents will absolutely cut me off after medical school. They've dropped a small fortune on Andover and on the programs I chose to do my upper year, and I imagine will continue to spend a lot on me so that I can pursue the education I want. They're amazing people for paying so willingly for everything I've wanted to do in my life, and I would feel quite strange packing up after college or med school and going to New York and continuing to live off of their money to maintain a privileged lifestyle until I get off the ground. There's no way I'd be able to get to New York and immediately start living a life of glamour like the women from Sex and the City. We girls also seem to forget that these women are not in their twenties. One of the main things that plagued Carrie in early Sex and the City was turning 30. They've had eightish years to make money and settle down, but we never saw the studio apartments or the late night jobs and takeout dinners. Shows such as Gossip Girl further glamorize the New York lifestyle, as the characters who have just graduated from high school, all live and work in New York and live luxurious lives. They are openly wealthy and privileged though, and overtly mooch off of their parents, so it's a little less conceivable that we would ever live their lives. With Sex and the City we've seem to have been convinced more that we'll be able to live a life like this. Sex and the City women don't talk about how lucky or abnormal their lives are. Noooo, they're normal girls. Sure, they're incredibly fashionable and gifted, but in the end, they're just a group of gals trying to find love in the Big Apple. Even with all of my qualms and concerns about a dream like this, I still want to end up in New York. The glamour means less to me, as I hate wearing high heels and would do terribly released upon high society, but I want an exciting life. More than anything these women seem cosmopolitan and happy. Even with all their man troubles, everything turns out okay. Since they all have different careers and personalities, it seems conceivable that anyone can find a life like theirs in New York. I want to be a doctor, and I know I have many 21 hour days ahead of me and years of working holidays, but I would love to do it in a city where dreams come true, and be surrounded by interesting people. The myth of Sex and the City is a dangerous one, as it sets up any middle class girl to believe that a wonderful life in New York City is attainable no matter your hair color or shoe size or career. Faludi's theses that in post-911 America there has been a pull back to the house is represented in Sex and the City as well. Even though in the first few seasons none of them settled down, now they're all looking to settle down and have children. Sure, they don't represent the family with three kids living in the burbs that seems to be representative of the post-911 family mold, but they represent the desire to be domestic that has been sparked in women in America. None of these girls are feminists. The closest one to a feminist was Miranda, who ended up taking her cheating husband back, and settling back down in her family based life. In one episode Carrie and Samantha even go to a firefighter's gala on an island at which firefighters of the town will model for the guests. They end up meeting firemen and having a great time, and in the episode there are women oozing over the firefighters. I see a lot of Susan Faludi's theses manifested in Sex and the City, even behind its facade of individuality and free-spiritedness.

I look around my room and see accents of colors amongst the muted tones I usually prefer to decorate my room in. My bedspread is a very pale blue-gray, the furniture I brought from home brown and white. I don't really see any pink in my room. I don't see magenta or baby pink or floral colors involving every shade of pink, yet I feel as if I'm expected to love pink. I have nothing against pink, it's a perfectly nice color, but I wouldn't pick a pink shirt over another color except for maybe olive green, and I certainly wouldn't want to decorate my room in pink. Pink is one of many things I feel I'm supposed to identify with as a girl attending Andover. I have shirts from sports teams and dorms that always have pink on them. The senior girls pinnies many girls have ordered for the spring are bright pink. Of course, girls are expected to identify with pink across the globe, but something about living in a dorm emphasizes for me all the things I'm expected to be as a girl. My room is decorated with scarves, flags, and a map of Maine. People come in my room, and remark on how sparse it is. They wonder how I can live in a room so bereft of color and wall hangings. In fact, my map of Maine brings me more comfort than I could ever get from an extra stuffed animal or posters of dreamy boys all over my wall. The happiest times of my young life took place in Maine last year during my year away from Andover, and I feel warmed by the site of the tiny little Chewonki campus on the broad expanse that is the coast of Maine. The flag of the bahamas I have hanging above my bed reminds me of Island School and all the peace I found there, but I feel as if my room is viewed as a sparse and cold place for its lack of fuzzy, furry or heavily muscled things. My friends who remark on my sparsely or inadequately decorated room have pictures of bunnies and models posing amongst balloons and posters of Twilight characters on their walls. Some of them have cards from their parents and boyfriends and one has a James Dean poster, but in general when I go into their rooms I'm confronted by lots and lots of random things. Many of the things mean nothing, some random bunny in an advertisement for ice cream doesn't mean anything. James Dean could hardly mean something to us as we weren't even alive for his career, fame, and life. A lot of their bed spreads are pink and green, and an abundance of pillows can be found heaped on the beds. I had an allergy attack sitting on one of their beds, as the pillows were stuffed with some kind of weird pillow stuffing, and my friend said that that happened to her often. I asked why she left all the pillows on there, and she said because they were comfy and they looked nice. Im perplexed by this desire to openly show ones ability to be comforted by nice things, even nice, generic things infused with little meaning.

Having an allergy attack while leaning on an ornately decorated floral covered pillow must have a lower comfort level than leaning on a normal rectangular, pillow-cased pillow. Seeing pictures of family members or things that mean something to us is more comforting and homey than pictures of random animals and men right? I'm confused by this trend and why I feel the need to fluffisize and pink-out my room. In some ways our rooms are the only way we can distinguish ourselves amongst the rest of the forty girls in the dorm. Is the decorating a way to show other girls that we live up to the standards of comfort and coziness that girls are expected to cultivate? With things such as clothes and makeup, boys are often who we target our appearance to, but why do we feel our rooms need to be so dang pretty. What are we even trying to prove? Sure, Andover is a stressful place and going home to a comfortable room is an important part of unwinding, but why is our idea of comfort apparently so homogenized? Of course, a soft fluffy pillow is comfortable physically but why are cutouts of other people and other people's animals comforting? Why is seeing the picture of a while attractive, completely unknown to us actor? What about throw pillows that cause allergies is comfortable? If we decorate our rooms in this way in order to stand out, why do our rooms look so similar?

When one of my friends entered my room, he immediately commented on how it was so "artsy," as if I was trying to appear to not be like other girls. I immediately asked him what he meant, partly because I was angry at being accused of trying to be "artsy," and partly because I was interested in what he thought made a girl's room. He pointed out that I had a throw at the end of my bed, something that only "chicks" would have, and said that all the shelves I had with clothes was a girly thing, as well as having all my shoes lined up against the wall. Apparently, girls are supposed to be organized and neat? The "throw" at the end of my bed is a ratty old blanket I had from camp that my mom brought me after I woke up with what felt like ice cubes in my blood in November. I needed that throw, it wasn't about show. He pointed out how the lack of bright colors and wall decorations made it seem like I was trying not to be a girl, but all the neat stuff was indicative of my gender and gave away my real persona. Wall decorations? I have a map and a flag, as well as some dark colored silk scarves hanging on my walls. Apparently, he expected "pictures of dudes and flowers." Alright...

When I google, "pottery barn teen," above is what I found. Pottery Barn kids elicits:

If teenage girl are being told their rooms should look like the first two, and mothers are being told that their little girls' rooms should look like this, no wonder the pink, plush, fluffy girls room has become such a staple in girls dormitories at Andover. We are the Pottery Barn generation. No one knits their own bedding anymore, and more often than not it's easiest to order an entire bedroom on Pottery Barn than worry about picking out disparate parts and bringing them together in a bedroom. Bedrooms are meant to be slept in but we treat them as some extension or expression of who we are, yet we seem to cheat and buy all the same stuff from one store. Do we decorate our rooms like this to escape criticism and give the illusion of fitting in? Is it easiest to just not attract attention to our rooms by decorating with other things? A Pottery barn bedroom is a luxury, so is furnishing our rooms like those above a sign of status? I wonder if Pottery Barn sales went up after 911, when there was a shift back towards conventional families. Pottery Barn is "modern," it's furniture made of new materials, but its advertisement display images of families coming together, and kids who spend time alone in these ads, are spending it in the rooms their moms decked out for them with everything they'd possibly need or want. The families in the ads are perfect, the parents give their kids their own bedrooms, yet they all end up coming together as a family. They balance the modern movement of children away from the home, towards independence at a younger age, and keeping family values of trust and loyalty alive. Do we buy furnishings like these for ourselves and our kids because we really believe they're the best, the most adept at creating a truly comfortable place to live or because we believe it creates a comfortable landscape, capable of giving off the illusion of pure domestic bliss. What is true American comfort? What do Americans value when we want to relax?

Dove

I've shown this video before in this blog, but in the spirit of examining what makes an American woman, I've decided to reexamine this expository and enlightening video. Women in America are expected to conform to certain standards of beauty, as are men. Being a woman in America is very different from what women in America are expected to look like. One day in seventh grade, I went with my friends to CVS, and bought a panoply of women's magazines. I bought a few teen based ones, Teen People and Cosmogirl, and then I bought Instyle, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, People, US Weekly, and Glamour. I got home, broke, my last 30 dollars spent on the purchase. I was ecstatic though, and I spent the three hours from 4 to 7, when my parents got home, first reading the magazines and then putting pictures of models and celebrities all over my wall. Literally, all over, the four walls of my room were covered ceiling to floor with magazines. When my parents got home they laughed at my project, joking about how I always found some way to have fun, usually one that involved scratching my walls and peeling paint off with tape. Before these pictures, my wall was covered with greeting cards from my entire childhood, which I unceremoniously ripped off in my haste to cover the wall with magazines pictures. My parents left me alone for a while as I continued to flip through the magazines, but later they called me downstairs for one of "the talks." We had "talked" in the past about boys, about homework, about treating people with respect, all when I had run into trouble at school or camp. I had gone to montessori school for elementary school, so when they released me wild into the public school, I ran into a few obstacles. With every obstacle came a lesson, and this was another obstacle my parents saw in my path. My dad started with asking me questions about what the girls in the photos looked like, what their bodies looked like, what their faces and hair looked like. My dad and I have always been close, so I didn't feel particularly uncomfortable talking to him about how large the models decolotage was or how thin their legs were. Alright, I might have felt a little uncomfortable, but it soon subsided.

My mother sat to the side, trying to be supportive, probably wondering where this talk fit into her profession. My mom is an opthalmologist and cosmetic surgeon. She has saved the vision of countless children born with droopy lids or hurt by dog bites or tree branches, things that often confront children's faces, but she had also fixed a lot of women's wrinkly foreheads. My mom isn't a plastic surgeon, she doesn't give liposuction or perform facelifts or breast augmentations, but the lines get a little blurred when you're trying to tell your daughter not to try to look like models yet dealing with old women trying to look younger. Most of the women I see at her practice are actually really young, within their late twenties and thirties, and still getting cosmetic surgery. My father focused on trying to have me identify how unrealistic the images were. They were photoshopped and airbrushed. He quoted my wonderfully feminist aunt saying, "women have pores. These women are abnormal for not having pores." I pointed out how one of the women had her arms above her head but had not a tiny shadow of underarm hair. It was completely smooth, and the color blended right into the rest of her skin, yet her hair was dark. I remember rolling my eyes a few times, wondering why I was being subjected to this, but I was still excited to participate in an adult conversation with my parents. In the years since then the importance of this conversation has become very clear to me.

I've tried to resist pressure to look a certain way in high school. In middle school, I went with the flow, which tended to lead my friends and I toward trying new beauty decisions, often using magazines as a guide for achieving further beauty. I plucked my eyebrows to the point of near extinction, I tried every face product available on the market to try to make my skin better, I wore mascara and eyeliner and eyeshadow. I didn't do anything extreme, but I definitely tried to change how I looked. Midway through freshman year I had a bout of homesickness that lasted about a week, during which I thought about all the things my parents hoped I'd get out of Andover. I didn't want to miss them, to be sad, so I tried to live up to how they hoped I'd live my life, not so that I'd do what they wanted, but so that I'd be happy. I knew they'd be sad to see the five pounds of makeup I had added to my face since eighth grade, which I toned down over break. I knew they'd be unhappy to know that I woke up a half an hour early in order to straighten my hair. I decided to stop it all. I stopped wearing makeup, cold turkey. I didn't turn my straightener on again for the rest of the year, and haven't turned it on since. I stopped it all. For better or for worse, I've cared less and less about my appearance as time has gone on. I shower every day, and make sure my eyebrows don't get too terribly bushy, but besides for a tiny bit of makeup every once in a while, I try not to worry. I have loved the extra hour of sleep I've received, now I use it for breakfast at Commons. Sometimes my friends comment on how often I don't shave my legs or how long it gets in between shaving, but I laugh it off. Sometimes they call me their earth child or dirty hippie, but I'm okay with it.

I watch this Dove video pretty often, whenever I find myself surfing youtube. The girl that enters the beautification process is ordinary looking. She looks like a normal person, not particularly striking, but perfectly nice looking. By the end of the video she's a whole new person. This new person not only doesn't resemble the old, but is entirely unique. Looking at a billboard and seeing an image of the model, I might think, wow she has nice hair, but there is no girl behind that face. It's all fake, and without Dove I would never have known how fake it all really is. My parents tried to explain it to me, I've listened to my aunt discuss it countless times, ranting and raving about her daughters exposure to photo shopped images such as this one. I never imagined it all went so far, to the point where her eyebrows are being lifted, her lips stretched. It's unreal how fake the girl on the billboard is, and I hope that this video continues to circulate because it shows teenage girls, and boys, that it's important not to try to conform to a standard set by a billboard. Sometimes I wonder why our society demands models to look this way, but I realize often that it's because we want to look at beautiful things. Advertisements tend not to be brown and gray, they're usually bright and colorful. We respond to attractive things, but ugly or just plain ordinary things don't capture our attention as easily or they might even turn us off from buying a product. There is a standard of beauty that is appealing to our eyes and brain processing. Proportions of the nose to the mouth to the neck and so forth matter when our eye glimpses a person. Our brains assesse naturally the way a face looks, and will respond to proportions. The Golden Ratio is the mathematical explanation for this standard, but I think our country has developed a standard of its own. Sure, we might think one model is more beautiful than another if the first fits this Golden Ratio, but we don't want to see a beautiful face with chopped off blue hair and piercings all over the face. We have our own standards of what makes a woman beautiful, and it includes long hair and unblemished skin. Proportions and ratios might go into it, but America has developed its own standards, which are being passed down to teens. We're expected to meet those standards if we want to be beautiful, and to look for them amongst our peers.