HW 35 part 2

INTRO:
Everyone knows that being cool means to be liked by everyone and be “in” with the latest trends and so on. “Cool” is a very big part of our society and influences a lot of people on how they act but I was wondering: How does “cool” help make one’s life meaningful/not meaningful?

PARAGRAPH 1:
I think that “cool” helps people feel like they are popular person, thus making it seem like their life is more lively. This was shown in the short story I wrote about a girl who is very vain and only cares about appearances. Like I described, “she looked at herself in the mirror “ look at how beautiful I am I would be jealous of me if I was everyone else” she thought to herself.” She thought she was the best thing but once she got to school, no one liked her vain, superior attitude and she wasn’t considered cool anymore. My point with this story was to show how being cool is essentially in the eye of the beholder and thinking of one’s self as cool makes a person “un-cool” and also that the idea of cool varies from person to person. This relates back to my thesis because the character in my story thought that being beautiful would make her appear cool and make her have friends, which she thought would help her to lead a more important life.

PARAGRAPH 2:
An important topic we talked about in class is emptiness and how that relates to being cool. People who have a feeling of being empty or living a bland life often turn to “cool” things in order to fit in with everyone else and live a more enriching life. One can deny that they have always tried to go "against cool" but that is not true because no matter what we do, something is considered cool, for instance tattoos or piercings. As I was doing research, I found psychiatrist Anna Freud's mother and child separation theory to be good and I agreed with it. That theory states that if a mother and child are separated at womb, it could really have a great effect on the child and how they will react and behave in life-especially with their mother. Here is a quote: “I therefore decided to present some of her ideas on the importance of the mother during the child's earliest years in the development of a ‘psychological’ object, culminating in the attainment of object constancy by the time the child reaches his second birthday, an achievement which is of great importance in permitting the child to go on to develop human relationships with all the emotional richness and complexity with which we are familiar.” This quote states how mother/child separation really usually begins during the "terrible twos" and if parents don't show attention to their kids, then that will most likely affect how the kids will be with their parents when they are older and when the kids have kids. Some kids will also do "bad" things or things to get that needed attention from other adults in their life. They then start to do "cool" things to get noticed and attention which all relates back to emptiness. But if they want attention and they do "cool" things to achieve that, then they might feel more empty because they aren't being true to themselves and if they aren't showing their true selves, they might be feeling emptier than before. The children or teenagers believe that by behaving or dressing in a “cool” way will fill in that emptiness that they have and they could be masking that possible emptiness with “coolness.” This relates back to my thesis because it shows how people believe that their loneliness can be solved by changing who they are to be more “cool.”

PARAGRAPH 3:
The media shows a lot of times how to be cool through messages in songs, movies, and articles. When I was doing research looking for articles on being cool, I found some very interesting websites:
http://www.mindfields.org.uk/blog/?p=140
(gives tips on how to be cool)
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1088699,00.html (describes how kids/teenagers strive to be cool by being rebellious)
http://www.copyblogger.com/be-the-cool-kid/ (shows mostly about cool kids and the effect on them later in life and what goes on in a "cool" kids head.)
http://www.wikihow.com/Be-Cool (how to be cool in general and there are tips in this article, too.) Also, magazines obviously show how to be cool by buying the latest trends or gadgets. I definitely buy into trends because I love fashion but I don’t follow trends just to be cool: if I like a trend I will wear it-not just because of its “cool” factor. Some movies that show “cool” is: the 2000 movie Loser which is about a “loser” guy who goes to college and has “cool” roommates who bully him and treat him badly and one roommate tells him that in order for him to be cool, he has to start drinking and being more social. The friends the lead character has are the misfits and in the end, the “loser” is the one that ends up happier and with a more full life than the “cool” college frat boys who end up doing nothing with their lives. There are many other movies and songs that are about being “cool.” This relates back to my thesis because it shows how the corporate media shows society about what cool means through various media outlets and they believe it will help us live a more significant life.

PARAGRAPH 4:
The other topic relating to cool is the cool pose. In class, we were learning about the "cool pose" which is what determines how we are considered "cool" in society. It also means if being or acting cool can backfire and contribute to a persons misfortune in leading a good life? I think that yes, it sometimes can because everyone wants to fit in and have friends or people around them who enjoy them and some people would do anything to be considered "cool." Friends pressure friends to act or dress in a "cool" way so that not only the friend will feel cool, but also so that the "friends" could feel like they fit in and don't want to be seen with a "loser". But the first person who contributes to all of this is the corporations/media who tell us what the latest cool thing is to do and if you don't do it, you're not cool.
I think this cool pose is also influenced by the people or location a person was brought up in and obviously, parents influence this. But this also causes a dilemma for some people: do the "cool" thing with friends or be less cool and follow a good path in life and make something of yourself. For example, a person can cut school 24/7 and do absolutely no work but still appear cool and the "badass" or a person can stay in school, get good grades, go to college, and then get a good, well-playing job. An even more drastic example is someone who is pressured into doing coke and all sorts of other lethal drugs even though they know how harmful it can be or he can go to school and get a better life ahead of him or her. If he/she thinks to him or herself "I want to be liked by the "cool" popular kids in school I'll do the drugs", they can become a huge drug addict or die instead of evidently living a full life. The person just died and sacrificed their life on the sake of wanting to be accepted by other people. A good example is the movie, The Blind Side which is a true story about a boy, Michael Oher, who is great at sports but does awfully at school but he came from the projects and had a very bad home life. A white family adopts him and they want to help him become great at football, which is the character's passion but get even better at school so that he can graduate. They want him to lead a better life because he is a good kid. All the other white people in the neighborhood disagree with what they are doing but they don't care and keep helping him. In the end, he graduates after doing countless hours of tutoring, goes to his dream college to play football, and then he got drafted this year in real life to the Baltimore Ravens. This shows how going against the grain on being "cool" pays off when you have the oppurtunity to live a good, safe life instead of in danger or even worse, dead. Another huge example is the corporate culture who show us through magazine, TV shows, movies, etc. what is cool and what everyone should do to seem cool. Obviously, cool changes very frequently in this fast-paced world and the idea of what cool means changes daily, especially with clothing and trends. The corporate media essentially says: you won't be cool if you don't act or dress this way. People fall for it, including me at times, and try to become "cooler." Also, in the "Learning to Labour" article, the "lads" want to do what they want and instead of being a doctor or lawyer or a proffession like that, they end up working in a factory like their dad which isn't terrible, but it isn't very satisfying work, in my opinion not to mention it being very hard work. All these examples show how the cool pose influence everyone. This relates back to my thesis because it shows how dangerous wanting to be cool can be and it shows the argument that wanting to be coolcan make a person's life more meaningless.

PARAGRAPH 5:
I interviewed regular people on the street and people I knew about what they
think cool means.

Liz (friend out of school, age 16 from NYC):
Q: Do you think of yourself as being cool?
A: Well, i think cool is different for everybody and your surroundings also play into whether you're cool or not. Like i might be cool in my school but if i was in another school, i might not be cool. But personally, i think of myself as being cool because I'm laid-back, nice, and i think i dress cute.

Q: Do you think being considered cool is important?
A: No, i don't think it's important. A person could be having the coolest clothes but be the biggest douche in the world and cool will only get you so far. A person should just be themselves, as cliche as that sounds. That's what matters and being cool is not being afraid to be yourself.

Ellie (friend from out of school, age 16 from London):
Q: What do you think some aspects of "cool" are?
A: Being a nice person-not fake nice, smart, not caring about others opinions of you, questioning authority (she means being a bit of a rebel), and maybe having cool clothes and cool "exterior" but that doesn't matter a lot but it does help.

Q: Have you ever changed yourself to appear "cooler"?
A: Yes, i did for a little but then i realized shortly thereafter that they obviously weren't true friends and I actually felt less "cool" about myself trying to prove myself to someone else for no reason.
As you can see, the answers are pretty similar. I then asked my aunt on her opinion of cool and she said:
that being cool means being able to express who you are and staying true to yourself. She also said that being cool is a person who can interact well with others and not hold a grudge. She also believes that superficial cool will only get a person so far and relationships cannot be based on shallow things like that-they also need to have a good personality. I then asked her what being uncool meant to her and she said that being uncool means being a nasty person who doesn't work well with others, someone who thinks they are above everyone and someone who always judges books by their cover. The next question i asked was if she was cool in high school and she said that she was somewhat cool because she was a cheerleader but that unlike all the other cheerleaders, her family didn't have much money so she couldn't buy clothes that were as expensive as the other girls, so that was the part that made her slightly "uncool" to her peers. She said it was ok because she had other friends to that liked her for her-not for her style or superficial things like that.
I definetly agreed with everything my aunt said.
person one:
Me: I see you are holding a magazine with michelle obama on it. Do you think her style looks cool?
Person: Um..maybe because most of the first ladies don't dress that way and don't show their arms but she does and it looks comfortable and polished and nice.
Me: Would you dress like her?
Person: Personally it's not my style but considering she's a first lady, she looks good. She's more chic than the rest.
Me: So how would you describe your style?
Person: I'm not sure i guess i would call it kind of girly kind of homeless (laughs). I think it looks nice.
Me: We like it. Did you dress similarly to this in high school? if so, did it look cool in your peers opinion?
Person: This is sort of funny: I was a goth type person in high school and people made fun of me for that but i don't care what they say. I don't have to always be cool. I believe that cool is different because everyone has different perceptions about it.

Person 2:
Me: You are dressed in a fancy sort of way. We were wondering if you had a car?
Person 2: Yes i do. I have a Mercedes.
Me: Do you feel that because you have a Mercedes your car "speaks louder" than your personality to some people?
Person 2: Well, I'm sure my car plays a role in how people perceive me.
This was from the random people on the street I interviewed and as one can see, the answers were all pretty generic and the same. This relates back to my thesis because it shows how everyone basically has the same meaning of what "cool" means to them.

PARAGRAPH 6:
My own opinion on cool has definitely changed since before we started this unit. At first, I thought that cool means being yourself but now I think that it is harder to be cool and since everyone wants to be cool and unique or their own person, that can't really happen because if everyone is trying to do that, that kind of defeats the purpose of them trying to be cool. I still believe that being cool is in the eye of the beholder but I also think that there are people who are just naturally cool and legitamitely don't have to try at being cool. As you can see, trying to be cool can help some people achieve a more important life but it can also destroy a person's individuality and actually harm their chances of living a meaningful life, all for appearing good.