HW 35

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: