JOUNAL #17

17. Discuss some issue of personal, local, national, or international concern and its importance to you.

Society's will to assimilation to normality is a concern today and can expand internationally. It is to succumb to society's social contructs based on the popular consensus. One example of assimilation to normality is found in the image of beauty. The image of any other than a skinny and tall model is seen as a mutant and undesirable, and therefore women must assimilate to what is considered normal and accepted even if it means mutilating themselves. Likewise if there are activist movements, people who want to fit in the activist crowd but do not actually think or fully support the crowd itself is a form of assimilating to some form of normality because the people are not actually thinking for themselves or understand the cause. It is just like in some instances where a celebrity speaks up their opinion and people mindlessly agree. The assimilation to normality can expand to gender roles, as the popular opinion provides the guidelines of what is acceptable to each respective gender, such as girls wear dresses and makeup, and are neat and organized while boys are aggressive and more exceptional at math. Thinking with these stereotypes hinder the individual to think and challenge beyond these social constructs, only making the invented means more true when in reality, they do not have to assimilate to such "normal" guidelines.

This has an importance to me as someone who takes highly to individual values. Originality and being true to oneself is better than following the main crowd foolishly, especially if it poses as dangerous to one's health and not bringing them to the fullest of potential. As someone who always believed that I was going to always grow up a follower and assimilate to look acceptable in society instead of never taking decisions for myself, I want to prove my past self wrong and that being who you are and understanding every cause is everything, of which the majority of the young and undeveloped crowd fail to do. Such dangerous forms of the assimilation to normality can be harmful to society as the mainstream crowd enacts in laughing foolishly at jokes in the media that include sexism, racism, and rape, all the more contributing to ignorance and unoriginality.