Popular Advice and Social Norms - Essay Example

Popular advice and social norms The following essay is based on an advice column that appears in ‘Jezebel’ magazine, d ‘The friendzone’. The advice column generally covers 3-4 advice requests centered mainly around issues that readers feel that they need help with regarding their friends, as such it provides an excellent opportunity to observe and analyze a wide variety of social interactions, norms, relationships and their intersectional natures. This essay is divided along three main sections that follow each advice question and its analysis and dissection along the lines of the material covered in class. The central thesis of this essay is that the advice column presented in given study is counter normative. It provides advice that may challenge established social norms and ideologies as the advice given is in favor of personal rights and protection of individual expression of the self rather than submitting to an established paradigm of social rules. 1) Self-image and gender roles In the very first advice question asked, the writer asks for guidance regarding a friend of hers who according to her ‘only goes for hot guys’ her description of her friend as being below average looking or an odd-looking woman which is a cause of concern to her. Although the writer claims that the concern comes from a place of well-meaning love for her friend and going on to add that the friend in question is quiet intelligent and a nice person, she feels that the friend might be internalizing some of the rejection and getting worn out by the constant rejection of her advances from the more unattainable men. The advice column in return is centered on the need of the friend to be an effective support structure instead of being someone who criticizes or singles out her friend and points out her flaws. The advice column encourages the writer to provide a zone of comfort and non-judgmental support for her friend, one that bolsters her positive aspects and qualities and does not focus on the downside of her less than desirable appearance. The need of her friend to date more desirable men than she apparently ‘deserves’ is putting down her own personal ambitions and instead focus is placed on the ability of the friend to come to terms with her own appearance and the dating standards of society around her. Analysis: The above mentioned question and the subsequent advice is a compelling study of sexual scripts, gender roles and process of socialization. It is interesting to note that in the above question the writer does not have a problem with the dating standards that her friend consistently fails to achieve, but rather with her friends insistence on her own high standards and the resulting despondence that occurs when she is consistently unable to achieve them. This situation raises several pertinent issues from multiple perspectives, from the friend’s, the writer’s, the advice givers and society as a large. The first pertinent issue that needs to be mentioned here is of course that of sexual scripts, society’s standardized pathways to sexual interaction, the first step of which is to be sexually desirable or to be ‘beautiful’, it is curious to note here that the writer’s distress is clearly from her friend’s inability to stick to this script and instead reach for higher than what she believes her to be capable of. As we know, socialization is the process by which individuals interact with and give meaning to society and societal standards around them. This process is influenced by how people define and act in these situations, how people situate themselves in context of these situations. This is perhaps the root cause for the friend’s disappointment with her dating life and her lack of success in finding someone who is according to her standards. The meaning which she assigns to her social situations is completely different than what societal standards have set for those situations, as such her socialization process does not compensate for her being rejected in her pursuits which is the root cause of her problems.The second issue is that of self-image, this is from the point of view of the friend that the writer is concerned for. Her image of herself is clearly centered heavily in the positive, almost bordering on the delusional and her process of sexual identity and socialization is heavily biased in her favor and detached from a lot of societal standards. The advice column on the other hand does not condemn her for this, nor is she asked to change her perceptions to suit what society requires for her, this in itself is highly counter-normative as most advice would be to ask her to lower her standards, but instead the columnist advices her to come to terms with this imbalance on her own cognition instead of forcing societal standards on her. 2) Social Interaction, aging, socialization The second advice request is in regards to an expat worker and the behavior of her friend, a local woman. The problematic behavior stems from the roommate’s refusal to allow the writer to leave back for her home country without throwing up a host of behavioral and apparently psychological problems. According to the writer the roommate, ever since she got to know about her impending departure has been acting up verbally and passive aggressively. There have been, according to the writer, various attempts at guilt-tripping the writer into staying, with continuous passive- aggressive verbal attacks on her, accusing the writer of not being a good friend or just not caring enough about her well-being. This behavior would be followed up with an attempt to play it off as being a joke or an attempt at humor. The writer informs that the roommate in question exhibited signs of being disappointed at her deceased relatives simply for dying. The final straw for the writer has come when the roommate invited herself along to the family trip of the writers’. The advice for this question was, as in the previous question, characteristically concise, sharp and to the point, keeping in mind first and foremost, the author’s own needs, safety and comfort. Where other advice columns would have generally counseled patience, restraint and understanding, Jezebel once again rejects social normative roles and insists on the significance of the self and on forming clear cut boundaries that respect the person’s own personal needs and comfort zones. The advice column clearly suggests the writer to strictly inform the roommate that she is not welcome along on her trip and that her behavior is unacceptable. Analysis: The issues raised in this advice question stem from a severe lack of socialization and lack of proper aging process as on behalf of the roommate, but pertinent here also is the fact that what would have clearly been several red flags were ignored by the writer herself and instead of distancing herself from the roommate sooner, she allowed her to invite herself onto a family trip, intruding on her own personal time and space. This raises two very important contradictory examples of not only socialization and the aging process but also of self-worth and self-image. From the point of view of the roommate, her behavior clearly demonstrates complete ignorance of how to properly interact with a friend and a roommate, another clearly problematic issue is that of her view of others as ‘leaving her’, dealing with loss and with death is an important component of the aging process, acknowledging and processing grief as an external variable instead of internalizing it and somehow looking at it as an inflicted tool shows serious gaps in her ability to deal with loss as a grown up. The aging process as we well know consists of stages of developmental growth in response to change and development, putting us through successive iterations of morality, emotion, physicality, cognition etc. This developmental ability is clearly lacking in the roommate who has yet to come to deal with the changes in her life. As discussed already, the aging process consists of a regulation and normalization of behavior and emotions, regulating ones behavior towards others, this is clearly not visible in the behavior of the roommate and especially in her attitude towards the loss of her family members as evidenced by her statements regarding their deaths as irresponsible towards her.However, we must also take a moment to understand the behavior of the writer as depicting severe insecurity of her self-image. 3) Social class, Racialization The third and last advice question poses a question by a writer who has a former friend showing up after attending college. The socio-economic condition of the writer is one of the lower middle class with her being a single mother going to community college in a predominantly Mexican neighborhood, her returning friend according to the writer displays animosity and shame towards her former dwellings and social settings. According to the writer, the friend continuously downplays, degrades and verbally abuses her friend, putting her down as being on food-stamps, going to community college and being a single mother. Her every attempt at rekindling their previous friendship is shot down by her friend who has returned from college and is worried about her new boyfriend seeing her as ‘one of these tacky Mexicans’ even though she herself is Guatemalan. Analysis: This question clearly raises issues of class and racialization. The former friend even though she belonged previously to the same socio-economic background has clearly moved on to what she believes to be a higher social class due to her higher education and her acquiring a richer boyfriend. Her attitude towards her entire neighborhood as being ‘those tacky Mexicans’clearly reeks of racializing an entire suburban area, even though as the writer suggests the neighborhood comprises of a diverse variety of people from a widely diverse background. This issue is one of disassociating oneself completely from one’s social background based simply on an upwardly change in economic conditions. The issue is once again that of intensely personal significance and consequences and as such cannot be nor does it deserve to be inflicted upon another person, the writer cannot, nor should she attempt to mend bridges at the cost of her own self-esteem. CONCLUSION The advice column gives the idea of different social behaviors and various viewpoints to deal with them. Each question provides its own unique set of social and sociological perspectives and the answers provided present another unique set of perspectives. It endorses personal rights and protection of individual expressions instead of established norms and socially idealized behaviors. References: Jenkins, Richard Social Identity 2013, Routledge W.Lee, Janice Gender Roles 2005, Nova Publishers Lareau, Annette Social Class: How Does it work? 2008, Russell Sage foundation S. Kimmel The Sexual Self: The Construction of Sexual Scripts 2007, Vanderbilt University Press Read More