ENG 101
YongJin Kim
Professor Teddy
10/5/15
Identity
There are lots of factors to make our personal identity. Three important factors are
race and ego, circumstances of person’s life and the media. These factors have affection to
our life and the personal identities. People all has the different identities because they didn’t
live, act, born same and doesn’t speak same language. It is important to find out the identity.
The first factor is race and ego. In order to become as main agent, a person has to
know the identity appropriately. So, discovering the way which personality is constructed is
essential. The article ‘Who Are You’ by David Bartholomae is a good article to show and find
out how the identity is constructed. In the article it says, “No one is born with a fully
developed identity. Of course we are born with qualities and tendencies we inherit from our
parents and their parents, but that potential has to be made real over the course of a lifetime.”
(Bartholomae 1) It shows how a personality can be ordered into two sections. The first part is
a section that is altered and given as inborn, so that it can't be changed which is called an ego.
The second part is liquid and given as fragmented, being made by communication between
one's ego of self and the society which is called the society ego. With these, one's conscience
needs to cooperate with society and by doing that a person can develop completely created
identity.
In the story, it says, “It is within their bounds that we make our choices and find
ourselves.” (Bartholomae 1) This shows that the examples of bounds can be called the given
factors such as gender and races. The roles of gender behavior, the first factor, can affect
identity in that they are essential part of the social matrix within which we produce our
identity. Racial differences which are socially defined are the field in which we build up our
self-image. So, the social class that can influence our identity and life is equally important to
those prior elements. These factors can be combined together because these factors can
influence our personal identity. Also, it is important to understand these factors.
The second factor is circumstances of person’s life. This factor is very important.
Basically, people are not just from the outset that a highly intelligent animals. Human beings
are creature that keep learning and improving themselves through their life. For example, I
was in the middle school. One of my friend and I are really close each other. However, my
parents has highly intelligence job and my friend didn’t have parents. So one day, I saw he
was pinching the money from another student’s wallet in the physical activity time. I couldn’t
stop him because I knew that he’s family was poor and everyday he was working at night.
Even he’s grades weren’t that good. This situation will probably effect to personal identity.
This shows that my circumstances were not lack of wealth and my friend’s was lack of
wealth.
Another example of circumstance is from the reading “Michelle Lee, The Fashion
Victim’s Ten Commandment” by Michelle Lee. Lee says number 3 ‘The average American
owns seven airs of blue jeans. Certainly, each pair could be cut and colored differently, but
are those seven pairs really that different?” (Lee 70) It tells that if people wear a blue jean in
the street at the same time, there is no personal identity at all.
The last factor is media. The media is one of factor that can influence the personal
identity because the media in these days are much vitalized so people can easily approach it
and absorbed. The media people usually use in these days are phone, internet and television.
The representative of media is advertisement. The advertisement can be seen everywhere,
even watching the movie and walk the street.
The first example is from the film ‘Miss Representation” by Jennifer Siebel Newsom.
In this film, every women who are famous looks very pretty, and they have good bodies.
Because people watch the television and the advertisements usually young women thinks
they have to be like that, unless they will be cast out from the society. Even in the film shows
that students in middle school has problems because of the media. The student who is fat and
looks not pretty gets blanked. Also feels want to suicide and even tried to suicide. Because of
the media, the person is automatically following the media’s identity not a personal identity.
This can cause a big problem in the society.
. Women in these days care about their beauty very much because of the media.
However, women are objectification. This shows that in today’s society, women are not
phrased as a person. It means women are objected. Jean Kilbourne says, “So no matter what
else a woman does, no matter what else her achievements, their value still depends on how
they look.” This shows when women who come out from the media are usually showing the
overexposure. Also, actresses are playing second foil in the movies and they are acted for
men’s sex desire. Moreover, women are acting like that to receive attention from society.
Because of these components, young girls will start to follow customs to look sexy and get
attention. This will affect women’s personal identity.
The media is very powerful in today’s society. However, the news anchor Katie
Couric says, “The media can be an instrument of change, it can maintain the status quo and
reflect the views of society, or it can awaken people and change minds. It depends on who’s
piloting the plane.” Couric is trying to tell us that it is easy to get absorbed and act by seeing
the media without thinking that is right or not. Because media has the power, people will bury
from the fake media society. Couric is willing to people to judge what is right and not, before
just accepting the media. People should choose and get only good information from media.
Then, people can change their life instead of absorbed by media. If not, people will just stay
in the same position and will not get chance to develop their own personal identity.
All in all, finding personal identity is hard and it is important to find the identity.
People have all different life style, races and ego and circumstances. Also, there is a big
factor that has power which is called media. However, if people try to find their personal
identity and not to be absorbed by media, people must think and judge what is good and bad.
Also, if people know what they want to be appropriately, they can change their identity too.
Citation
Jennifer Siebel Newsom, Miss Representation.2012
David Bartholomae Who Are You