Role-models

The term role model in sociology generally means any "person who serves as an example, whose behavior is emulated by others". Who is your role model? Who do you look up to? Is it a scientist? A scholar? Or maybe your own parents?

Having actors as role models has been something that’s been going on for long now,  seeing how the actors play certain character, and the audience might fall for that certain character, but at the same time, not differentiating between the character and the actor/actress. Especially children.

One of the reasons I decided to write about this certain topic is that I remembered a little chatter between me and my friends about Miley Cyrus. How she was only seen as Hannah Montana, a role-model for little girls, and then how she evolved to a totally different example, a bad one. (1-2)

And as for boys, their role models might be from WWE(World wrestling Entertainment), which is an entertainment programs that target males from age 18-34, and also children. But how do you group children with 18-34 years old males? These role models are certainly not good ones.

Why is media portraying these people as people a child should consider a hero? Why are most kids these days not consider scholars, scientists as heroes and role models these days? Is it because the whole world is focused on self-entertainment in this century?

There are many other "role-models" to be listed but I thought that these two stands out the most.

Tattoos

A "behavior" is a very specific word that is unique to each and every person. People’s behaviors differ from one culture to another, within a similar culture, from one family to another and even within the same family, that is called Deviance.

Throughout generations groups of people with rebellious thoughts and ideas about what they like were founded, these were expressed in visual forms that distinguished them from others. Some of these are groups were beneficial rock roll groups, punk, rock, groups of people who like piercings, tattoos and so on.

Concentrating on tattoos, people have different opinions about why tattoos are good or bad and how they started. Some just do it for the fun of it not really knowing the history behind and whether it makes a difference having it.

Here’s a brief history about Tattoo.

It started with the Egyptians more specifically on Egyptian women. Women’s legs were tattooed as a preventive action to avoid dangers on childbirth. It was then spread through Asia, Africa and pacific islands. Other cultures had different interpretations for it such as spirituality, strength, protection, narrative purposes and marking criminals. It was then banned in the 787 AD, then the eruption happened in the 1960’s, after that tattoos were considered a symbol of rebellion, gangs, and dirty sailors. Such ideas create segregation in society, for some it is a positive http://www.thefreedictionary.com/sanction, such as having people joining this type art, for others it is a negative sanction where they get people giving them weird looks or weird comments.

In the religious point of view the bible banned tattooing as it falsifies and fabricates what GOD has given us. It is banned to touch and manipulate with one’s own body.

I don’t see the point of having tattoos whether they were obvious or viewed by others or not and more importantly because it is banned by GOD and clearly written. Moreover, it is a lifelong print that someone may regret with age but can never do anything to change it. From a non-religious point of view, if it was apparent, it can damage ones look, (imagine wearing a wedding dress with big tattoo on your arm), and if it wasn’t apparent it has no reason other than self-satisfaction and that is also not convincing in my opinion.

In some cases deviance enhances unity and a sense of community, but in other cases it strengthens wrong paths that should not be courage.

Culture shock?

If someone would ask you, what makes you different from Person A or Person B, you would probably be able to come up with a list from the top of your head, without even having to think, like nationality, language, religion or even food habits or education.

In other words, the way you have been brought up is what differentiates you from the others. A sociologist defines this as culture. The way of life of people or more specifically, the human created strategies for adjusting to the environment.

For some of us, seeing different culture is the best part about traveling, where as for few other, they have a culture shock coming from place X to Y. Culture shock is the strain that people experience while traveling from one region to the other, and must reorient themselves to the ways of the new culture. And this was exactly what happened in the movie Outsourced, where an American products salesman (Todd) heads to India to because of his replacement, after his entire department is outsourced. Being unaware of the beliefs and values of India, he found himself in a very inconvenient situation. For example, in India, Cows are considered sacred and play an important role in the Hindu religion. Whereas when Todd goes to India, being ignorant, he talks about cows as a food product without realizing how sensitive a topic it was and he goes on doing the same sort of mistake, until he finally finds someone who could teach him about the Indian culture.

People’s behavior and values change from culture to culture, and that is rooted to the shortage and abundance of resources in different regions. For example, the video shows how common begging is in India. However, in Qatar it is hardly seen in public. The economic structure of the country breaks the conservation-oriented behaviors of its people.



According to Sociology, some of the most important types of non-material cultures are beliefs, values, norms, symbols and language. And some of these aspects were clearly noticeable in Culture Shock, an Al Jazeera documentary, on how African migrants find ways to deal with the European culture. These African migrants face instances of racist violence in Germany, where because of their skin color, people assign symbols. People assign offensive names.

Despite being immigrants, some of their habits perfectly match local customs, which is a case of cultural universals, which refers to things found in every culture. But sometimes people hold on to the viewpoint of ethnocentrism, because of which these African migrants are not being accepted by the social norms.

Click here to check out the documentary on Al Jazeera

Culture Shock: What is it like to live in Europe with an African identity?