Will Bardezbain
Ivey, Christina. Comm 160
September 29th, 2016
Blog #1
“Fear is ultimately the reason I have survived” – Andres
Gomez. In this article called ‘Fear: Beneath the Façade’ Gomez is explaining
how ever since his toddler years he has been afraid of nearly everything, from
the dark, to needing glasses, to not having friends, even being afraid of his
parents divorcing. He explains how terrified he was constantly and was living
with great anxiety. He also mentions the fact that ever since he was little he
has experienced and observed that whenever he got scared or another little boy
around him got scared, they were told to “man up” and told to toughen up, as a
way to overcome fear and exude the predominate manly persona. This here can be
linked back to chapter six and relates to identity and perception, as a boy he
was confused about identity because he felt scared and he perceived being a
“man” was to be tough and buck up to fear. What he experienced as a child was
different than what was expected of him causing him to not feel accepted into
his surrounding culture. This is more of an issue that he was never explained
that his ‘perception’ was failing him. He fails to realize that he actually
contradicts himself in his writings by first rejecting the concept of “toughing
up” and then embraces it by eventually overcoming all of his fears. I don’t
think “toughing up” is necessarily a male thing exclusively, it may be
expressed more outwardly but females must toughen up as well, or else we would
all be living in constant fear and crying all of the time. I think it is taken
out of context in the way that he is relating toughing up to a gender rather
than just a motivational phrase like saying “let’s go” or “come on, you can do
this”. If someone feels inadequate because they were told to toughen up and
then were unable to accomplish the task being asked of them, then that also
relates back to chapter six definition of social construction. It is kind of a
flakey article because he is just playing a victim type of role then says that
“fear, ultimately, is the reason I have survived” when in fact courage is what
helped him overcome his insecurities. Now if he had been running from his fears
to survive this would be a different article and he would be correct. Example
being, someone sees a bear in the woods, first reaction, fear, one could simply
respect the fear and run away to get away from the bear, but the bear would
still remain. Or one could decide to neglect the fear and kill the bear,
ultimately eliminating the fear. Which is what this author did in this article,
not realizing that he in fact is an example of symbolic interactionism (also
chapter six), by being told to buck up and toughen up, at first he rejected
that theory, feeling inadequate, but he became tired of being afraid, in order
to overcome his inadequacy, he then embraced toughness. The definition of
toughness according to Dictionary.com is, strong and durable. There is no
correlation between being tough and being a man. Nor that toughness is only a
physical trait. The only correlation is that some people believe that toughness
has to be assigned a gender role, but that is their own ‘perception’ due to
lack of explanation. Some of the toughest people in the world are women, and
they at some point in their lives had to be courageous and overcome fears to be
that way as well. Manly to me is more of an adult reference, like “grow up”.
Little kids have fears no matter the gender, if you don’t embrace growth you
will remain either a little boy or a little girl. If a man is not ‘tough’ he is
not ‘manly’, if a woman is not ‘tough’ she is ‘womanly’. I speak for myself
when I say nobody wants a bunch of whiney, inadequate people running around
because they don’t want to face their fears and grow up. So toughen up, it’s
for your own best interest.
Citations
"The Definition
of Toughness." Dictionary.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 29
Sept. 2016.
Warren, John T., and Deanna L. Fassett. Communication: A Critical/cultural
Introduction. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2011. Print. Chapter Six. Pages 99-105.
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