Will Bardezbain

Ivey, Christina. Comm 160

October 28th, 2016

Blog #2

“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 whiny, 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.