blog post #2

I want to address perception and social construction in this month’s blog post. Perception is a key factor of our daily life; cultural and socio-economic context shapes the way we see and perceive the world. Social construction, or norms variate accordingly with culture, and are those un written rules that shape a society. We had a very interesting discussion about school dress code during our last class and I wanted to reflect on that particular topic.

I went into a private catholic high school, and the only catholic thing about it was the name, the choral and the small church inside. Looking back today it blows my mind to realized how much clothing meant so much there, I knew exactly what I would wear, every single day of the week probably a week in advance. There were a lot of “must have” items, like bags. The last time I used a backpack to go the school (before college) I was probably about 12 years old. In my high school having a designer bag was pretty much an obligation, I don’t remember of any girls having backpacks, which is really stupid because to be honest we weren’t fitting much in our “cute” bags, and totally destroyed my back over the years. It seems totally stupid to me now: what would I use a bag that barely fit two notebooks and a book and hurt to carry instead of simple backpack? The answer is because it wasn’t a trend, different of type of bas were, having a designer bag (or even a fake one) meant belonging to the fashion and trendy society.

I can’t help but think about the story of one of the girl I know that really made me realized how stupid it sounds, and how none of us had no clues of priorities in life. I don’t remember that girl name so we will give her a very common french name like Marie. Marie was part of my high school but wasn’t really in my group of friends as she was a year older. One of her best friends, that we can call Julien, was known to be really wealthy, he had a huge house, always wear designer clothing, had vacation house, he was always hosting cool parties, so he was just really popular. As she was always hanging out with him and seemed to dress the same way, post the same way on social media and so on, everyone kind of assumed she was really wealthy as well. Imagine my surprise when I heard she was actually not, she was raised by her mom only and lived in a public housing in a tiny apartment in a low income area of my city. She was working a lot to be able to afford, the last phone, and jewelry, and all the designer clothes she had were either fake, or from thrift shops. Her situation really confused me, I remember thinking why trying so hard to look wealthy? It wasn’t just fashion at that point, you can totally get really cute and fashion clothes for fairly cheap if you know where to look and just buy smart. Why spending 60$ in a bag that looks like one that actually 850$ but has the quality of a 10$ one? It didn’t make sense to me, I thought she could’ve just go shopping in less expensive stores and instead of having one plain shirt from a brand like Gucci, have ten different ones for probably cheaper.

As I was wondering all of that, I also tried to look at it from her point of view, why would she did that? I realized that first when it’s your own money that you’ve earned through your hard work you get to spend it whatever you like and no one can say anything about it. Second, she probably felt the need to do all of that because she saw how on the high school scale, clothing could help her feel more accepted and “cooler”. I think her story really was a turning point for me when I really started to notice how stupid that mentality was. She perceives that she needed to have all those items to be accepted, and it really makes me realized what some people go through because they care too much about how everyone else perceive them, and forget about how they actually want and what actually make them happy. Maybe Marie found pleasure in spending her money in expansives clothes, and appearances, and grabbing drinks or go to fancy restaurant to show off, and maybe she would have put her money somewhere else with a different environment.