Monday, February 24, 2014

A Cycle of Outrage by James Gilbert

OK, so I have to say that I did not enjoy this reading at all. It just did not hold my interest and I found myself just skimming through the entire piece...I did the same for the Raby reading, and actually the two seemed like the same story to me. I have been sitting here all day trying to get my thoughts together enough to write something. So I have been reading through some of the blogs to see what others had to say and I really enjoyed reading what Jessica had to say. She focused on the quote "teenagers lacked a sense of the line between good fun and delinquency" (Gilbert, 12). Teenagers then and teenagers now are exactly the same, the only difference is that the economy changes and they must change with it. Stereotyping teenagers by their appearance is unfair and does not prove anything. Teenage years are when you are supposed to experiment with all sorts of things, some good and some bad. They are supposed to get into some trouble, it is how a person learns. Teens should experiment with their dress, appearance, and with different interests. This is a crucial time of figuring out what you want and who you will be. I love that Jessica commented on the industrial boom post war. She is so right, teens and adults alike both got caught up in the want for materialistic items. So far in all of the readings that we have done, including the Palladino piece, the Raby piece and now this one, they all have the same negative stereotypical view of teenagers and focuses on how their appearance makes them look aggressive. I feel like teens know boundaries and sometimes they push them on purpose and that is ok, the teen years are for learning and testing out the boundaries. This does not make them criminals at all. It makes them teenagers and it is a normal part of growing up. I would love for a group of teenagers to write an article about their views on teenagers and also their views on adults. Why do the adults always feel the need to explain teens and their delinquent behavior. Lets just go straight to the source. After all, weren't adults adolescents once? Didn't adults, as teenagers, take part in delinquent behavior, and maybe even listen to rock and roll, dress according to the fashion of the time, and maybe even rebel? I know that when I was in high school I snuck around, rebelled against my mom, disregarded my curfew, wore some pretty crazy things, had all sorts of hair styles, smoked cigarettes, drank alcohol, got a tattoo and hung out in the neighborhood all hours of the night. I don't think that makes me a criminal or delinquent, I was just being a kid. Even today, I have some customers that see my tattoos and totally freak out. They automatically put me in a category as some rebellious kid (most of them think i am 20...I am 27). It is super annoying that they think i am so great until they see tattoos and I can see the way their faces completely change. So unfair. We need to stop judging teens and talking about adolescents as a passing phase. Maybe we can even learn a little from these so called delinquents.


4 comments:

  1. Agree cousin!! everyone is so quick to judge other people, when they were at that stage in their life 30-40 years before. This is what makes kids do the things they do and they should do what they want at this point in their life (to a certain extent), it helps them figure out who they really are and who they want to be.

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  2. Thank you for being honest about reading this article..it got incredibly boring after a while for me too, so you're not alone. I agree that people have been saying "those darn teens are terrible" for generations. This isn't new. But I also think we need to be careful about what Raby showed in her article with her stereotypes...we need to be careful not to describe teens as inherently experimental ad unpredictable like they're some phase of life that is meaningless or dangerous or a time where they just can't have control. I think we should teach teens that what they feel is normal and that they can express themselves in safe ways without being judged. It's tough though because, like you pointed out, people have very negative views of some forms of expression like clothing and tattoos.

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  3. I couldn't agree more, this article was incredibly long and boring! I agree that there is a lot of profiling being done of adolescents. However, I do have to say that as humans, I believe it comes naturally to simply judge based on first impressions. I am not saying that this article is true, that adolescents are delinquents, but I am saying that as a society we do make a first impression and that we do profile as a society.

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  4. it's insane that tattoos have such a negative effect on certain people, like that changes who you are or something. being rebellious when you're a teen is a way of figuring out your life and making mistakes and learning from them, and basically just living life.

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