Week 3- Videos about Identity

What makes up your identity?

    I think your personality/characteristics make up your identity. Some of the most well known categories that people usually find identity/what they identify with is race, ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation, physical attributes, personality, political affiliations, religious beliefs, professional identities, and the list goes on and on. Anybody could find what they identify with in each category and there will always be some people that relate or identify some of the same things as you. What that's called is intersectionality. By definition intersectionality is the interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage. But this does create an environment where people get treated differently/discrimination just because someone identifies as something different; the majority versus the minority. 

    In the identity short film, written and directed by KJ Adames, the film shows different high school students wearing masks, some are different, some are grouped up by having the same mask, but when we follow the main character around school we notice that her mask is unique from the rest. I think my favorite scene from that film is when the poster says that this is what real beauty looks like and it displays a yellow mask and the high school students surrounding the poster are all wearing that masks perfectly mimics real life. People want to follow the trend because they want to fit in because it's what's popular/cool at that moment and if you copy that you seem superior to others. But I just think that makes you seem fake because you're following a trend just because it will make you seem cooler, you're not being your true authentic self. 

What boxes are you put in and what boxes do you put yourself in? Are there any boxes that you feel don't really convey who you really are? Can you think of any other boxes that haven't been invented yet?

    The boxes that I'm put in is I fit in is that I am a straight cis Filipino American woman who grew up in the working middle class in a suburban neighborhood. I think that what society sees me as is what I identify with mostly. But then this creates preconceived notions or stereotypes before getting to know the person themself. For example, a really popular stereotype among the Asian American community is the model minority myth. The model minority myth is basically where Asian American students are assumed to be docile, obedient, always good in school/straight A's, and just intelligent in everything they do. But it's not true because not all Asian Americans are or were like that in school and if they weren't like the model minority they were seen as delinquents, which heavily affects their mental health.

    I don't feel as if there are any boxes that I feel that don't really convey who I really am because I proudly say what I identify with and I like being unique. If they ever come up with boxes of what to identify with, I think it would be like pronouns because I know that especially in San Francisco they make it a big deal of knowing what someone's pronouns are because that's the sexual orientation they identify with.