Discriminiation and The Media

Discrimination (di-skrim-uh-ney-shuhn) – noun: Behavior that shows prejudice. Failure to treat people equally because of a bias based on characteristic such as race, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, and disability. (1) People may say that it’s gotten better throughout the years, that it has become a minute issue inside society today. Personally, my opinion differs from the rest of society. Discrimination is just as bad now as it was in the past. You can see discrimination everywhere you go in the modern-day world, whether it be from teenagers, the media, even society itself. Society has a nice way of hiding things, doesn’t it?

1: discrimination. Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.0.1). Retrieved October 15, 2006, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/discrimination

Let’s start with how teenagers interact with discrimination. What hand can these innocent bundles of ‘joy’ have to do with such an ugly thing like discrimination? Why, everything… as much as no one acknowledges it and believes it builds ‘character’ to be picked on… they have everything to do with it. And we have no one to blame but ourselves.

Teenagers, as well as mankind, have three basic instincts they follow when they cross paths with an unusual creature or object. They either:
A) Feel threatened by it, and inevitably destroy it.
B) Worship it.
C) Fear it, which ties into the first one.

Normally teenagers will follow either A or C. Or sometimes even both in some circumstances. Though fear is usually the leading cause of discrimination the moment teenagers start to fear another living, breathing, unique creature (Just like them, I might add.) tension builds and a jealousy or hate will arise from this fear. Being frightened of having something taken from them, whether it’s their popularity, friends, or sense of person they will attempt to force the other person into submission and make them their own personal lap dog, make sure that no one will notice them any longer and the one that is dominant will reign as she/he once did before the creature crossed their path.

It has been deemed “cool” and will give you popularity points to crush someone’s spirit. To make them look weak and powerless while the dominant ‘popular’ one reigns champion in their own sick game. Teenagers are like sheep. If one has a fad, and they are popular enough to support it, everyone wants to do it to look exactly like one another. If they all look the same, they can’t get hurt, right? Right. There is no way someone who looks like you, can tease you for what you’re wearing. They’d become a hypocrite and destroy themselves as well. It would become a suicide-homicide situation.

Then there are the ‘black’ sheep. The ones, who do not look, think, act, and speak the same. The ones who go against the flow of the other sheep to support their own individuality. These members of the flock, in the ‘white’ sheep’s prospective, must be destroyed or abandoned far off so that not even the other ‘black’ sheep notice they’re gone.

For example, Jane Doe was always popular, she had everything she could possibly want… friends, popularity, and the whole school adored her. One year John Doe came to the school Jane was attending. Suddenly she was no longer popular and cast to the side for John, who happened to be much different from Jane because he was an individual and not another sugarcoated plastic creation. In an attempt to regain her popularity she and John began dating one another. After a few months when her popularity came back to her because she was dating John she crushed him. She told him that he meant nothing to her and that he was simply a way to regain her popularity. John, having a low self-esteem as it was, committed suicide over the act Jane had committed. (2)

2: This is actually a true story. Names have been changed to protect the innocent (or not so innocent in this case).

Teenagers seem to fail to realize that once they leave high school and travel into the real world, their popularity is diminished and they become the bottom once again, the one to be broken. No one out in the real world cares how popular you used to be. So, these efforts are futile compared to those of making something important out yourself to have a life in the real world. Perhaps years from now the sheep will realize these facts… until then we can only hope.

Society is even more flawed then high school. We sue anyone for any reason. I’m almost positive we’d sue people for their age, sex, race, nationality, sexual orientation, disability, and even religion. Society also tries to make it seem like harassment and discrimination are completely opposite. Yes, they are different by definition, but they go together like a horse and carriage, you can’t have one without the other. (3)  By harassing someone you are also being a discriminator. In addition to people wanting to sue everyone for everything, especially things like age, we also argue over trivial things LIKE age. Come on… didn’t we all have parents who claimed we were too little to do something when we’re certainly old enough to do something small like go into town to simply be with friends? We argue over how old we are with our PARENTS for heavens sake! Seems just a little silly doesn’t it?

3: Excuse my use of Frank Sinatra’s song “Love and Marriage”.

As for suing everyone for everything, discrimination is even used in the court system. They’re not supposed to discriminate based on someone’s race or sex, but we all know they do. You can see the look in a judge’s eye when they look at someone who is condemned to prison for the rest of their lives. They look at them like they are nothing simply on the actions they took… they judged them before they knew anything. Now, some people may look at this like it is not discrimination or not even prejudice to look at a condemned man differently then a normal, free, sane, person. This is where you are wrong. Prejudice is the act of judging someone before you know who they truly are. By the judge’s act of judging someone before they know him or her, even if it’s in the back of their mind to look at them as if they are nothing and not truly say it, does not mean it is not discrimination. And even the jury in the case of murder will look at a condemned man as if he is nothing and it will influence their opinion on if he is guilty or innocent. If the man happens to be of a different race, or sometimes even a different sex the jury may look at the person as if they deserve no mercy even if they know that he or she is innocent.

Now, the media… the media influences us, especially teenagers more then society itself. If media says something is perfect, it is our immediate response to copy it in every way. Movement, attitude, body, even the way we live our lives. The most pathetic thing about the media is only about 30% of the women in the united states are actually anything like the models, actresses, and so forth… the even more sad part is about 15% of those women… are the models and actresses. Once the media states that a woman must be skinny, or must have a certain hair colour everyone must have that body and that hair. And those who don’t are harassed… and if you recall, harassment and discrimination go together like a horse and carriage, you can’t have one without the other (4). Since the media has had a huge impact on society as of lately, teenagers are even more flawed by the media then they used to be. It’s become a way of life to take the media’s bullshit, for each and every person whether they are young or old.

4: Ahh! Excuse the use again.

To the point, I have seen a mother of, had to be 24 with her 7-year-old daughter. The young girl had a tight shirt and a very, very short skirt. The skirt was short enough you could see the little girls panties without her bending over, and her mother looked no better. She looked miserable; as she pulled at her skirt to pull it down to cover herself and her mother would grab her hands, tug her skirt back up and tell her to stop that. To the point the mother looked at her sobbing child and told her that if she did not dress the way her mother dressed her, she would abandon her. I swear these were her exact words. Has media corrupted society, and has society corrupted teenagers enough to make them want sex at a young age without the knowledge of protection, end up becoming pregnant, having children, and making their children miserable by corrupting them as they have been corrupted themselves?! Yes, the mothers intentions may have been good in her eyes to have her child free of harassment and discrimination, but in the wrong way. Instead of doing something about the flawed society in which she is apart of she simply did the easy thing and made her child just as bad! I start to doubt there is any hope for the human race.

And so, in conclusion, discrimination is just as bad, if not worse then it was in the past. Between the media corrupting society… and society corrupting the teenage generation we are getting nowhere in this twisted game called life. Mankind has become flawed in every way possible… and one day it will fall apart and we will be reduced to nothing once again. And by discriminating against people and taking away their individuality, it will happen even quicker… Discrimination is a horrible, ugly thing… and it’s destroying us all faster then it was 70 years ago. It’s something to keep in mind next time you listen to the media.