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28 June 2024
I (pronoun)
But who are we, really?
We are simply socially constructed multiple realities merged into a name.
Me, Marla. You, reader.
People who like me might describe me one way, people who knew me as a child will describe me another way, people who think I’m a pain in their side will probably have something quite different to say. I’m constructed by their upbringing, experiences, language, and realities. But I’m still Marla.
So, who is Marla?
Names come from language and language is a really good example of a social construct. The word ‘girl’ for example would have been laden with feelings of disgust, negativity, and dread if it was uttered by a midwife to a father in an Indian household in the 19th century. That same word spoken to a teenage boy however probably incites quite different emotions. Language is filled with connotations, innuendos, and allusions. Words are loaded. They carry with them our experiences, happy and traumatic. They bear the implications set on them by societies, religions, cultures, and families.
In 1966, sociologists Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann described how “any action that is repeated frequently becomes cast into a pattern, which can then be … performed again in the future in the same manner and with the same economical effort”. They called this Habitualization. In essence, they explored the idea that our society is none other than habit. We repeat things because they were done before us and we accept things as they are because we’re told, it’s just like that. Words mean what they mean because of repetition.
Habits, the same.
Values and trends too.
We are sheep walking around in circles of perpetuated behaviour fed by our experiences, media, and gossip.
In today’s world, planned obsolescence unfortunately runs the market. Everything is made to break and fall apart so that the consumers keep consuming. Gone are the days where appliances would flow through the generations. Once upon a time, advertisements boasted that their products would last not just the length of your lifetime but through those of your offspring as well. Ford for example had a myriad of long-lasting logos such as ‘Built to Last’, ‘Built Ford Tough’, and ‘Go Further’. Now, we’re lucky if something lasts a year.
If planned obsolescence wasn’t bad enough, there’s also the obsolescence of desirability running amok in our consumerist playgrounds. Society tells us to keep up with the times, keep up to date, get with the program. Things that work perfectly well don’t serve us anymore because there are new shiny things calling out to us. ‘Buy me!’
We celebrate the rich, the expensive, the celebrities, the politicians, the soccer players, the singers, the actors… why? Because society tells us this is what we should aspire to be like. Not the scientists, the social workers, the factory workers, the service staff, the teachers. They’re not idolised. “Those who can’t, teach” as the saying goes.
Our society has constructed a view that we have accepted as our own even though our heads and hearts might be in constant battle everyday about it – consciously or subconsciously.
Even our own identities are subject to this mental warfare. Our true selves and our egos feuding for power over our actions and decisions.
Society says that Marla is meant to be a strong independent woman who is married with children, working in a job that benefits the economy and makes enough to provide for said children. To work out and have the perfect body that’s expected of a female but at the same time soft enough for a man’s touch. To be able to cook well, speak well, listen well, not be anxious, not overreact. To be available, to be humble, to not complain. *enter America Ferrera’s Barbie’s monologue*.
With all the ideas that society has constructed for us to be – who then, is me?