The Theme of Identity by Sarah Hinchey

Who's Afraid of Little Old Me?

hincheys243881 — 2024-04-22 17:49:05 UTC

Swift recently wrote a song called "Whos Afraid of Little Old Me?". In this song, she sings about how she feels as a huge spectacle in the world and how everything she does is speculated on. This song ties to the theme of identity because she is essentially writing about how she feels a loss of identity at times because of how famous she is. In her Variety Article, she says she wrote the song when she “felt bitter about just all the things we do to our artists as a society and as a culture.”. She begins to lose her sense of identity when the people watching her just see her as a character in their fantasies instead of a real person. One line in this song I believe ties to identity is “ You caged me and then you called me crazy. I am what I am because you trained me.”. She felt a loss of identity and felt as though others controlled her identity. Our identity is who we are. This song ties into the overarching theme of identity because Swift, at times, feels like she can choose who to be but rather she feels it is forced on her.

America Ferrera's Barbie Speech

hincheys243881 — 2024-04-22 17:51:18 UTC

In this movie, Barbie loses her sense of identity when “Barbie Land” is taken over by men. She also experiences the real world as a woman for the first time. In this speech, America’s character, Gloria, talks about the expectations of a woman in society and how each of them contradicts each other. For example, she says “ You have to lead but you can’t squash other people's ideas” or “ You have to be a career woman but also always be looking out for other people”. As I talked about in the Taylor Swift Song, society sets expectations and takes away the freedom to choose your identity. This speech alludes to the fact that women have an expected identity and the speech motivates women to break away from that restriction. At the end of the movie, after this speech, Barbie decides to break away from the limitations of being “Barbie”. Barbie was essentially a symbol of women's expectations from society. This speech informs women that they can never meet the expectations of the identity society wants them to have. They should not keep working towards it because it is impossible. When women come to this realization, they have the freedom to build and construct their own identities.

The Women of Nasa

hincheys243881 — 2024-04-22 17:55:53 UTC

The National Women's History Museum had an online exhibit on the Women of Nasa. They go into detail about how long women have been a part of NASA and when their jobs in that workforce became official. They talk about three specific women and their contributions to NACA/NASA. One thing I would note is that they called the women “human computers” when they first hired them to work at NASA. Men were praised for the work they did there but women seemed to just be a part of their broad system. This takes away the freedom for them to construct their own identity within the workforce. Without this freedom, they struggle to be accepted or understood as their own person. So, having a role as a person in this workplace is important to their identity because it helps them to be accepted in society. Once women had become more prominent in the workforce taking bigger roles and being acknowledged, their jobs were able to contribute to the construction of their identity. What a person does every day is very important to who they are. The career path you choose becomes a part of your identity. For example, these women of NASA have aspects of identities such as their intelligence and determination. They make that person who they are among multiple other things.

After Apple Picking by Robert Frost

hincheys243881 — 2024-04-26 12:58:01 UTC

The poem "After Apple Picking" by Robert Frost is about a man who's looking back on his life and has regrets about not reaching enough accomplishments and not living up to the standards he wanted to live up to. He wanted his life to have a meaning and he did not believe it did. This poem ties to the theme of identity and societal expectations because while he is talking about not living up to his standards, society plays a role in which goals we believe we need to reach and what roles we need to fulfill. The apples are supposed to represent the anxieties and responsibilities he has in his life and I believe part of those are expectations. We are taught that we have to live up to a certain standard in society and that can help shape our goals but it can also produce a lot of anxiety. The expectations of society and even ourselves can cause us to question our identity and who we are. If there is a certain standard to be met, then a person may see themselves as lesser of a person if they cannot meet it. The author talks a lot about the character's regrets and he writes "My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree. Toward heaven still, And there's a barrel that I didn't fill." He believes that he did not reach his standards as well as the societal standards which leads him to believe he was an unaccomplished person.

Lavender Haze

hincheys243881 — 2024-04-26 12:58:39 UTC

In 2022, Swift released a song called Lavender Haze. While this is a song about a relationship, it is also about her identity within that relationship and societal expectations. She sings about the expectation for a woman to get married at her age and the expectation to follow a certain role in her relationship. She essentially says she wants to stay in the "Lavender Haze" where she can't constantly hear people tell her that she should get married or be "the woman" in a relationship. As a large public figure, it is hard to find a sense of identity and it makes it harder to find her own identity within her relationship since so many people voice their opinions on it. She is a songwriter known for writing songs about her relationships so some people believe they have the right to comment on her relationships. It is hard for her to find her own sense of identity when other people are trying to construct it for her. The "lavender haze" is her ignoring the comments that people make and staying in this state of mind gives her the freedom to construct her own identity without worrying about the expectations of society.

Vetted Article: Peter Davidson; Robert Frost

hincheys243881 — 2024-05-02 13:14:07 UTC

The vetted article was written by a man who had met and interacted with Robert Frost. Robert Frost was someone Peter Davidson looked up to and he taught him how to live a poet's life. This article compares Frost's and Davidson's writing and highlights some of the most important aspects of Frost's writing. Davidson said that Frost was a good poet because he had exploratory ways of talking. He was not always direct. Poems are pieces of writing that people can interpret how they want. They have messages but they are indirect and require some interpretation to understand it. To tie this article to the theme of identity and societal expectations, Davidson highlighted how Frost continuously wrote about "human's efforts to shape nature" and nature's resistance to these efforts. Society always wants to set standards and expectations for the world and the people in it but it is not always reasonable for nature or humans to reach these standards. That is why it is important to be able to form your own identity without others pressuring you to conform to a certain identity. While this article was about the differences and similarities between Davidson and Frost, Davidson talked about Robert Frost's identity multiple times. He commented on his exploratory form of talking, his references in his poems, and even talked about how they saw aspects of identity differently. Davidson thought aspects of our identity were more shaped by society while Frost believed that our identity was more natural to us. While Frosts' main focus in his poems was not always identity, he approached it and portrayed it in a unique and exploratory manner.