What We Say Online

It is true that in online social media I have those few friends who choose to go the extra mile in telling bits of their life. From a taste for tasteless but funny memes, to a few paragraphs from a book being written, to someone's personal struggles, to poetic spouting, to intricate word snapshots of the couples one is marrying that day. To be honest it is these people that keep me engaged in social media sites.

In any relationship, whether it is online or in person, you should always be aware of what and how much you are saying. You should understand the repercussions that can happen by giving too much information to the wrong person. And just like you don't talk smack about someone (like say your boss) where the wrong person might overhear, you should be aware that the same is true of the internet. Most sites on the internet are not private and you should never treat them like they are. You need to pay attention and monitor yourself. "Self-monitoring usually makes people more competent communicators because it enables them to see how their behavior fits or doesn’t fit in a given social setting" (Floyd, 27).

But how much is too much? You can read a lot out there saying how social media is not the place for such public disclosers. But I read part of a fascinating article by Alex Lambert who made a case for "public" intimacy. For getting away from the constrained view where intimate relationships only existed in the home or family sphere, and take it back to Aristotle's ethics where intimacy becomes part of your civic interaction, "because a civic order, a “city”, is above all a network of friends" (Lambert 28). I think there is a lot of truth in this statement.

I personally function best with general reciprocity, that is giving with no expectation of an equal or immediate return (which in American culture you supposedly find in families and not much elsewhere). So I post the types of things I would like to know. I will often post short snippets of my day, things I made or did, or bits of philosophical questions. But I am always asking questions about my online posts. Will I be upset if some unknown person finds this out? Will this come back to bite me? Only you can answer these questions for yourself, and yes sometimes you will get it wrong. But that happens in any friendship. And ultimately you have to make the decisions of what parts of your life you will tell.

References:

• Floyd, Kory. Interpersonal Communication. McGraw-Hill Education, 2012.
• Lambert, Alex. Intimacy and Friendship on Facebook. Macmillan Publishers, 2013.

Thoughts on the Little Mermaid

Disney's The Little Mermaid is many things to many people, especially once you start looking at the gender issues in the film. For some it is the belief of dreaming for the impossible, an obvious dominant theme of the movie, and one needed for women in our current age where they are striving to be a real part of the world around us. For others they see the many gender based portrayals, themes, and stereotypes. And you may not realize it, but there are as many for the male gender as for the female gender. For feminism to succeed, all our current and future understandings of gender roles must be considered and addressed.

The main plot of The Little Mermaid advocates following your dreams, however impossible they may seem, and it is one of the movie's best contributions to modern culture. Though the thought may have originally come from Walt Disney (who believed that anything is possible) (Williams, 48), it has now been passed down to one little mermaid, a girl. This is an important step forward in our strides toward gender equality. Although, even though it is being acknowledged that women too can dream for the impossible, there are inevitably still boundaries being placed on these dreams by those around them (and not just by men). However, as the inclusion of it in this movie shows, these boundaries are definitely loosening up. More women are able to dream the impossible than ever before, but what are they going to dream for?

The typical dream for people of the female gender, as shown in the movie The Little Mermaid, is one that feminists have complained about the narrowness of for some time. That is the dream of falling in love and marrying. Even so Ariel had to give up much to follow this circumscribed dream. She gave up her current life, her family, her voice, possibly her friends, and even full access to the world she was longing for (your life being dictated to you by your husband) just to get this new dream of love. But as Luara Sells pointed out in "Where Do the Mermaids Stand?", through this process Ariel also gains a richer, less innocent understanding of being a woman, one where the constrains of the female gender are recognized to be a performance through her interaction with Ursula (Sells, Conclusion), thus possibly helping us towards loosening these stifling gender roles that constrict us all in narrow sections of behavior and possibilities, and maybe even expanding our dreams.

Now to speak about one of the areas that is most lacking in the film, male gender roles. Especially that of fathers. Ariel's father is one who is selfish, dictates other's lives, and thinks nothing of rages where he destroys much around him. He believes this is fine in dealing with his daughter because he really does love her (even though he has never tried to understand her). Why is it that this archaic model for a father has not been addressed more? Could it be like Giroux states that we are viewing children as a problem and not an asset (Giroux, Ch.1 The Eclipse of Childhood Innocence) perhaps to keep from admitting our culpability in their outcome by not seeing or treating them as human beings for most of their young life? If our children are acknowledged as being fellow human beings, instead of a little me that I get to shape and mold or just ignore, what freedoms and understandings might we discover. But instead we create male gender roles that teach our young males that they can never understand women, and thus are giving tacit permission to never try, therefore negating the voice of half of the population. What new understandings should we be creating in our male gender roles instead?

In so many ways a true freedom for all of us from the slavery derived from our current gender system will not be ours until we address our current gender definitions. They must be deprived of unhealthy stereotypes and differences, and be supplied with new language, expectations and basic equalities. Our gender roles and understandings, both male and female, must be created anew to get the freedom we truly desire.

References

• Williams, Pat and Jim Denney. How to Be Like Walt: Capturing the Disney Magic Every Day of Your Life. Dearfield Beach: Health Communications, Inc., 2004. Google Books.
• Sells, Laura. "Where Do the Mermaids Stand?: Voice and Body in the Little Mermaid" From Mouse to Mermaid: The Politics of Film, Gender and Culture. Eds. Elizabeth Bell, Lynda Haas and Laura Sells. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. Kindle Edition.
• Giroux, Henry A. and Grace Pollock. Mouse that Roared : Disney and the End of Innocence. Blue Ridge Summit: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2010. Kindle Edition.