Girls

this is how you appear to be very pleasant to everyone around you. this is how you should act towards my friends. this is how you must eat when guests are around. never chew with your mouth open. this is how you live a good life. this is how you a successful. this is how you be the best christian possible. this is how you wont end up in hell, you dont want to end up in hell do you? this is how you can be trusted by us. this is how you will be a good child. this is how you wont get grounded. this is how you wont get sent away again. and how we wont be worried about you anymore. this is how to be a good girl, mallory! this is how to be a respectful woman. a good respectable christian woman. and thats how to not be trusted, and thats not what not do. but this is how you shoudl think. this is how you should be sympathetic and nice to others. this is how you should treat your sister and this is how you should feel when you do something wrong. you better feel that way when you do something wrong! this is what happens when you mess up. this is how you disappoint us.

i dont know if i did this right - not specifically related to gender. but more towardsmy family - though it does have to do with gender, compared to the way my brothers were taught and were treated. there was definately more focus on me - and my respect as a woman. i think my parents assumed that boys would more go their own way - find their path, but for me they feel the necessary to be hunched over my life, watching me and my moves and making sure i am staying out of trouble - just in case. my brother got engaged when he was 16. if i ever did that they would never trust me again. they would be so disappointed. but maybe since my brother is a boy - he was trusted more - his decisions and his independence. 

appearances - question 2

vazquez waits a while to disclose that brian and mickey are actually straight, but she does disclose this fact. i think she waits because as most peopleknow, there is already tons of prejudices and judgments towards homosexuals. so a story like this, as brutal as it is, isnt THAT surprising, because we know that many people have negative viewpoints on them. but i think she does this to demonstrate how important how appearance is - what it does and what it makes people percieve. that even us, the readers can be decieved. andi think she eventually discloses it to show us that even just this man's appearance that could associate him to being gay affects him greatly - affects him to the point that he almost died. and does the anigay violence change in any way when we recognize that sometimes its victims are heterosexual? honestly, to society i think it changes more. all together i dont think so - violence is violence. just like in the 60s and the civil rights movement - when there was plenty of prejudice against blacks - it is awful. there is no excuse for any person to be treated like this - but i think itmakes it more noticable to society when one realizes that the victims are heterosexual, because then they "recognize" that the victims are "innocent," that maybe this is going too far and that there may be much much more under the appearance. but in reality, gay people experience this all the time - they are the victims and these sort of situations need to be empathized with and dealt with when they are happening - not when straights start getting victimized. 

Dr Wades Airplane Metaphor

i understand the metaphor he is trying to make, though i dont necessarily agree or think it is used in the right context. he talks about how there are two airplanes, and one airplane nearly always gets you to your destination safely - this he is referring to a two parent home, a heterosexual home. and the other airplane gets you there most of the time - but significantly less than the first - this being a single parent home. well of course, i think that most of the time it is much healthier for a child to have two parents, and that having both a mother and father who are loving affects the child positively in a great way. and though a single parent can provide a lot of love and support, it most likely may have some negative effect on the child not having that mother/father there. but i do think this is so relative to say, and i think discussing the success of a single parent home is a separate issue from having a same sex marriage. dr wade does not give any statistical evidence of the success of a same sex household - let alone if the household is loving or not too. he is giving statistics to a issue that is entirely separate. and i do agree with his metaphor, due to the fact that a two parent home is primarily more successful than a single parent household - especially with the evidence of the statistics. but i just think it is entirely unrelated to a same sex marriage and the effects that has on a child. 

do the masculine man and the sensitive man coincide?

this is a hard one. i honestly think the easier answer would be that they do not coincide. that would be my more bitter answer i guess. because from experience, i have been more attracted the masculine man- they stand out, they are "brave, courageous, strong" etc, and these men show chivalry and what not, but because their duty is to protect and support in that way. but many times i have found out that the masculine man turns out to be the less sensitive of them all. and then i meet such sensitive men/boys who "make themselves equal to women" and put themselves on the same level, however, the qualities of the masculine man are not there - i do not get the feeling very often of protection or support. i have met both these kinds of men. i do think the masculine man and the sensitive man exists though. yes, like the author of this article pointed out, there does exist extremes. however, i have met few boys in my day that hold both sensitivity and manliness, and i believe there are much more out there. just because men are men and they have different brains than women, doesnt mean they cant comprehend emotions and be sensitive while also having qualities such as strong, brave, curtious. i believe they exist somewhere. did i answer this blog right? lol

Gilbert's idea of the Last American Man

Gilbert's idea of the last American Man. Well, we talked in class about how the american man is defined by a man of expansion, one who goes out to prove himself in the frontier. who works and builds his spirit and himself into a man by living among the frontier, and the forest, supporting himself in the wild. and to an extent i think all these things are true about the last american man, but from this reading, i took that it was more about the state of a man's spirit. of course, expanding himself to the frontier, living off the bare essentials, and "succeeding" in the wild are all essential for being the last American man, his soul must be in a certain state. his idea about life. his idea about freedom. the last american man lives off of nature - he is connected to the earth, he appreciates the nature of life. he is not filled up by society, by electronics, by inventions, industrialization, superficiality. the last american man is always striving for spiritual freedom. he yearns to live by the purest way of life. for example, the way eustace does in his tee pee, his food, his fight with the deer - he simply continues on the "circle" of life, and incorporates himself in the cycle and nature of life. with that spirit comes the physical aspect - the aspect of living on the frontier, proving his masculinity in the forest, proving his masculinity through working and fulfilling his role in the circular motion of life. 

beauty and the beast

well i loved beauty in the beast very much. specifically belle. i thought she was beautiful. in this disney classic, i was taught simply how beautiful Belle was, how beautiful princesses and girls were, and how i wanted to be exactly like them and dance around and be beautiful. i even got the pretty yellow dress that she wears. this movie also taught me that if you fall in love with someone ugly, they will eventually turn into a handsome prince. and that life is the most exciting and happy when there is beauty involved - like in the end, when the beast is turned back into a handsome prince and belle is once again so beautiful. this movie, also, like every other disney movie, taught me how love is the most important thing - and it like all the other movies made me so excited to fall in love and get married. and that i cant wait for that perfect boy to come into my life. 

the spirit of infancy

"The lover of nature is he who's inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to eachother; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food." 

i think this is a fabulous sentence. he states nearly the beginning of his passage about nature that the majority of men don't really see the sun - they see it only in a superficial way. where the sun is only to illuminate their ways. but one who truly loves nature is someone whos eyes are illuminated, but also their heart. that through their sorrows and all their deepest pains (as he says later), one can find peace through nature - for it is the most pure form of life. it is life, it holds life together, nature gives birth to life, it continues the cycle of creation and life. therefore, we, as humans, are connected to the earth. we are a part of it - we are connected from the soul. it fills us up like food. it goes beyond our physical needs, for no matter what this world does to us, there was a point in the beginning that still exists when all there was was life, peace, and nature - that obviously being our infancy. but blessed is the man who can contain that spirit that he holds when he is an infant - one that is free and revived by the mere life around him - the spirit of nature that created him - and carry it onward to manhood. for he is not living among the superficiality of the world, he is not turned upside down and deeply affect by the superficial things in the world, even sorrows and pain, for he has the spirit of the world. of nature - the thing that binds all life together - that allowed him to be created. and that force is much larger than anything else in the world.

sorry if this is really confusing! i was just rambling.