Tag Archives: identity

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Our Fragile Selves

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It’s been a burden to go through life having an uncanny resemblance to Cary Grant. The great Hollywood star remains an iconic example of the perfect leading man. You can undoubtedly see the resemblance and imagine the confusion.  

I’m on the left.

                    Me
                Cary Grant

Believe me, it was not easy to be mistaken for the famous movie star.

In his day a lot of guys wanted to be Cary Grant.  Even the former Archie Leach said that even he wanted to be the suave persona he portrayed in movies with Katherine Hepburn, Ingrid Bergman and others.

Personal Identity is one of the most fragile of our perceptions. Media researchers remind us that the young–especially girls and young women–are  endlessly needled by messages that undermine shaky egos.  “I’m not attractive enough” is the generic effect of viewing advertising and other elements of popular culture. It is delivered incessantly, sabotaging a person’s birthright for an intact and resilient self image.  Even so the Grant example is a reminder that we easily imagine a form of our idealized selves.

Advertising is an interesting case because we usually don’t usually think of it as a vessel for delivering messages of inadequacy.  Ads come in the form of ‘good news’ and upbeat reminders. But those dealing with what the industry calls “personal care products” are filled with remedies to trumped up problems created specifically to sell a product.  Ads destabilize a young consumer.  They beg an individual to worry about problems they might not have known they had: blemishes, hair that is the wrong color, or a body type that deviates from an idealized norm.  In fact, film, advertising and the gatekeepers of media content (especially in fashion, dance and television casting )generally prefer “ectomorph” women who straddle the borderlands of the anorexic.

“Body dysmorphia” begins for some males and females during adolescence.  This  consuming obsession over appearance affects almost 3 in 100.  But much larger percentages have issues accepting their physical appearance.  This is all made worse by the ironic fact that our general appearance is a relatively fixed part of ourselves, often getting more attention than the thoughts we utter: aspects of ourselves that are within our control.

When we are young, we often assume that what we offer as our physical selves should be enough to secure our place and our status with our peers.  It’s one of the vulnerabilities of youth that we regard our lithe bodies as our best calling card. What else do muscled men or pretty young woman need to offer?  A racetrack of a mind or verbal facility might only complicate things.

Soon enough our identities must deepen. Who we “are” must be much more than how we look. For many that takes a degree of self-induced emancipation, as in this personal declaration from comedian Margaret Cho:

I fly my flag of self esteem for all those who have been told they were ugly and fat and hurt and shamed and violated and abused for the way they look and told time and time again that they were ‘different’ and therefore unlovable. Come to me and I will tell you and show you how beautiful and loved you are and you will see it and feel it and know it and then look in the mirror and truly believe it.

The Challenge of Reframing Leisure Choices as Ethical Choices

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Street musician commons wikimedia
 Street musician                                                commons wikimedia

Even very good arguments describing musicians who are deprived of compensation usually have no impact on downloaders.

Communication often involves thinking strategically to find the right appeals that will produce compliance in a target audience. Searching for ways to induce others to accept the kinds of choices we endorse is always a challenge. And while it usually makes sense to focus on what works—strategies that show some success in getting agreement—I am struck with how difficult it is to produce one kind of change:  convincing individuals that a favored leisure activity is a bad ethical choice. It almost never works.

There are no shortages of relevant cases where we have all have been on the sending or receiving end of these appeals: criticizing attendance at sporting events that can result in serious injuries to the participants (boxing, football), decrying a life-style choice that wastes resources (owning a mile-to-the-gallon cigarette boat or SUV), attending performances that include individuals charged with making bad choices (avoiding films by Woody Allen), using products that come with significant health risks (smoking, racing motorcycles), and so on.  We all struggle with the apparent hypocrisy of violating our own values in the pursuit of the things we enjoy.

One especially good case study is the plea from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and any number of musicians to not download “pirated” music. The request is to instead purchase “legal” singles and albums from record companies or online retailers, who will then distribute royalties to songwriters and musicians. The cause seems just, even though the industry can be its own worst enemy, as in attempts by Warner Music to go after restaurants and public venues where someone might sing “Happy Birthday to you,” a song they erroneously claimed to own.

Piracy is no longer a new problem. But one can look at the state of the music industry today and conclude that the digital revolution has been cruel to musicians.  Stephen Witt’s recent book, How Music Got Free (Viking, 2015) is just the latest account of the unraveling of the record business, mostly at the hands of ordinary listeners who can now copy music files without payment.  Witt reports that there was only one platinum album (1 million units shipped) in 2014. The singer was Taylor Swift, and–as television’s ET reports– even she’s not happy.

We simply don’t buy as much recorded music any more. We rent it, sometimes legally from online services, and often borrow it from each other, bypassing a legitimate path for distributing royalties. Fewer albums and singles are sold today because a digital copy of any one can function as a “master” available to make many more.

I’m always impressed with how little impact solid arguments about musicians deprived of compensation actually have on listeners, which means most of us. We simply resist linking our behavior to the theft or “piracy” of someone’s creative work.  It’s not that we have to worry about whether Ms. Swift will be able to pay the light bill. It’s that musicians in virtually every musical category have been cut off from revenue streams that could support them.

And so a simple quid pro quo can be made: To support the musicians you like, buy their music.  But images of talented modern musicians living as paupers doesn’t motivate in the ways one might expect.  Adding in the argument that downloading is “theft” of their intellectual property hardly results in the kind of cognitive dissonance a persuader might expect.

Even students who are also budding musicians don’t seem to take the bait. Perhaps they should. As RIAA spokesman Cary Sherman noted in a 2012 speech, the Bureau of labor statistics estimates there is a 41% drop since 1999 in people who identify themselves as musicians. That corresponds to a continuing decline in the sale of recorded music of all sorts.  Even though more albums are being released, most (80%) sell less than 100 copies.

At several levels it’s obvious why we do not heed requests to change a behavior we enjoy. Our leisure passions are linked to our personal identity.  To give them up is to face the unwelcome thought of becoming at least a slightly different person. Then, too, the immediate rewards of our passion are much more tangible than compliance with a behavioral ideal. It’s probably only a few academics and some musicians who like to intellectualize potential hypocrisies.

In addition, we can generate perfect rationalizations that will take us off the hook.  We look for cases that will confirm a prefered view that no harm is done. Using this kind of process of “motivated reasoning,” we focus on the single instance that minimizes the power of arguments for change.  Hence: “Taylor Swift will never miss the puny royalties she would get from a legal download,” or “I paid too much to hear Paul McCartney last year,” or “I live by the principle that the internet ‘wants to be free.'”  And so we find ways to not notice the lie that separates our best instincts from our actions.

Comments: Woodward@tcnj.edu