Discussion: Social Constructionist Perspective

When thinking about the Social Constructionist Perspective I relate it to childhood. As we grow, our world is truly built through communication. We know only what our parents and other people from our world tell us and show us. We learn to talk from hearing our parents speak and we learn our core values and beliefs through the ones communicated to us by our parents. It is up until the point where our own curiosity takes over us that we may, or may not, merge away from our parents beliefs. But than even when we leave our parents teachings behind we still deal with the construction of our societies beliefs and values, and we learn from them. We build our worlds through communication whether we agree or disagree with one another or society by communicating what we, or society, feel towards different ideas. We build thoughts and opinions based upon what we see in the media, what we see on the streets and what we see in school.

Concepts that we in America may have that other cultures don’t have are the rights of our women and the idea of what beautiful is. Of course we have many different beliefs on each of these topics within our culture but we are also free to express our beliefs. With the rights of women, America is very open to women having a voice for themselves. As a woman I find this a strength for our country allowing women to make a life based on her own values and beliefs and not behind those of the man in her life. Also the idea of what beautiful is in our country is very different than those of other countries. I know there are many different definitions of beauty in our country but I want to discuss the idea of the definition our media gives to it. In the media girls, and even boys, are learning that beauty is tan and skinny with perfect teeth and hair. Although this may be beautiful to some, it is not the only thing in which makes a woman, or man, beautiful. In other countries some woman want to stay as white as possible, and in others some woman fatten up for their men. And although the media is trying to change the image of beauty a bit it has a long way to go.

So for all my rambling, what I am trying to say is that within the media the social constructionist perspective is in play. Media plays a big part in some peoples image of the world. It is a strength that we can send messages out to our culture through such a bug medium, but it is a weakness when people use this form of medium as their only medium of reality and worldviews.