Gee, you had a funny way

No wonder I’m always annoyed with my peers’ behavior. And no wonder THEY tend to give me THE LOOK at almost every single thing I do.

Blame it on my affair with English network shows, movies and YouTube videos if you would, but I never seemed to fit in any mini social circles or subculture groups for as long as I could remember, for my quirks deemed too out of norm for the tight-knit clan of Asian drama enthusiasts.  

They say walking in the open air and having direct contact with the scorching beams of sunlight would darken their Olay-creamed milky skin and ultimately sentence them with skin cancer; I say doing so gives me a sense of freedom, paints my skin a healthy shade and provides the thrill of adventure, especially if me and my friends found ourselves lost.

They say the ideal way to spend a Sunday afternoon is to built a north pole out of an air-conditioned room and laze about or surf the net or just shop the hours away; I say a day is most luxurious when luck gives me a shady spot in a garden where I could read my book or my friends and I take off on an impromptu trip to nearby states or I get to fall asleep on the grass in the middle of a picnic with a bunch of crazies. And yes, I have tried all 3.

They say singing in a boxed-up, dimly lit karaoke room with traces of cigarette smoke is THE way to celebrate an occasion; I say pumping up the car radio, winding down the window and screeching the songs at the top of our lungs to passerby is THE way to drive away any blues or get high.

It probably took them less than 24 hours to realize they couldn’t attempt to squeeze me into the mould of the society; all thanks to my relationship to English-conversing media.

Welcome to the world of mass media socialization.

Socialization, to my understanding, is the nurturing and acquiring of one’s behavior, culture believes and ideologies through interaction between individual beings, as a group, in an institution and through electronic media. Thus, the mass media socialization that I have mentioned above refers to our learning from the said medium about what kind of behavior is deemed right or wrong. Like the example that Ms. Yap pointed out: Asian dramas put heavy emphasis on family, and allow only discreet manners of showing affection between lovers; Western TV series, on the other hand, address issues faced by teenagers, from parents’ divorce to drugs to pregnancy, a common presence in most of the shows, as well as a colorful splash of sexual affiliations.

So my behavior has been a learned one, all but thanks to the Hollywood bowl I eat from and the British cereal my dad fed me, or tried to, because British humor is not my thing. Ha. And I spent half of my life being frustrated with my peers, judging their mentality and actions without understanding why.

Of course, there are also the family, school and occupational group factors to take into account. Every one of these agents of socialization is like a sledge hammer that would make a dent on a person’s wall of mental development and socializing skills, an imperative impact on his or her life living in a society.

In that case study of Isabelle and Genie, it is saddening to read of such harsh abuse from parents, and sadder even to know similar situations still occur in this modern age. I’m an avid reader and fan of psychologist Torey Hayden’s books on her treatment of linguistic-based-impaired children, such as elective mutes, who could speak but refused to due to a traumatic experience. A lot of these children were abandoned, isolated and abused, whether physically or emotionally, to a point that it took years and a generous amount of patience before they could overcome their speech problems and fears to talk about what they had been through. Some of the things I read were sick and downright immoral, like how a girl was forced to dig in garbage bins for a scrap of food and had feces shoved into her mouth when she tried to scream for help, and the worst part? Her biological father was the kidnapper, who wanted revenge on her mother for divorcing him.   

She never did recover fully, but she her mental health improved almost as much as Isabelle. This is because she lost so much of her childhood in seclusion and to abuse that the lack of proper socialization left her handicapped when it came to human interaction and expression of emotions, hence proving the importance of socialization on human development.

As for biological inheritance, my reckoning is that it is only about 20% influential on our personality traits. Let’s make myself a specimen: ever since I was old enough to make sense of my parents’ actions and attempt at imitation, I had been trained to act ‘correctly’, whether it was eating at the table, the formula of wearing an attire, or addressing elders, all for the need to conform to the norms of the society, not to mention what I’d absorbed from the mass media. So what are left of my biological inheritance influences are the specific way I like certain things done, my taste in food, die-hard habits, like my mirrored version of my dad’s habit of peeling the dry skin off the lips (yes, yuck).

Socialization plays a huge role on shaping me into who I am and would continue to do so till the end of time (I have a flare for exaggeration), because we would never stop learning and growing as a person; and that, my friend, is the beauty of being human, because we could always re-learn what we forgot or lost. It is a blessing that even when we are all wrinkled and white-haired, we could still continue to attain knowledge and grow mentally.