Sorority Girl Say

Stereotype:  A popular belief about a specific type of people.

This video does a great job of portraying the generalized stereotype of the sorority girl.  Although this video was intended to stereotype sorority girls and Vanderbilt University, it's accurate in almost all assertions for any university across the country, which proves its validity as a stereotype.  Maybe your typical sorority girl is not exactly like they are portrayed in this video, but the video does a fairly good job of giving an exaggerated example of how sorority girls appear to an outsider.

Stereotypes are based on prior assumptions which become simplified or standardized for a group, often times stereotyping can turn into a negative bias. Stereotypes can be attached across all borders. Within an in-group often a positive stereotype will be attached to those within the in-group (such as fellow sisters) and a negative stereotype to those in the out-group (such as rival sororities or non Greek goers). People within the out-group also often attach stereotypes to people within an in group. For example:  People who are not involved in Greek life often assume that all sorority girls are blonde and dumb, or that specific sororities represent promiscuity, high academic achievement, or partying.

Familial Types

Up until the age of 6, I grew up in your stereotypical nuclear family, consisting of my mother, my father, myself, and my younger sister. This type of family is generally what people picture as the perfect family style if they were to be asked to draw their ideal family.

When I was 6 my parents got divorced and I lived in a single parent home with my mother and my younger sister.  Statistics say that most people will live in a single family home before the age of 21. This statistic is in part due to the increased rate of divorce and the ease of which you can obtain one. Also, out of marriage births occur more frequently and it is more societally acceptable for women to raise a child without a spouse.

Up until recently my mother remained unmarried. I now live in a home with my mother, stepfather, younger sister, and three step siblings (as if 7 people isn't enough, we also serve hand and foot a number of pets). This is an example of a blended family where there is a mixture blood-related relatives and non blood-related relatives all contributing to the family structure.

My father remains unmarried today, but lives with his longtime life parter of over 10 years. At various times in my life I would visit them in their example of a cohabitation family. Studies show that most children will spend some time in a cohabitating family before the age of 16.

Each of these examples are representative of different types of families. The structure of family has changed over the years to represent a diverse number of things from the stereotypical nuclear family to homosexual cohabitation, heterosexual cohabitation, adoption, to single parent homes. Each of these structures, however different, are what someone calls home.

"Talking"

The Meeting: 
So you're at a party, or a bar, or whatever and you bump into this cute guy and start having a conversation with him. This is the stimulus stage where you are attracted to superficial characteristics like looks, cool shoes, or nice hair.  One thing leads to another and by the end of the night he has your phone number.  If he asked for your number at all he's probably at least a little bit into you, or he's just super drunk and his beer goggles are extra foggy that night.

Texting:
The general waiting period for a guy to text you is between 3-5 days after the initial meeting.  So don't freak out if you wake up a little groggy the next morning, check your iPhone, and there's not a passion-filled lovetext waiting for your reply. If there is, delete his number and drop him immediately.

Initially conversation will be pretty surface level, the typical "Hey what's up, this is ______ from the other night." "How you doing?" which will eventually lead into playful banter.  You want the guy to think you're "pretty chill" and totally normal in this stage (and let's be real we all have our quirks, no matter how normal we seem on the outside). So please don't tell him about your roommate that leaves her socks on the kitchen table or how your dad left you when you were 6, unless you genuinely want the guy to go running for the hills--bad idea.  Play along.  During this stage people will get to know each other and determine if they have similar enough likes and dislikes to actually hang out. This goes beyond superficial characteristics and people will decide if they remain attracted.

Hanging out:
This could really be anything from meeting up with mutual friends or hanging out on your own, it's usually pretty casual.  During this stage deeper conversations will begin to take place and you will learn what the other person is actually like.  Pretty sad, considering you spent all that time trying to convince him you're just stereotypically normal. Nobody actually wants to be normal. This is where you take the complete opposite route and start telling him everything amazing about yourself so he'll want to stick around. Tell him you have practice later and won't be here this weekend. When he asks say "Oh I'm on the track team...it's the national meet...yeah I hold the school record in the 100 hurdles *insert bashfully humble blush and smile*" Make yourself awesome.

Maybe it'll work out, maybe it wont. If it does you'll start hanging out more and eventually be dating, if it gets really serious probably become FBO.

Stages of "talking" all follow general role expectations.  As a girl you are expected to wait until the guy initiates conversation, seem coy and slightly uninterested but bashful and witty.  Texting back too quickly breaks role expectations and will send a red flag up that you're a crazy clinger even if you're not and just being punctual. People who date "too soon" totally break role expectations. This whole crazy circus of "talking" was invented as a prerequisite of actually getting to know each other, which precedes dating. What ever happened to love at first sight?

Thomas Malthus Was Right

As a female, I think it's interesting how since elementary school you start planing what your family will be like. You want a husband (of course because that's what society tells you the perfect family needs) with a good job and probably upwards of 2 kids.  You'll live in a pretty house in a suburban neighborhood and everything will be perfect just like....nothing actually is in real life.

Living the American Dream.

Nevermind that our expectations for real life are equivalent to what Disney movies portrays and society sets us up for total disappointment in life, that's a discussion for another time.  But let's look at the desired Total Fertility Rate (the average number of births expected from any woman to bear in her lifetime).  So I asked some of my friends: "How many kids do you want?"

Zulay: Zero
Amy: Zero
Claire: minimum of 2
Grace: 2
Casey: 2
Allyson: 2
Nora: 4
Becca: 2 or 3, probably 2
Kehri: 4
Chelsea: 2
Angel: 3-4
Hannah: 3-4
Alyssa: 3-5
Lauren: 3
Katy: 2
Kim: 4
Kalie: 4, but her husband wants 2, so they'll compromise at 3
Colleen: 2

It's interesting that the desired TFR is equivalent to or greater than the zero growth population rate, which is two.  In simpler words that means that in order for our world population to remain stable, a woman is allotted 2 children to replace her and her husband or baby daddy, or whatever. Thomas Malthus theorized that one day the world population would exceed the available food supply. I believe his assertion to be correct.

Although most of the people who will read this live in the US or another developed country with access to ample food supplies (as shown by your apparent access to the internet) there are literally hundreds of thousands of people starving because they DON'T have access to even enough food to even survive.  We are suffering from overpopulation, the world population has exceeded 7 BILLION PEOPLE.  Due to advancement in technology we are able to produce more food at higher rates but we can't do this forever especially with the population growth increasing exponentially. There will be a carrying capacity to be reached, if it hasn't been already.

And as shown by the results from my insignificant little poll above, we don't have any intention of stabilizing the population.  Let's step back a second and reevaluate what a "perfect life" would be life in a world without enough food to feed you, your husband, or your two kids.

Contagion

Recently I watched the movie Contagion, which I thoroughly enjoyed. It goes along perfectly with my major and is an interesting hypothetical anecdote of what would happen should the world be infected by a seemingly incurable virus.

See trailer below:

Generally, the gist of the movie is that Gwenyth Paltrow's character came in contact with a pig-bat hybrid virus while on a trip to China.  This virus had never been seem before and mutated very easily, scientists had a very hard time growing samples of the virus or finding an anecdote.  Paltrow's character  spread the epidemic to everyone she came in contact with while in a hotel in China and on her journey home (which was comprised of a diverse group of foreigners over a holiday weekend) spreading the infection worldwide.

Eventually the world goes into a state of hysteria, thinking that they are all going to become infected and die. The CDC and WHO attempt to contain the infected areas and people panic.  The high levels of emotion running through citizen's minds lead to mob raids on the government, turning over vehicles, breaking windows, robbing stores, threatening and attacking people, and setting things on fire.

A perfect case of mob mentality is when an official from the CDC announced that there would be no more anecdotes handed out that day to a very long line of people.  One man ran towards a woman holding the last anecdote, stealing it from her and knocking her down, and the crowd follows creating a domino effect of hysteria.

What to learn: Don't touch your face.

#YOLO

This acronym stands for: You Only Live Once

It is often used by the young people to justify taking risks or do something that they normally wouldn't do. Using "YOLO" is a good technique to try to persuade your friends to do something they don't want to, peer pressure--it works.

Although this type of phrase has been used in many different contexts for literally hundreds of years (ex. "enjoy it while you can," "live like you were dying," etc.) by every age of people probably dating back to some Socrates theory or a quote from Abraham Lincoln, it has been recently popularized by Drake and Tyga in their song "The Motto."

YOLO's popularity is a classic case fad, often being blown out of proportion by users hash-tagging it pictures on Facebook or getting it tattooed on to their bodies in a futile attempt to become trendy.

But what do we actually know about fads? They fade. They become unpopular as quickly as they became popular and people shed them for the new latest trend.  Let's take for example the Beanie Babies trend in the 1990s. Everybody had at least 30 Beanie Babies which they thought would become collectors items within the next ten years.  Newsflash: They didn't. Beanie Babies are now popular in thrift stores for 1/4 of their original price.

Or how about skateboarding shoes? Everyone at my middle school jumped of that bandwagon looking like little teenage punks and proliferating the bad image adults give teenagers. Thank God that's over. Nike shorts will come to an end. The feather in your hair that looked so cute this past summer now is outdated and you WILL get dirty looks for wearing one. Crackle nail polish, hippy headbands, high waisted skirts, and plaid will all phase out eventually. The RZR phone has been replaced for the iPhone, the gameboy color for the Kinect, and flip-flops for sandals.

So as a word to the wise: Fads are fun while they last, but don't get them tattooed on your body.

Juvenile Delinquency

I volunteer a couple times per semester at a Juvenile Delinquency Center in Mart, just outside of Waco.  We go in and talk to the kids really about whatever they want to talk about and play a couple games of pick-ip basketball or volleyball with them.  Somehow it always gets brought up, but the kid will tell us why he's in the center. Usually this will be burglary, armed burglary, or sometimes sexual assault (which I won't lie is a little discomforting to hear from the child sitting next to me, no older than my little sister).

I always ask what they want to do when they get out.  Some will have stories of hope saying that they want to come to Baylor or college in general, and others say they just want to go home to their mother's cooking.  But you'd be surprised to learn how many of them are repeat offenders and have been in the same Juvenile Delinquency Center more than once.  This screams to me stigmatized shame and recidivism.  The kid will often go home and fall back into the patterns of hanging out with the same bad influence friends who go them in trouble the first time or family members who taught them that crime is accepted in society (Differential Association Theory) and land themselves back in the center.

I think that many people put a negative stigma on criminals, thinking that they are inherently bad people, but more often than not they were raised in an environment that led them to this life of being in and out of prison. Their parents and siblings may be the same way, usually coming from poverty, and it's sad to see this repetitive cycle that they become trapped within.