Play by The Rules

Society has evolved over time from people forming particular cultures and social behaviors that shape actions from society’s gaze. Most people want to be accepted into society, but not everyone feels like they could be. In Roxane Gay’s excerpt, My Body Is Wildly Undisciplined and I Deny Myself Nearly Everything I Desire, Gay wants to acknowledge herself as an “ideal woman,” although she is very undisciplined and denies nearly everything she possibly desires because of the many eyes of society.

Society’s gaze has shaped actions and social behaviors that are perceived in the article by Amy Chua in her piece titled, Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior, which is about Chua strict disciplining reasoning behind how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids with the evidence of Chua raising her daughter. Society’s gaze is the many eyes of the people, who are programmed to view things a certain way, that forces people to feel as though they must conform.

Society’s gaze shapes actions and social behaviors that are perceived in society, for example, it is universally accepted that blue is for boys and pink is for girls. Society’s gaze acts as a set of rules, which govern people to fit accordingly to establish goals and prohibit deviance. How can “discipline” be defined? Some would claim that it is the following of rules that remind us of the proper behavior that society has conformed to. Amy is big on discipline and mentioned in her article “Chinese parents believe that they know what is best for their children and therefore override all of their children’s own desires and preferences,” Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior, Chua.

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Chinese parents believe that they know what is best for their child to be successfully happy in the future because children lack self-discipline at a young age and do not know what is right for them.

Society gaze acting as a set of rules is paired together with Chua because Chua develops many discipling rules that will establish her daughter to complete goals and conform to a successful life that Chua’s brain has programmed to view in society. If someone does something out of society’s norm then people will assume that the people’s eyes will look and judge. To avoid that, Chua conforms to the set of “rules” that society governs people to fit to and establishes a disciplined, well-rounded daughter that will fit into the collective of society by just disciplining the rules of society. On the lines of lacking self-discipline, Amy Gay’s article describes the show The Biggest Loser, “A show about unruly bodies that must be disciplined by any means necessary and through that discipline, the obese might become more acceptable members of society. They might find happiness,” (My Body Is Wildly Undisciplined and I Deny Myself Nearly Everything I Desire, Gay.

Because of the lack of confidence she has for being not accepted in society and the lack of self-discipline of her body, Gay is not going to be able to achieve it alone, similar to the child of Chinese parents that needs guidance. Chinese parents are only thinking about what is best in making them successful, not happy because the concept of reality slips away and fall into the rules of society and social acceptance that if one is unsuccessful then society will brush them away. Gay claims, “I was ashamed at how I am so terrible about disciplining my body and I was ashamed by how I deny myself so much and it is still not enough”. If Gay feels so terrible about disciplining her body, then she needs to create a goal to discipline the body, although Gay believes all hard things to achieve a goal is not worth it- turns against the role of society and is why she will never be part of it because she does not act to the set of rules that govern people to fit in. Once Gay acts to the rules, it will forbid her to depart from accepted standards. Society has its disciplines and it is all a matter of how it is preserved.

We all want to stand out in some way, but we also want to fit in: to feel we belong, that we’re part of a community, or that we’re part of something larger than ourselves. Because of how euthanizing Gay described the show, she becomes more and more self-conscious because of how people view her body size compared to what is known to be healthy and ideal. Gay expresses an experience of self-consciousness when, “I tucked my thumb against the palm of my hand as if I should hide my thumb as if I had no right to feel pretty, to feel good about myself, to acknowledge myself as a woman when I am clearly not following the rules for being a woman”. Society says, as women, that they should look good. In reality, there are no written rules to be a woman, but there are rules that are written by the society of how a woman should be. It’s just a way of thought since everyone is different. She needs to work on changing the inner her and accepting who she is to build her self-consciousness.

Whatever happened to being yourself? Society teaches ladies that they have to look and act a certain way to be perfect, but in our minds, our thoughts are influenced by what others do.  Once Gay follows the rules that society’s gazes acts upon, she will feel as if she fits in accordingly to establish her goal of being the “ideal woman” that she wants to be and will forbid her to depart from accepted standards. Considering the role of stubbornness in Chua, she has the idea “Chinese children must spend their lives repaying their parents by obeying them and making them proud”.

The child has to repay the mother because the mother is always taking care of them. In society, people believe parents do what they do out of love and not having to be repaid. Mothers do not necessarily have to give what is needed. This is when it is healthy to bend towards society and realize that another one of society’s rules is parents giving all their love and support they could for their child. Society’s gaze is the many eyes of the people, who are programmed to view things a certain way, that forces people to feel as though they must conform. Society’s gaze acts as a set of rules, which govern people to fit accordingly to establish goals and inhabitation of deviance. Be good at the rules and most people will view you as a respectable member of society. The individual needs to stand up against the role of society to break the customs of behaviors.