HW 34 - The Cool Pose and Various Approaches to Life Rooted in Class, Race, Gender, Age, etc.

Nothing that has to do with cool is ever in the eye of the beholder. It is always in the eye of the community around them. So whether they be from the upper east side or Bedford-Stuyvesant Brooklyn, they are representations of the cool in their community. They are affected by their friends from school and the people around them. These people are the people who shape them and make them into who they are today, not through brute force, but through a lifetime of what it is to be cool and they are simply passing these ideas down into people who are younger versions of themselves. They will make all the same mistakes but they wont learn much because they wont know they are mistakes because they will be happy with them.

The next step is that we Act Cool. We do it so that we can be rebellious to our parents and yet fit in with our social groups. But if our social groups say not to be rebellious to parents then we aren't. We all need to fit in and our social groups are often based a lot around our race and where we live. So we are who we are because of our race and where we live. Our looks are everything about fitting in. We fit in best with people who are like us. Whether that be by age, gender, race or anything like that. These are all the things that put us where we are. It is like a filing system, these are all categories that we fit into and they base everything we need to learn based on all these things. They base our entire life off of that stuff.

John Fanning is the perfect example of this because his race played a small role in his future with tattoos. The reason he did that was because he wanted to be different. Which can be played back to race, but it has more to do with age and gender. He was a male teenager. He wanted to be different and by getting tattoos, he proved that he was different and was worth being cool because he was willing to go the distance to be that cool. That isn't a bad thing. It is a rare thing to find someone who is willing to go the distance to get something accomplished nowadays but he did it because he realized that it was worth it.

The Poem by Gwendolyn Brooks is a really good example of people who were willing to go the distance. The were willing to sacrifice their educations and any shot that they had of being successful in a good way for their shot at being cool. They saw it and they decided that it was worth it be be cool and shoot pool. The reason that the poem is good is because it captures their angst, and how they manage to cover it up and bury it down with things like being cool and how that can lead to worse things in life. I am not saying that all cool stem off from the cover up of angst, but a good majority of them are. The way that it is covered up is determined by race, gender and where they live.