Chris Collazo Professor Warwick English 155 March 4, 2007 America: A Distorted Portrait of Ourselves America can be a place of freedom, a land of opportunity, and a society of self-expressing people, but America can also be a funhouse mirror reflecting purposely ugly, distorted images of ourselves, which causes us to question and change our appearance to its liking. We can explore our ever-changing images through the meaning of “self,” which can often be found in our material, physical, and mental identities. Our material identities can always reflect who we are, but it often reflects a distorted version of who we want to be. Our physical identities often represent America‟s constant refinement of beauty and our bodies, which are shown to us through distorted images that compete in our advertised society. Our mental identities can often reflect our blurred visions of others or ourselves, often making us zombies, robots, puppets, or dolls that have lost the ability to have self worth or even think for ourselves. Our material things can often represent our wants, needs, likes, interests, hobbies, and many other things that make people who they are, but it can also represent our dislikes, and they often represent what we are not. America often says that our society is the “land of the free,” but how free is our society if it uses propaganda to blur the distinction between what we need and what we don‟t need so we can buy their products? America is also called “the land of equal opportunity,” which to many means that everyone has an equal chance of obtaining material things that would ultimately satisfy them and they have the chance of making it in life, which in turn would give them a self identity. I ask this question to you readers out there, on secondthought to America: do you really think that your material thing can truly describe what makes you who you are? I personally don‟t think so. One thing that I think describes people is their life experiences because people change both physically and mentally throughout these times. I don‟t think that material things describe our true identities because the deep memories that we share with items come from ourselves, which means that material objects are only a part of our identities and not our entire identities. “The first object I sold was my toaster. I sent it to Bill in Illinois. And almost immediately after I sent it, I wondered if Bill even cared about its history. I started to think about the history Bill would attach to my toaster-would it burn his toast, as it did mine? I also realized that the act of selling these objects would start to change my life in subtle ways. After I sold my toaster, I stopped eating toast”(Freyer 59-61). Material objects don‟t define us, but our deep and fond memories of things that remind us who we really are. Our physical identities can often represent our constant struggle to become beautiful and perfect in the eyes of our society. America‟s constant change of our physical aesthetics shows us that we can‟t be truly defined by our bodies because our society will always change the meaning of what is beautiful and what is not. America often uses advertising to claim that we should do something in order to truly find ourselves, like dieting and having surgery for example. In this century, it is now beautiful for a person to be very thin, even though their obsession to lose weight can endanger their lives. America has become a funhouse mirror, often showing and telling us that we are too ugly and not thin enough to be deemed beautiful. Physical beauty has gone to the point that people think that they could buy it in order to obtain an identity. Even if people obtain the image of themselves that appeals to them the most, they would not be able to maintain it because sooner or later the definition of our society‟s physical beauty will change in order to keep us chasing for an identity. Our society has made us think that even if you don‟t feelgood or like yourself, it is worth trying to look beautiful in the eyes of society because you will be defined by others and you will find what makes you yourself, which they claim is your physical beauty. “Health became of secondary importance in the 1980s; it was OK if you felt ill or depressed, according to the popular Billy Crystal character on Saturday Night Live, so long as you „looked marvelous‟”(McLeod 586). America has started to care more about self-image and beauty than their own health, which is a very dangerous and self-destructive idea. Our mental identities can often reflect what we think of others or ourselves. America has hypnotized us into thinking that we need to think in a certain way in order to gain an identity. We are often told by advertising that we need to play a part in society. We are constantly being reminded of the idea that women have to be housewives and men have to be the workers and providers of the family. We are also told what exactly makes us happy and what we have to do to obtain happiness, which often affects our minds. Being told by your society that you are not beautiful or rich enough can really affect your mind in a negative way, and it can also destroy your own self worth. Our society in a sense has become fake and artificial, often full of robots or zombies who don‟t think for themselves but let others think for them. The reason why so many people portray their identity through material objects or physical appearance is because their self image has become so distorted that they don‟t know where to turn to so they go to physical things as a means of having a description of themselves, thus falsely creating a fake identity. “Someone plays with me, plants me in the all-electric kitchen, is this what Mrs. Rombauer said? Someone pretends with me--I am walled in solid by their noise--or puts me upon their straight bed. They think I am me! Their warmth? Their warmth is not a friend! They pry my mouth for their cups of gin and their stale bread”(Sexton 86). life has in a sense become fake and has shown us how people have become like dolls, often being played with and being controlled byothers. The self image inside of us that we view as being our true selves has sadly been distorted by America‟s constant attack on our psychological selves. Through our materialistic, physical, and mental identities we have spotted that our self worth has in one way or another