Roddy 1

Alexis Roddy

Jennifer Rodrick

English 115

December 9 2017

Changing Identity Due to People and Surroundings

Have you ever been in a situation where you did not feel comfortable and felt the

need to change who you are to fit in? You may think that it is just for the moment, but if it
continually happens, it ultimately becomes a part of who you are. For example, you

would not act the same way sitting with someone in a professional situation as if you

were sitting with your best friend. It happens to everyone, and even if you don't think that

you are being affected by some outside source, you probably are. People's identities are

majorly impacted by the people who surround them, causing them to conform in different

places and situations. Conformity to please others is not a good thing because people

should be able to be who they want to be, without having to worry about changing who

they are for others.

Think back to a time when you had not seen your family, maybe cousins, aunts

and uncles for awhile. Do you remember how when the whole family gets together

everyone in that setting, maybe parents or siblings, acted a certain way and then when the

other family members left, your parents or siblings acted different after not being

surrounded by those people? When individuals are put in different places and are

surrounded by old friends or family, we tend to go back into our old habits or act a certain

way, when we would not act like that if we were not in that space. In the article written

by Joan Didion On Going Home Didion gives an anecdote of

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how her personality changes when she goes home to visit her family. Didion states My

husband likes my family but is uneasy in their house, because once there I fall into their
ways, which are difficult, oblique, deliberately inarticulate, not my husbands

ways(Didion, 1). This demonstrates that her husband does not like to go to her family's

house because she conforms to the way that her family acts when she gets there. She is

not exactly changing who she is, she is just falling into old habits. That part of her

personality is just not brought out when she is just at home with her husband and kid.

This conformity is not good because one, she is making her husband feel uneasy, and

two, she is not giving her parents a chance to see how she really is. Instead she is just

acting how her parents would want her to act while she is there. She is doing this just so
that her parents will not judge her for who she really is, because her lifestyle is different

than theirs now. This personal anecdote is an example of how people's identities can be

affected by the space that we are in and how we conform when when we are surrounded

by different people. Where we are, even if it is a place like home, we are always going to

be shaped in some way or form even though people should ,at the most, be able to be and

act how they really are around people who they know really well.

Being in public places can shape who we are as well. People tend to conform

when they are put in public spaces, in fear of being judged by others. They may have the

pressure to act a certain way because of expectations and social norms. In the article

Black Men In Public Space Brent Staples tells a story about how the character was

walking down a street at night and a woman was afraid of him for no apparent reason,

just for the fact that he was a black man. He goes on in his story and he starts acting

different around others so that he wouldn't be seen as

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dangerous. This demonstrates how people adjust how they are in public spaces in fear of

being stereotyped. A consequence to changing who you are, or conforming to the social

norm, every time you go out will eventually change who you really are as a person.

Staples states in his article, I now take precautions to make myself less threatening. I

move about with care, particularly in the evening. I give wide berth to nervous people on
the subway platforms during the wee hours, particularly when I have exchanged business

clothes for jeans (Staples 143). This is demonstrating how he has changed and adjusted

to his surroundings just so that he will not be feared by others. People should not have to

adjust themselves because individuals stereotype them as dangerous. Society is so

stereotypical that people have to conform to something that is not who they truly are, and

ultimately changes who they are as a person. Now that he does these things every day it

became who he was, and it was only because outside

sources made him act that way.This behavior is wrong because he should have been able
to just be himself, he was not a criminal and he still had to change who he was. The bad

thing about society is that our identities are shaped by the people who surround us, people

that we do not even know, because most individuals will conform just so they do not

stand out, or seem dangerous even though that is not who they really are. Conforming to

other people's expectations is not a great idea because you should be who you want to be

and not let others determine who you are.

Things that happen to you can affect who you are because of the space that

surrounds us and the people in those spaces. For Example, say you get into a car accident

and you have external damage to your body like scarring, it is usually not the traumatic

event that changes

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your identity, it is the people that surround you, strangers and family, that affects your

identity. If people did not focus on scarring in such a negative way than your identity

wouldn't be affected. It would be like it happened and then continuing on with your life

without any embarrassment. Which brings me to the idea that our identities can change

when our insight on surroundings changes. In the article Beauty: When the Other

Dancer is the Self, written by Alice Walker, tells a story of when she was little and how

her life dramatically changed when a physical feature was damaged. It affected her

identity to the point that she would not raise her head because she was afraid of an
outside source judging her and bullying her. Her daughter made her feel content with

herself, as well as those who surrounded her, and made her feel good about herself. In her

article Walker says as I dance ,whirling and joyous, happier than i've ever been in my

life, another bright faced dancer joins me. We dance and kiss each other and hold each

other throughout the night. The other dancer has obviously come through all right, as I

have done. She is beautiful, whole and free. And she is also me(Walker 28). This is

signifying that she has finally found peace with herself and she now feels beautiful again.

The only reason for this is because of mainly one person and that is her daughter. This is
important because it shows how you can be affected by your surroundings and the people

in them. In a Ted Talk Video called How Do You Define Yourself Lizzie Velasquez

gives insight on how her identity was impacted. Lizzie Velasquez has a rare condition that

does not allow her to gain weight. She speaks about how she was bullied once she started

school. She tells us that she had a major support system that would not let her get

discouraged because of what she looked like. Having this support system led her to being

confident in herself, and taking the horrible comments from

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others and turning it into drive to be a better her. This shows that outside sources can

affect who you are, and in this case she took the bad and turned it into good. This

ultimately affected her because she grew as a person and found her true identity, because

of those outside sources. These two instances go hand and hand because they both

struggled with being put down by others because of a physical feature. Since they

surrounded themselves with people who loved them for who they were and seen beauty

in them, that really affected who they were as people. Both of these demonstrate how

people can impact your identity for the better. It only takes something minor to change

the view you have of yourself and that is why our identities are so impacted by the space

around us. This goes back to how conforming to what others say about you is bad

because if these two women let themselves be affected by the negative thoughts and
comments by others then they would have never learned how the make peace with

themselves.

Individuals identities can be affected by a major event that happens to them in

their life or experiencing something that is impactful to them. In the Ted Talk Is Your

Identity Given or Created Marcus Lyon introduces the idea of how many of us define

ourselves through experiences and certain people in our lives. He tells the story of how he

spoke with many different people and asked them how they would define themselves.

Lyon focused on four of the people that he spoke with. Each person had told a story of
why they acted the way they did, or the reason why they are who they are today. One

woman named Ana Claudia spoke on her story of how when she was a little girl, her

grandmother had her legs amputated. Ultimately having that emotional effect as a child

led her into doing medical practice so that others would not have to suffer like her

grandmother did. This shows that people's identities can be affected by other

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people and in this case it was an incident that happened to another person close to her that

made her who she is today.

In conclusion conforming to the thoughts and actions of society is a bad thing

because it doesn't give you the chance to be who you really are. There is different ways

that people are affected by the space that surrounds them. Identities are affected through

people and our experiences with different people. It is not so much the area that we are in

that affects us, but it is the people in those spaces that really have an impact on who we

are, or how we define ourselves.All of these authors gave great examples of how

impactful our surroundings are on us humans. People are always going to conform in

different situations, and this can really affect who you are as a person.
Work cited

Didion, Joan.On Going Home. The Norton Reader: An Anthology of Nonfiction, edited

by

Melissa A. Goldthwaite et al., shorter 14th ed., W.W. Norton, 2017, pp.1-3

Lyon, Marcus. Is Your Identity given or Created? | Marcus Lyon | TEDxExeter.

YouTube,

Tedx Talks, 11 May 2016, youtu.be/-tJKGZ_xSZ0. Accessed 9 Dec.2017

Staples, Brent. Black Men and Public Space. The Norton Reader: An Anthology of

Nonfiction,

edited by Melissa A. Goldthwaite et al., shorter 14th ed., W.W. Norton, 2017, pp.

141-143

Velasquez , Lizzie. How Do You Define Yourself? | Lizzie Velasquez |

TEDxAustinWomen.

YouTube, Tedx Talks, 16 Jan. 2014, youtu.be/QzPbY9ufnQY. Accessed 9

Dec.2017

Walker, Alice. Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self.The Norton Reader: An

Anthology

of Nonfiction, edited by Melissa A. Goldthwaite et al., shorter 14th ed., W.W.

Norton,
2017, pp. 22-28