Name: John Joe Rimuel P.

Robles Subject: 21st Century Literature

Grade and Section: Stem 11-15 Professor: Ms. Princess Bucala
2017-03140-MN-0

1. What does it mean to be true to oneself?

- Being true to something we do or we say doesn’t mean that we are being true to
ourselves. Being true to someone doesn’t shows that we are being true to oneself.
Obeying someone’s rule or wants even you don’t like it, it doesn’t show that you’re
being true to oneself. But first, what is oneself? It is the person and its own self, so how
can you be true to yourself? How to be true to oneself?
Every people have different characteristics or traits that we use to make friends,
use to socialized with others. In our teenage life, we encounter different people,
different races, different characteristics, and different friends, can we say that each one
of them has a good characteristics? Has a good traits? Are we sure that we accept them
by the way they really are? At the same time are we sure that they accept us too? Our
traits and characteristics? Our personality? Or they are being fake to belong with us.
In this stage of our life, we are being curious of everything, we have to make
friends that’s why our characteristics that describes us is playing an important role to
our life, we use our traits or characteristics to belong to others, we have sense of
belonging to get along with others but all of these were being bad when we are starting
to hide our true self by making new image in front of our friends just to belong with
them, just to say that you have a connection with that’s why you’re making a new image
of you in front of them. But after all of your lies and fake character you’re not just
fooling them but also you’re fooling yourself, because being not true to others indicates
you’re being a fool but being untrue to yourself is more than fooling other people.
In our life we need friends and other people that will protect and support us in our
way to our life but having friends by creating fake and different of you is being untrue
to them and creating a bigger problems behind your relationship that will blast or blow
out someday. It is true that you’re fooling those people around you because of your lies
but you’re fooling yourself too, because you’re showing different characteristic of you,
different traits of you, different you, instead of showing of what you are. It’s better to
be real in front of your friends rather than showing new image that hiding the real you,
because of showing the real you to them, you can define if they are true to you and
accept you even in your worst, and make sure that they are that friends that may
influences you in a good way and putting you in the right path. And change for yourself
not for them but change it for yourself, because being true to yourself molds you to a
better person and having you true friends.
2. What kind of body is idealized in today’s society? Do you agree with this idea? Why
or why not?

- Everyone has different body, differs in size, in weight, in color, others have fat body,
others have fit, others have large size of their hips, others have their fit body. When we
are in the stage of teenage life, we are so concern of different thing in our life, one of
these concerns is about to our bodies, how it looks, is it like the body of others? It looks
like the body of my celebrity idol? Is it increasing in size? Especially my waist line?
Most of the teenagers were s conscious about this because at this stage they are so
curious about everything, they want to explore everything, they want to try this, they
want to try that, they want to buy this, they want to buy that, It was like they are
experimenting their selves to achieve something, because their mind set at this stage is
they want to be like their idols, like in television, or their idols in modelling or in acting.
They want to be like them that’s why they are exploring, searching and trying some
beauty products for the girls and making their body fit especially to the men, because
many men were so conscious about their body, at this stage they want those muscles
those biceps, they want to build an abs in their body because at their minds, when they
build their body with such muscles, biceps, triceps, with those abs, they can easily
attract girls, because other women wants those characteristics of men but I’m not
addressing all of them but some of them want it.
To the girls when they got their at the age of 13 or 14 years old, sometimes at early
age like 12 years old they enter at their adolescence stage where their body change,
those shoulders are being broad, there waist is widening, their chest is enlarging and
their body forms like a bottle of soda but not can soda. There are something that shows
in our body or face when we are in puberty stage, like pimples. And we don’t want to
have those pimples because it is so uncomfortable for us, we think that it makes our
face ugly and sometimes others don’t go to school because of this matter. That’s why
we use some beauty products that can help us, that can be the solution for this problem.
Like anti-pimples cream, anti-white head, anti-black heads, and the whitening soap or
facial creams. We use the products of our celebrity idols endorse like, belo soaps, belo
beauty products, and many more. We use those stuffs to have a solution to our body
problems. Another problem is about our skin tone, most of the teenagers were so
conscious about their skin tone, their body color, because we are comparing ourselves
to others, we are making some questions that stuck in our minds like, why there skin
tone was fairer than mine? How to become like that? How to overcome these problem?
What are the solutions for these? I want to be like my idols, have fairer skin, soft
looking face, moistening skin, that’s why we are trying some products to apply to our
body to achieve our goals in our body. One of the influences of this mind set is about
what we are watching in television in our phones, tablet, laptop, even in the internet,
while we are watching those videos, we are being a fan of a person who is we are
watching that’s why we want to be like them, they amaze us by their physical
appearance and sometimes they amaze us by their characteristics.
In our society nowadays, people are being colonialize by technology by the means
of televisions, computers, and cellphone. We are just use and use those gadgets and
being under by the technology. We don’t know that we are being controlled by the
technology, every morning we always check our social media first before we eat, we
post everything that we do in our social media accounts even the nonsense things, we
check the news and update in our phones in the morning and we don’t use newspapers
compare to the past years or decades we’re the technology is not rising up. We’re just
keep on using these thing but we don’t know that we are controlling by the technology
and changing our lives.
By the means of the technology, society nowadays, especially to the young people,
we have watch different shows, movies through television, phones, and other gadgets.
We’ve watch different people, actor and actresses, while we are watching them we are
amazed by them, by their physical appearance, and their different characteristics. Based
on their physical appearance, as a teenagers, we idolized them because of their postures
and body. As a teenagers, we are so conscious about our body our face and everything,
we have different problems in our body when we are at the adolescence stage that’s
why we want to resolve it and we want to become like our idols to overcome our flaws,
we want to be like them, we copy their attire, how they look, their hairstyles, hair color,
and how they dressed. Even the shape of their body, we want to be like that.
Women, want to be sexy, they want to have a shape in their body, they want lower
waist line and bigger chest, they want fairer skin, and pointed nose just like their idols,
even the fashion of them is being copied by the women. Nadine Lustre, Angel Locsin,
Maja Salvador, Collen Garcia, they are one of the beautiful and sexiest women in our
country, they are the idols of different women, they research about them, they stalk
them, they want to know how those celebrities achieve those body. For men, at their
adolescence, they are being conscious about their body too, they want those muscles
and biceps, triceps, and they want to achieve those body to resolve their problem or to
achieve their goals to be like their idols, some celebrity like, Jake Cuenca, Paolo
Avelino and Jc De Vera were being idolized of men in terms of the body, because they
have the body of all men wants to achieve, they are checking out the social media of
those celebrity to know how they become like that, those body and their lifestyle. Most
of the men and women were changing their body to achieve those goals they are being
under surgery to change their bodies to achieve the body they want like their idols, and
sometimes those surgery caused so much trouble when it is not done right.
Idolizing a certain people or celebrity is not a bad thing, idolizing their body, their
physical appearance, their characteristics, but being too much of it is bad, to the point
you are changing your own physical appearances by means of surgery, it’s okay to copy
their body but not in the point that you are going to change your own body parts by
means of surgery, there are some cases of this, or there are some people do this way to
achieve the body they want, because they are depressed because they are being criticize
by the other people because of the way they look, the way they dress, about their color,
and all of their flaws, at the same time they are being bullied, they being judge by others
that’s why it resulted to changing them from what they are, some are resulted to suicidal
attempts or suicide. That’s the power of technology they change us, using this
technology may lead in two result, good and bad, good if you are using this at good
purpose and bad if you are using these to criticized others.
I don’t agree by the ideas of the youth to change their physical appearance to
achieve their goals, to achieve the body they want, to undergo in surgery, to undergo
in operation to change the physical appearance of you, you don’t have to undergo to it,
it is okay to be fit, to go to gym and workout, to exercise yourself, it’s not bad because
 it helps our body, It make us healthy, it make us fit, to prolonged our life, but putting
yourself in so much trouble like surgery and operations, it can cause bad effect when
the surgery or operation go wrong and cause so much money allotted to do these such
thing, and I believe that God give that body and appearance for you and you must take
care of it and be proud, because God don’t create different man, we are all equal in the
eyes of God, you’re not obligated to change yourself for others change yourself for
you, don’t take a risk to change yourself, stand up and be proud for yourself.

3. What do you think of people with autism? Do they go through a lot of discrimination
in today’s society? Explain.

- Autism is a disorder of a certain person where he or she is incapacitated to speak

verbal and non-verbal to others, and interaction to them. They are afraid to interact to
others, they want to be alone, and they don’t want to join on anything events and they
want to interact to other, it is more like they are introvert people.

I think people with autism experience tough situation, hard and emotional situation
that result to a trauma for a person, they are afraid to feel what they feel before in the
past, the experience that they don’t want to repeat, those experience maybe repeating
in their heads and leads them to be an introvert person, they are afraid to be hurt again
by the others, that’s why they don’t want to interact with others, they are afraid to speak
because they are thinking that no one can understands them and no one cares for them.

Autistic people are the lonely ones for me, because most of them don’t have any
friends and they have big problems behind them that they can’t resolve and no one
helps them in their problems, no one is there for them in good times and bad times,
they are the ones who is being left by the others, they want to be alone to keep
themselves from being hurt.

In today’s society, there is variety of people, the good ones, the bad ones, the bully
one, the nerd, the weird one, thee smart one and many more, but why there is a variety
of people in society? It is because there’s discrimination between the individuals, the
comparison of each other, the envy to the achievements of others, the gap between the
races, the flaws of each other, gap between the ability of each other. The person who
has autism is going through a lot of discrimination, you know why? Because no one
can understand them, we don’t know the story behind them, we are not interested to
them because we are always thinking that they are weird or they have mental disorder,
we are judging a person without an evidence about to what we are saying to them. We
are always set aside them from our society, we are not treating them as a human, we
always conclude about them, and giving them a negative feedback or negative opinion,
without knowing what is the truth behind them. We discriminate them by not choosing
them as a friend, we don’t allow them in our circle of friends, and we are always
choosing the others and not giving a chance to them, to understand them. We are the
one who is keeping their mouth shut, we don’t let them speak for themselves, we are
building a barrier from them, we are set aside them from our society.
 But truth is we are all the same in the law and in the eyes of God, we have to
understand each other, accept each other, accept all our flaws, all of us have rights to
leave in peace, live with happiness, but we will not become happy if we have the envy
to others, if we are always thinking the negative and bad thing that they are doing, if
we are always recognizing the gap between us, if we are all thinking about the
differences between our races. We must break those barriers and hindrances that block
us to the happy and brighter for each and every one of us, we must escape to the cage
of envy and discrimination, we must reach the gap of every one to become one, to unite,
to stop setting aside of people in our society, we must open our minds and look equally
to everyone to achieve our goal and live with happiness in our hearts.