Rough Draft

Cool? Where did it come from? thats what i ask myself all the time. Nowadays there are some many different verisons of cool, it so hard to keep up with. Its a constant ongoing battle within ourselves and with each other. The idea of cool varies in many different ways. Everywhere you go you witness it. Its what we live off of. We seems to try and make this idea of "cool" but what is it really? Especially kids my age they are willing to change everything about them (appearance, lifestyle, etc). Is it really worth all this trouble? Some may think so. I feel like we push ourselves to be this "cool" person but what happens when its over. There nothing much there but just pure emptiness.

When it comes cool, theres no way in stopping it, its like an epidemic. Lots of kids these days when they think of the word "cool", they think of name brand things and being popular or some sort. It relates back to that Merchants of Cool video when they talked about the little girls becoming like Britney Spears or MTV hiring kids to look good in a video to make other kids want to be like them. Referring back to the Britney Spears thing it said to flaunt their sexuality even though they do not know what it is just because that is told to be "cool".

When it comes to appearance piercings, tattoos, hair,etc all determine if you are "cool" or not. When Mr. Fanning came in and talked about his tattoos he mentioned that his tattoos was his armor and that he felt like a rebel kind of showing his side of "cool". Part of the tattoo thing is where you get it if your a guy your "suppose" to get it on your arm signifying masculiny or if your a female you get it representing feminity. I think that refers to the cool factor and that when it comes to cool there are rules and different ways to go about it. Its kind of like a game. The same thing goes for piercings. No only does it matter where you get your tattoos its sort of like what your background is such as ghetto or if your white, black, or hispanic. It all varies. We pierce our bodies to show how "cool" we are but when in reality is kind of showing how fake we are being. So who the hell our we really?

It seems as if we look at ourselves we are empty and just use things to distract us in life to full up this emptiness. There's nothing really there. "Sometimes we feel an inner sense of emptiness. When we look within, it seems like nothing is there, so we distract ourselves with something on the outside, like food or television; and yet, these outer distractions only temporarily take care of the emptiness, or more accurately, they only temporarily keep our attention. When the distraction is over, the emptiness returns." I agree with this we live our lives with all this crap such as technology, pleasing people, and other objects around us to fill up this emptiness we have but we do not even know what is. Its like an unsolved mystery. Its impossible to find the emptiness, we cover it with being "cool". Constanly trying to be this and that. With the concept "cool" everybody trying to gather things to be this image of cool. Once you get one thing you have to another thing. One of the reason we might feel this emptiness because we always have something covering it up. Its like a bandage, we get a cut use a bandage to cover it up and heal but it still there. Everybody wants to be accepted and become this other person to be "cool" so is that emptiness?

"Cool" not only to cover up our emptiness, we live cultural maps revolving this. If you live in a wealthy neighborhood then you have exxpensive clothes and a hot shot car they are "cool". On the other hand, if your in the ghetto living in the projects you have you pants "saggin", you don't go to school and chill all day that is "cool". It shows the cultural maps we follow within our communtiy and what is already set for us in our families. Every kind of race has their own cultural map and how to about it. The poem by Gwendolyn Brooks reminded me of the cultural maps because those kids in the poem are following what all the other kids are in their neighborhood are doing. We are all slave in our cultural maps. Thats if you have a bodega in every corner around you live, it's obvious that where everybody goes just like Andy said about the chicken spots and people always there. Is it our fault though? People are so used to their cultural maps why would they want to change it? Not every cultural maps can fit into other ones. For example, if you are minority and you want to change your lifestyle by going to school and doing what you have to, to go to college. It might fit with those other people like you but not where you live cause then people going to make fun of you "your a loser or your white". Why is that the minority get stuck with the fucked up cultural maps? If your causcian you live the "good life" and if your hispanic or black you "struggle" most of the time that what it is or what people think. Is it possible to change that? Personally, when it comes to my cultural map its get an good education and attend college. I think its like that for a lot of kids because their parents did not attend college so they want to make these cultural maps better and better each time with their children.

Cool can be shaped into any form we want to and mean whatever but it what it does to us that makes this whole thing so complicated. It's one of those that are unexplainable. No matter waht anybody says about it we live off of it and perform in these roles to be "cool". Its an ongoing cycle. Its physically with piercings and tattoos anf then mentally with our "emptiness which we do not even what the hell it is. Then we have the cultural maps that we present ourselves with to be "cool" or try to change out of them to be better.