Sociology of Self. Social Sciences. The Sociology of Self

The Sociology of Self
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The Contemporary Society
In this contemporary society, self-perception has become a significant subject of concern. Moreover, self-perception has become responsible for influencing others’ perception of others or of oneself. Some of the topics that involve self-perception include appearance, character, and actions. All of these can be explained by the ideologies in sociology.
Self-Perception: Appearance and Beauty
People all over the world can be fascinated by beauty. The human representation of beauty can almost exclusively be divided into two—externally and internally. However, most people characterize this attribute on the external appearance.
Social media, the internet, and other mass media resources have featured beauty in the form of the perfect angles and symmetry of faces. It has become a programmed function of human representation which is significantly subjective and prejudiced by different cultures.
Studies have shown that human representation and identity can be reflected through a person’s appearance, which can be affected by the way a person walks, talks, carries and dresses /herself. Moreover, research has found out that people, both men and women, have an innate definition of attractiveness. This perception is primarily influenced by the smoothness of skin, thickness and shininess of hair, and facial and body symmetries.
Most people harmonize with others’ opinion and conclude that appearances are arranged to astonish the eyes of other people. For instance, fashion is mostly influenced by the impression that changes through time and place (Samizadeh & Wu, 2018).
As explained earlier, beauty is not secluded to the external views, but it can also be attributed to the internal characteristics of a person. Nevertheless, more attention is focused on external appearances. Thus, violating the operations of a useful and valuable organizational system of society (Samizadeh & Wu, 2018).
The distorted view within a society reflects the influences of sociology. These differences in the perception of beauty can be explained by etic and emic perspectives in sociology. An emic view can be unconsciously, subconsciously, or consciously expressive and evocative, where it is an insider view. Meaning, those people who are within the same society probably has the same perception of beauty and appearances. Therefore, a person’s self-perception can be influenced by these people in their own community. By contrast, an etic perspective refers to the viewpoints of an observer or a person outside the context of the society (Samizadeh & Wu, 2018).
The best example of this is the perception of beauty in people of colour, specifically the Asians and Africans. Several Asian nations, white skin is the best description of sublimation. Hence, skin whitening treatments in Asian countries are trending. Other features perceived as beautiful in Asian countries include, long neck and legs, stretched ears, and big and full lips—all of which are quite the opposite of characteristic Asian beauty (Samizadeh & Wu, 2018).
Asians, specifically of Chinese origin, have facial characteristics of having a high bizygomatic and bitemporal width, retruded forehead, orbital rims, medial maxilla, pyriform margins, chin, and low nasal bridge with deficient anterior projection. Moreover, the skin of Asian beauties looked younger as compared with the Caucasians because of the proximity of the latter to the radiation of the sun (Samizadeh & Wu, 2018).
Because of this, the cosmetic surgical demands in Asia, especially in women, are extraordinary, especially to the middle-aged and older population. The very reason behind this the application for the approval of the opposite sex, where, an attractive person is a candidate for marriage (Samizadeh & Wu, 2018).
On the other hand, African and African-American beauties are characterized by the idea of plainly “looking good.” The perception of beauty for African-American people lies on the overall package, including fashion, the size of the hips, and femininity (Davis, Sbrocco, Odoms-Young, & Smith, 2010).
By contrast to the Asian, African, and African-American beauties, Caucasian beauty is dependent on the description of a “killer body,” where, they highlight the absence of fat and overall condition of the body. In layman’s terms, Caucasians are concerned with sexiness or hotness (Davis, Sbrocco, Odoms-Young, & Smith, 2010).
Knowing these factors, it can be deduced that Caucasian women will have a difficult time in finding African, African-American, and Asians innately beautiful. This is the same within African, African-American, and Asian societies. However, the insider view (i.e., the person who lives in the equal culture), will find themselves attractive as long as an individual fulfil their standards. Thus, applying the sociological accounts of emic and etic views.
Self-perception: Character and Actions
An individual’s character and actions can also be analyzed by sociological perspectives. Self-perception is mostly influenced by cognitive and affective attributes of oneself which may be derived from a verbal, visual, neural, or sensorimotor configuration. These factors epitomize a person’s...