Deviance is something that everyone encounters in his or
her everyday life. It can range from criminal behaviors to something that may
only receive a strange look if the activity is noticed. Deviant acts usually
have formal or informal sanction that attempt to correct the deviant behavior.
How people view and interpreted these actions is purely socially constructed.
This can cause what is considered deviant to vary greatly between time and
location. For example it is normal to see a person wearing shorts and a tank
top walking around a shopping center on a July afternoon, but it becomes
deviant on a January morning. Even varying from the social norms for gender can
be quite deviant. Most everyone violates some social norm on a regular basis,
for this I am no exception.
Growing up my childhood was fairly in line with the norms
of an American family. My parents have stayed married and we had an upper
middle class house in a bit more of the rural area of Vancouver. My parents
both worked as teachers and I had two older brothers. In the fall I would play
club soccer with a group of friends. My brothers and I all attended the
elementary school where my mother taught, and I graduated from the same school
district. Those younger days it was pretty easy to get along with others, but
in middle school kids start to notice and point out differences. While I
personally follow a lot of the norms of society by being a white heterosexual
male, there is one observable part of me that I do consider to be deviant.
What
I consider to be deviant is my body size. What is almost always considered a deviant
body size is being overweight. For me it is being slim for my height. I am
5’11” and according to the US National Center for Health Statistics a male my
age should weigh around 171 pounds (See the table here). I personally weight around 135lbs. Some
people may not see this as all that deviant but it is often one of the master
statuses that I am associated with. When someone is trying to identify me to a
coworker I am pretty much always identified as “the skinny one”. The largest
impact of my master status is being thin is often considered not masculine
because men in our society are supposed to be large and muscular. When I was
younger many people would comment that I needed to eat more because I was so
thin, when I just naturally have a fast metabolism.
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| Taken From http://savvyhealth.blogspot.com/2011/02/normal-0-false-false-false-en-us-x-none_24.html |
This
is a good example of Howard Becker’s Labeling Theory. In short Becker’s theory
states that people are labeled according to social norms and are treated as a
reflection of the label they are given. For example, if a person was to be
labeled a thief and at party something goes missing, most people will
automatically expect the “thief” to be the one responsible for taking the item,
and even if it is discovered that they were not the one responsible, most of
the others will not feel all that bad for suspecting the person that had been
labeled. I am often considered physically less able than many of my peers by
being labeled as “skinny”.
While
I did focus much of the first part of this post on why I am considered deviant
in one way, the fact is that I am really not that deviant except for my body
size. Like previously stated I am a white heterosexual male, which had an upper
middle class upbringing and finished high school. I also largely support myself
with my own income and have a white girlfriend and a dog. Overall I am fairly
in line with the social norms of the US. According to Travis Hirschi’s Control
Theory, this may be due to the fact that I have been attached to many of these
social norms and non-deviant behavior throughout my upbringing.
For
class we were told to write about violating these aforementioned social norms. We
had to either continually act or dress in a deviant fashion, or commit a
deviant act three times. For this assignment I chose to preform a task that
hopefully most people preform on a daily basis, but in a fairly private
setting. This task is brushing your teeth. I saw this as not extremely deviant
act, but one that would seem a bit out of place and lead to some reactions from
people.
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| Taken From http://titusdentistry.com/2011/04/toothbrush-101/ |
I
preformed my public tooth brushing on the WSU Vancouver campus on February 3,
2012. I spread the three times throughout my day on campus with the first
brushing occurred around 10:30 am, with the second around 2:40 and third around
4:10 pm. I would start at one of the drinking fountains in a hallway and brush
while I walked across the quad to another building.
What
I noticed was actually quite a lack of a reaction from any of the observers.
The only reaction that I noticed was that people would look up for a quick
second to register what I was doing, and then they would quickly look away and
avoid looking at me again. This avoiding eye contact is somewhat in line with
John Baithwaite’s Shaming Theory in that people will preform some action of
disapproval upon the person committing the deviant act to show that action is
not acceptable. I was actually surprised that no one even asked me what I was
doing, but I did feel that I shouldn’t have been brushing my teeth the way I
was. This goes to show that I thought what I was doing was wrong and I was
fighting the path of least resistance to follow social norms by preforming a
task that is not commonly done in public.
In
the end I can say that I am all that much of a deviant individual. The only way
that I really consider myself to be a socially deviant individual is for my
body size. Through having to act deviant for class and the how I felt about the
act really supports that what Becker was saying in his work,
“Outsiders-Defining Deviance” that rules we live by represent informal agreements,
such as tooth brushing should take place in a private setting of ones bathroom
or at most the semi private setting of a public restroom. Deviance is something
that everyone encounters more or less everyday, and most people are also
deviant in some way at least part of the time.
Works Cited
1.
Becker, H. (1963). Outsiders, Studies in the Sociology of
Deviance. (Pgs 1-18). The Free Press.
2.
Hirschi, T. (1969). Control Theory. “Readings in Deviant
Behavior: Sixth Edition.” (Pgs 30-32). Pearson Education Inc.
3.
Braithwaite, J. (1989). Shaming Theory. “Reading in Deviant
Behavior: Sixth Edition.” (Pgs 33-35). Person Education Inc.
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