Taking the illustration of American sex norms, two proscriptive norms prohibit premarital intercourse and extramarital intercourse. But many boys also have been taught that sex is good and that they should seek to "score" with girls whenever possible. Somewhat similarly, girls have been taught that promiscuous intercourse before marriage is bad; but they have also been taught that sex is acceptable within true love relationships. Members of both sexes, then, find themselves faced with conflicting demands for participation in sex and for abstinence from it. They also discover that there are sanctions associated with either course of action. William Graham Sumner called "folk-ways"; that is, conventional ways of doing things that are not defined as crucial to the survival of either the individual or the society. The 'should behaviors' in our own society include the prescriptions that people's clothes should be clean, and that death should be recognized with public funerals.
The word "May" in the definition of norms indicates that, in most groups, there is a wide range of behaviors in which the individual is given considerable choice. To continue the illustration, in Western countries girls may select to wear dresses or halters and jeans. Funerals may be held with or without flowers, with the casket open or closed, with or without religious participation, and so on.
The remainder of the definition, including the 'should-not' and the 'must-not' behaviors, probably does not require lengthy illustration because such examples are implicit in what has already been said. One should not belch in public, dump garbage in the street, run stop signs, or tell lies. One must not kill another person or have sexual intercourse with one's sister or brother.
To test this interruption of everyday “norms” I decided to try to do something out of the ordinary to a local shopping center here in my hometown Kennett. I am a pretty outspoken individual and I love to dance. Loud music and dancing is not normally seen around here, so I took my radio to our shopping plaza, wore a bright blue shirt with black jeans and multi-colored high-top shoes, and danced for about thirty-forty minutes. This plaza has about 10 different stores so it usually has quite a bit of people coming in and out of them. Granted, I don’t dance the best, and my style of dancing is different than what is normally seen around here (rave, shuffling, hip-hop, tutting, slides, ect.), I do dance pretty well.
I was, of course, a bit nervous because I usually just dance with other dancers. However, it went well and exactly like I expected. Most people stared at me blankly, ecstatically, eagerly, or would simply double take a glance and then go on about their business. I got a few verbal cheers from random people. Two African American gentlemen joined me for a couple of steps while they walked by. Plenty of girls watched and I could tell that they were eager for me to teach them something but they walked away after five minutes of observation. I noticed that the senior citizens (60 years old and up), except the couple who watched from a distance for a little bit, didn’t even glance at me.
I am far from the definition of a “shy” person, so people’s reaction didn’t affect me in my mission to go through with my experiment. I believe that I was successful in showing my fellow townspeople that dancing should be embraced more here and that it can be very entertaining to watch.
In conclusion, I found that I did break the norms of my fellow citizens’ everyday routine at the plaza. As I expected, people were in some way interested whether it be to come up to watch me or glance to see what I was doing from a distance. To me, simply proving that civilization is always intrigued by something that is out of the ordinary within their lives; individually, as a whole, something small taking place, or someone doing something different. This is reasoning behind how our world has changed sociologically so drastically over the last 200 years—people hunger for change, development, and entertainment, whether it be for the better, worse, or no particular reason at all.
