It is shown, through the sociological imagination, that personal troubles are stemmed from public issues or vice versa. To illustrate this, Mills has uses unemployment as an example. He states that there are differences between the troubles of an individual being unemployed because of their abilities and qualifications as opposed to being unemployed because of external forces, like the economic climate or racial discrimination. This is because when an individual doesn’t get hired for a job or gets fired from a job, the individual would usually think of reasons that associate with the individual themselves. For example, the individual would think of reasons such as the interview not going well because of the lack of work experience or that the interviewer acted very harsh and had strict criteria that the interviewee did not fulfill. Through the sociological imagination, the individual could realize that his situation of being unemployed may not be due to his/her lack of qualifications or skills but may be due to the reasons in the bigger picture such as history of troubles the company may have been through with specifically person of that race, how wealthy that person is, or his/her fashion sense. All of those reasons could be things the interviewee look at and decide for themselves to see if they like the interviewer, thereby to possibly hire them. Also, it could also be applicable that maybe the company may be looking for a person that the job can be offered to for a low salary pay because of cash flow problems and instead of the person being discriminated negatively, maybe that the individual may also be over-qualified. These reasons often don’t go through people’s minds as they typically associate ‘blame situations’ like these to themselves. By having a sociological imagination, the individual analyzes and realizes their position in the society to the background of the society as it can be stemmed to other personal problems he/she has.
The sociological imagination could be applied to my life as well. An example could be the pursue of a good body image. As I grew up I was a very lanky skinny kid and although I didn’t have any troubles then I started growing an obsession of having and creating a big masculine muscular body. As I was growing older I started to become more conscious of having a good body image such as having a muscular more masculine looking body. A lot of my friends, who originally did not really care or were not concerned about body image, started getting into going to the gym to exercise for the body they wanted. This was and still is a trend as more and more people started getting into it as this makes them think and feel that they are attractive. The trouble for me then was that I was a relatively skinny boy and the fact that there were also so many females who think having a masculine body is attractive, made me feel insecure. This made me willing to start having this goal of achieving the ‘desirable’ body image. I started going to the gym and started trying to build my body and as I went on with the process I became more and more conscious of my body image. Even having seen results from what I use to look like, I still feel the need to continue working on my body till I see my desired outcome because I was never fully satisfied.
Viewing this issue in a sociological imagination, these body image issues that many teens such as myself face are stemmed from the public of what is defined and viewed as beautiful or attractive. The media plays a big role in how the society views what attractiveness is, as it can be considered to be the ones who depict and define it. For example, most men’s magazines have guys with gigantic muscles on the cover, a lot of television shows have guys who appear to be very masculine with a fitting a body, or advertisements that sell health products like protein supplements that suggests that these products help people achieve their goal of growing muscles; beauty. In movies, there will also be a male that is considered as attractive because of their body structure and shape. Me, especially having to live in Hong Kong, a place that is very commercialized and health-conscious, for my high school life as more and more people follow and grow into strive for beauty I was and still am the product of this.
But how has this become a public issue? Back in the 1960s, the depiction of image definitely was not as pressurizing as it is now. The health, fitness, and ‘well-being’ market is so big now that it has so much impact on the society through the billboard, television and magazine advertisements. The main purpose of this is for health companies to sell their products to help people achieve what they think is beauty. With the media being used more than ever before, especially now with Internet, media corporations can easily alter the way people perceive things from the exposure of it in their media. I can say that we, as teenagers or individuals who want to be seen as attractive, are a product of this media creation. The health companies have created a group of highly health-conscious people for their business gains. This has led to the public having body image issues which has linked to me because my friends and because people think beauty is of having a nice body. Thereby, I started conforming to the public’s idea of beauty.
My personal issue with the conforming to a body image can be seen as a linkage to the public issues of beauty and the struggle for beauty. It is the satisfaction of being viewed as attractive knowing that it conforms to the public’s depiction of beauty. That is what initially stemmed my desire to pursue a body better image, as this was the reason that stemmed peoples’ views of what is beauty and what is not.
The sociological imagination offers both a “terrible lesson” and a “magnificent one” because in a way, an individual analyzing his/her problem will feel less pressure as it could be due to issues of the society; a magnificent one. However, the individual will realize that it is the product of their environment they are in that has caused them to not being able to work where she wants, not being able to do the thing she/he wants in here way etc, her personal issues is a product of the social composition. The terrible lesson is the self-actualization of the fact the society limits an individual to do or act on things; there is a controlling force of one’s freedom.
Bibliography:
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Mills, C. Wright. The Sociological Imagination. Oxford [England: Oxford UP, 2000. Print.
The Sociological Imagination. Page 4
