The Cool Pose and Various Approaches to Life Rooted in Class, Race, Gender, Age, etc.

As said, our friends are like our second family. We care strongly about what they think and feel because they come up as frequently as families come up in our lives. My friends may say skinny jeans and sunglasses are cool and to fit into their "group," I may choose to wear skinny jeans and sunglasses when inside, don't like to wear sunglasses. According to Goffman, I may think that I am being myself and not notice that I am actually influenced by my friend's expectations of me. They may also say that having shirts tucked into pants are uncool and that will tell me that I should not be having my shirts tucked in. And while my friends approve of skinny jeans and sunglasses, my mom says sunglasses make you look like a gangster (which, in her case, is uncool). Because my mom (the real family) overpowers my friends (my second family), I choose to wear sunglasses. Foucault believes that this happens because we are constantly being watched so we have to act for our audience.

Cool does not just affect one particular group but every group. Every group has different definitions of cool and they must act to these definitions to become cool. It is not only African Americans who have a cool pose, which include skipping school and lurking late (Brooks). The white's cool pose include having some of the black's interest (hip hop) and balancing study time (Patterson). But why are white kids interested in black interests but black kids are uninterested in white interests? What shaped their cultural map to include some of the black's interest and how come the blacks do not have study time in their cultural map?

I think we should work with old cultural maps that contradict each other to make a new and better cultural map. But then, people make different cultural maps so in the end, we might have a ton of cultural maps with not enough people to initiate new maps based off off the new ones made. For example, Asian parents think that their kids should get A pluses on all their classes because A's are unacceptable (A is for Average, not Awesome). They think that their kids should go straight home and hit the books, no leisure time, no breaks, and no games. On the other hand, their peers from other cultures with different cultural maps may say that Asians work too hard. They suggest that Asians take breaks, hang out more often, don't freak out when they do not get A pluses, etc. With these two maps, one may say that the new cool pose would be to take five to ten minute breaks every hour, hang out once a month, games for a certain number of hours a week, etc. By taking two contradicting cultural maps, a new and better (containing elements from both) cultural map is born.