Blogpost 2 – Social Responsibility
Being a student at LCF, it is clear that the environment I’m part of is extremely considerate towards all types of differences. It’s widely agreed that, because of the fact that we live more and more diverse lives in multicultural cities, we have to adapt our individuality so as to be able to accept new, uncommon perspectives.
The question is, how can we integrate people that differ so much from eachother organically? The answer to this question isn’t that simple. Although the Better Lives lessons offered me a new perspective regarding these concepts, I believe that sometimes pioneers from the fashion industry have an artificial, almost tokenistic take on how to integrate minorities. Moreover, some minorities are taken into consideration more than other, especially individuals considered as “different” by the masses, but still live a privileged life.
In my opinion, one of the hardest things to achieve about integrating change refers to opting for the right nuances. Time has shown us that making people feel special is inherently wrong and reduces a person’s personality to a word that says nothing. Even hearing the words “you are special, you are loved” projects a utopian, unrealistic state of mind. How are we supposed to be special and loved if everybody is – unless, obviously, humanity were built on love.
A considerable mistake made by actors of any scale is the following – giving power to the word <<different>>. It is only fair to acknowledge the fact that people are stand out because of differences, but, following the same rhetoric as above, if everybody has differences, do they truly exist? And even if they did exist, how fair is it to build an entire culture around one aspect of one’s life, later on to build personality traits and impose them on large numbers of individuals? Even if the intentions are pure – integrating different people and their culture, just considering that all different people can be labelled into this huge crate of “difference” only aids to creating stereotypes.
For example, I am gay, but rarely feel comfortable to talk about this because I feel that it says absolutely nothing about me. Because people would associate a man having a relationship with another man to listening to Lady Gaga and Britney Spears, watching Rue Paul’s Drag Race and attending the Pride every year. There’s really absolutely nothing wrong with doing all of those activities, the two singers represent icons, the show is glamorous and the Pride is very important, but people can start feeling that they do not really belong to a certain community when they do not tick those boxes. LGBT+ people come in any colour, shape or size and it is important to be mindful of these factors.
I believe that the only way to integrate difference is to listen to each and every <<different>> voice about what integration means to them. Some people need help and assistance, whereas others might want to go unnoticed in the crowd. At the end of the day, we are all humans and the breaking of these social barriers should come naturally.