23 Exploration of Cool

Being cool has always been a weird topic for me. I know I have had my days of trying to be the "cool" kid in school. Even now I have a certain image of cool that I try to portray, whether I realize it or not. But there is a difference between popularity and being cool. I think being cool is based on people's interest and what intrigues people. Firstly it starts from different groups and or different types of cool. For example from different "cliques" is what it can be better known for. In school, in Andy's class for example people rave and think 50 cent and his rap/singing or whatever you call it is cool as everyone sings along, "heeyyy disss maa sonngg". And me on the other hand, I roll my eyes and sigh "oh god, turn this crap off". From a group of kids that I can probably be seen as normal, some friends outside of school that can better relate to each other we have our own perspectives of what is cool. My boyfriend and I find certain things cooler then other, we find rap music such as Jay-Z and mainstream rap music really annoying and "uncool" and we find music like Japanese pop, jazz, scremo cool. When that type of music spontaneously pops out of know where thats when we are the ones going "heyy thiss maa song". Well maybe not in that type of slang.

There is a really broad range of stuff a person can find cool in a certain perspective. This is where I wonder where people develop a certain liking and interest for certain things to find "cool". One cause could be how a person is raised, what kind of neighborhood a person is raised in, or what type of people a people surrounds a person while they are growing up. This may not always be true but from my view and experiences i think it is unless otherwise proven wrong. For example I was raised part of my childhood in Hong Kong and part of my childhood in New York. From around 2 years old till 10 I was raised around in a dominantly chinese based culture just like every other chinese child around me that was my friend. Although I had my dad who was kind of an "outsider", everyone would call him the "whiteman" in chinese and call me "whitegirl" even though I probably look dominantly chinese. In Hong Kong I was taught that white people were "bad" people, basically they were uncool in the chinese culture. And being white it made me "uncool". And no matter how much I would try to fit into the chinese culture I could not, I was too chubby (since everyone in my chinese is super skinny as most chinese people are), or too tan, didn't speak enough chinese. And even when I try to listen and watch chinese television it was not really white I enjoyed or found cool myself. I put up a mask to cover myself, a mask to show people that I am cool and that I can fit in too.

When I moved to New York I figured I would finally fit in more since New York was such a diverse place full of mixtures of culture and ethnicities. When making friends in elementary school although I felt more comfortable with my ethnicity then I am in Hong Kong I was still look down upon. It is so interesting to me how everyone here calls me "mad asian" or the "chinese girl" yet everyone in Hong Kong calls me "white girl". So thinking that my ethnicity would finally be accepted what wrong as I was criticized by my other ethnicity of being chinese. I was younger at this point, maybe around 11 years old so i figured if I could not be accepted for being Caucasian nor being chinese then what raise is dominantly accepted where I live? So like in Hong Kong I tried to put up a mask and a fake image in a chinese based culture, when I first came to New York I realized that the dominate raise was the Spanish people and Black people. My friends in elementary school and the dominate ethnicity in my elementary school was Spanish and Black. So like many kids I put up a new image of what was expected to be cool by the dominate percentage of kids my age. I tried to "talk" spanish or black which is what they seem to call it which is basically slang. This again brings up the experience I had with someone who said "yo you talk like a white person". So without blabbing on basically this idea shows that where you are raised and the types of people you are influenced by plays a big role on what you find cool. People try to be cool by setting up an image for themselves that would fit in.

Although fitting in to what is mostly seen as common always works it still may not make you stand out or be seen as "ooo that person is cool". This is where an attention aspect in involved. Being cool is kind of like a cry for attention, and although wanting to follow what is mainstream or popular people do not want to fit in too much or else they would not be noticed. Growing a little older right now, although I fit in with kids I hang out with outside of school I am seen as pretty cool, within my friends I am pretty high up on the cool rank since I fit in. In school I think I am in the middle on the cool rank, mainly because to people in school I can be seen as unusual but not too unusual where I am looked down upon as being uncool. Although I put up an image of being a "different" person in school I still put up a mask not too different but not too common so that I can try to portray an image of what I would think people would think is "cool" of me. Sounds pathetic but it is true, and although I cannot say this for every person to be correct it can probably be correctly assumed.