SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF SELF

INTRODUCTION

We have been assigned to do an article review about Social Construction of

Self and the subtopic we chose is Self-esteem. Social construction of self is defined
as a theory that people develop knowledge of the world in a social context, and that
much of what we perceive as reality depends on shared assumptions. From a social
constructionist perspective, many things we take for granted and believe are objective
reality are actually socially constructed, and thus, can change as society changes.
Social construction is important in our society nowadays because the world we are
living now is more challenging compared to the past especially in our society’s
perspective. Lack of social construction of self could decrease someone’s self-esteem
and eventually will cause several diseases like anxiety and mental health. Based on
our subtopic which is self-esteem is related with society life. Majority people nowadays
really pays attention on how other people think about themselves and how do we
present ourselves to the public. This means self-esteem affects to our inner self
because it can increase and decrease based on several factors. Why is self-esteem
related to the social construction of self? Overviewing from our articles, social
construction of self would not enhance if our self-esteem is not stabilized as we could
not control our emotions and this could lead to negative thinking. Dissentient thinking
could make our confidence level in communicating and meeting people in public to
drop. In the nutshell, our article review is about how self-esteem affects ourselves to
the society.

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ARTICLE REVIEW

 ARTICLE 1

Reviewing on my article, with the topic “insight into the motivation of selfie postings:
impression management and self-esteem” we summarize that selfie-postings are the
newest tool to present ourselves. In addition, nowadays our biggest medium is social
medias and people will present their selves by posting selfies, this happens most likely
in the female millennials. In addition, the word “selfie” have been used worldwide as
the statistic have proven that an average of 3 million selfies were taken per day and
have been uploaded to all medium of social media. This “selfie” then have been added
into Merriam - Webster Dictionary, that defines an image of oneself taken by oneself
using a digital camera. A report from “Selfie city”, proves that posting selfies is one of
the key in motivating female millennials. They made an extant work by interviewing
females and the findings showed that informants were motivated to convey
impressions by two sub-themes which are happiness and physical appearance. Selfie
posts are also to manage their desired impressions. Specifically, to enhance a person
self-esteem they look at the number of likes their selfies receive. Self- presentation
conveys an image about oneself to another individual. Self- presentation involves not
only individual attempts to manage the impressions of others also their efforts to
control their impressions. Goffman research found that the connection between
people’s daily lives and theatrical performances with individuals controlling and guiding
how they perceived by others on the way individuals obtain information about other
individuals. While traditionally research, which is also during the past individuals
present their selves in the form of face-to-face interactions. Prior work suggested that
personal websites is one of the biggest tool to reach either friends or strangers. Social
media enables posts allow people to present themselves by sharing selfies that will
allow consumers to feature their physical selves to the public.

Hence, a phenomenological interview was done to gather experiential information

for richer understanding about the motivation associated with selfie-postings. The goal
of this interpretive approach is to derive meanings and conclusion about selfie. Next,
they focused on the understanding the informants of experience they gain by selfies.
Regarding the motivation that female millennial consumers have for posting selfies,
analysis from the interview revealed that impression management is a motivation for

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posting selfies. Also, self-esteem plays integral role by posting selfies as the number
of likes increases, self-esteem increases. Impression motivation defines when people
become encouraged to control how other see them while impression construction
refers when people determine precisely the kind of impression to personally create the
particular impression. Selfies could manage a positive impression even if it may not
be genuine. People post selfies when they are happy and to show that they are in a
good condition so that their informants is viewed as happy individuals. For example,
for female breakup is a critical time to appear happy but female will post selfies to
embrace happiness even toughs they are facing a critical and emotional issue on that
day as a motivating factor for themselves. Another motivation from selfie-postings is
to project positive physical appearance as woman always want to look good for the
public. This way they would feel positive of their appearance hence lower down their
insecurity and increase confidence.

In general, as technology and technology evolves, selfie postings in social media

have become a common form to present ourselves. From this study findings,
impression management is a primary motivation for woman millennial. Thus, it reveals
that looking happy, having fun acts as a positive physical appearance reflecting from
ourselves to the audience from a person followers. Sometimes, informants described
experiencing happiness or feeling gorgeous and posted selfies is to capture moments.
By reviewing these motivations, more knowledge is available to understand why our
society is experiencing a growth in the selfie phenomenon. It allows, opportunity for
gratification in the form of positive feedback they gain from the audience of the selfie-
postings.

In the nutshell, this study had their sample limitation by age, gender, geographic
location and socioeconomic status. This selfie phenomenon is transforming the social
culture. When the female informants discussed posting selfies is one of the ways to
manage the impressions of happiness and positive physical appearance as woman
always focused on how to look beautiful to the public, they received affirmation through
the number of likes and comments which eventually will enhance their self-esteem.
Unfortunately, failing to receive positive feedbacks can potentially negatively impact
one’s confidence of posting or exposing their pictures in the medium of social medias.
Thus, selfie can be a good and bad motivation for one self.

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ARTICLE 2

I already read an article about health, wealth and honesty by Jenny Byrne. This
article is under the topic of social construction of self. When I read this article, I can
summarize the perception of self-esteem in primary aged children. Them made a
research which investigate the factors which investigates the factors with primary age
schoolchildren perceive as causes of high and low self-esteem. Them do investigation
to five children using the Draw and Write technique. This investigation shows that the
children perceive multiple factors affecting their self-esteem. This thing can be related
with health issues especially mental health and will effect to self-esteem. The children
are affected by the desire to improve their social status and consider this a way of
increasing their self-esteem. High self-esteem and academic achievement are
positively correlated can be other factors affect levels of self-esteem, and it prove by
the research. Glendenning believe poor mental health and low self-esteem are related.
The Draw and Write technique which was originally devised for children to discover
their perception of heath (Williams et al., 1989). It is to express their views more openly
than the case with a questionnaire.

The true meaning of self-esteem in considered can be an important aspect of the self-
concept (Baumeister, 1993). In sequence, self-esteem theory was reviewed and used
to influence the formation of the tool. Self-esteem is an affective process it tells us
which individuals have a belief or set a belief about themselves. The most importance
in this context is about personal experience and the children’s interpretations of it. The
valuable technique which enable children to express thoughts and ideas are draw and
write it will focus, on the topic being researched and followed by an explain in writing
what the picture illustration mean. There have four invitations, one and two invitations
are requested information from the children about someone other than themselves.
For the third and fourth invitations are asked them about self-perceptions. Two
theories were used in the construction of the first and two invitations in the construction
of the Draw and Write schedule. In the first invitation, the children were asked to draw
someone of their own age who did not like themselves. Meanwhile, the second
invitation is asked them to draw the person who now like him or herself. The invitations
were purposefully to refer to another individual to encourage the children to be as
honest and open as possible about themselves feeling. Furthermore, for the third
invitation is related with the concept of fixed, as opposed to fluctuating.

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 The children were need to draw how they felt about themselves most of the
time. The fourth invitation was, the children were asked to draw themselves how they
would like to be and their responses were used to discover a possible self.
Subsequently, for the finding from all the Draw and Write schedule reveal that the
factors that the cohort considered to have an effect to entitled health. For sure, health
and social factors are the most important for others and themselves, while academic
are given the very low priority. The invitation 1 and 2 show the children’s perception
and factors contributing to low or high self-esteem if another person their own age by
the statistic. There have a few factors contributing the level of self-esteem which is the
physical domain, the social domain, the academic domain

The responses for the third invitation was inform about the level of global self-
esteem and the factors perceived by the children as contributing to their personal level
of esteem. They were asked if they like or did not like themselves most of the time.
Family and friend were the factor of attributed to a positive self-esteem while the
mental health and family were attribute to negative self-esteem. In addition, for the
invitation 4 most of the children desire to acquire money or possession in statement.
Mental health and social status appear to be major factors in determining self-esteem
for this group. When they were in negative minded group the possibility to them got
low self-esteem was big. The prevalence of mental health is from the self-esteem. For
the facial factors, some children were an age think the body image is not important the
important to them was having a long hair and wearing the spectacle. The school could
develop areas of study in personal and social education also give the realistic picture
of physical beauty.

In conclusion, the research sought to discover what aspect of their lives children
took account of when estimating their self-esteem. The school need consider and alert
to children live before something bad happen such as mental health in young age.
Health category emerged as one most important factor in determining self-esteem.
The school nee think carefully about their approach to health education. Besides, the
trend also regards the negative aspect of a factor as more important in lowing self-
esteem. For the positive aspect is accepted as normal behaviour and not given such
as a high status in causing high self-esteem. If all the positive things maintain, it may
help children to raise standards of academic work and behaviour in a school

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ARTICLE 3

Based on the article that we have reviewed, Mirror, Mirror: National Identity and
The Pursuit of Beauty by Hounaida El Jurdi and Sandra Smith we can summarize that
the pursuit and consumption of beauty come in several ways.

The encoding and construction of cultural beauty ideals and promotion of certain
beauty standards has been well noted (Englis et al, 1994; Frith et al, 2005) by the role
of media and the media not only prescribes what women should look like but also
implies that numerous benefits accumulate to those who adapt to cultural standards
of beauty. At the same time, we are able to know about the process of how women
are influenced by their social context in constructing and pursuing personal beauty
ideals. Plus, the topics of beauty ideals and beauty consumption have received
considerable attention from researchers in the consumer and marketing literatures
over the years.

Research analysing the effect of idealized images of beauty in the media on

consumers are mostly focuses on how consumers decipher such images and how that
in turn influences their body-satisfaction, self-worth or self-esteem (Buunk and
Dijkstra, 2011; Calogero et al, 2007; Clay et al, 1999). According to social comparison
theory (SCT), consumers ordinarily engage in self-comparison with social groups or
others in their self-attractiveness, body image and self-esteem. Other than that, given
that a person’s self-concept and sense of self are largely influenced by the cultural
context in which they establish (Poran, 2002) conforming to beauty ideals through
processes of social comparison has an effect on consumers’ self-identity. Social
identity theory (SIT) suggest that positive social identity is derived from making positive
social comparisons with favourable “in groups”. Such processes are constructed as
attempt to reinforce an important part of the self-concept, that is, social identity. This
approximate research paper uses SIT and SCT to examine the relationship between
cultural beauty ideals, personal ideals of beauty and self-perception of beauty to
unravel the effects of the social and cultural context on the strategies and processes
by which Lebanese women construct and pursue beauty ideals.

The aim of this research was to probe how consumers make social comparisons
with aspects in their social context, including media images and celebrity culture, in
the construction and pursuit of personal beauty ideals. In their pursuit of beauty, the

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participants sought to establish their identity by making comparisons to resolve
tensions between the fake versus the real, the natural versus the unnatural and
individuality versus conformity. Unnaturally looking or fake features, especially
resulting from cosmetic procedures, reflect not only an inauthentic self but also a
superficial self.

The role of learning identity processes was revealed where identification involved
active information searches and learning practices, particularly about public figure or
celebrities, showed how they overcome adversity with their personal experiences and
struggles until they become who they are right now, creating a connection with
participants and their own success stories.

The importance of mirroring processes in identity projects was highlighted because

it is a process which consumers validate and agree with confirmation their sense of
self (Poland, 2000) and reflects a need to belong and the importance of the knowledge
and what it means to be a part of particular social group which is being Lebanese for
this case. Other than that, mirroring processes have largely been limited to
psychoanalysis (Devor, 2004) and organization studies (Hatch and Schultz, 2002) but
the analysing consumptive contexts has been overlooked due to their usefulness.

The importance of national identity and beauty imaginaries in a society in the

pursuit of beauty have been highlighted in the study. Plus, the cultural aspects that
shape beauty ideals and beauty types such the cultural representations can be of more
relevance than standardized beauty types. Also, it has been highlighted that the role
of learning and identification in the pursuit of beauty and in influencing beauty ideal.

As a conclusion, we can conclude that the pursuit of beauty has involved rich
processes and it is motivated by the search for an authentic self while the participants
construct and pursue beauty ideals by mirroring views of their national identity through
three aspects which are conformity, identification and subversion.

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FINDING AND SIMILARTY OF THIS THREE ARTICLE

Based on these 3 articles we have read and discussed there are several
similarities that we gained from the article. It is obvious that, self-esteem effects our
social construction rather in our personal life. Firstly, a person beauty effects the social
construction of self. This happens because nowadays people are too obsessed with
how they look and based on the World Plastic Surgery Statistic, South Korea have the
most number of people who carry out plastic surgery because they think that they are
not beautiful enough and their insecurity level increases. This eventually make us feel
ungrateful for what we already have because actually everyone in this world have
beauty in our own way. Second affinity regarding our article is, the aftereffect is we
can obtain side effect to our mental health. We can prove it by observing the increase
of number of people who experience depression as a mental health. Many people who
becomes the former patient state that they main reason on why they get affected in
depression is because of what the society thinks about how they confront their selves
at the public. This relates to the social construction of self because a person has to
balance between their physical and mental to experience a good lifestyle with a
healthy living. In the denouement, the level of self-esteem is the most obvious
similarities between this three article because our mentality is stuck on what people
judge just by looking at the appearance of a person. For an instant, the number of likes
that a person gained by posting a selfie in their social media account increases their
self-esteem however, if somebody doesn’t respond in the way that they hope for, they
might start to feel anxious and even a bit paranoid. Next, people also think that money
can buy a beauty of a person. For an instant, if we have money we can go and shop
for clothes, make ups and accessories, and some people with low class mentality will
say “it is not that you are not beautiful, it is just that you don’t have money”. The truth
is, beauty can be expressed in many ways like someone who is kind hearted can be
beautiful because not everyone can be pretty and nice at the same time. We can say
that beauty, mental health and level of self-esteem can be controlled by ourself.

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CONCLUSION

Sequestering from all the articles we have summarized, we conclude that self-
esteem affects at all range of ages this is because not only teenagers attend to be
speaking in public as nowadays children at the age of 6 years old have been exposed
talking in the public since they are in the kindergarten. Being exposed to the public
and media, getting compliments from media followers could enhance a person self-
esteem. Hence, media social also have negative impact to ourselves this is because
sometimes when we overthink and get to obsess of the numbers of likes we obtain
from our followers we quickly judge ourselves for example “Am I to ugly?”, “Why don’t
I get more attention like others get?”. As the world that we are leaving now self-esteem
does not only occur at teenagers, but it also effects at all the people who are using
social media as their medium on how they expose themselves to the public. We need
to be serious of this issue as this will effects our personal daily life. We don’t want our
life to be miserable and unhappy just because we keep on following and get affected
by other people might think of us. If it is not from ourselves then who? because
everything starts from ourselves. At the end of the day, we are living our life for
ourselves and not those people who keeps on downgrading you.

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REFRENCE

 Kathrynn Pounders, Christine M. Kowalczyk, Kirsten Stowers . 2016 . Insight

into the motivation of selfie postings: impression management and self-esteem,
USA : University of Texas. Department of Marketing and Supply Chain
Management, USA : East Carolina University.

 Jenny Byrne, 1999, Health, wealth and honesty: perceptions of self ‐esteem in
primary‐ aged children UK : Senior Lecturer at Chichester Institute of Higher
Education, Chichester

 Hounaida El Jurdi, Sandra Smith, 2018, Mirror, mirror: national identity and the
pursuit of beauty, Lebanon : Olayan School of Business, American University
of Beirut, New Zealand : University of Auckland.

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