My research has been focusing on Visual Culture and place. As I have been reading articles on the subject matter, I constantly think about what my students are exposed to through media. I started thinking about one specific article that I read by Kristen Eglinton where she interviews boys through an after-school club called HOPE in NYC about masculinity. As she compiles her research about these boys’ perceptions about masculinity, she sees that many relate it to a ‘gangsta’ stereotype, as the boys call it. Visual culture which portrayed ‘gangstas’ created perceptions that caused youth to define masculinity as: overcoming hardships, violent, having sexist behavior, laid back, and having control or power.
My focus consistently comes back to these boys’ perceptions of ‘gangsta’ with overcoming hardships. I think about this when I see my seventh-grade males who define themselves under this stereotype. Why wouldn’t they want to define themselves this way? Many of them have been witnesses to murder, beaten mothers, sisters, brothers, themselves beaten, and witnesses to illegal acts. Overcoming hardships is what they are trying to do. Many times, in my head, I think if we could expose our youth that have been through hardships to visual culture that displays individuals that have been through similar experiences without the other stereotypes that come along with ‘gangsta’, that we could reduce some of the issues in school. I think what my students are holding onto is the idea of Hope. If they become a ‘gangsta,’ then they can overcome anything.