The aspect of finding yourself and in turn identifying who you are is an obvious aspect of everyday life. Being able to ascribe an identity to yourself is complicated because there our so many components that contribute to how we are who we are; among the contributing factors to self are gender, body, consumption, education, and food. In this cartoon it speaks to many different levels of identity and the search for self through a global positioning system (GPS). In this comic a middle age women seeks out the electronics department in hopes to find herself. She appears to have gone down a long journey to discover herself; she has tattoos all over her body, several piercings, a choker necklace and what seems to be a mohawk. These traits she reveals physically tend to match the traits of an adolescent teen that is considered punk-rock or rebellious. The important point to note here is that although some sort of identity is expressed she is still on the road of self discovery internally as well as externally. The comic here represents a variety of pressures that human beings feel because of the struggle to represent the real you when your physical identity is not congruent. In Elliot's "The Face Behind the Mask" he describes the medicalization of social phobia and how it effects ones ability to live life. The question he greets the reader with is why is "medicalizing a personality trait called shyness" so plausible in America and why do we need to (Elliot 58)? Personality is a way of presenting yourself to the rest of the world, "and you want your personality to be 'dazzling' (Elliot 60)." Self-presentation attracts others to and is what makes you appealing within our society, for instance being out-going, opinionated or creative versus being shy. As Elliot says personality is "to make yourself interesting and attractive to other people, how to make them like you and respect you and want to be around you (60)." Thus, the next step if people are not attracted to your personality is to seek self-improvement. This point is, as Elliot addresses, "You might have been given a certain kind of personality but with the right kind of help you could change it (61)." In the comic above the women is seeking to find her true identity, therefore in Elliot's notion her personality creates her social identity and how she is viewed but she can develop and change to improve herself to become socially acceptable. There is a constant desire to claim an identity, to be somebody, "We must master and control the qualities we already possess in order to gain the good opinion of others (61-62)." Therefore, it is crucial to overcome poor traits with medication because it allows the individual to master the desire traits as well as control them to the point where society is attracted to the personality. Elliot argues that the self-presentation in social spaces are a performance because of the social expectations involved which cause humans to regulate what they do and don't do. In the situation of social phobia and creating a better representation for society we are compromising our own feeling of self-identity.
In Elliot's article, "Amputees by Choice," he discusses amptemnophilia or the desire or attraction to become an amputee (209). The people desiring to amputate a body part often do so because they feeling that they are "stuck in the wrong body" or their "body is incomplete with their normal complement of four limbs (211)." Elliot recognizes though that in their description of their feelings they reflect "through language of self and identity to explain why they want these interventions (211)." Although their physical bodies are indicate our form of normalcy they do not feel fully connected. Therefore when the person loses a physical extremity they are actually gaining so much more of who they feel they are. The true self is thus "produced by medical science (211)." Identity in this is seen as self-improvement but not a societal norm of self-presentation. However, the amputees want their self-presentation to portray how they are feeling inside, as Elliot puts it there is "A struggle between the impulse toward self-improvement and the impulse to be true to oneself (211-213)." It seems to be implied that after the amputees reach their limbless destination that they have a sense of achievement or well-being that they lacked before, as one amputee proclaims "You have made me the happiest of all men by taking away from me a limb which put an invincible obstacle to my happiness (114)." Whether one was the amputated for desired it the social space available for them was invaluable in creating a subculture which they could be a part of, one individual who wants to be amputated even says to Elliot, "The internet was, for me, a validation experience (217)." The common experience here allows these individuals to publicly validate their identity, in turn.
A common theme between the two articles in the importance of feeling less stigmatized by society to seek out one's true identity. In the comic, there is an evident identity search going on that has materialized on the women through tattoos, piercings, and clothing. In "The Face Behind the Mask" a pill allows the people suffering from social phobia to reveal who they are in a matter of self-presentation to others. And in "Amputees by Choice" individuals are trying to creating a symbiosis between their internal self and how others perceive them, thus taking it one step further by going surgical to embody what embody's them.
