Christenson, Unlearning the Myths that Bind Us Response

After reading Christenson's text I feel lied to. As if my entire childhood was a secret training camp to shape me into a racist, sexist American pig. I enjoyed many Disney movies and several cartoons as a child since that was the only thing to distract me from my parent's constant bickering and I can see how the subliminal messages in said cartoons and movies have shaped my perception on how the world supposedly should be. My views on femininity stem from such media as I viewed girly acting women as how they are supposed to act, though I eventually broke out of that train of thought, the thought of a woman taking a mans role seemed strange to me as a child. My ideas about race were also based on the media growing up and that it loosely impacted my thoughts about those of different ethnicites I have encountered, though few when I was growing up. You could say that I was ethnically challenged. The idea of being the "hero" as a child set my standards high, so high that there was no way to reach them and so I thought of my self as weak and insufficient to the world's view. This subconsciously continued through out my early life and aided my medical depression in making me take drastic action against my self, actions that I do not wish to discuss unless you are a therapist in the field of depression and self harm. As I grew older I realized that it was a false view of the way people should be though the thought still persisted on what my perfect self should be, I saw that no one really fit the description of the perfect person and that it was okay to be who you are. This helped a bit while going in and out of high school though other problems at the time still weighed me down.