Society puts great emphasis on attaining happiness through success. To achieve this success it is believed that one must be physically attractive, intelligent, and confident. When we perceive ourselves as falling short in one or more of these areas, we begin to feel inferior to others. This is reinforced as the media is constantly bombarding us with messages telling that we need to change ourselves. Not an hour goes by without advertisements telling us to lose weight, use age-defying creams, color graying hair, buy designer clothes, and offers of prescription medications to "feel" better. Having a disability, wearing glasses, being very short or very tall, or having an acne condition can make a person feel so self-conscious that they may retreat from the world. We are led to believe that if only we could conform to what society believes is acceptable, we would find happiness. When we feel that we don't measure up, we are filled with an insecurity that leads us to criticize ourselves and may cause despair or frustration. These feelings can create unwanted behaviors. In reality, we all need to confront our shortcomings and consider what is necessary to be the best that we can be.

Being able to reach a vast amount of people, by creating a web organization and community, insideye.org will encourage people to look within as they consider what is truly important, and judge their lives accordingly. In most cases, we tend to judge ourselves more harshly than we would judge others. Socrates always preached that, "The unexamined life is not worth living." Examining my life keeps me going throughout tough times.

After brainstorming several different ideas I chose a concept that really means a lot to me because I feel that it’s really important. The message that I plan to communicate, in simple terms, is to encourage people to think before they judge and label others negatively. Whether it’s calling someone fat, skinny, a loser, retarded, ugly, different, etc. We need to think about how we would feel if it was us being labeled. We label people without even knowing the person. Whether it’s swearing at someone while driving or just someone you see walking by. At a young age children start judging others and placing labels on them. We see our parents or friends doing it so it must be okay. The problem is that it never ends. It continues on through our lives whether you’re the one labeling or the one being labeled. What’s wrong with being different?

After hearing many stories about increased suicides in young child because of being bullied, it really makes you think that we’re doing something wrong. Growing up, wearing glasses, I’ve been called names, and know how it feels. I was watching a TV program the other day entitled What Would You Do? and they showed an autistic young man working at the grocery store. A man was calling him retarded and most of the customers didn’t even seem to care or say anything. My mom works with teaching autistic students and just loves it. She doesn’t judge them or would never think to call them that. Everyone deserve to be treated equal. Each one of us has to examine ourselves and make a change. A quote by Audrey Hepburn says

My goal, for my senior year, is to expand upon this message to encourage others to realize how labeling affects us. Using inspirational quotes, quotes that I found about how our DNA is almost alike, and the movie Avatar, will help guide me through the process of building upon this important message. I chose the movie Avatar because after seeing it I realized how much it fits into my message. The movie is about humans and another race who is being labeled as inferior. There were a few that grew to understand them and respect them unlike the others. In the end the one man was willing to be transformed into this race. He saved them and accepted them even though they were different.

The medium I’m choosing to work with will be web design. One of the main reasons, besides just really enjoying it [see my webdesign company - Designistic], is being able to share my message beyond our exhibit. To spread my message to the world and make people think for a second would be so gratifying to me. I spent a good amount of time trying to come up with the name for my project. It’s an important part since it’s what people will remember you by. I also had to take into consideration if the domain name was available which most great names have been taken already. After brainstorming, these are some of the ideas I came up with…

• blindconscience.org
• indifferences.org
• lostinwords.org
• insidei.org
• insideye.org
• scene.org

What I finally decided on is insideye.org which I purchased alongside insidei.org just in case of user error. I feel the name fits perfectly with what I want to communicate and is also unique. Insideye.org will be my place to spread my message in an interesting way. Presenting different scenarios and using statistics are some of my ideas. I was thinking that when people use labels because of someone’s size, I could make use of horizontal scrolling on a page with a tape measure that increased as you go right or decreased as you scroll left. Under that a simple facial expression of how people view these different sizes. From a frown to smile? I would also like to create a community for people to tell their stories so others can see how labels they use affect others which would be quite powerful and convincing.

I was thinking about the exhibit itself – how I would present this and show it off? My ideas are to use mixed media along with the website site. I was thinking of having three computers. Each one different in quality. Maybe different sized monitors. People will choose the better one showing that we judge. I also was thinking about doing a metal garbage can with words that people use as labels sticking out and continuing onto the wall above the computers. Those are just some beginning ideas.