Identity

=Identity can be created in many ways, and those ways are different in America than in the Middle East, but identity can also be impacted by others.=

=**What is Identity? ** = Identity is the state or fact of remaining the same one or ones, as under varying aspects or conditions.

= How can identity be created? = Individual identity can be created in many ways. When people think or hear of identity they think of a person and how they make life their own. They use such things as fashion, life style, and everyday activities as just a few things that someone creates their own identity. Fashion is the most common way people use to create their own identity. Different kinds of fashions can be associated with different kinds of identities. When someone sees a person walking down the halls of the school wearing tight pants and shirts, dark straight long hair, and sagging tight pants they think this person is emo. Just like when you see a person who is wearing a basketball, football, cheer leading, or softball uniform they automatically think the person is a jock. Life styles are also away that someone can create their own identity. If someone works with computers all day or writes comics for a living they assume that this person is a geek.

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[[image:identity-theft.jpg width="300" height="414"]]
=Identity in America versus the Middle East =

In America it is really easy to create your own identity because we have the freedom to do so. In the Middle East it is hard for a women to create her own identity. She is covered with a head scarf so she can’t make her own style. Identity in the Middle East is very hard to create; it is hard because they don't have as many opportunities to create their own identity. When they create their own identity trying to use fashion, life style, and everyday activities those are some things that should create a persons identity but in the Middle East it's very hard. With fashion they should be able to wear whatever they want but they are sometimes forced to wear a head scarf and they are not allowed to show skin. With life style the women can only work at home and are not allowed to have a job. In my book The Forbidden Face the main character is a young girl and her, her mother, and two sisters have to wear head scarfs when they go outside because they live in Kabul, Afghanistan. But as a teenage girl she just wants to make her own identity so she has posters of Brooke Shields and Elvis and she wears sweatpants and running shoes and she wears makeup and colored clothes. With none of this freedom they are forced to look like everyone else and they have no chance of making their own identity. If they do they try to hide what they are trying to be like the main character in my book. We saw this same problem with identity in the movie Osama. This poor teenage girl has to become a boy because there is no man in here life so, she has to become a boy so she can get a job to help her family. She has to create a new identity as a boy because that way she can help her family. She has to abandon her pervious identity as a gril and creat a new identity as this boy Osama which means she has to start dressing like a boy and to talking like one to.

=Impact Others Have on Shaping Identity =

Peer pressure can affect many aspects of life, one of which is a person's identity. Now a days it's not rare to hear someone say cool people wear these clothes or listen to this kind of music if you want to be popular, or other things of that nature. Some people take that to heart and try to make that their identity in order to "be popular." When this happens, different cliques are formed, like emos, jocks, and many other groups. Someone who was impacted by others to be part of one of those groups may not actually want that. That person's true identity might be something totally different and unique, something that can't be labeled. If that person would listen to his inner self and realize that what he shows to people really isn't who he or she is, then his or her identity will be unique. All a person has to do to have their own personal identity is to ignore peer pressure and to be the person that one wants to be. [|Personal identity in philosophy]

[|Identity in social science]

__**Bibliography:**__
Latifa. __My Forbidden Face__. Mirimax Books, 2002 <[|Latifa. My Forbidden Face. Mirimax Books, 2002]

Kent Police. "Identity Theft". Kent Police. 4/14/08 <[|http://www.kent.police.uk/News/Latest_News/Identity%20Fraud.jpg>.]

Selby, Phil. "A Cartoon About Identity Theft". The Rut. 4/14/08 <[|http://bigeyedeer.files.wordpress.com/2007/03/identity-theft.jpg>.]