"On Wednesday's we wear pink"

        Mean Girls is a pop culture classic of the current generation.  It's easily one of the most quotable movies of all time.  However, the movies basis is off of interpersonal conflict between the characters at hand.  Regina George, the main 'plastic' and possibly the most hated girl at North Shore High, has issues expressing her conflict.  When faced with conflict, she mostly uses an Aggressive system to express her conflict.  She seeks revenge when she finds out Cady has been lying to her about the 'nutrition bars', therefore fighting back when being attacked.  Even though Regina has an aggressive style, she does show weakness in some areas.  She is not usually honest to whoever she has conflict with.  For example, when she feels that a peer's skirt is ugly, she tells that peer that the skirt is 'super cute' and then proceeds to tell Cady that she really feels like its the ugliest skirt she has ever seen.  Much of Regina's conflict with others stems from the fact that she is not open and honest, and tends to be very passive aggressive.
         If Regina George were to take HCOM 214, I feel as though she would learn a lot.  First off, I would teach her how to better express her feelings and anger towards people.  She tends to insult and victimize people when she is angry, even if it is not that persons fault.  I feel as though her Aggressive style of interpersonal conflict is okay, but if she is going to be aggressive, she needs to follow all the attributes, such as being completely honest and expressing your emotions. If Regina took the course and changed her behaviors, I feel as though she would be a much better person, and her feelings wouldn't be expressed in such a hurtful manner towards others.  However, this would affect the plot of the movie greatly because the movie itself is based solely off of the fact that Regina resolves conflict in the way that she does. Short term outcomes may be that she will keep the friends that she has, and will have stayed with Aaron Samuels.  Long term outcomes may be a happier life, more friends, and being a nicer person all around.
        Another character who might benefit greatly from taking HCOM 214 is Gretchen Wieners.  Gretchen uses an avoidant system to deal with her interpersonal conflict.  Gretchen is often the main victim of Regina's angry outbursts, and she never says anything.  Gretchen is treated like she isn't smart, however she doesn't get angry or express her angry feelings towards Regina or anyone else.  Gretchen is constantly telling Cady how she feels instead of telling Regina outright.  If Gretchen took HCOM 214, she would learn how to express her feelings to the people she is actually angry with and she would also learn not to bottle up her feelings and then let them explode. She would really benefit from these skills, her short term goals would be having better relationships, and making long lasting friendships.  Long term goals would be for her to be happier all around, and expressing her emotions better.  However, if Gretchen did act this way, it would affect the plot of the movie because the main conflict of the movie is between Gretchen and Regina.

"You Can't Sit With Us": Interpersonal Conflict in "Mean Girls"

Mean Girls portrays the relationships between new student, Cady Heron, and the Plastics, a clique composed of  Regina George, the mean queen bee, and her two minions, Karen Smith and Gretchen Wieners. In the film Janis and Damien, two misfits, convince Cady to become Regina’s friend to ultimately sabotage her in the end by eliminating her “hot body”, “army of skanks”, and her boyfriend “Aaron Samuels” for revenge. Once Regina realizes Cady is fake, she frames her by giving the principal the Burn Book, a gossip styled scrapbook that the Plastics wrote about their peers. The classic comedy revolving around four high school girl’s fluctuating popularity is the perfect hunting ground for interpersonal conflicts.

The strongest interpersonal conflict theme presented in the film is power. Regina George is the most popular, beautiful, and mean girl at North Shore high school. She has control over the staff, boys, and most importantly, her closest friends. The Plastics’ friendship suffers from a balance imbalance. Regina dominates their relationship, making irrational rules like “on Wednesday’s we wear pink” and “you can’t wear your hair in a ponytail more than one time in a week”. When these rules are violated, the violator is told “you can’t sit with us” during lunch. This gives Regina complete control and power over her friends. She switches between disregarding their feelings, playing favorites, and treating them all like royalty. This leads to Karen, Gretchen, and Cady enduring her verbal abuse in hopes of becoming Regina’s favorite. Naturally, every group of friends has a leader, but Regina completely abuses her power. She says hurtful things like “people always forget about Karen because she’s such a slut”. Regina’s relational goal with her friends is complete dominance, while the friend’s relational goals is acceptance. This fuels an unhealthy cycle of enduring abuse to achieve a sense of belonging with the abuser, also known as a power dependent relation. For the reasons mentioned above,  Mean Girls shows ineffective use of power balance. The short terms effects from the unhealthy relationship can be seen in the film. For example, Karen tries to have a sexual encounter with her first cousin. Cady, once innocent and naive, begins throwing parties without her parent knowing, drinking alcohol, and trying to have drunken sex with Regina’s ex boyfriend. Lastly, Gretchen has an emotional breakdown during her English class while simply reading an essay. Long term effects of the power imbalance can include the girls being victims of domestic violence. Their desire for acceptance supersedes their self worth, which is extremely dangerous. It would also be plausible for them to develop a drug dependency to combat their low self esteem. Either way, I would predict the girls engaging in some sort of power dependent relationship.

There are also two examples of different conflict styles and tactics in Mean Girls. More specifically, once Cady Heron is corrupted, she tends to use a competitive style to deal with conflict. She begins to pursue her own concerns at the expense of Regina George’s life. However, she also uses avoidance. She never expresses to Regina that she does not like the way she is treated. This results in Regina being unaware of a brewing conflict. Cady gets caught in the avoid/criticize loop. She constantly talks about how mean and unfair Regina is, that even Janis and Damien get tired of hearing it. Instead of confronting Regina, she tries to ruin her life. For example, knowing that Regina “really wants to lose three pounds”, Cady gives her kalteen bars, but tells Regina they are for weight loss. When none of Regina’s clothes fit anymore, she is forced to wear sweatpants two days in a row, a violation of one of her own rules. Cady, Gretchen, and Karen tell her that she cannot sit with them resulting in Cady being the new leader of the Plastics. These are ineffective conflict styles. None of Cady’s actions resulted in Regina to treat her differently, it only made things worse because Regina ends up framing her. If she had used a more collaborative approach, she could have had more luck. On a different note, there are clear verbal destructive competitive tactics. Cady uses personal criticism quite often. She makes remarks about how Regina is not good looking and how unintelligent she is. She also uses denial of responsibility. The clearest example is her saying, “It may have seemed like I was acting like a bitch, but that’s only because I was acting like a bitch”. This statement allows Cady to justify her neglect for other’s feelings  by saying she was pretending to be mean. Short term consequences for Cady’s inability to use a collaborative style include her being grounded and unable to attend North Shore’s Spring Fling dance. Long term consequences can involve unstable and/or limited relationships due to her manipulative ways. I predict Cady participating in conflict-habituated relationships in her future.

The Whirlwind

Emotions play a critical role in the resolution, or lack of, and management of conflict. Our own preconceived notions about conflict can influence the emotions we feel during one. For example, if you think conflict is good, you would be more likely to have emotions correlated with positivism while trying to resolve it. And if you view conflict as negative, it might be harder for you to even engage in conflict in the first place. Either way though, "conflict is emotionally arousing - one cannot be in conflict and not experience emotional upheaval" according to William Wilmot and Joyce Hocker (198).

I can feel an array of different emotions during conflict, but typically I feel the same emotions within a relationship. To clarify, if I engage in conflict with my family I will feel the same emotions, no matter what the situation is. However, if I have a conflict with a supervisor, my emotions will be different than the ones I experience with my family. With that being said, when I engage in serious conflict with my mother, it is usually because I broke the rules, or did something else wrong. She brutally points out my mistakes, which makes my identity feel attacked. This leads me to feel shame and doubt in my abilities, which perpetuates hurt. Furthermore, I feel inferior because she has more power than me and she makes it very clear. Even though, the same is true in the work place, I tend to feel different emotions.

At work I try not to engage in conflict unless completely necessary. To me it is best to avoid conflict at work because the security of your job can be compromised if you raise too many concerns. I don't feel fearful though, it is more of an awareness of what is at stake. I did engage in conflict once, though. I worked at an ice skating rink recently and got along with my boss really well. However, the assistant manager was extremely rude and condescending towards me. I decided I had to let my boss know. I felt horribly nervous when I told him because she had more power in the situation than I did. By the time the conversation was over I actually felt relieved because he said he agreed with me, which meant my job was not in jeopardy. After feeling relieved, I recall feeling satisfied in my decision.

When it comes to my roommate, I avoid conflict at ALL costs. She is the most selfish, inconsiderate person I know. I used to tell her when little things bothered me, but she would not stop doing it so it is pointless to bring the issue up. When I want to engage in conflict with her, I feel rage because I can not hit her (well, I could, but that would lead to severe consequences). She makes me want to hit her because I get frustrated when she disrespects me, but I can not make her change her behavior.

I do not have a romantic relationship, but I can imagine feeling hurt and betrayed if my partner cheated or said something that I did not like. I can imagine one's identity feeling especially attacked in this situation because we expect our partners to have our best interest and cherish us.

In short, the emotions I feel in each conflict, depending on relationship are:

Family- hurt, shame, doubt, inferiority

Work- nervous, content, relieved

Roommate- rage, anger, frustration

Romantic- hurt, betrayal

My History With Violence

Natasha Dahan

 

Growing up, my parents were physically, emotionally and verbally abusive to each other frequently. That was my early experience in observing conflict responses, although their methods of resolving conflict usually did not end well or solve the problems. One might expect that the influence would affect me to act and respond similarly to the way my parents did, but this actually is not the case.

I think that because I observed the affects of the conflict management methods that my parents used which were almost always negative, I have learned that it is not the most effective way to deal with conflicts in a relationship. I also learned not to do it because I do not want the effects I saw after their fights to happen to me in my relationships. So, instead of learning from my parents how to handle conflict, I learned how not to handle conflicts.

To this day, I can't think of a time that I actually hurt somebody on purpose as a result of negative emotions. At times I have gotten mad to the point of imagining hurting somebody but I don't think I would have the guts to actually go through with it. I also try not to say things when I'm mad that could be considered verbally abusive. If I get to that point of being mad I usually just stonewall or avoid the person I and/or the other person are calm enough to continue. 

I have learned from the history of violence that I had observed. The only ways it affects me now is that I imagine scenarios sometimes and that I don't act on those scenarios or physically hurt anyone out of anger in general because I have seen the results and that is not what I want for myself in my life.

Daniel Livingston
HCOM214
Blake Rodger
3/5/15


A Conflict Memory (Blog Response #1)

       The most recent conflict that stands out to me happened about 3 months ago over winter break. It was me and my best friends hanging out playing a game of monopoly, when the topic of depression came up. We recently found out one of our friends was depressed, and while one one friend thought depression wasn’t all that serious, I thought it was. “Its just something that weak minded people have” was the argument that my friend had, and that really took me back, because i strongly disagree with that. I know for a fact that severe depression is an actual illness, so when i heard that it really caused a conflict. This argument went on for quite some time, and while neither of our minds would really agree on anything, we basically stuck to our same stand points. Mine being that depression is a very serious issue dealing with a chemical imbalance in someones brain that causes sadness, and my friends being that it is something that you can control.

       My emotional response was that i was personally offended and pretty angered by it too. From second hand experience with depression with family members, it really got to my nerves that he would think that. Our verbal responses got pretty heated as well, and even though we are very close friends, it got a little bit hostile. Exemplified through this conflict, i get very emotional when on topics like these. I usually tend to take a more emotional and anecdotal standpoint, and use facts and statistics as more of a secondary reasoning source. My way of handling these discussions is definitely getting everything out into the open because, as i said before, this is one of my best friends, and we know we will still be friends afterwards, so we feel it best to say everything we want to say.

       Eventually, at the end of the conflict, we basically still kept to our own opinions, and even though we still felt strongly about it, we just stopped and got back to our monopoly game. We laughed about it afterwards, and it in no way negatively affected our relationship. I think the reason this conflict ended so well is because we got everything out into the open and didn't hold back.

blog #1

Mateo Ovalle
HCOM214
Blake Rodgers
3/5/15
                                                         Emotions in Conflict
    Conflict is just part of life and is inevitable no matter how much someone tries to avoid it. In my life conflict arises quite frequently. Four common areas where conflict occurs is within a family, roommates, romantic partners, and work. I handle each one of these types of conflicts differently and my emotions vary with each one.
    When I have a conflict with my family I usually feel anger within me. I feel anger because every time a conflict comes up I feel like everyone in my family goes against me or tells me im wrong just because Im the youngest one. One conflict that occurred recently was with my mom. She got frustrated with me for using my tax return money to put a down payment on a car. She thought the money would have been better spent paying of my school loan. Her reaction was yelling at me through the phone and telling me im too young to be buying a car and that I was fine the car I had witch was my dads, but I felt obligated to return it since it was not mine. I got really upset with my mom and ended up yelling back at her and not picking up her calls for about a week. In this situation I felt like my mom was babying me and did not trust me to make these kind of decisions on my own. Eventually I ended up calling my mom and I just talked to her how I felt about her always trying to baby me and for once just to let me grow up and do things on my own.
    My conflicts regarding roommates and romantic partners are the same since I live with my wife in a rented room. Conflicts always arises over me not cleaning up after myself and her always saying I never do anything around the room. I admit sometimes I like coming home after work or school and just eat and relax for a while before I wash my dish or clean, but every time I do this she goes on a rant about how I never help out. This really annoys me because I do more then my part when it comes to cleaning. I always wash my dishes, I take out the trash, fold blankets, and sweep. Although I may not do these things right away, I eventually still get them done and it just irritates me how she accuses me of not doing anything. I usually handle these sort of conflicts by just ignoring her because I know if I argue back then the conflict will just explode and I just don’t see dishes being worth a fight.
    Conflicts at work are a constant between me and my manager. I honestly can not stand looking at her. She thinks she’s better than everyone, which she cleary isn’t because she’s 40 something and still working at burger king. Conflicts usually arise when she tries to get me to stay past my shift. I hate when she tries doing this because it takes time away from my school work and personal life. At first I would always say yes to staying longer because I was new and wanted to seem like a good worker. After a while I grew the courage to say no and the first time I said no, she told me I had to stay because someone called in sick. This angered me because I felt like it was not my responsibility to suffer for someone calling in sick. Instead of going off on her and risk losing my job I calmly just told her that I could not stay and that it was her job as a manager to figure it out, and I just clocked out and left. Ever since that day this manager  has been on my case and is always makes me do grunt work like sweeping and mopping the dining room and taking out the trash.
    Although I handle each of these conflicts differently I guess the common emotion is anger and I feel like I handled all of these situations in a decent manner.

A Recent Conflict

As time was winding down in the Fall 2014 semester, I was finishing up all of my final exams and essays, eager for the winter break like all other students. Because I had left my car at home for my younger brother’s use, I expected that he could return the favor by making the two hour drive to Monterey and picking me up on the Thursday of finals week. On Wednesday night, my mom called and told me that there was no way he could pick me up because he was too inexperienced of a driver and she didn’t trust him.

This ruined all my plans. I had already promised a friend from back home that I would make it to his birthday party on the Thursday night. To make matters worse, I had already ran out of money on my meal plan the week before and was forced to use my own money to pay for meals. My mom told me that the earliest she could pick up was on Saturday, which would force me to spend more of my own money on food and miss my friend’s party.

I was outraged that she left it up until Wednesday night to tell me this. I felt completely unimportant as well as uncompensated. I mean my gratuity was the only reason my brother had a car to drive. This saved my mom the time it would take to drive my brother to school every day. I argued with my mom, calling my brother lazy for not taking a few hours out of his afternoon to come pick me up.

I was also upset with my mom because she waited all the way up until the night before to tell me that I would have to wait another few days at college until I could get picked up. She could have at least told me this news earlier in the week, giving me a little bit of time to possibly find another way to get home. My mom thought I was being too selfish and over dramatic. She kept telling me that spending a few extra days at college wasn’t going to be the end of the world.

Ironically, just as final exams were concluding, I felt more stressed out than ever. I was going to have to miss my friend’s party, spend more of my own money on the overpriced campus food, and I was going to be the last one of all my friends who hadn’t gone home for the break

On Thursday, I was blessed with some sort of a miracle as it seemed. Another one of my friends was driving back home from southern California, where he was attending college. He texted me notifying he was driving back that day. I replied, asking if he could pick me up since it would be on his way. Everything worked out. My friend was gracious enough to give me a ride and I was able to forgive my mom and brother. I felt that all I really needed was someone to do something kind for me for once. I realized that I was crying over spilled milk so to say, and I was able to accept that not everyone was going to cater to my needs all the time.

Emotions in Conflict

Kelsy Harris

Normally when I think about my emotions during conflict, or how I handle conflict in general, I tend to generalize and say that I handle everything one specific way. But when I read the prompt and say it ask me to think about the four areas (family, roommate, work, and romantic), I realized that I have a separate way of handling things for each area.

For example, when I'm dealing with conflict with family, I either hold back tremendously in an attempt to keep things calm and everyone happy OR I let it all loose. When I have conflict with family, I tend to have the same two emotions: anger or disinterest. I tend to act disinterested when the conflict happening doesn't have a reason for happening, or if it doesn't involve me. Even though the way I go about acting disinterested may make the conflict worse at times, it usually helps calm the conflict down because it helps everyone realize that there's really no purpose in having the conflict in the first place. If/When I get angry during a conflict, it's usually because I see a plausible solution, but no ones using it. I'll usually start to get loud and probably start to use my hands a lot more while talking when this happens.

Now, with the roommate area, that's as little more difficult to hone in on. I've had two roommates already this year, and my way of handling conflict with both is very different. My first roommate and I were like best friends, sisters almost. So if we ever had a conflict, we handled it pretty well; just casually bringing it up and came to a solution together and that was that. No hard feelings. No raised voices. No eye rolling (unless we did it on purpose jokingly). But with my current roommate things are a little different. We don't have the same bond as my last roommate and I so if there's a conflict, it's almost kind of awkward. She's not someone who particularly enjoys conflict so she tends to avoid it when it happens by giving short, neutral responses and giving strange looks. Whereas I will be pretty blunt and straight up with what my issue is, because that's the only way to get my point across. Unfortunately this tends to come out pretty rude and like I'm pretty annoyed (which I probably am annoyed so that's fine) but again, it's the only way to get my point across with this roommate.

In the workplace is where I feel I handle conflict best. Mostly because I have to, but you get the point. When handling conflict in the workplace, I'm a lot more professional and level headed, and I keep my cool A LOT better. If something happens that I don't like, I manage to stay calm and express what I think/feel in such a way that it comes across that I'm obviously not okay with what's happening, but not in a way that's going to worsen the situation.

And then there's the romantic area but all I really have to offer for that are hypothetical situations on how I would most likely handle conflict with the other person.

Blog #1 Topic/Content Goals

Joel Casillas

HCOM214

Blake Rodgers

3/4/15

                                            

                                                   My Topic/Content Goals

     For this, my three topics are going to be school, work and friendship. I’m choosing these three, because they’re the ones I can relate to the most. Disputes are a part of being a human being, and they happen everywhere and every day, some dispute more than others, but we all do it at some point.

     Let’s start with work, at work I have to deal with assistant managers that aren’t as educated as me, and they have their ideas, and they don’t even consider other people’s ideas. They completely shut out everyone else and do their own thing. So when they ask me to do something that’ll take me 30 min to do it there way, I do it my own way and finish in half the time. This is one conflict that arises at work, another is that people are always arguing about how the assistant managers have favorites, and this one really pisses me off. I have to arrange my schedule according to my classes, and when I get to work, I sometimes arrive about 8 minutes early, so I want to punch in and begin working so I can leave early and do my homework, but they don’t let me punch in early. They make me wait those 8 min, until it’s exactly the time I’m supposed to start. I would be okay if this rule was applied to everyone, but it’s not. There’s this one girl who always arrives like 20 min early and they let her punch in and leave early, and that’s only because she’s the assistant manager’s favorite. I’ve never said anything regarding this, but others have. I’m passive, I’d rather ignore it and have nothing to do with it, but others are more aggressive and they have yelled to each other about this. So far they haven’t fixed the issue and I don’t think it will ever get fixed.

     Another context would be school, I don’t have much of a problem with school, but one topic that always come up is homework for the classes. We all hate it, but it's necessary sometimes. I know that school is important and stuff, but giving too much homework can mess things up at home. Students are always arguing with the teachers about how they didn't finish the homework due to other classes, and that's happened to me a couple of times. Homework from one class can disrupt the time I have set apart for other classes, or If I want to do an activity like mountain biking. Teachers want student to act like they have only one class, but they don’t always consider that we have more than 1 class. So it interferes with other activities, but it’s not a big deal most of the time, at least for me

     My third and final context would be friends. One problem that would come up in this situation is the dispute of time spent with my friends and where to hang out. I hangout with my friends every once in a while, and when I do, they expect me to hang out with them the whole day, but it’s like I have to work and I have homework but they don’t care about that, all they care about are themselves, they don’t consider my needs. They ignorant to the fact that my life isn't the same as theres, I have priorities.

  This are all related in the way that each have to do with time taken to do something, and I also believe that these are things that many people experience, not just me. These are some topics that are argued in my life, but I assure you there are more to come as time goes on.