Susan

The theatre is a world where you really do step into someone else's shoes. You examine how the character views herself and how she is viewed by others. My theatre professor suggests some questions for studying a character--What do other people say about my character? How do other people react to my character? These questions help examine how the character is viewed by others and, thus, create the "looking-glass self." To act the character you need to understand her "me" (the "looking-glass self"). This understanding of the character should allow the "I" to come naturally. The "I" is the spontaneous self, the source of motivation. It defies study, as when it is closely examined, it disappears.

Glenda

A ring. A class ring. A guy's class ring. In high school it was the ultimate sign of status, whether dangling from a chain or wrapped with a quarter inch of yarn. Without ever speaking a word, a girl could tell everybody that she was loved (and trusted with expensive jewelry), that she had a protector (and how big that protector was, based, of course, on ring size—the bigger the better), the guy's status (preferably senior), and his favorite sport (preferably football). Yes, if you had the (right) class ring, you were really somebody.

Shannon

I can vividly picture an example of how others reactions to me made me take more of the looking glass self on, often to the exclusion of the true "I." One day at track we were in the weight room and as I weighed myself, the girl behind me said in apparent disbelief, "You weigh 145 lbs?!" For a moment I verged on mortification, though I was athletic, tall and lean. Through her eyes I saw myself as huge and cumbersome. Moments after she caught herself and added in our track terminology, "but that's okay because you're butch—that makes you good." In trying to find coherence between the "I" that I was, comfortable and satisfied with and these comments. I allowed myself to become a "butch" which for us meant super-strong athletic girl. But in the process, as I shrank into accepting myself as what others saw of me, I lost part of myself that isn't reflected in their reactions. The past few years I have been salvaging my "girlie" side—I have been trying to uncover the "I" that has been buried under what other people perceive me as.

Since being at school, I have begun to see the dramatic importance of surrounding myself with people who enjoy or bring out in me the thigs I love to do and be.

Erin

An example of being a looking glass to others: When my little sister was about five or six years old, she would still act like a baby because that was the way I treated her. After my mom figured out the cause and approached me about it, I began treating her more like an equal; she quickly changed her behavior and began acting her age, and even a little older.