Culture.

When I think about culture, I automatically thing diversity. For some odd reason, I picture cobble-stoned streets and a mixture of tall skyscrapers, like those found in San Diego or New York, and I picture old white buildings that would belong to a foreign country. I picture this street teeming with people of all different races; I see myself, a single spectator, drinking it all in. With all the people and their different ethnicities, I imagine hundreds of different colors because it happens to be a street fair. There are pretty women young and old with flowing skirts dancing with the widest grins and men in a different group, supplying the rhythm for which they will dance to. I smell ethnic specialties as some man grills and others sell refreshing drinks. Younger children are dancing around the circle of performers, imitating to the best of their abilities, or they are playing random childhood games like hop-scotch and marbles. When I picture culture, I see the world unified in one area. No fighting, no wars, no politics. Just a bunch of people having a good time, enjoying each other's company.

Idealistic much?

Culture is such an amazing thing. Everything about it, language, foods, religions, even the technology. It is amazing to think of how diverse we are!

After that introduction, I kind of have a topic on my mind that kind of ties into culture.

The fashion culture!

Today, there was a girl in my class, who, goodness, she should have just stripped down to her underwear by the way she was dressed. She was wearing a suuuuper low-cut shirt (muuuch lower than I go, and I can go pretty low sometimes) with her bra peeking from the top. Also, she bent down and bah!, don't wanna go there! When I see others dressed like that it makes me wonder. If they are so keen on exposing their bodies, would it not be better to just save their money and instead of buying these clothes just walk around in their underwear? Really. -.- She is only one example. The western fashion culture is pretty scandalous as compared to other societies. Here, it is (almost, depending on who you are) perfectly acceptable to where a suuuper short skirt with butt cheeks hanging out, or if you're a guy to wear suuuper baggy jeans with boxers hanging out....what is it with the obsession for showing one's butt?! Gah! Anyway, western outfits are pretty racy as compared, say to that of women in Saudi Arabia.

In some Middle Easter countries, the women must be completely covered from head to toe, that can even include their face, save the eyes! That's crazy to think about, but for other cultures, that is the norm. Wow.

Not only that, think about education in countries. In North America, we apply for colleges in Senior year of high school. In Japan, they apply to high schools that are just as competitive as colleges would be. Here in North America, the education system doesn't really stress a certain learning material, we have favorite subjects and we tend to excel at those. In Russia, the children are amazing at math and science (something I heard that North America was lagging in).

It is an amazing concept to think of my own culture that I have grown up in and compare myself to someone my age in another country. If I was born in another country, I could have been married by now (married for a few years, actually), with kids and I could be illiterate. Long covering clothing could be my norm, and having my hair down in public would be unacceptable. I could be highly competitive in a school full of geniuses because that it was I was born into.

Wow.

What a shocking thought.