Cookie Cutters Are Quite Pricey: Ideas of Conformity in the Writings of Gay and Yoshino Madison Gorman College

Everyone in life has experienced a moment where we feel out of place. The feeling of being unlike all others and going against the norms of society has had major impacts in the lives of everyone. For many years now, society has provided the ideal examples of what a person should be, how they should act,what they should look like. This example is commonly referred to as a “cookie cutter” because it takes an individual and cuts out the parts that make them an individual, leaving them as a person who is just the same as everyone else. These concepts of changing from an original personality into a person that is just like everyone else are explored in the essay “My Body is Wildly Undisciplined And I Deny Myself Nearly Everything I Desire”, by Roxanne Gay; people will often undergo processes that reform them into a complete new person, discarding their original personality without a second thought. But the question that many fail to ask is why do we feel so pressed to make ourselves be just like everyone else? There’s simply too many things to consider in a time like this. When we change ourselves to fit into the cookie cutter shape created by society, we loose key components of our identities such as originality and our happiness,...