Life as a 'THIRD-WORLDER'

Being a politics and sociology student, discourse and ideology are terms that keep springing up on me. To the lay man, discourse means simply language, while ideology refers to a set of ideas. So i sat down and looked up these terms, respective of my chosen fields.

discourse: according to Foucault: discourse would be the acceptable statements made by a certain type of discourse community.---> (which then) refers to people who share similar thoughts and ideas. (WHO says they are acceptable?)

Ideology: The term may be used to describe the shared beliefs of a group of people, for example a nation, a sect of a religion, or a group of theorists

(At a more analytical level, these definitions may prove unsuitable, but for the purposes of my views, they serve well.)

Growing up as an African, in a world rich with culture, i have come to ask myself many questions. This is my Africa, this is my home, yet day in and day out, i am forced to perceive my world in a lesser light. When we are young, the world we live in is limitless, and offers us ALL we could ever need. As you grow older, you are bombarded with Western discourse and ideologies. These ideologies come at you from all sides, at a personal, political, socioeconomical, and even global level. There seems to be no way of escaping them, in an increasingly globalized world.

At a global level, we are coined the THIRD WORLD, the LESS DEVELOPED WORLD (LDC). Immediately this suggests that there are others before us, who are far ‘greater.' Knowing this we begin to settle into this mentality, we become individuals of the Third World. This is also aided by the academic discourse we are exposed to; it teaches us our weaknesses and failures as a continent, as a people. Unknowingly we begin to adopt these weaknesses and before we know it, we ARE the Third World; we begin to embody what it means to be a ‘Third Worlder’. Our dreams and hopes fail to rise beyond the label of the Third World as we fall into pre-supposed roles and begin to lose our intellectual freedom together with our agency.

At a personal level, as a female of this century; I am amazed at the number of things which have come to influence me. I am exposed to western media with all its discourse and ideologies in all its forms. I watch CNN, read Vogue, dream about the Kardashians and all i see is the greatness of the Western World, and in turn i am forced to think of the supposed weakness of MY world. I see models with never-ending legs, girls with such flat stomachs it is hard to believe they even eat. Black girls with silky hair, red pouty lips and smooth spotless skin, and more and more, i am forced to look at myself as a lesser being ---> “why can’t my legs be long enough, why isn’t my stomach flat like hers, why do my lips need constant moisturizing when I use red lipstick?” these questions come at me so forcefully, each one of them begins to feel like a blow.

Knowing the dangers of ideology and discourse, what changes do I impart on my THIRD WORLD?? What changes do you?