On the F

Usually my daily commutes via Subway consist of earphones blasting my favorite tunes and a nice game of Angry Birds. Since I began observing for my visual cultures class, I've pressed pause on my play-list and decided to pay more attention to my immediate surroundings. Just Saturday I was riding the F train uptown to Penn Station when I caught an interesting conversation by a group of high school students also traveling the underground.  They seemed to be excited to be traveling together, like they were on some sort of an adventure, another event or experience that would draw their group closer.
Finkelstein shares in Art of self-invention, image and identity in popular culture (2007), about the "universal self." No matter what background you come from, people conform themselves to society creating a "cultural mask," that allows them to fit in with the norm. The universal self can have many different appearances, like this group of teenagers for instance, but everyone is conscious of their social presence and conform themselves within the customs and structures of their particular culture. I noticed that everyone in this group wore only dark colors, grays and whites. One young lady with a ton of smokey black eyeliner and bright blue bangs (the only noticeable color on any of them) ran most of the conversation amongst a group of three or four guy friends. She seemed to have strong opinions on much of what the talked about.