Lower To Higher Class Analysis : Bicycle Courier To Polo Player.

In the documentary 'faking it' we see many relative theories of identity in practice. At the start of this process his self concept is comfortable. There is a large gap between his ideal self and his real self. Which lowers his self esteem. As a common result of this he's lowered his ideal self, expectations of himself and his aspirations which has given a pretense of higher self esteem. because of this, he uses lots of self maintenance strategies. an example of this is when he tells the camera that he's ridden a horse once and it didn't go very well. However he tells the trainers, When he first meets them, that he has never been on a horse - 'never ridden a horse'.

In terms of the ‘Johari Window’ theory. At the start of the process he has a small open self, a slightly larger blind self, a very large hidden self, and also a large unknown self. He has a small open self and a large hidden self because he is trying to protect himself quite a lot from any judgement. This relates to his low self esteem and he is very defensive and doesn’t want his esteem to be any more damaged by failure of this challenge. He is not emotionally invested at this point because he doesn’t want to be hurt by failure and is protecting himself to the point that makes it even more of a challenge. He has an average blind self which is made up of the things that are giving him away. Some of the things other people can tell about him that he doesn’t realise are: the fact he’s not from the higher class, because he doesn’t talk confidently about his back story. His unknown self is large at this point because he has a lot of potential for finding new things out about himself is very large.

We can also apply the Goffman theory of self-presentation to Woody at the start of this process. His persona is very much himself. At this point we have no evidence that he is any different from his real self. His performance is very sincere. This is himself. He is very close to his real self. He says his presentation isn’t even about rebellion. It’s just how he wants to look and act, he is happy with this. He becomes more himself – emphasises his identity – when he’s around people he’s uncomfortable with (the type of people he’s not used to). His staging is the city he’s from, Manchester, and his main props are his bike and his clothing/ make up. In every day life he doesn’t have much of a ‘team’. He lives alone and he doesn’t mention anyone else in this life at the beginning. His roles include ‘bike courier’, ‘alternative reputation’, and according to him, he is ‘himself’. His personal style is how he wants to look. He paints his shirts and jackets. He wears clothes that are easy to move in because of his very active job.