Communicating through our body language

For this blog I watch a new reality show called Love and Hip Hop Atlanta. This is not a regular show that I watch, but as I flipped through the channels with the volume on mute, I was intrigued to use this show to help me complete my blog. Upon turning to this channel, I noticed the women's facial expressions. One of the ladies had a smurk on her face as if to say "I know she didn't" while the other ladies just sat looking kind of like "yep she said it". Standing in a circle, their body language suggested to me that there might be some sort of conflict going on. I assumed that because one of the ladies stepped back on one of her legs and then proceeded to fold her arms in an angry manner. The other lady that seemed to be in a conflict with her put her hands on her hips and then she rolled her head and neck and batted her eyes rapidly. And by being a black woman, without her even hearing the conversation, I immediately knew that she was pissed off. So after about 20 minutes of watching this show on mute. I decided to rewind it back to see what the conversation was about and just like I figured there was a conflict between two of the ladies and the other ladies were just on -lookers. Listening to them, I learned that one of the ladies is an artist trying to get her feet wet in the game of hip-hop and the other ladie is the girlfriend/babymama of a producer. The girlfriend/babymama has just learned that the potential artist is supposely sleeping with her man (producer). This was not a nice situation, because the women, were both upset and one tried to out talk the other. They used their body language to send messages of disapproval to each other.

I must say that this was an interesting task to engage in, because I have never really watched a movie or television show without the sound before. So it was interesting to try and use the individuals body gestures and facial expressions to try and figure out what is go on. It did make me mindful about making sure that both body gestures and facial expressions do not send negative messages to others. Just like words tells others about our feelings and thoughts towards certain situations, so does our body gestures and facial expressions. This little experiment will help me in my work with children and families because it will make me more mindful of the verbal and nonverbal messages that I am relating to them.