Ivy’s Challenges 2
Mark’s purpose in making and publishing Soft White Underbelly videos is to reveal serious problems in our American society. He suggests citizens need to know there are challenges that are not being successfully addressed but must be. Before his videos came online, data existed involving negative, social statistics, but Mark’s videos show the emotional sufferings of real Americans.
Five of Mark’s interviews with Ivy are excellent examples that depict typical life challenges experienced by her and many others. In her first video (11:51 minutes), Ivy is a smart, attractive, 20-year-old, black prostitute that comes to understand, through Mark’s help and encouragement, what she must do to make her life better and regain parental rights to her daughter. The second, third, and fourth Ivy videos show different aspects of the challenges she is attempting to overcome. In the fifth video, Ivy reports she has not achieved her dream of a better life, has had a second daughter, but does not have parental rights to either.
In the last video Ivy reports lessons learned about herself and the society she lives in. First, she says that having material things will not help her achieve her dream. Second, she says that general society views her as an inferior person being a drug addict and a whore. Third, she says she is drawn back into the “streets” because the people there are the only “home and family” she has known. She says she needs love; she did not grow up loved by her mother and is attempting alone to overcome difficult social challenges without love.
It is important that Mark’s videos document that the social challenges faced by Ivy are experienced by people of every race and ethnicity throughout America. Social problems seen in Mark’s video are experienced by all groups regardless of their race and culture
In my view, Ivy and many Americans trying to live with major personal challenges are victims of a social system that results in too many individuals not growing up to have what is needed to live the good types of life Ivy can only dream about. A properly functioning social system develops families dedicated to teaching children to live by abstract concepts and values, and having capabilities to become self-reliant, educated, skilled adults.
I mentioned in my first message that many of the challenges we face today did not exist in our society when I was young. Societies do not change based on the repositioning of the moon and stars. To successfully overcome these new problems, we must identify what incorrect social changes were made before the problems began. 6/27/2025