Deviance Behavior And Michael Phelps: Deviant

There is a standard of behavior or norms of every culture and society according to which each of the individuals act. Whoever violates this accepted or predictable standard of behavior, is referred as deviant (Conrad, 2017). The sociologists use the term deviance in referring any type of violation of the social norms. Deviant behavior is unacceptable action or behavior which is grated an unorthodox to the social as well as cultural norms. The individual with this type of behavior deviates from what is expected in the normal pattern (Tittle, 2018). In different cultures, the acceptability of behavior is different but some behaviors are never accepted by any culture which include, naked exposure in public, homicide, robbery, rape, binge drinking, suicide, theft and prostitution. As the sociologists have pointed out that there are two types of deviant behavior namely formal and informal deviance. The formal deviance is associated with the violation of enacted laws for example theft and homicide. Formal deviance behavior violates the codified laws, regulations and code of conduct acceptable by the legislation of a country. On the other hand, the informal deviance is associated with the valuation of laws which are not codified in the laws or acts such as licking of ground or belching loudly. However, any type of deviance behavior whether codified by the laws or not affect the reputation of an individual and harm the society in its entirety.

Michael Phelps is an American competitive swimmer as the most celebrated Olympian of all the time. He holds the all-time record of wining the highest number of gold medals in Olympic. He is also the long course world record holder in different types of swimming categories and won the World Swimmer of the Year Award eight times and American Swimmer of the Year Award eleven times. He is the son of Fred and Debbie Phelps and has two sisters. He has married Nicole Johnson, miss California of 2010. However, this celebrated athlete had faced punishment several times for his deviant behavior (Kwon, 2015). Despite the fact that he apologized for all his guilt, he was suspended from the swimming organization of the USA several times and lost sponsorship. In May 2016, Phelps has taken initiative to run his charity program through The Michael Phelps Foundation where he guides the children swimmers to grow the sport of swimming in one hand and promote a healthy and motivated lifestyle. In his career he was also accused to have used the performance enhancing drugs to perform great in Olympics and other international competitions but Phelps noted that he had signed up for the Project Believe which is a project of the United States Anti-Doping Agency. In this, the U.S. Olympians may volunteer to be verified by the World Anti-Doping Agency guidelines. In this regard, Phelps volunteered these tests and conceded all the nine tests which were administered to him during the games. 

At the early stage of his swimming career, he was arrested for driving under intoxication of alcohol and sentenced for serving an eighteen months’ probation with 250 USD fine. After this punishment, he realized his guilt and asked pardon. The controversy again raised when in 2009 Phelps was found using a bong. This behavior is highly unacceptable for a sport star like him. This however resulted in huge for the career of Phelps. He lost the sponsorship of the Kellogg Company as this behavior was against the image and reputation of the firm. In addition to this, Phelps was also suspended from the USA swimming for three months. After this incident, Phelps was again suspended from all the competitions for long six months as he was found driving intoxicated in the year 2014. This deviant behavior also resulted in his losing chance to represent the US World Aquatics Championships in the year 2015. These not only affected the career of this particular athlete but also affected the reputation and images that he had built though his success (Spruit et al.,2016). These actions of Michael Phelps were grated to be a part of his deviant behavior and affected his personal and professional life. Fans as well as sponsors did not embrace him rather repel and create a sharp decrease in the ticket sales, endorsements and sponsors (Rossi, 2018).

Therefore, it can be concluded that Deviant behavior can be varied from society to society but there are some common factors which no society or culture accepts. Deviant behavior includes, drug and alcohol addiction, theft or many criminal activities. In the career of an athlete like Michel Phelps, deviant behavior had harmed every aspect demolishing his reputation, image and profession.  

References:

Conrad, P. (2017). The Medicalization of Deviant Behavior. In Identifying Hyperactive Children (pp. 71-75). Routledge.

Kwon, W. D. (2015). The Effect of Social Support on Youth Student-Athletes' Stress and Deviant Behavior. Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society, 16(8), 5198-5206.

Rossi, A. (2018). The Effect of Age and Gender on Deviant Behavior: A Biopsychosocial Perspective. In Gender and the Life Course (pp. 137-166). Routledge.

Spruit, A., Van Vugt, E., van der Put, C., van der Stouwe, T., & Stams, G. J. (2016). Sports participation and juvenile delinquency: A meta-analytic review. Journal of youth and adolescence, 45(4), 655-671.

Tittle, C. R. (2018). Control balance: Toward a general theory of deviance. Routledge.