I love sewing, and I recently decided to make my own skirt and crop top to wear during the spring. There are tons of videos on Youtube of women designing and sewing together there own clothes, and I thought that it was an awesome idea. It is less expensive then buying clothing at stores and it allows you to be creative with the fabric and stitching. But sometimes I wonder if I start telling people that I make my own clothes, they will think that I am poor or have too much time on my hands. Is it really so bad to wear something you made yourself? What does that say about your social status? There are so many societal norms that dictate the way we live, and if you stray from those norms you are shut out from everyone. Why is this so? I guess it doesn’t matter as long as you are okay with it. Fashion designers sew their own clothing to give to consumers, so why can’t the consumers make their own designer garments? Who says you can’t be your own designer? I know that these “societal norms” that I am talking about is artificially created, but you can’t deny its reality either. It is the very thing that is driving our consumer society today.

At the Age of maybe eight or nine I wanted to look like a Barbie doll. I wanted the perfect body size, cute red cheeks, long straight hair, and colored eyes. Every year that past I wanted to look like someone else, but as I reflect on my childhood I realize that everyone I once wanted to be had some similar characteristics to a Barbie doll. I was grown in a fairly stable household, I was always told I was beautiful and  there was never a instant in which I was told that I was an ugly child but for some reason I felt that I was not beautiful because I did not look like the cheetah girls.  I did not have nice straight hair or a straight nose, nor was I white. I admired white girls because I wanted to have their features because that’s what I associated beauty with. As I got older I started accepting myself for who I was but there was that Barbie doll mentality still lingering. I have thick hair and my mom use to braid it in various styles, but I hated it because it did not make me look beautiful I taught at the time .I found all the excuses I could just to convince my mother that I needed a perm so my hair could resemble these beauties I idolized. I don’t think my mother knew I wanted to change my body to resemble these Disney channel stars; I think she taught she was supporting a cartoon phase children often go through. I didn’t just want to meet these stars or dress like them; I wanted to literally look like them because I taught I was lacking something. As I got older I realized that I was perfect the way I was, it took a lot of confidence building because for the longest time I just wanted to look like the typical white or mix star on television. Today I love myself however I sometimes have that moment where I see a person and I wish I had their features, I am not sure if this is normal or am I still not fully confident. Society makes it even more complicated because it promotes the idea of loving oneself for what we are but most media sources portray the Barbie doll look as ideal beauty. I do not look anything like a Barbie doll and I’m ok with that but I often wonder if society thinks I’m ugly because I don’t fit in this category? What is beauty in your eyes?

Does anybody remember watching The Wild Thornberry’s as a kid? I loved that show!  I always wanted to be just like Eliza, traveling around the world and talking to animals. Yet for all my love for this character, others hate her. Why? Well for one it always seems like she puts animal’s needs before her and her families’. In one episode, entitled, Have Yourself a Thornberry Christmas, Eliza and her family are celebrating Christmas. She runs into some trouble when she sees animals in distress and tries to help. She comes across and ostrich trying to keep her eggs warm, so Eliza gives the animal her parents’ Christmas present to use, a camera warmer. She also gives Christmas lights to a zebra to keep it safe from a group of Jackals. I guess one argument against her is that she should not interfere in the lives of animals and should just leave them alone. I agree that sometimes it’s best to not get involved but, I mean, come on, she’s a kid, wouldn’t you want to lend a hand to a animal in need? And to keep her and her primate friend, Darwin, from getting eaten by a lion, she gives her families’ Christmas goose dinner to it. But this is legit, she was going to get eaten by a lion, I would have done the same! And also being able to talk to both humans and animals, she probably can’t help coming to the rescue because she is a part of both words.

Also in another episode, Eliza gives all her families’ food supply to a group of monkeys because she believes they are starving. There are plenty of episodes where Eliza put herself at risk for the sake of animals, and I also agree that she can be extreme when it comes to seeing animals suffer, but sometimes you just got leave it alone and move on.

I loved reading comic books as a kid. Whenever my family and I went to India, we would always come back with a comic about Indian culture; one of my favorite stories to read from the Jataka series, a series of stories written from the former lives Buddha, is “King Kusha”, which is a story about a prince born with an ugly face, yet he excelled in academics and the arts. One day his parents decided that he should be married; aware of his looks prince Kusha knew that no one would want to marry him. So he carved the image of a beautiful girl out of stone and told his parents that he would marry her thinking that they could not find such a girl. However, the girl was found; she was the daughter of neighboring king.  After that, the king’s messengers went to the princess’ palace and told the king of the marriage and the father agreed to have his daughter married to Kusha. Neither Kusha nor the princess got to meet or see each other before the marriage! Prince Kusha’s parents knew that if the beautiful princess who was supposed to marry their son saw him, she would run away because he was so ugly! Talk about ruining your child’s self esteem! But the two do eventually meet and the princess ends up running back to her parents and Kusha is not far behind, trying to win her love. He ended up apprenticing for different artists in the palace, trying to make gifts for the princess to show her that he loved her, but when she found out they were from him she didn’t want them. Eventually, the father of the princess discovers that seven other kings want his daughters’ hand in marriage. Realizing that giving her to only one of them would begin a war with the other 6, he decides that he would have to cut her up, and give a piece of her to each king. I know, gross! Realizing what her father is going to do, the princess runs back to Kusha wanting him to save her, and he does by offering her 7 sisters to the kings. And they live happily ever after!

There are many things that I am noticing about this story. Both the princess and Kusha’s mother are way too focused on his looks. What the hell? Let her see beyond his looks. Show her how good of a person he is Look at how talented this guy is! He can sculpt out of stone, he excels at pottery, and many other artistic creations, and he is so sweet. If I was the princess, I would be delighted that someone loved me that much. And, when she found out that she was in danger, she came to him asking for help. That seems kind of selfish of her. And Kusha still helps her. To this day I still love this story, it gives me something to think about— not to judge a book by its cover.