One of the topics that struck me the most in class the last few weeks was when we talked about mental illness and the people whose loved ones have mental illness. When people talk about mental illness, whether it be their own or just as a general topic, it’s hardly mentioned how other people are affected by someone’s mental illness. Yes the focus should be on the person who it working through this ordeal but it can also affect the others around. Continue reading
Month: October 2015
Porn Is Weird
My friends have the weird challenge that they do during a game that somebody designed. There are two teams and each team gets to choose a porn segment for the other team to watch. The team that watches the chosen video for the longest amount of time without laughing wins the challenge.
My Mind Could Never Be Quiet
The Book, “An Unquiet Mind” follows the story of Kay Redfield Jamison journey with bipolar disorder. I had to read this book for one of my college classes and was not looking forward to it. I have been on my own journey with bipolar disorder and was afraid the author would portray people with bipolar disorder, as being “crazy”, but aren’t people with bipolar disorder crazy anyway? Continue reading
You look gay today.
I am so tired of people saying this to me. Yes, I am a lesbian, but can’t I just wear what I want without you pointing it out to me? Continue reading
I Know You Told Me I’m Healthy, But I Really Think You Should Check One More Time
TW: death, sudden death, mental illness
My body freaks me out. I’ve never really understood how to embody it properly, to feel right in it. I guess there is no wrong way to embody your body, but I have always felt confused and afraid of my own. There’s so much about it that I can’t know—so much that is left automatic, and so much that could go wrong—and that inability to really, confidently know if I am safe in my body has literally driven me crazy at points in my life.
Labels…Who is “insert name?”
I feel as though every time I think I figured out who I am, someone else’s opinion interferes; thus leading me to think “oh I might be that too?” Continue reading
Achilles
I have been dancing since I was 7 years old and I still have not stopped. From break-dancing, Hip hop and even my own Punjabi cultural dance known as Bhangra. Dancing is my way to express myself and enjoy the limelight of the stage. From the age of 7 to 21 years old I never had any serious injuries besides some minor bruises or strained muscles. Continue reading
Gifs, Emojis, and Avatars: Self-Expression on the Internet
The internet creates a strange liminal space where we must invoke our bodies in order to represent ourselves. In the absence of facial expression, body language, or verbal description, one can express emotion and identity with other methods, like pictures, gifs, and emojis.
This video talks about how people on the internet often represent themselves through pictures, gifs, and videos. They caption or tag it with the phrase “Me RN” meaning “Me right now”. Even though these gifs or pictures are taken from shows, movies, or places that don’t relate to the user, through their abstraction and decontextualization people can appropriate these images to create themselves in webspace. These images capture a feeling or mood that can be difficult to evoke on the internet because it would require long descriptions, finesse of diction, and/or visual depiction that’s not possible or desirable to pull off.
In a similar vein, emojis are abstracted images used to represent emotions and ideas in internet liminal space. However, emojis differ from things like reaction images in that they are designed by the owners of the webspace themselves. Whereas reaction images derive from a third-party source and can be easily manipulated to suit the user’s needs, emojis are dependent on its creators. We could assume that while reaction images derive from a bottom-up appropriation of culture, emojis represent a top-down system that is limited by the ideology and resources of website owners and creators.
However, I’d like to think it’s more complicated than that. We cannot characterize website owners and creators as from the “top” and users at the “bottom”, when many creators derive from lower or middle class backgrounds and found their work through their own funding or crowdfunding. Users can be creators and creators are also users. Thus, while some of the same privilege systems are recreated on the web, we cannot assume that this is always true.
That’s why I believe that the internet represents an amazing new space for people to represent themselves and perhaps create new identities away from everyday restrictions.
Compulsory Femininity And My Very Weird Phobia
“Could you help me find the back of my earring?” she asks, looking around on the floor.
“Actually…. I can
‘t. Like, I really can’t, I’m sorry,” I say, standing there. I’m not just being a dick – the idea of touching an earring back sends a shudder through my entire body. I’ve been this way since I was a kid. In the way that people hate and fear spiders or elevators, I hate and fear small and ornate metal objects. I have the dumbest phobia of all: the jewelry phobia.
General Anxiety Disorder: Humanity’s Fight or Flight Reflex on Overdrive
What happens when two people with Anxiety high five and one of them is wearing a stone ring meant to help alleviate anxiety attacks?
Unruly Bodies 