body politics

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*Inserts Witty Title Here*

I’ve typed out this final blog post about 6 times already and deleted it each time because I just wasn’t sure what to write about. Actually, I knew exactly what I wanted to write about but couldn’t because it felt a tad bit too personal. If anyone remembers from me saying in class, I hate sharing anything remotely personal online but after 6 attempts of trying to write about other less relevant things, I found myself stumped because I couldn’t go anywhere with it. Although this isn’t as deep as some of the other posts so far on the blog, I figured that since everyone else has been so open, I might as well. Here goes nothing…

Well, there is this problem that has been plaguing me for the past couple months. I am constantly at war with myself on how to portray myself professionally, so that I can be respected in the “industry” as a woman. And by this, I mean not as a slut. So that this will make more sense, I’ll say that I do a bunch of various “artistic” shit, but mainly, I’m a photographer and a clothing stylist, and a handful of my clients are Grammy-nominated musicians. I won’t name drop, but I had this incident not too long ago with one of my all-time, hands downnnnn second-to-favorite music artist…

Continue reading →

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“No you can’t be gay, you just haven’t found the right guy yet.”

My sister is a proud lesbian. As proud as they come. She’s the Teddy Roosevelt of gays, waving a rainbow flag as a bald eagle glides around her…and I love her for it. We talk about it frequently like it’s nothing (because it shouldn’t be a big deal), so when we encounter someone who actually doesn’t love her for it, it’s always a huge shock.

My sister threw a holiday party last week and we met someone new. Once we mentioned in the conversation that she was gay, you would have thought we said she was previously Harrison Ford:

“What? That’s a joke right? You’re not actually gay?”

Once she said she was he responded:

“Oh no. No no no. You’re not gay. No. you can’t be gay, you just haven’t found the right guy yet.”

How do you respond to something like that? Who gets to be the judge of whether or not my sister is gay? She went through another time when a guy really liked her, and when she continuously reiterated she was gay his response was, “It’s just a phase! You’ll grow out of it!” I’m sorry, it’s not a cyst on the side of her arm, it’s who she is.

I know our country is making a lot progress towards legalizing gay marriage throughout the United States, but I am constantly reminded that the country needs far more than that for the LGBT community to be fully accepted. There was just a news report last week of a young boy killing himself after being bullied for being on a cheerleading squad. Where do we even start to not only gain support from the country, but also show the opposition that literally nothing is wrong with being a LGBT.

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Masculinity, Disability, and Aging

In one of our readings (Coming to Terms by Gerschick) we focused on the intersection of masculinity and disability and this started me thinking how this reading can be applied to men I know in my own life. In the reading Gerschick outlined that most men approach their own disabilities in three ways one of which is called reformation. In this approach the hegemonic masculinity is still the main focus, but it is reformed  so the man’s abilities can fit the masculine ideal. Continue reading →

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Embodiment through time

Scan

My 26th birthday was a week and a half ago. It was quiet and I spent most of my time with my mother. I know, I had quite the raging party with my mom. We cleaned the house and laughed at the memories of us throughout the years. Yep, real party animal over here! We started to look at my baby pictures and I became fixated on this one picture, my very first baby picture hours after my birth at George Washington Hospital in D.C. Continue reading →

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Long Way to Happy

Long way to Happy

I know this is the title to one of my favorite sings from Pink!’s album “I’m Not Dead”  but it poses the question; just how long really? Until happiness?

I have been on antidepressants and anxiety medication for the past six years, after off and on therapy for 3 years before. Now I am not trying to write a sob story here. I am a strong and independent women. I am outgoing and have a bubbly personality, which is what confuses people I think- about these illnesses. Depression does not mean you are always in a bad mood

As the years have gone on, I began to wonder how long I will have to be on prescription medication. How long until my brain and body is able to sustain control on its own? How long until happy?

This is my disability, for I can adamantly see a difference in my mood from when I skip or miss a dosage. The difference is a very uncomfortable feeling that just reminds me that I am strong enough to cope without them…Yet!

Are these medications helping me or disabling me more?

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Something to think about.

At the beginning of the semester, I had no idea what to expect to learn in this class. It took me a little while to get used to thinking about the body in different ways, but I can say that I’m glad I did. From the information I have learned in this class, I’ve been able to look at issues in the world with a different lense, and I think that is so imortant.

Because I’ve learned so much about all of these topics, I’ve actually gotten in some interesting conversations with my mom. Continue reading →

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Feeling My Body

Lying on the cold ground outside of Penn Station on Thursday night, surrounded by activists chanting “We Can’t Breathe” as I chanted those very same words myself, I felt my body. I couldn’t say how many times it has happened other than to say that it rarely does, and if you asked me to describe the feeling now, I couldn’t for the life of me. I call it a feeling and not an experience because that’s what it is: a feeling. Everything else seems like an experience in comparison. The magic in feeling my body is that I am not in control of it. It just happens to me. It feels as though there’s a shift in my being in which I go from experiencing my body through my consciousness to actually feeling my body, being my body. Continue reading →

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Representation in Photography

I love the internet, of course. It lets me access a whole wealth of content, my favorite being photographs. I’m very interested to see what everyone else is seeing through their perspective. I look at a lot of photo blogs, flickr accounts, so on, to get to see peoples photos. However, I am often disappointed and a bit confused. When I look at photographic work done by my generation, most of it looks the same. Most of what I see is white people,specifically ‘pretty,’ thin girls, doing whimsical things like running through a field or laughing while their hair blows in the wind or something. If you have a Tumblr I know you know what I’m talking about. Let me find an example…

I don’t want to discount anyones photographs. I’m not saying these photos are bad or should not be taken. This isn’t an issue of quality or validity of work. Its an issue of representation in youth photography. Where are the fat photographers/ photo subjects? The photographers of color? Trans photographers? I could even venture to ask where the financially lower class photographers are, as the people in these photos often appear to be well off (taken with high quality equipment, or color film which is pricey, but this is an assumption). I would love so much to see the perspectives of a broader range of people. I’m wondering, is it there and just hiding in an unfound corner of the internet, or are the only people my age using photography as an outlet white skinny people? Of course there are layers of nuances here relating to socioeconomic issues, the narrative visual media maintains, and so on. But I hope that a wider demographic of people will being to be represented in photography.

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Schools are not for the disabled

Our last class discussion really had me thinking about how un-accessible schools really are. Not only in physical lay out but also in policies and attitudes and I wanted to talk about it a little more. For students with mental disabilities there’s the issue of “proving” that you have an issue that could affect you in class, going to the doctor’s, reporting it with the school where it is then on file, then outing yourself to your professors which can be very stressful for someone. Also once you talk with a professor it is a guessing game on whether they will be accommodating or act like you are taking away from others. For those with physical disabilities our campus is not designed for easy access while getting around, our desks are small and uncomfortable and overall there is just so many obstacles to overcome.

Class also made me think about things we don’t often attribute to this issue. Bigger individuals, whether it be height or weight, have a hard time fitting into the desks and yet it is not thought of as an issue. The same goes for pregnant women who are not given appropriate accommodations, they face a variety of issues such as discomfort/ pain, fatigue, doctor’s appointments, sickness etc. and teachers often don’t think of them as needing any help.

The school as a whole is often set up to work best for someone who can afford tuition, is young, able bodied, can live on campus, doesn’t have to work, and takes the classes their adviser tells them to. But what about the people who don’t fit into this. I’m young and luckily I’ve gotten through college without much trouble but thinking about it critically I can find times where I was seen as a nuisance because I didn’t fit into the appropriate mode. I am on scholarship so I have to take a certain amount of credits and get a certain GPA, also I take more than the needed amount of credits because my scholarship only lasts until the end of this year. I also have to work in order to get through college and I’ve been told many times I should quit my job, or I need to just stay in school longer and take more classes even though that’s not a possibility for me. Commuting also opens up problems that students face. There’s only a small number of students who fit into the accepted form and yet nothing is being done to change how we deal with all of the others.

I don’t know if we have one already but if not I think we should have a group or panel that discusses these topics and try to make change.