OK, so I haven't been tracking this whole wedding prep thing very religiously. OK, so I threw my ring across the room after I hung up with Duc last night. OK.
The truth is that I haven't been counting down lately; I've been counting up. Counting up the number of RSVPs. Counting up the number of guests that parents keep adding to the guest list, and counting the number of my friends I wish I could invite to the wedding (as if any of this is really about what I want). Counting up the days I have to take away from my students so that we can have a "traditional" honeymoon. Sure, I'm acting like a victim here, but it's only because I feel like one.
I mentioned before that I haven't been dreaming about this day since I was young. Am I seriously alone in this? There must be other sensible girls who feel like this whole wedding thing is contrived and wasteful, and there must be others who've gone along with it anyway. After all, I'm not the only one getting married here, and he wants me to be happy about all of this.
In the middle of starting a new school year, recovering from Jury Duty (that's a forthcoming blog), and waiting to hear back from the DJ and dress shop, I decided to get surgery on my varicose veins. So, over the next three days, as I sit on my bed with my legs elevated, I will try not to think about my guest list as I read Sylvia Plath. Perhaps she'll have some unconventional advice.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Frida Kahlo and Identity
Andre Breton called Frida Kahlo a Surrealist. Kahlo's response to this: "...I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality" (SFMOMA 7). When does the individual become part of something--a movement, a trend, a classification? When I was in junior high, my friend had a handmade, 8 1/2 by 11 poster on her wall which read, "I want to be different, just like everybody else." Being different is dangerous; one risks being classified. Classification to me is far more frightening than exclusion, in part because it is the ultimate form of rejection: if you are this, then you can't be that. Trying to define the self as a movement, trend, or any other fleeting definition petrifies me.
I can identify at least one antecedent for this fear, but I'll save that for later.
One day, during my first year of teaching, I had a joyous realization. None of my students had an eating disorder. This was shocking. In my hometown, I knew several girls who had been hospitalized (not just to the doctor's office to be weighed every other week) because of complications from their eating disorders. My experience at a conservative Christian university in southern California was similar. One semester, I counted 8 undergrads on my half of the dorm floor who were actively entertaining eating disorders One girl was hospitalized for two weeks. To be in an environment where zero percent of the girls suffered / struggled / indulged those issues was mind-blowing. I might add that the one student who brought up her weight socially was white (one of the two white girls I had as students that year). This phenomenon fascinated me, so I started doing what I do best: analyzing. I realized that my students did indeed classify themselves, but not based on their weight or even their appearance. My students gave themselves value and identity through their race. I teach in Sacramento, California, known as the most diverse community in the United States. I have students from all over the world; I have students whose parents are from all over the world. Their experience is the polar opposite of mine. One of my best friends in high school was of Chinese dissent. Another one of my friends was half-Indian; another was black. The common thread was that they all acted white. I grew up thinking that everyone was white, just like I. It wasn't until college that I realized that, culturally speaking, assimilation is less than ideal. My students know little of assimilation. They are more involved with their family and cultural groups than their social groups at school. In fact, their family and cultural groups often dictate their social groups at school. My students don't strive for the label of "skinny," "jock," "brain," "skater," or "band geek" like my peers did. My students boast their cultural identities as "Mexican," "Hmong," "Pinoy," "Black," and "Russian." My heart breaks with each anecdote of racial profiling or social struggle that my students endure. But at the same time, I envy them.
To grow up with the confidence of who you are as an individual--to rely on that even though you are thoroughly confused about life's harrowing events and circumstances--that is what I admire in my students. That is what Frida Kahlo came back to. And she had more problems than simply being teased as a child. Frida Kahlo expressed herself, partly through how she viewed herself as an individual, and partly through her culture. When walking through a Frida Kahlo exhibit, as I did at the SFMOMA yesterday, one cannot help but wonder why she painted herself so frequently, and, at times, so violently. This, I think, was her attempt to label herself in a healthy way--to capture who she was as a way to comfort herself. Another obvious element of Frida's art is Mexico: traditional clothing, folklore, and color. It's as if it gave her security, stability; identity.
The welcoming of her self-expression came with a label which she rejected; Frida Kahlo knew who she was, and she knew that it didn't fit into a box.
I can identify at least one antecedent for this fear, but I'll save that for later.
One day, during my first year of teaching, I had a joyous realization. None of my students had an eating disorder. This was shocking. In my hometown, I knew several girls who had been hospitalized (not just to the doctor's office to be weighed every other week) because of complications from their eating disorders. My experience at a conservative Christian university in southern California was similar. One semester, I counted 8 undergrads on my half of the dorm floor who were actively entertaining eating disorders One girl was hospitalized for two weeks. To be in an environment where zero percent of the girls suffered / struggled / indulged those issues was mind-blowing. I might add that the one student who brought up her weight socially was white (one of the two white girls I had as students that year). This phenomenon fascinated me, so I started doing what I do best: analyzing. I realized that my students did indeed classify themselves, but not based on their weight or even their appearance. My students gave themselves value and identity through their race. I teach in Sacramento, California, known as the most diverse community in the United States. I have students from all over the world; I have students whose parents are from all over the world. Their experience is the polar opposite of mine. One of my best friends in high school was of Chinese dissent. Another one of my friends was half-Indian; another was black. The common thread was that they all acted white. I grew up thinking that everyone was white, just like I. It wasn't until college that I realized that, culturally speaking, assimilation is less than ideal. My students know little of assimilation. They are more involved with their family and cultural groups than their social groups at school. In fact, their family and cultural groups often dictate their social groups at school. My students don't strive for the label of "skinny," "jock," "brain," "skater," or "band geek" like my peers did. My students boast their cultural identities as "Mexican," "Hmong," "Pinoy," "Black," and "Russian." My heart breaks with each anecdote of racial profiling or social struggle that my students endure. But at the same time, I envy them.
To grow up with the confidence of who you are as an individual--to rely on that even though you are thoroughly confused about life's harrowing events and circumstances--that is what I admire in my students. That is what Frida Kahlo came back to. And she had more problems than simply being teased as a child. Frida Kahlo expressed herself, partly through how she viewed herself as an individual, and partly through her culture. When walking through a Frida Kahlo exhibit, as I did at the SFMOMA yesterday, one cannot help but wonder why she painted herself so frequently, and, at times, so violently. This, I think, was her attempt to label herself in a healthy way--to capture who she was as a way to comfort herself. Another obvious element of Frida's art is Mexico: traditional clothing, folklore, and color. It's as if it gave her security, stability; identity.
The welcoming of her self-expression came with a label which she rejected; Frida Kahlo knew who she was, and she knew that it didn't fit into a box.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
The Countdown
I once set my myspace headline to read: "against wedding countdowns since 1979." It's still true, sort of. I will never have a wedding countdown online--nobody would care...and some would dare to mock it. My confession is that as I type, out of the corner of my eye, I can see my little blue "Let Every Minute Count" Wedding Countdown Clock. My mother bought it for me, partially as I joke and partially because she liked it. Now that it's sinking into the lower numbers (in the sixties now), it brings with it a healthy sense of urgency and (I'll admit it) excitement.
Middle daughters strive to be different. I think this spawns from the social and emotional pressure of being compared to "the perfect" first-born, and perhaps from our relatives' needs for variety in gift buying and sports and hobbies involvement. Since every girl I ever knew started planning her wedding at age eight, I decided that matrimony was not for me. The plot thickened when a handsome first-born Vietnamese boy (who's been dreaming of his wedding since age eight) proposed to me.
Now I have a Wedding Countdown Clock, bridesmaids dresses on order, appointments with wedding industry capitalists on a daily basis, and an embarrassingly large stack of wedding magazines. Life is a tale told by an idiot...
I figure that one positive way to endure--I mean enjoy--these sixty some days is to chronicle them on this blog. We'll pretend it's not a countdown, but I might be ready to admit that often I turn into that which I loathe. Se la vi.
Middle daughters strive to be different. I think this spawns from the social and emotional pressure of being compared to "the perfect" first-born, and perhaps from our relatives' needs for variety in gift buying and sports and hobbies involvement. Since every girl I ever knew started planning her wedding at age eight, I decided that matrimony was not for me. The plot thickened when a handsome first-born Vietnamese boy (who's been dreaming of his wedding since age eight) proposed to me.
Now I have a Wedding Countdown Clock, bridesmaids dresses on order, appointments with wedding industry capitalists on a daily basis, and an embarrassingly large stack of wedding magazines. Life is a tale told by an idiot...
I figure that one positive way to endure--I mean enjoy--these sixty some days is to chronicle them on this blog. We'll pretend it's not a countdown, but I might be ready to admit that often I turn into that which I loathe. Se la vi.
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