You are never Beneath A Dream

Representative Heuristics, making judgements based off of preexisting prototypes and stereotypes, can be a hindrance when considering my dreams. Perhaps when one realizes that "being a female doctor is not yet accepted by society" (http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2014/mar/21/women-workplace-everyday-sexism), she might give up her dreams entirely. And on top of that, money is a huge problem. Consider the ever increasing costs of college, and then think of all the rash decisions your family may have made to increase their chances on the economical leave l. For example, you might have a brother who is convinced that a liquor store is the way to go, or a dad who wants to invest in a new business venture that you are 99% positive is going to be risky and unstable. Many men, not all but many, in our ever existing society believe that their dreams are better than ours. With all the feminism rights protests, one would think that they might find our dreams equally as important, but I have found that our dreams are inferior to theirs, which I find as illogical and impractical."I always thought [being a doctor] was the one concrete thing in the world that a human being could do. Fix up the sick, you know –" (A raisin in the sun), so I couldnt understand why my dreams to become something concrete were being obstructed by someone with abstract and complicated ones.

 Suddenly, I was plagued with this terrible feeling that the world was truly not worth saving anyways. If all I my dreams consisted of trying to increase the health of someone who wanted to obstruct my dreams, then the world was truly a twisted place. I was ready to give up my dreams,  when I was doused with a refreshing change. Doctoring, I learned, is something bold and beautiful and its a challenge that will prove quite fruitful. If us women never truly can prove to the world that what we do is worth its time, then society will forever be stuck in a unjust cycle of inequality.

" '[Life] isn't a circle--it is simply a long line--as in geometry, you know, one that reaches into infinity. And because we cannot see the end--we also cannot see how it changes. And it is very odd by those who see the changes--who dream, who will not give up--are called idealists...and those who see only the circle we call them the "realists"!' " (A Raisin in the Sun)
To succeed, women should look beyond the circle of reality.

Pink Elephants + Elephants in the room= A whole mess

Today, society avoids the elephants in the room by a various means of escape. Silence, aversion, and distraction can be used to beat around the bush, but the one elephant we can't ignore is the "pink elephant". Pink elephants, according to Meriam Webster, are visual hallucinations that occur from a state of psychological and physical drunkenness. This inner battle of mental disillusion can let the elephant out of its cage,  or the "cat" out of the bag. As proven in F. Scott Fitzgerald's story, A Diamond as Big as the Ritz, drunkenness doesn't just refer to a state of alcoholism, but also to a greed or obsession with something, in this case money, that can impair one's judgement. The main character, John T. Unger, falls under the spell of a very rich family, failing to recognize their empty rhetoric as anything other than luxurious and eloquent. As the story progresses, the audience realizes, this "fairytale" doesn't really begin with a "Once upon a time"; unfortunately, it was more like "back in hell, an evil man with an obsession for money was born...". Braddock Washington, the man in the family (and from hell), uses a series of cruel lies to cover up his paradoxical treasure: a diamond so big that its useless to the economical market. Clearly, he thought he was Moses, because he tries so hard to become a "God" using his "princelike" status (if you know anything about Moses, that would ultimately summarize him: a prince turned God). At the end of the story, the real "Moses", or "God", pays his retribution towards Washington, ultimately turning him back into the place he was born and destined to be. And now, everyone can agree that the "pink elephants" that release an elephant into the room can definitely lead to a karmatic disaster.

Now look at the largest diamond in the world, the Cullinan Diamond. Not so attractive anymore is it?

Break the looking glass

I often spend my time reminiscing about memories which have become glorified in my head. I can always find myself thinking back to "that summer" during school, when in reality "that summer" was just a long 3 months of pure endless boredom.

What psychologists call this is the "Good Old Days Syndrome". Keyword: Syndrome. This is a problem. (Read more at: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/turning-straw-gold/201308/good-old-days-syndrome)

Essentially, this "romanticism" is innate but not innocuous.

The greatest problem in looking backwards it that we tend to alleviate our troubles by pretending that the past was better and that we are facing a new kind of trouble never faced before. That becomes our basis for failing. For example, I might say that my parents didn't face school like I do now, and it was much easier for them without the cutting edge technology and brand new information that makes us cram more and more information into our heads (don't deny it, you've probably done the same thing). So we make the past seem better to make our problems seem worse. How does that make our lives better? It doesn't.

Unfortunately, it gets worse. When we start applying ideals to people, we make a false image of them in our head which they will never be able to fulfill. Gatsby (from yes, in fact,  The Great Gatsby), for instance, idealized Daisy (also a character fabricated by the acclaimed novelist Fitzgerald) as someone who was as perfect as a barbie doll (yes, the irony is real because barbie dolls are the last thing from perfect). Thus the "Fay" (full name: Daisy Fay) part of her name comes into play because her idealistic image is, like a fairy, not real. This idealism applies to modern life. When people tend to paint a picture of another in a way they feel describes them as real, they may in fact be setting themselves up for a reality crash when the latter's real character slaps the former across the face.

So remember this holiday season, when you look back on the memories you made in previous years:

Don't look back at this....

But look back at this....

"You’ll still have your stars"

I want something that is not material. Something that can't be bought and something that may not even bring me happiness. I want to "venture into the unknown" , "to add a new note" and cause the "universe [to] change" (The University of Chicago Campaign: Inquiry and Impact). However, most of America doesn't want this. They want cars, and entertainment, and money, and beach houses, as do many other average human beings. 

But what truly does the possession of such items bring to a person besides the momentary satisfaction of "I have it, and you dont!"? 

When dolls, and cars, and new toys melt away into oblivion, objects which cannot truly be touched still remain. Rex Walls, in the Glass Castle, by Jeanette Walls, reaffirms this by claiming "[His kids] still have [their] stars" because they will never go away. 

Now that we've clarified that regular possessions are truly not worth our time, there is still the matter of human ignorance. 

Although "I'm in a more socially conscious form of my default-setting", "a huge percent of stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, as it turns out, totally wrong and deluded" (David Foster Wallace in his speech "This is Water"). As I start to rethink my opinions, I realize that there is always more to learn, more to explore rather than just obtain. By turning the head 5 degrees to the right, we could gain so much more knowledge than is available, but most of us are just too stubborn or too oblivious to move away from this. 

In fact, such obdurateness can be traced back to the 1920's in America. Consumerism, the promotion of goods in the interest of consumers, flourished in the "Roaring Twenties", causing many people to become rigid in their obsession of physical appurtenances. They became a useless camera, one that could not rotate to view images from different angles. Imagine what photos would be like if they could only be captured from one height, one distance, and one viewpoint. Any minute details that made the photo unique could have easily been missed. This unwavering structure which misses out the most significant details is what the society in the 1920's was like, and what the society is like today. 

For example, The Great Gatsby, by F.Scott Fitzgerald, exemplifies the theme of obsession of materialism in the 1920's, but also captures the stubbornness that continues today. Daisy, near the beginning of the novel, exclaims that "The best thing a girl can be in this world, [is] a beautiful little fool" because she has one picture of how women can obtain a perfect life, by embracing the personality of a fool and living life wildly. 

To Punctuate or Not To Punctuate

 As children, we've all been taught that breaking the rules, whether it be on the playground, or in the academic world (of punctuation for example), is almost sinful. By the time high school rolls around and we've begun to explore why society can be arrogant in setting a "default setting, hard-wired" (said by famous American novelist, David Foster Wallace) into our brains, us students start to question why we need to follow the rules in the first place. We've become so obsessed with the idea of "getting free of [our] natural, hard-wired default"(Wallace) that considering the original might actually be insane. And it probably is. The whole while, I've been teetering on the fine line of equilibrium and disequilibrium, containing the urge to break all the set down rules of punctuation. If great authors such as Shakespeare dare to break free of the standards and still manage to succeed from the wrath of the the punctuation police, then why can't the average commoner! Not to say that new rules should override the old, but to throw away the rules once and for all.

Punctuation, like society, can be hypocritical at times. The comma, for example, "feign [s] liberation with one hand" and "tighten [s] the leash with another" (Elizabeth Austen in "On Punctuation"). Thus Austen implies that the rules, while creating a sense of emotion and feeling of suspense, can also be applied to a critical manner, such as eliminating non-essential (or so it thinks) phrases from a sentence. Modern culture, in its constant state of motion, should adapt to a new era as it occurs. As it happens in this era, punctuation should be used "honestly and sparingly" (Lewis Thomas in "Notes on Punctuation) and only to "dwell in [the] possibility" (Emily Dickinson in "I dwell in Possibility" of furthering creativity. An avid representation of a "sparing" (Thomas) use of punctuation could be exemplified in the modern social media site, Twitter. Freelance writer, Amanda Cosco, claims that she has "seen some beautiful [tweets]" (Cosco in "How Twitter Can Make You a Better Writer") coming from a site that actively restricts punctuation. And although some may argue against Twitter, and the campaign for loosening the "dogma of the period" (Austen) due to the inevitable fact of its ability to convey crisp ideas, one must ponder on the more important works in literary history. They dare to break the "dogma", which led them to create a story which embodied a clear message without the use of punctuation. So the final question is: To conform or to be individualistic? It's all in the matter of human choice.

Just the photo of a man (Shakespeare) who escaped the rules...

Identity is all in perception

Upon debating with some of my fellow students, I have come to more questions than answers when it comes to the issue of what makes up a human identity. Truly, my belief is that identity is shaped by society's perception of a specific mannerism or stereotype attributed to a race. Because identity is what a person believes he or she is, in the physical and mental state, and can only be identified by pondering on what outside influences have shaped that person to be.

After some thinking, I concluded that once society begins its rampage on a victim, from the time of childbirth, that victim will begin to believe whatever they are told to be true, including what others perceive that child as.  Soon enough, the victim starts to define important characteristics such as beauty, humor, and morality and associate these qualities with others and not themselves.

For example, in a passage from The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison (the author) creates an admirable scenario in which she clearly highlights that the oppressed can in fact learn to oppress others by taking their own diffidence and forcing it onto a weaker object.

" 'They are ugly. They are weeds.' " (Morrison 50) says the victim.
This situation is ironic because the reader would expect the main character, Pecola, to be compassionate because society has perceived her to be ugly, but she instead is critical of "them" (them being dandelions) because she has determined what society's definition of beauty must be true.

This just shows that the hypocrisy of society can influence even the most victimized member. In the end, Morrison claims that the oppressed themselves can be the oppressor to those who are inferior, forcing an identity onto an individual who is vulnerable to injustice.

Repressed Memories

A psychodynamic psychologist would claim that people are driven by unconscious motives and desires. This in fact, despite the polemic nature of this point of view, is apparent in many instances of humanity.

Much of modern society protests against shunning people based on their nuanced behaviorism, but to their disdain, it happens more often than not. For example, in a normal class discussion of a widely recognized novel, The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison, classmates seem to express a collective disgust for the character Geraldine. As the discussion progressed and some important insight was brought to light, I noticed that our "quick to make conclusion" attitude slowly faded away. However, most victims are not so lucky to receive this kind of clarity.
Geraldine's dilemma, marital rape, was the source of her psychological trauma, and the reason for her sour behavior that much of the readers failed to truly acknowledge.

A simple answer to Geraldine's attempt to explain herself would be, "Oh, we all have problems". Unfortunately, this is the case in many situations. Perhaps, to avoid herself the unnecessary pain that would inflict with such a response, she avoided sharing such obvious details that let everyone know that she was being raped. Or perhaps it was a repressed memory that was revealed to the public without true knowledge of the victim's feelings. In the end, the most logical conclusion would attest to the fact that this "marital rape" resulted in the passivity of her character.

In recent times, studies have shown that such psychological trauma would result in "social withdrawal" as stated in the article below.

http://wkzo.com/news/articles/2014/oct/24/for-kids-psychological-abuse-may-leave-the-deepest-scars/

Then as a result, psychological trauma is almost deemed as genetic, as usually the case seems to play out in a "you give what you get" kind of theme. To continue with Geraldine, the story points out that her son, Junior, turns out just as cold-hearted as her. Both with a minimal backstory, and both with the same amount of negative viewer misjudgment.

"Look at me, I will Never pass for a Perfect Bride"

Society has been corrupted in terms of the perception of beauty standards. Humanity has been taught at a very young age about what is respectable . Social media and culture have been a very important influential factor in the game of killing self esteem.

I especially have noticed the effects of Disney on a child's development and perception of beauty. While they may not realize it, several Disney movies set up children for a false ideal of beauty. Starting from the beginning, stories such as Snow White (1937), Cinderella (1950), and Sleeping Beauty (1959), have set up the standard for gender roles. For every little girl watching this movie, they walk away knowing that it's okay to be a damsel in distress and for every little boy, they remember that they will have to battle the big scary monster to rescue the damsel.
The best movie that does, however, contradict the stereotype is Mulan (1998). While it does have its flaws (The song Reflection, despite its inevitable grace, has connotations which imply the beauty standards of China are critical, especially when assessing for a "Perfect Bride"), Mulan is one who breaks the limit of acceptable means to bring a family honor, and does so with impeccable accuracy.

Once these seeds start to create roots in a culture, the people who realize they don't fit the norms quickly learn that nothing they do will help them assimilate. They make assumptions, wrongfully, that there must be something entirely wrong with them. Toni Morrison, a Nobel Prize winning author, claims that "Victims of self loathing" are actually "accepting rejection as legitimate" (The Bluest Eye).  Mostly affected by this hatred are children, racial minorities such as Blacks, and women, who have been experiencing the exclusion from the beginnings of history. The self deprecation becomes so bad that the comments that others make upon an individual are almost better than the comments that an individual makes on themselves.

In recent times, studies have been trying to reveal the disparaging nature of such standards. Dove, for instance, has created a clip that exposes the cruelty of self denigration.

When first watching this clip, I was baffled at the differences in the images, but when reflecting later, I realized that most, if not all of us, including myself, have experienced the same critical and harsh analysis of ourselves, which does not in any sort portray the same image that others see in us.

Incidents in the Life of a Modern Day Slave

While slavery was abolished in America in the 1860's, it still to this day exists in various types or forms. Perhaps, in the greatest sense, slavery can be pegged as any evil which swamps a human into an everyday lifestyle of torture.

For example, take standardized tests. Now this may seem like a very trivial and naive way to interpret slavery, but for a while I've felt like I wasn't really living life, I was just functioning. In the regular cycle of going to school, coming back home, and studying for large state based tests like the SAT, it was almost as if the education system had had me under a torturous spell of life's disillusionment.

Of course, slavery in the U.S reaches far beyond the life of a normal schoolgirl. To up the scale to another level, let's consider prejudice. Since 1860's, America has been able to claim that all men have equal rights. Its claims, however, are mostly false. Prejudice in America has been long standing, even existing today. Take Brent Staples for example. His literary piece called Black Men and Public Space details how prejudice can be a type of slavery. The never ending cycle of feeling inferior can be analogous to the life of an African American slave in the 1800's.

The highest level of slavery in Modern America is actually slavery. Better known as Human Trafficking, this kind of slavery is almost unimaginable to the normal viewer, but is actually more common than expected.

Human Trafficking is the illegal selling of adolescents and young adults, especially girls, into sexual servitude and prostitution. All girls are kidnapped from their homes or taken off the street and are beaten violently.

This girl has been labelled into 1 of millions of modern day slaves

Clemmie Greenlee, a young woman who escaped from such terrible clutches exclaimed that “If you’re putting a whip on my back because I’m not picking enough cotton, or if you’re beating me because I’m not earning my quota, it’s the same thing. It’s slavery.”

To read more, check out this link: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/07/opinion/slavery-isnt-a-thing-of-the-past.html?_r=0

What makes a villain a villain?

It's a Chilling (worth) feeling in the cool October air. As Halloween approaches, I can't help but remind myself of the dark and spooky creatures that go bump in the night.

So when reflecting upon the ending of the Scarlet Letter, I made a quick connection from Chillingworth to the hollowness associated with Halloween (see what I did there, hollow, hallow?). Roger Chillingworth, the scariest character in a classic novel that I've ever read, met a fateful doom at the end of the novel, but his death, in my opinion, cemented his villainous character.

I mean, what would have happened if we saw the thoughts behind his thinking? What was he doing handing all of that money over to Pearl? Obviously, he wanted his legacy to continue. He wanted to find another way to live, even if his main reason for living seemed to fade away. We can only ponder as to what evil stores he had in mind for the innocent daughter of his estranged wife.

His timely death made me reconsider what truly made up the characteristics of a villain. While Hawthorne made Chillingworth "wither away", he points out that each villain has to have some sort of downfall. During his life, Chillingworth was portrayed as some sort of devil, with "a writhing horror [that] twisted itself across his features"(Hawthorne 58) . However his death was sort of...anticlimactic. Based on all his evil ventures, one might suspect he would die a gruesome or more cataclysmic death. Instead he fades away, like any mundane human would.

This led me to the conclusion that Chillingworth really isnt a villain. He's just an antagonized human being with a soured heart. Hester's fault actually. Villains, in my opinion, have to show a stark contrast to heroes. Any tragic hero, such as Dimmesdale, has to have a major weakness that surpasses his or her strengths. So shouldn't that make the villain, as a result of the contrast, virtually indestructible?

Take Crowley, a character from a popular culture show called Supernatural, for example. To this date, this "King of Hell" has yet to be defeated. He stands strong as a villain, and probably will continue to do so, in pestering the two main heroes lives and in making the world a HORRIBLE place.

Warning: Crowley Creepiness Overload....!

The Ice Queen: A single woman

As far back as I can recollect, I've been called "bossy", "mean", "dramatic", and "sarcastic". Those words seemed singled out by my childhood guy friends as words specifically for me. Now I know, those words actually meant that I had "leadership skills", "authority a woman shouldn't have", "the power to express my emotions as an individual",  and "humor".

The words hurt. As I grew up, I began to realize that I wasn't the only one facing the humiliation. Many others, almost all women, face the disasters of being pinned as something they are not. Little girls, especially, will be classically conditioned to stop telling jokes and trying to be a leader after being mocked for their actions. In fact, today's society has recognized this diffidence and prominent female CEO's (such as Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook) of companies have started a campaign called Ban Bossy to remove the word bossy from society's vocabularies and promote self confidence within young girls.

A brief overview of Ban Bossy: http://banbossy.com/

So does the cliche, "Better safe than sorry" work? No. I think no matter what we do as women we will be compromised on every nook and turn. By keeping quiet, like many girls do, we restrict our own creativity. Society shouldn't be able to define our genuine comedy as satirical. For example in Deborah Tanner's piece There Is No Unmarked Woman, she identifies a common woman as being marked for her appearance and actions even when they appear to be acceptable to society. The point is, if all women are inevitably marked, there is no reason to be "safe" if in the end we all end up being "sorry.

Some women have accomplished great feats by stepping outside their "safe" boxes. They break the stereotype that "Women are Ice Queens", meaning we are harsh and passive to the world.

Ellen Degeneres, for example, is one such comedian. Very renowned for her work, Ellen shows her skill, as one of the funniest people I know, and proves that women are not cold towards others.

She even explains in the video (above) that women are more conversational than men (and does so in a way that makes us laugh :P). The fact did shock me but it seems true. We are more conversational, but we tend to become reserved as soon as we are put down by society for being so loquacious.

So next time, men, when proceeding to call a woman bossy, rethink the situation and ponder why she behaves in such a way. Most likely, it is because she has to carry the burdens of stereotypes that society throws on her.

Every Rose Has Its Thorns

In Freshman year, I went to a seminar that changed my outlook on societal ranks. The orator started off by mentioning that humans are always taught to single out those who don't belong. How was this even relevant to the theme of the presentation, racism? But then I began to ponder on his words and I realized that he was right; this habit is inborn in us, and activated as early as the first grade, when teachers tell students to cross out items that are irrelevant to a set of objects. Soon enough this "crossing out" becomes shunning from society. 

Such as the rose in The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The rose bush itself appears in the book sparsely, but the symbol is omnipresent. When first introduced, it is situated amongst the most dreary place in a city; across from the jail and in the peripheral of a cemetery. The rose seems as an irony of sorts; where something of pulchritude sits in a place where life seems to come to a stop, figuratively for a jailer and literally for a corpse, and serves as a beacon of hope for those who are bound to be shunned from the world. 

More importantly, the rose is a symbol for the book's main character, Hester Prynne, the object of society's distaste. She is the embodiment of a rose itself. Her "rose", or beauty, is clearly etched onto her appearance. However, although she is portrayed as having "indescribable grace" (Hawthorne 51), she is plastered with a surefire sign of ignominy, a large scarlet "A" to represent her Adultery. The adultery itself represents the thorns on a rose.

The photo below shows Hester's beauty in the form of a rose, surrounded by all its thorns. 


On a rose, thorns exist to protect the rose from harm. This feature evolved due to the constant interruption of its growth by pressure and threats from the outside world. Now when anyone picks a rose, the first thing they notice is the presence of thorns. 

Just in the same way, everyone in the Scarlet Letter notices Hester's "A" before her innocent appearance. 

But all the Puritans are hypocrites. 

What the seminar eventually taught me was that all people have thorns. Meaning, all people have their flaws. So we shouldn't be singling out others at all, because if we continued the same process until the end, we would all exist separately in our own little world of individual flaws. 

Solitude: Finding Passions and Escaping Struggles

I think the best definition for solitude would be a human's desire for a removal from society to either redefine themselves away from stereotypes or to seek improvement in personal goals or talents. 

Stereotypes and prejudice infiltrate our very lives. Perhaps you have heard some of the common ones and are unaware of them: Asians are smart, Latino girls are looking for a good time, Native Americans are alcoholics, Black men are criminals, and the list goes on. And these wrongful perceptions of people hurt the victims to the point where they want to feel a disconnect from society itself. 

Thankfully, solitude doesn't always turn out bad. Some of the best artistic endeavors and masterpieces come from solitude. 

When people retreat into seclusion, they search for hobbies that will help them relieve the anger they feel while being discriminated against. And out of this anger, comes a beautiful representation of what people believe capture their feelings. 

Like me, Uldus Bakhtiozina (in the video below) uses photography as a means to find some relief, but she goes a step farther in making sure that her photos undermine the stereotypes against her. 

The Truth and Untruths about Photography

If one were to write a great novel such as, The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien, and be able to establish a sense of verisimilitude, who is to say that they cannot achieve the same appearance of truth in a simple photo?  

Thousands of photographers capture images every day, but only a few are able to capture the truth. Out of a thousand photos taken, give or take a few, only a meager amount can expose the uncomfortable embarrassments of society. 

Few have been successful at such a tedious feat. Those who have succeeded do not flaunt, for what they have discovered is not something commendable about the world. The photos they have taken do not just uncover society's cryptic secrets, they delve into the lives of those who are burdened with the ills of life. 

In America, many faults are yet to be found, but those that have prove to be shocking. Julius Krausz snapped the photo below in the 1900's, showing that although this era may have been fruitful and luxurious at times, all was not well in any area other than the 1st percentile of the population. What much literature struggles to write about, Krausz manages to ensnare in one breathtakingly terrifying shot. 

In addition to taking the photo itself, the artist must face an arduous journey to both overcome their own boundaries as well as those set by authorities. In such repressive countries, capturing a photo that reveals an injustice gets them jailed, or killed. In the most recent news, Azerbaijan's photographers fight against threats to find out that many citizens are being kept quiet on their judgement against an upcoming election in the country. 

(To find out more information check out this article! http://www.indexoncensorship.org/2013/10/from-the-magazine-azerbaijan/)

However, although the photo of American children huddled together in an abandoned street shows undeniable truth about the poverty of the 1900's, there is also something polemical about taking a photo. 

Photos can also be quite deceiving. In reality, the photo above may look quite disturbing, but the actual truth could be something quite different. I, as well as many others, have come to discover that all truths are based on a type of fiction and all fiction is based on some sort of truth. Sound paradoxical? It is. The fiction itself varies in both situations, where the former refers to perspectives and the latter refers to a figment of imagination. 

As a pioneer of modern photography, Alfred Stieglitz once said, "“In photography there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.”

Take the life of a normal photographer, per say. In his memoir, Voices In The Mirror, Gordon Sparks talks about his encounter with his first job in Washington D.C , through which he learnt that " a good documentary photographer's work has as much to do with his heart as it does with the eye" (Sparks 106). 

So in the end, a truth uncovering a country's sins may be captured but almost all of it is based on the perspective of the photographer, or that "of the beholder".