Issue 2: Culture

CULTUREStay woke.

WHY I TRADED IN MY “FINSTA” FOR A GOOD OLD FASHIONED JOURNAL

By: Nicole Cier

It’s 2018 and nobody keeps a diary anymore -- at least, not in the traditional way. We each have a “finsta,” a “fake” Instagram account that exists without the rules, etiquette and limitations that society usually employs with social media. But this is not news. The concept of a more private, alternate account in addition to one’s main Instagram has been in action for years now. Think of it as a combination of both a blooper reel and a digital diary. On our “real” accounts, we post filtered, perfect images that convey the perfect life. On our “fake” accounts, we post anything else that doesn’t fit the standards of the typical Instagram post. This includes unedited or imperfect photos (think “the ones that didn’t make it to the ‘Gram”), long and personal captions, funny memes and anything else our hearts desire.

What started as an outlet to post funny photos privately became what the kids of our generation considered a safe space to share our innermost thoughts and feelings, go on the occasional emotional rant and connect with peers on a more interpersonal level. It all seemed so exciting, the ability to curate our own little community of carefully selected friends and share things that mattered to us. But as time went on and our posts developed into more personal matters resembling diary entries, the concept of a “finsta” changed -- at least for me.

Over the span of a few months, I noticed that I was conforming too much to what I thought my64 followers would like to see. Everything I posted had to be funny or profound or aesthetically

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pleasing, and that is not always what life is. Even in this world where -- supposedly -- no expectations or judgment existed, I was still tempted to create an alternate reality to the one I was actually living. Yes, I genuinely love my life and am filling it with things that make me happy, but nobody lives a totally perfect life day to day. Things happen, we feel upset at times, we need to share our thoughts and emotions with people we trust.

I recalled the days of my childhood when I felt free to write anything I wanted in my actual diary, a pink fluffy journal with a lock on it. If this account was supposed to resemble a diary, why was I censoring myself? I felt trapped with the thoughts that I couldn’t type out, for fear of oversharing. Suddenly this oasis for personal expression was preventing me from doing just that. The girl behind the account didn’t feel like me anymore; it was like an overly optimistic, semi-filtered, flawless skinned alter ego was posting for me instead.

We can’t control much in the universe, but our social media presence is one thing we can. The image I was projecting was starting to feel unauthentic, which is when I decided to take a step back and reassess my values. I began to remove some followers from my list (a relatively new feature on IG that allows you to let people stop following you, without blocking or notifying them), and then some more, until only my closest friends remained on the list. At that point I thought, “if these are actually my best friends, can’t I just share my feelings and ideas with them face to face?” And so I did.

I also turned a trip to Target into a trip down memory lane, where I bought a good old fashioned marble composition book. This journal has become a more efficient way of recording and expressing things that matter to me. It’s filled with song lyrics, personal thoughts, poems, inspiration and ideas. It doesn’t require ideal selfie lighting, filters or a certain amount of likes. It

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just requires a pen, a few spare minutes and an open mind. Our generation barely knows the definition of privacy. We overshare, overpost, we feel the need to document almost everything we do and share it online. Why? To project a certain image to people we went to high school with, or impress followers we don’t even know? This journal is something that is truly private, for my eyes only and whoever I choose to share it with on my own terms. After all, sometimes paper listens better than people can.

STOP TRYING TO LOOK LIKE US

By: Sarah Harwell and Destiny Hodges

Introduction Last month, our Culture Editor wrote about cultural appropriation on Halloween; little did we know that the disgrace of our ethnicities would become someone’s face, a face that they put on because white women find it “attractive” or “trendy”. For years, we were told that our features were not “attractive”. With larger representation of our ethnicities in media, the superior can’t help but see our ethnic features as something that they can steal. There are multiple Instagram influencers that use heavy makeup of a darker shade, and edit their creases out of photos - all the while having the privilege to go back to society’s beauty standards, and being able to get the jobs that we deserve, not experience the oppression that we encounter, not hear the hate that is yelled at us.

On Black Women An un(wise) person once said: “I do think that people should not be so quick to call everything cultural appropriation. They should be flattered when people take things from their culture. Culture is shared. Everyone takes something from someone. And it’s like that time-transcending idiom: Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” - Katrice Perkins

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Let’s makes this very clear once and for all; culture is not something that can be simplified to mere exchange between those who choose to take from it. “Culture refers to the cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and material objects and possessions acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving.” When you borrow from another culture to achieve some trendy aesthetic, you are disregarding the history and experiences behind your taking for your own benefit.

“What’s the big deal anyway?”, many say. Let me give you a prime example:

Imagine being the most disrespected person in America, the Black Woman. Imagine that notion being imbedded in your culture not because that’s what your people wanted, but because that’s how history played out. Imagine your women being mocked, raped, sexualized, trivialized and made profitable for the same traits that white women reconstruct their entire physical appearance for. And no, not all of our people possess the same physical traits, but it is evidently apart of our identity.

We keep shouting cultural appropriation when we see it, because when you take from us, you don’t see us, you see an opportunity. You hate us but you want to look like us. We’re deemed as less than human when you take from our identity as if it just an accessory. Our lips, our butts, our hairstyles, our music, our fashion, our vernacular, our darker skin are made trends and disguised as “flattery”. You love all of these things, but God forbid you take a stand against police brutality or wage gaps.

And of course, you have those that say, “I don’t see race”. Well guess what, if you don’t see race youdon’t see us either. You probably aimed to resonate with some sort of deep comment that transcends

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what we know to be true, but really all you did was admit to being ignorant to racism. “Race is such an ingrained social construct that even blind people can ‘see’ it. To pretend it doesn’t exist to you erases the experiences of black people.” If you choose to not acknowledge what makes someone different from you, then you are also choosing to not fully appreciate and understand them.

If we’re being honest, maybe we wouldn’t keep shouting cultural appropriation if we were respected for our lifestyle, defended against the harsh discrimination we receive in America, and seen as more than just pop-culture. We are not just another privileged person’s next plastic surgery inspiration. You cannot wear us all day, and hang us in the closet when the day’s over. And we definitely aren’t here for you to leech off of us at your convenience.

Whether you participate in the leeching or not is ultimately your choice, but consider the long-termdamage that could wreak havoc on young, maturing, black girls who you cause to see themselves as lessthan; as an object. Be human enough to actually see us for us, and watch the world follow.

I’m not insinuating that people should be forbidden from any inspiration that may spark from the blackwoman, but realize your place and position; proceeding respectfully, responsibly and mindfully.

On Asian Women Being Asian in a mixed family, I told people that I was half-white when I wasn’t - it was to preserve my family’s history, to keep private parts of my life, private. But this would become the downfall of me hating my Asian features. Half-white, half-Asian girls would tell me that I did not look half-white, and pride themselves in their white features, telling me, “your hair is too dark”, “your eyes are too small”, “your nose is too wide”. This would lead to me hating parts of myself that made me distinctly Vietnamese. It took years of loving myself and years of accepting that this was the way that I was born,

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and is still a struggle that I encounter almost everyday. Society, my family, the girls who loved their white features more than their Asian ones, made me hate who I was. The audacity for a white girl, a girl who fits society’s standards of beauty, to choose to look like me is beyond any struggle I could imagine. I wake up and look like this. I used to wake up and hate what I saw in the mirror. What these white women do to their eyes to make them smaller is not appreciation of my own. It is using my ethnicity as something that is “cute”, when really, my eyes have been something that society has told me that I am not good enough - not good enough to be taken seriously, not good enough to be strong and independent.

My eyes tell stories of fetishization, tell stories of men looking down at my small stature and thinking of it as something they wished to conquer. My eyes hold anger and frustration of constantly seeing people being surprised that I was capable of doing something on my own, capable of speaking up, capable of not being so submissive that it catches them off guard. Someone’s first impression of me is that I am small and quiet, until I speak up. Until I tell them that my small eyes, my wide nose, and my dark hair do not determine who I am. For someone to wish to look like me, take advantage of the fetishization of my entire ethnicity and be able to go back to society’s beauty standards whenever they wished, disgusts me. I am born this way. I am stuck with the constant oppression and the constant disrespect from my own peers. I do not get to wake up one day and have all of that vanish, or decide when I get to look that way. The way Asian women are treated, with the assumption that we are obedient, is continuously present for me everyday. For a white woman to rebel, there is no thought, she is allowed to. For me, people get angry. People don’t understand why and how this could have exploded from me. Why? Because of the features that lie on my face that give away the bias that I am compliant, docile, weak. A weak girl who will never speak up, never fight for what she wants. But despite my fraile traits and features on my face that were told were ugly - I fight through it all. Daily, I fight the bias that was held against me that no white woman would ever be capable of understanding. 


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