caliber
staff PRESIDENT Sophia Stewart EDITORS-IN-CHIEF Sophia Stewart Michelle Park HEAD OF PHOTOGRAPHY Henry DeMarco HEAD OF DESIGN Jezell Lee HEAD OF MARKETING Sam Miller CHIEF WEB EDITOR Evelyn Taylor
DESIGNERS + ILLUSTRATORS Lauren Leung Keziah Aurin
PRINT WRITERS Vanessa Wan Jennifer Co Caitlyn Jordan Leandra Ramlo Anni Wang Riya Sinha Rachel Pekelney
PHOTOGRAPHERS Alexandra von Minden Zachary Grove Carissa Lewis Aria Dasbach Anna Chang Noah Kentis
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contents 04
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Horoscopes Jennifer Co
Beyond the Lunchroom Narrative Vanessa Wan
Photospread: Timeless Alexandra von Minden
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Uprooted Caitlyn Jordan
Isa Mazzei is Done Hiding Sophia Stewart
The Private World of Berkeley’s Bathroom Graffiti Rachel Pekelney
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Photospread: Documenting Change in the Bay Area
Running Through Berkeley Leandra Ramlo
Photospread: Tracing the Fading Light Henry DeMarco
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Defiant & Dangerous Anni Wang
Photospread: Vancouver, Shot on Kodak Portra 400 Zachary Grove
54 Freshman FOMO Riya Sinha
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editor’s note In the nearly four years I’ve been with Caliber, I’ve seen the magazine evolve into the most eclectic publication on campus, covering culture from every angle. At Caliber, we’re interested in interrogating the cultural phenomena around us. From campus culture to international culture, this issue of Caliber considers what it means to contend with the cultural forces around us. Whether it’s confronting the Japanese patriarchy, fighting feelings of FOMO, questioning the merit of horoscopes, or discovering an entire world of latrinalia, Caliber’s writers are drawn to the ways in which we form, resist, and probe culture. In this issue, our photographers document skate culture and drag culture, as well as cultural expressions
like architecture and street art. In fixing our gaze on culture, Caliber hopes to encourage our readers to engage with the norms, customs, and practices that permeate our lives in new and challenging ways. What does it mean, for example, when we turn Asian culture into a fetishistic spectacle? Or how does a woman claim ownership over her sexuality in a culture that condemns women’s sexual agency? And how do we negotiate our inherited cultures with the lives we live? These are all questions with which we wrestle in this issue of Caliber. Rarely in our inquiries do we find neat, satisfying answers — but I hope that our rigorous engagement with the cultural questions that shape our lives might still inspire you just the same. Sophia Stewart Editor-in-Chief
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horoscopes “I had this theory once, on how much life a human body could hold. It all had to do with the number of heartbeats. Each human is assigned a number determined by an unknown power cascading over the dark water of the unformed Earth.” —Anonymous, 2019 / Way Bay, BAMPFA
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WORDS BY JENNIFER CO VISUALS BY KEZIAH AURIN
S
o often in this life I wonder what I am supposed to do, what I’m supposed to feel, who I’m supposed to be. In a world of growth mindsets and self-made men, we tell ourselves that we can be anything that we want to be — that we can create ourselves from scratch. It is not a high stakes argument at the outset. Obviously, it is I who wields this brain, and it is therefore I who wields the identity that ensues. But as we grow to claim our place in this world, the endless degrees of freedom can manifest in unsettling ways, be it discerning between careers or majors, or still more in the quieter pockets of life, deciding who and what to care about, choosing our partners and those we invest energy in, taking inventory of how this world makes us feel. It is no small task, this self-made life — to align our own emotion, ambition, and identity with something we dare deem meaningful. It is empowering and demoralizing all at once, coming into this world with our blank slates. Unless our slates aren’t truly blank. What if we had an identity already written in the stars, the sun, the moon, and each planetary pull coming together just as you began, just to make you?
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In the age of Co—star and celestial copouts (“Sorry I avoided confrontation for so long, it’s because I’m a Capricorn!”) I have dedicated many an eye roll toward the horoscope’s corner of identity parameters, chucking them to the far left amongst many other power players: Meyer’s Briggs, the “Which element can you bend?” Buzzfeed quiz, and the classic Rice Purity Test. But even so, there’s something that separates horoscopes from the rest. While other quizzes and questionnaires generate results for you based on your answers against an algorithm, horoscopes bestow their verdict by birth date and time alone — upon origin. Horoscopes make the assumption that identity is intrinsic, reflecting what you were destined to become rather measuring that which you have already carved for yourself of your own volition. Astrology was first used by the early Babylonians, who charted the stars to predict the oncoming seasons. It was a practical science, meant to forecast harvests and natural disasters. They studied the zodiac, a belt of the heavens that contains all apparent positions of the sun, moon, and most planets. Astrology recognizes the twelve
lunar cycles it takes for the Sun to resume its original position, as it takes 12 months for the Earth to orbit around the Sun. It is in this way that the stars are a sort of moment in time. We each have a permutation of the heavens that we get to call our own. The zodiacs themselves are divided into four subgroups (as told in Conscious Lifestyle Magazine, which I will cite as a pretty thorough run-down of the basics of astrology): There are 12 astrological signs in total. First, there are fire signs: Aries, Leo, and Sagittarius. Fire is positive, assertive, energetic, enthusiastic, impulsive, inspirational, courageous, powerful, passionate, and initiating. Then, there are earth signs: Taurus, Virgo, and Capricorn. Earth is cautious, responsible, reliable, ambitious, practical, focused, disciplined, dependable, solid, and persevering. Next, air signs: Gemini, Libra, and Aquarius. Air is lighthearted, joyful, curious, restless, independent, communicative, impractical, entertaining, intellectual, and trusting. And finally, water signs: Cancer, Scorpio, and Pisces. Water is compassionate, forgiving, understanding, emotional, creative, intuitive and spiritual. Together, hese 12 signs and the many characteristics associated with them make up the zodiac. Every person’s astrological chart contains a snapshot of our solar system: the sun and the moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus and Pluto in their relative positions, each representing an aspect of identity, in a particular zodiac. For example, one can have a Gemini Mars, Virgo sun, and Capricorn moon, the positioning of which all indicates something about their
personality. Joining your chart is your rising, also known as your “ascendant,” the sign of the eastern horizon at the time you were born (and therefore the direction in which your sun was headed). While your sun is considered your core and therefore a marker of your individuality, your rising is how you appear or claim prominence. Today in 2019, our charts can be mapped out in seconds with quick search engines, as well as apps that commodify our charts like little personalized fortune cookies, peppered into our daily notifications. We make jokes based on our signs and justify our behavior based on our astrological identities. We check our friends’ and partner’s charts to validate our compatibility. We make decisions when the chart deems it the right time. All of this is possible thanks to the popular app Co—star. Co—star culture is where social networking meets identity crisis, put in a neat astrological bow. The app lets you follow your friends and receive a daily horoscope. Co—star wakes you up with “your day at a glance” — today, it tells me I should “concentrate on turning ideas into a reality” and “handle emotions with integrity.” Horoscopes are both a window into and a reflection of human nature. To that end, astrology has made its way into our day-to-day lives and interactions: we ask each other’s signs right after our nice-to-meet-yous; we share text posts listing “each sign’s toxic trait”; we include our Co—Star handles in our Instagram bios. If it’s any sign of the times, just last week I looked down to find my old chemistry instructor had added me on Co—Star, punctuating his request with that monochromatic moon.
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I suppose it is at this time that I ought to see what my own horoscope holds. I will be the first to admit that it’s been a turbulent time for me. I had thought that the worst was behind me, having finally crawled to the halfway point of my time at Berkeley, but this year was punctuated by new kinds of doubt, new kinds of emotional turmoil, new kinds of empty. I often wonder whether the circumstances I’m facing are really more dire, or if I am simply less emotionally aware than before. And it’s in these odd pockets of life that I find much harder to communicate. Why can’t I troubleshoot where my sadness comes from, and is my struggle less real if I do not have the words to articulate it? In truth I have screenshotted my fair share of Co—Star notifications in the thick of this ambiguity: OCTOBER 11 “You are becoming who you are,” when, mid-poweroutage, I am unsure of who I am when she encounters unstructured free time. OCTOBER 13 “No need to be so polite,” when I apologize to an abrasive coworker on behalf of someone else. OCTOBER 26 “Don’t be afraid to let your cracks show,” when I take inventory of myself after donating my hair.
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The argument could of course be made that these are fairly general statements. Are we not at all times becoming who we are, are not all of us capable of an excessive politeness, am I not capable of screenshotting anything in a time of emotional vulnerability — irrespective of where Mercury is in relation to the moon? But there is a resonance here that cannot be denied, and I recognize an important distinction here, in that horoscopes are not so much a place of fortune telling, but rather a way to give us the words to describe our feelings — to try on the terms. Scrolling through my chart, there are a number of things that resonate. A Gemini sun is described as being intrinsically witty, dynamic, and eclectic, with a need to distinguish oneself through philosophy or faith. And my moon in Capricorn points to a security found in home and authority. Both feel like apt descriptors that I can comfortably wear. But still more, there are many aspects of my sign that don’t feel right for me: my sign should dispose me to emotional repression in the name of responsibility (which many an open meltdown in Le Conte would sadly counter); coming across as diligent, peace seeking and organized (which my roommates would sadly counter); being over attached to perfection (which my editor would sadly counter).
But I will admit there is a sense of identity that has emerged in trying on all these terms. Because it takes truly knowing oneself to have a feel for what resonates with you and what doesn’t. It’s empowering to find a sentiment that you think feels like you, to say why yes, I do enjoy quick conversation and spend many an existential crisis on faith and philosophy; but it is also empowering to claim the inverse, and reject your horoscope’s descriptions of you, because you know yourself that well. It is no wonder that horoscopes are so successful in this day and age. Saturated in rapid communication and shares, it is easy for us, in our journey to define ourselves, to grab onto what we see is already being done. Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest and VSCO curate models of appearance and create a pressure for us to present ourselves, fully-formed, to the world. Mine is not a luddite’s finger waving at the modern world — this is simply the fact of the world now. This is how we communicate, and this is how we manifest our appearances, our thoughts, ourselves. It is a dynamic of trying on identities, of pressing a couple buttons to see what options are out there, and clinging to whatever we think might be us. Because for a world with so much noise and opinion, it can often feel that there is an awful lot of silence when it comes to how to live, how to breathe, how to navigate your body and mind
and claim them as your own. So we create prescriptive models for ourselves — models that, for some, are written in the stars, at the exact place and time that you began, like a snapshot of your entrance into this world. The orbits for Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto are much longer, as their orbits around the Sun are especially long. Thus, the signs for this half of our astrological charts are shared by all the individuals in this pocket of time. Many of us, then, are an Aquarius in Uranus and Neptune or and a Sagitarrius in Pluto. The horoscope tells us that this means we are a generation characterized by innovation, rebellion, and progress. We shock others with our unconventionality, but also our detachedness. We are naive in our ideations on romance and creative pursuits, but have a deep run nature of forward-looking confidence. Detached and unconventional, naive and forward looking — perhaps our adherence to the stars was pre-written by them as well. Of course, maybe it wasn’t. Maybe the stars don’t write anything at all. Maybe we must continue to choose ourselves even on days when we don’t recognize the person in the mirror, and to be confident that there is some intrinsic consistency in you who is always looking back. And so I dare us in this inbetween to continue trying on the terms that astrology can give us! But I also implore us to do so mindfully, with the knowledge that you are ultimately able to make your own.
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Beyond the Lunchroom Narrative “Asian” as a genre of entertainment
words by VANESSA WAN visuals by Anna Chang
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n the past few years, we have witnessed the long awaited rise of Asian American representation in media, from Fresh Off the Boat to Crazy Rich Asians to To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. At the same time, there also appears to be a newfound interest in Asian culture on social media; there has been a sharp increase, for example, in influencers and YouTubers who vlog their travels to Asian countries. While it’s exciting to a see new spotlight placed on people who look like me in the media, it also brings me pause. I have to consider who exactly has ownership of this content. I don’t know how to reconcile the attention my culture is finally getting with the ways in which different groups have decided to stake claim in it, specifically people have decided to commodify it for entertainment. How am I supposed to feel seeing videos of white YouTubers framing common aspects of my culture as spectacles to marvel at?
In elementary school, I participated in the free lunch program. Every day administrators gathered all the “buying lunch” kids together, lined us up, and marched us to the lunchroom first. I took pride in swiping my little ID in the card machine and talking to the old Chinese lunch
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lady whose eyes lit up as she realized I spoke Mandarin. My parents never really had the time to make me lunch. Though at first I didn’t mind, I soon began to wonder why that was. I began to imagine what it would be like to be able to go directly to the lunch table, crinkle through a brown paper bag, and trade little goodies that other kids’ parents thought to pack them. Of course, I would never tell my parents this; even my bright eyes could see exhaustion behind the veil. But then one day, they offered to pack my lunch. Excitedly, I dragged the kitchen chair to the counter, watching as deft hands wrapped noodles around chopsticks and plopped them into a plastic container.
YouTuber Safia Nygaard recently came out with a six part series on East Asia. In it, she goes to different East Asian countries to explore the “beauty, style, and shopping,” among other things that people in the United States may not get to experience. In her video “I Bought An Outfit At A Fake Market In Hong Kong,” she explores the night markets in Hong Kong with a fellow YouTuber of non-Asian descent. The video begins with her explaining the trend in
which white YouTubers go to night markets to explore the plethora of off-brand clothing items, or dupes, available to them. The YouTubers often try to negotiate the price of these items to get them as cheaply as possible, even after the vendors have become visibly upset with the negotiation. Here I saw night markets, a staple of everyday Asian life, be turned into a spectacle. One YouTuber described the markets as “pillow forts” filled with vendors hoping to scam you out of money with their “Baienglaca” shoes and “GD” bags. As Safiya and the other YouTuber laughed at the ways in which a vendor tried to sell his bags to them and mused about being more cutthroat in negotiating down the prices, I wondered what it is about Asian culture that makes white people feel entitled to explain it for others. And why was it that the Asian people these YouTubers encountered got turned into quirky, funny entertainment to be laughed at? In my eyes, it felt like these vendors’ livelihoods were being played for laughs, turned into part of a game for white people’s amusement. Don’t get me wrong, I love Safia Nygaard and I don’t mean to outright condemn this powerful woman, who I recognize is biracial. But her content as of late feels like it is participating in a larger trend of the profiting off Asian culture by those not from that culture. Because YouTube videos are monetized, when non-Asian Youtubers create content involving Asian culture, they are directly profiting off of that culture. This frustrates me — one’s culture is not universal content that can be used as a concept for a monetized video by anyone. While Safiya does her best to be respectful for the most part, there’s still an element of exoticism that underlies the videos she recorded during her trip to Asia. In one video, she explores the “unique” vending machines in Japan, making comments about the oddities that are being sold and the spectacle of the vending machines themselves. In another video she gets two makeovers inspired by signature Asian styles: first a Japanese Lolita makeover, and then a K-Pop makeover.
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Perhaps what is most discomforting to me is the way in which foreign culture is experienced through the lenses of people outside of that culture for an audience of people outside the culture, all while keeping out those who actually exist inside that culture. When you explain a culture to an audience that is not intrinsic to you, you run the risk of reducing a complex culture into a series of offhand observations. That is, a culture can only be truly understood by someone who is a part of it. For example, when Safiya focuses on the tourist buyer experience of night markets, she takes the narrative away from those that make a living through it. Burned into my mind is the image of the man modeling a purse to try to sell it to them and the way in which Safiya and her co-host look away from him towards each other to share a laugh at his expense. This is the cost of trying to explain an entire culture through social media. A desensitization results when we experience something through our screens; we become
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divorced from reality. I think of way in which Safiya’s video keeps us from empathizing with or learning about the vendors. Due to the perspective of the video, the audience is encouraged to share a laugh with the YouTubers rather than gain any insight into the vendors’ lives or culture. A harsher and clearer depiction of cultural reduction can be seen in Kasey Musgraves’ recent encounter with the áo dài, a traditional Vietnamese dress that she decided would look better without the pants. Another example is Logan Paul’s vlog to Aokigahara, or Japanese “Suicide Forest,” where Paul framed the visit as an “adventure” and completely disregarded the history and the emotional trauma the site carries. Here, white influencers experience and then attempt to translate a culture that is not theirs to a large audience. Here is the cultural reduction, in which something with such rich cultural history, is diminished as a trend to be claimed by any and all casual observers who take an interest in it. This habit of
treating Asian culture as a fad rather than as an established culture with a rich history lingers constantly in my mind.
Popping the tupperware cover off, I had never been so aware of my sense of smell than in that moment. The reaction of the kids around me started off neutral, then transformed into something more malicious. But I could not turn back, I could not pull the scents of garlic and green onions and of all things, kimchi, back into the safety of my little box. Suddenly, kids began making faces, wondering where those smells were coming from. Invisible as I was, nothing could shield me from their judging eyes. In an instant, the fondness I felt for my parents and their generosity disappeared, replaced with embarrassment and the plan to buy school lunches for as long as I was in school. Now, Asian culture is suddenly “in,” with social media serving as the vehicle to make it digestible to the general public. Social media influencers and large media companies are all producing content that reduce Asian experiences and cuisines as fun, trendy things to try — new exotic fascinations. Buzzfeed produces videos like “Americans Try Korean Snacks for the First Time” for white audiences to enjoy and consume. The exoticism is clear in these videos. Watching Buzzfeed’s “People Try Boba for the First Time,” I didn’t exactly appreciate the drink from my childhood being described as “tadpoles flying into my mouth” or “weird
gummy things.” While I appreciate the attempt to step outside of one’s cultural comfort zone and get acquainted with the traditions and practices of another culture, the way in which those traditions and practies are made to seem so quirky and odd feels like a form of Othering. These videos divide cuisine into “normal” and “abnormal,” “regular” and “irregular.” As if, when it comes to culture, there was such a thing.
In that moment in the cafeteria, I, like many many Asian kids, first experienced the feeling of cultural shame, that heat that creeps behind your neck and flashes brightly on the rounds of your cheeks, finishing its ascent, finally resting on your ears. It is the moment in which you realize your home life, what you thought of as universal truth, was not the truth that the other kids at the table believed in. It is the same feeling you experience when you first realize you must act as a translator between your parents and the grocery store cashier who can’t understand their broken English, the same feeling when your parents try to help you with math but don’t understand the specific way your teachers have taught it. And it is the same feeling again when you grow older and realize you never cultivated a true sense of loyalty to your culture, that you let other kids’ judgements take that special thing away from you. It’s that outsider feeling, when the other kids treated you as a spectacle, when all you really wanted was to be one of them.
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TIMELESS
a photospread
words and photos by alexandra von minden Time has many faces. While we often don’t notice it flowing by, suddenly a picture, a song, or even a smell suffices to throw us back in time, leaving us nostalgic about “the good old days.” When we engage with what we’re passionate about, time seems infinite, reminding us that our perception of it is nothing more than a human construct. In other moments, we feel like we’re losing control of time; it takes power over everything around us, our actions and emotions. In this series, I captured three moments where time takes on these strikingly different roles: In “Curiosity,” two kids playing in the narrow streets of old town Kashgar in Xinjiang, China don’t notice that the day is coming to its close. The rules of time are non-existent — they’ve been replaced by those of hide and seek. Only hours later, when their mothers call for dinner, do they stop their games.
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“Wrapped Up Melodies� shows a boy looking through old records in Kreuzberg, Berlin. He puts on the headphones and waits for the records to start spinning. The rhythms, melodies, and voices take him back in time for a few minutes.
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“Burnt Dinner� shows the colorful food leftovers at the bottom of an oven dish. Time has taken control over the once carefully prepared chickpeas and tofu, creating an unrecognizable landscape of different shapes and forms.
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uprooted the family trees of Japanese war brides
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words by Caitlyn Jordan visuals by Lauren Leung
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okohama, Japan, 1949. A young woman named Kazue leans against the wall of a cabaret. American soldiers fill the room, each with a Japanese dance partner. Jazz music whirls around her. Voices overlap: loud Southern drawls, twangy Midwestern accents, cautious English from all the women still practicing. A young man approaches her, handsome and much taller than her 4’9” stature. He is black, like all the soldiers in the club. Kazue knows little about segregation, but she knows that even though there are no official rules in cabarets, the white officers never step foot in this building. She tilts her head to look him in the eyes. “Would you like to dance?” he asks. “Yes,” she says carefully. “I will dance with you.” He tells her his name, Sidney Jordan. He can’t pronounce her name, so he gives her a new one, and calls her Kazuko. They dance for hours, and Kazue feels like she’s seeing an escape route opening in front of her, his smile like a dotted line across the world. Within two years, they will be married. Soon, Kazue will leave her family to travel to Florida, where she will give birth to a son, who, 45 years later, will have a daughter himself. Kazue will not know this granddaughter for long. She will die when her granddaughter is five years old.
But this granddaughter will sometimes sit at a computer and begin to type, imagining what her grandmother must have thought as she left the only home she had known.
My grandmother, who I knew as Grandma or Kazuko, was one of thousands of Japanese women who married American soldiers in the ‘50s and left Japan, often to never return. American men had destroyed Japan, and yet Japan was filled with them — American men stationed in army bases, who loved to explore the city and dance in cabarets, who thought that Japanese women were the most beautiful women in the world. Japan’s future, post-WWII, seemed grim. Many young Japanese women saw the influx of American men as a chance to carve out new futures for themselves. Others fell in love with American men. For many of these women, their new relationships came at the cost of their Japanese family ties. These women created new families, joining their husbands in American army bases, coastal cities, and midwestern farms. Yet, history took little note. Growing up, I also took little note of my family’s unique composition. My identity seemed simple to me, despite the confusion it elicited in others. Yet, questions
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still arose. They surfaced in my skin, in the looming questions I could see in people’s eyes when they looked at me, in my teacher’s polite confusion when my parents appeared at open houses. Once, a teammate of my sister confusedly asked how we could have three ethnicities. “What are you?” It’s the bane of every mixed race person’s life, a question that is often well-intended, although sometimes malicious. It’s a question that never fails to position the person asked as the unknown, the outsider, the person to be catalogued and deciphered. For years, I dreaded the inevitable “So, what are you?” I dreaded it because I hate the excitement, the exclamation of “what a perfect/interesting/exotic mix,” the way that people think of mixed race people as blended paint, as things to look at and categorize: “Oh yes, your hair is curly, so that must be from your father’s side, but let me see your eyes...” And yet, as I grew up, began to wonder myself. What was I? What could my family history mean? I knew that my grandparents had risked estrangement and social discrimination to be together. They had created a
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mixed-race family in an era in which interracial marriage was still illegal (my grandparents married with army permission in 1950, 17 years before the Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia declared interrial marriage legal in all states). And yet, their youngest descendants are my sister and me: two girls with light skin, curly hair, and an inability to speak Japanese.
Many descendants of Japanese war brides cannot speak Japanese. I didn’t realize how common this phenomenon was until my family was asked to contribute to a documentary project on Japanese war brides. Inspired by her own mother who arrived in the U.S. in 1952, Washington Post journalist Kathryn Tolbert began interviewing Japanese war brides and their families. Together, our stories begin to answer the questions that history does not ask. Our stories illuminate women who were determined to create new futures, to succeed, and more than anything, to raise American children.
My grandmother never taught my father Japanese. My grandfather never learned, either. Our silence is the result of mothers who raised Japanese children in a country that had interned its Japanese citizens less than a decade before. It is the is the product of my grandmother’s fierce determination to raise children that could never be seen as “un-American.” Arriving in a country that did not recognize her, she became determined that her children would be seen and respected. For my entire life, my grandmother never spoke to her family in her first language. But my father says she was happy, creating an independent life and building her own future. “The women don’t view their families today as a branch on their Japanese family tree,” writes Tolbert. “They started from scratch.” How does one create a family tree “from scratch”? Even when cooking from scratch, we do not start from nothing. There are ingredients; there is something from which we begin to create. In first grade, I became determined to create a family
tree. I asked my father about my grandmother’s relatives, all of whom still lived in Japan. I carefully repeated pronunciations, shaping the unfamiliar consonants on my tongue. I snipped and taped cardboard paper. Crouched over the kitchen table with my mother, I created construction paper sushi to place next to my grandmother’s picture, pressing the corners of paper into folds, peeling dried glue from my fingertips. In front of me, two lines of family history diverged and intertwined. The Japanese war brides who came to the U.S. did not start from scratch; they started from themselves. Their descendants may not be Japanese in a traditional sense. We may not share language, and we may be separated — by oceans, over cultures — from our relatives in Japan. Yet our family trees are altered forever by these women. We are shaped by the ways in which they tried to protect us. I will never know exactly what my grandmother thought that night in the jazz cabaret. Yet, I keep returning to the past, trying to envision her life. It is this moment, reaching through time and space, trying to learn Kazue’s story and the history of the other Japanese women like her, that I finally feel Japanese.
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ISA MAZZEI is done hiding
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words by sophia stewart visuals by noah kentis
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sa Mazzei has never met me before, but she greets me with a hug anyway. I’ve heard that you can tell a lot about a person by their handshake — by its firmness or its duration — but I think you can tell just as much about a person by the way they embrace you, or if they embrace you at all. Mazzei’s hug is warm and sincere, like she’s known me forever. I take a moment to absorb her presence: she dons a shag haircut, clear lens aviators, and a bright red lip. It’s a bold look, one that draws attention. But Mazzei is used to attention — since the release of the acclaimed horror film Cam, which she made with Daniel Goldhaber, Mazzei has been catapulted into the national spotlight. Cam, Mazzei’s first feature film, tells the story of Alice (Madeline Brewer), a camgirl who battles an online lookalike. In writing the film’s script, Mazzei was inspired by the years she spent as a camgirl herself,
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and many details in the film are drawn from her life. Now, with her new memoir Camgirl, Mazzei pulls back the curtain even further, sharing her own experience camming to reveal the complexities of sex work, as well as the indignities sex workers face. Before Mazzei began her career as a sex worker, she attended UC Berkeley, majoring in Comparative Literature. She loved her classes and felt challenged by her professors. Studying literature opened her up to new narratives and perspectives. “Cal really opened my eyes to how much of a bubble I had been living in,” Mazzei says. “I was really confronted with my own privilege there, and I was exposed to ideas that I had never been exposed to before.” At Berkeley, Mazzei gained many of the essential tools that would serve her later as a writer. “What was so incredible about doing Comparative Literature is that I was able to see the universality in a lot of our stories, and
that is incredibly helpful as a writer,” she says. “Writing is so much about telling a story that is going to relate to people and that people are going to be able to see themselves in.” What studying literature taught her above all was “the humanness of everyone.” When it came time to graduate, Mazzei felt ready to face the world. “I definitely walked away from Cal with both this excitement as to the potential of finding my place in the world, and more than that, being someone who is able to create in the world,” she recalls. The first step of post-grad life: “Figuring out who I was and what I wanted to say.” But despite her artistic bent, Mazzei felt pressure to kill her creative impulses and get a “mainstream job.” “Those pressures are very real and I felt them,” she says, “but I know that when I gave into them, I felt dead inside.” So she explored other professional avenues. She soon began working as a sugar baby, and then moved into camming.
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“I say who. I say when. I say how much.”
In her memoir Camgirl, Mazzei recounts her experience as a camgirl, or an online adult performer. Under the pseudonym Una, Mazzei performed for viewers via her webcam. Through camming, she found agency, empowerment, and a way to truly reclaim her sexuality. “I’m really proud of the work that I did as a sex worker,” Mazzei says. “The second that I decided to cam, I decided to really own my sexuality and sexualize myself within the boundaries and limits that I set.” Early in the book, Mazzei recalls Julia Roberts’ mantra in the film Pretty Woman, and adopts it as her own: “I say who. I say when. I say how much.” Camming also immersed Mazzei in a new community made up of sex workers and patrons that she had never known before. “It really opened my eyes to just how many different types of sex workers there are out there and just all of the myriad of reasons why people engage in sex work,” she says. Mazzei’s performances amassed a devoted viewership, and she was able to support herself through camming. Then screenwriting came calling. “Writing the film was extremely collaborative,” she says. “I worked very closely with Daniel [Goldhaber],
the director. We built the entire story together.” But the collaborative nature of the film didn’t end there. Mazzei and Goldhaber understood the responsibility they had in telling a story about sex work, and the weight that narrative held in illuminating an often misunderstood profession. “We recognized that we don’t speak for all sex workers,” Mazzei says. So they enlisted the help of other sex workers to help tell their story. “We cast sex workers. We had sex workers involved in reading drafts of the script and giving us notes. We had sex workers watching cuts of the film. We really tried to include people in every step that we could.” While working on Cam, Mazzei began writing her own personal story in the form of Camgirl. Writing a memoir was a far more daunting challenge than writing Cam. “At the end of the day, Cam is fiction. It’s all shot through the filter of this other character’s experience,” Mazzei says. “[Camgirl] is really about me. It’s about all the parts of myself — even the parts that I don’t necessarily like that much.” At first, she struggled to figure out how to frame her story. She initially wrote a “very serious, academic version of the book,” but if you’ve met Mazzei, you know that she is far from serious.
“Ultimately, I’m a funny, goofy weirdo,” Mazzei admits. “The second I started allowing the book to have some humor and some levity is when it really just kind of poured out.” Once she found her voice, Mazzei found the writing process to be “incredibly powerful and incredibly healing as well.” “I didn’t find it lonely at all,” she says. “It was almost a way of remeeting myself — getting to know me in a way that I had never really done before.” The resultant book is a bold and moving declaration of self, a manifesto against shame. “I think the process of coming out — be it coming out as queer or coming out as a sex worker — is a way of erasing shame,” Mazzei says. “It’s a way of reclaiming something that I had been hiding for so long.” She hopes the success of her memoir will open the door for other sex workers to tell their own stories. Mazzei understands the gravity of her platform and is vocal about using it. “I feel really privileged to have a platform,” she says, “and to say that, if someone chooses to engage in sex work, that is one hundred percent valid and deserves to be one hundred percent respected, just as we would respect anyone in any other profession.”
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T HE P R I VAT E WO R L D OF B E R KE L E Y ’ S B AT HR O O M S T AL L
i t i f f a r g
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WORDS BY rachel pekelney VISUALS BY rachel pekelney & KEZIAH AURIN
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t was Cal Day in 2018 when I visited UC Berkeley as an admitted student for the first time. Seeking a respite from the overwhelming crowds and the unsettling smile of our beloved mascot, I found my way to the first floor women’s restroom of the Valley Life Sciences Building, or as it’s better known, VLSB. That’s when I noticed something that I’ve come to love about Berkeley: restroom graffiti. The inside walls of the VLSB bathroom stalls are covered in a mosaic of drawings and writings. There are words of advice (both giving and seeking), confessions, political opinions, and jokes. Entire worlds are tucked away
within each stall. Amid the public, in-your-face spectacle of Cal Day, where the school tries to sell itself to the world, the bathroom stall graffiti was my private and perhaps more genuine introduction to Berkeley. Although the VLSB first floor women’s restroom is my personal favorite spot for spotting graffiti, Berkeley’s stall art is not limited to one building. I’ve seen drawings and writings in Dwinelle, McCone, and Genetics & Plant Bio. Even in the deep, dark oppressiveness of Evans Hall, creativity lives and prospers on the inside of bathroom stalls. Technically, these markings are a kind of vandalism, but the University has apparently ignored
their existence, and in doing so, allowed for the formation of an ever-changing and growing piece of collective art. Perhaps the University is not purposely ignoring the graffiti; in a Stephens Hall restroom, an anti-graffiti hotline pasted on the mirror seems to have gone unused. In the hotline’s neglect, there lies a complicity between the artist and the viewer. To call the anti-graffiti hotline would be to betray this complicity and impose a premature end to the ongoing dialogues within the stalls. Bathroom graffiti is certainly not unique to Berkeley or college campuses in general. Nor is it a new phenomenon — people have been
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vandalizing public bathrooms for centuries — but it’s noteworthy because of the choice of canvas. In many ways the artist’s chosen canvas can mean as much as the art itself. Bathroom stalls are remarkable because they are accessible to everyone regardless of religion, race, or socioeconomic status. They don’t require expensive supplies or technical skills, and they don’t privilege anyone’s work. Not
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everyone can access art in the traditional sense — like painting or poetry — but stalls are a universal domain and an unconventional place for art to flourish. But why write on the inside of a bathroom stall in the first place? And how does one decide what to write? A number of academics have published papers analyzing these underlying motivations — perhaps inspired by stall scribbles at their own universities. In
2019, researchers Jocelyn Amevuvor and Greg Hafer conducted a linguistic analysis of “latrinalia,” the official term for bathroom stall graffiti, to compare the themes in the types of graffiti that appear between different gendered public restrooms. The largest commonality they found was the existence of conversations back and forth between different individuals. And at Berkeley too, the conversations are striking. In my observations of Berkeley’s stalls, I categorized the graffiti into four broad groups: art (see the imitation Matisse); humor (“Jesus can’t save you. But Google Calendar might”); socio-political commentary (including a Black Lives Matter discussion); and encouragement and advice (“Next month I am coming out to my family as gay. Wish me luck!”). These categories make up the majority of Berkeley’s latrinalia, although they are not all encompassing or mutually exclusive. For example, the message that reads, “The only ethical form of capitalism is stealing from Brandy Melville” both comments on our consumer culture and elicits a laugh. Another element of latrinalia is the role of bathroom stalls in providing privacy in a public space. They are a place to take care of pressing business (ahem), a hiding spot to shed some tears (we’ve all been there), and home to a less than comfortable seat to waste time on your phone. Enclosed within those four walls you can be sure that whatever you choose to write will be kept anonymous. This anonymity grants you the freedom to share your deepest and most unfiltered thoughts, thus enabling the declaration of brazen political views or profound personal confessions. These are the things people choose to share when they are certain of having both viewers and a protected identity. In a sense, the anonymity is a two-way street; the messages are written and read in private. The artist will never know exactly who interacted with or
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studied their graffiti, or who ignored it altogether. Aside from the internet, there are few places where people can express themselves so freely while keeping their identities unknown. But it’s more satisfying and concrete to put your mark on a physical object rather than on a digital platform — it’s proof of existence, a declaration: I was here. By writing in a location that receives many unique visitors in a day, the artist is guaranteed a captive audience, and in this case one that is specifically made up of women. There are no other places on campus that are segregated by gender in this way, which may influence what people choose to write. In the big stall of VLSB’s first floor restroom there reads: “Messages like these never appear in male restrooms. We have a community & this is our secret hiding spot.” Thus, one’s identity is inextricably bound
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to the content of notes written on the stalls, as well as the way in which viewers interact with the messages. The comment makes an important observation: there’s an intimacy in this collection of interlocutors. All of the visitors to the women’s restrooms on campus are partial to this secret and, whether they are aware of it or not, are united in this private knowledge. Seeing this graffiti on Cal Day was the first time I felt like the students were speaking directly to me — with unapologetic honesty and unfiltered humor. The bathroom graffiti art is special, and despite its apparent randomness, it feels like it belongs here. In such a vast school, it creates an unexpected community; and in a small way there’s comfort in knowing you’re never truly alone at Berkeley, even within the privacy of four walls.
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DOCUMENTING change IN THE BAY AREA a p ho to s p read
photo attributions: 1 Henry Demarco / 2 Anna Chang / 3 Zachary Grove / 4 Aria Dasbach / 5 Carissa Lewis
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RUN NING thr ough
BERK ELEY
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WORDS BY Leandra Ramlo VISUALS BY Carissa lewis & aria dasbach
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hen I reflect upon moments when I’ve felt happiest at Berkeley — not just smiley happy, but rather unadulterated, Walt Whitman Leaves of Grass scream into the heavens happy — what often comes to mind are the moments when I am running. Before a run, backbreaking weight accrues on my shoulders; the need to break out of my own skin becomes all-consuming, precipitating into a restlessness that can only be sated with motion. Rushing to get to the top of the firetrails sends that weight sliding down my back to my heels, where it dissipates into the dirt. Like a deep clean, a good run purges my mind, getting rid of the grime and filth that have festered in its mildewy corners. I can’t seem to invoke this sense of rejuvenation in any way other than on a run. Prior to Berkeley, running meant business. Growing up, I played soccer year-round, so running outside of practice and during my off-season was oriented toward
improving myself as a player. When I stopped playing soccer upon starting college, my relationship with running took on an entirely new meaning. As a freshman, Berkeley oftentimes felt claustrophobic. While on the one hand it was horizon-broadening and expansive for what it represented — a new chapter of life! — the space itself felt one dimensional: without a car, my understanding of it extended not much further than Dwinelle and Artichoke’s. Running gave me space to breathe, to get out of the Berkeley bubble, to explore parts of the city I would’ve never seen. I still vividly remember the first time I abandoned my usual run — a mundane, dizzying repetition of laps around the Clark Kerr track — and ventured into the fire trails above campus. On a quiet Sunday morning, I accidentally ended up running nine miles along a hiking trail that led me to magnificent views of the bay from below the Lawrence Hall of Science, and then to the tiny, enchanting universe within the
Botanical Gardens. Never before had I stumbled upon such gifts just from letting my feet carry me forward! I wondered what other secret treasures were waiting to be uncovered. Not only have I discovered more of the area, but I’ve deepened my relationship to the landscape around me. The steep gradations of North Berkeley’s hills have gnawed at my calf muscles; the blissful shade of the giant trees in the fire trails has given me refuge from the sweltering sun’s despotism; the wind that blows off the Marina has encouragingly nudged me along; other times it teases me, swatting my cheeks, restraining my momentum. Running has expanded the city into a multifaceted thing — a living, breathing creature. When I tell people I like to run, I imagine they sometimes think it must mean I run for many miles and for hours on end. I don’t. The length of my runs typically ranges from three to five miles, though it can vary: sometimes I’ll do two; in rarer instances, when time allows, I’ll do
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eight or nine. I don’t like to run very far because after a while my knees and hips begin to ache. I also don’t really know how fast I run, either — I used to track it with an app, but I stopped doing so a while ago. It can be fun to track these aspects of my runs, and I’ve gone through phases in the past where I’ve enjoyed tracking my progress. But during the school year, the primary purpose of my running is to serve as a space of relief; I find that bogging it down with numbers can desecrate that sacred space. Does it somehow discredit me that I don’t run that fast or far?
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Occasionally I feel uncomfortable referring to myself as a “runner” when I talk to those who run upwards of 50 miles a week, or even some of my friends, whose runs regularly exceed 10 miles. I don’t run half marathons or marathons and don’t really have any desire to. You also won’t see me participating in the social running culture that exists here at Berkeley. I don’t run with the cross country team nor do I participate in the Running Club or in formal races. Throughout writing this piece, these reminders of supposed inadequacy have crept into the back of my mind,
occasionally contributing to a sense of imposter syndrome. I question on what grounds I have the ability or authority to write about a culture I exist on the margins of, a sport in which I am a novice at best. But in taking a step back, these doubts feel shortsighted. As with any hobby, what allows one to lay claim to an identity, other than feeling a personal bond to it? I feel a deep bond to running for the service it does for me. A portal gapes open as soon as I take my first step; each breath swallows me in deeper; I’m still myself, in here, but I slip further away from my
usual disposition where I’m used to being pulled and tugged at by my everyday demons, like the anxieties of my relationships with other people, or the intellectual nature of academia that often sends me into a state of cognitive overdrive. Instead, as I push further and harder, I’m reminded of my own agency; I feel more and more in my body. My mind is connected back to my body and my body back to the Earth. These amorphous feelings seem to coagulate into something akin to a spiritual experience — which, I realize, can easily be written off as a bunch of nonsensical mumbo jumbo. Science has indeed identified the cocktail of endorphins and dopamine and endocannabinoids
that ground the resulting experience in something more concrete and less otherworldly. And these mechanisms deserve their due credit. But the sensations of these induced “mystical” experiences are just as real as the endorphins that course through my nervous system. Knowing the science somehow doesn’t diminish my bewilderment toward the experience. I’m still just as amazed each time I feel so harmoniously aligned with myself and the world. I feel a particular rapport to what Haruki Murakami writes in his 2007 memoir What I Talk About When I Talk About Running about the personal nature of the experience of running: “All I do is keep on running in my own cozy, homemade void, my own
nostalgic silence. And this is a pretty wonderful thing. No matter what anybody else says.” Like him, I carve out my own space: sometimes it’s cozy and nostalgic; other times it’s uncomfortable, where I cry to relieve my sadness; more often it’s where I feel I’m existing in my ideal form — powerful, agile, energetic. Perhaps this is why running as a secluded act, separate from any social culture feels necessary: I gain privileged access to a part of myself that feels most authentic, a sense of identity I’m unable to so easily access in other states of mind and being. But the paradoxical joy is that I simultaneously feel an escape from myself as well. In the “void” that running creates, I can finally catch a break from the tiring
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script of thoughts that constantly rolls onward. Murakami again articulates the idea succinctly: “I’m often asked what I think about as I run. Usually the people who ask this have never run long distances themselves. I always ponder the question. What exactly do I think about when I’m running? I don’t have a clue.” ••• My four main running routes extend east, west, north, and south from Berkeley’s campus. My favorite and most frequented route stretches up to Grizzly Peak, best right before sunset. Heading north I follow Euclid road up to Cordineces park, an oasis of elms and pines, supremely serene aside from the distant yelps of dogs and young children. The Rose Garden sits across the street — its view of the Golden Gate Bridge as the sun dips into the sea rarely ceases to be anything short of magical. Past these landmarks, Euclid becomes a windy path that gradually ascends upward; whimsical houses nestled into the hillside pulsate with warmth during golden hour; barbeque smells transport me back to summer evenings with at my grandma’s house. A sense of nostalgia
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overcomes me; I acknowledge it by picking up the pace. Beneath me I feel the topography of the sidewalk. It incrementally bends like a racetrack, and it juts upward suddenly as monstrous tree roots assert themselves to expose broken slabs of cement. Though my ankles and knees may not be so forgiving, I don’t usually mind the obstacle course; as long as I keep my eyes ahead of me, I can usually manage not to trip. I’ll gladly play servant to the nature that disturbs what would be an otherwise smooth trail, even if it means my joints will pay the price. I’ve reached the top once I see the Grizzly Peak street sign aglow. I stop to indulge in my Rocky Balboa moment, but only for a moment before I turn around to take the same path back downward. My lungs begin to refill; gravity pushes me along and my stride lengthens. I think about how peculiar it is that the way back down always feels longer than the way to the top; how peculiar it is that the same route approached from one direction looks and feels like an entirely different route from the opposite direction. I don’t push my contemplation too far,
though; I’m content to be aware of my inability to grasp these quirks of perspective. It feels good to be reacquainted with a kinesthetic relation to time and space, to these reminders of myself as a mere pawn in the larger, invisible game run by these mysterious forces; yet simultaneously I’m overwhelmed, enveloped by, and united to them. It’s just about now, about three quarters of the way through my run — warm enough that I’m sweating, but before exhaustion — that I feel so good: submerged in the depths of the void, miles into the portal, mind wedded to body, I exist purely. What drunken happiness I’m reunited with! I feel bouncier, light as a feather, yet strong, unstoppable. I can’t help but think to myself, Why don’t you always think and feel this way? Take this ardor for life with you everywhere! Paradoxically, then, my euphoria is often tinged with the neverending frustration of not knowing how to bottle it up and save some for later. I begin to grieve the loss of my happiness before it’s even gone. I crave the experience of wearing these rose-colored glasses not just when I’m running, but always — in everything from my day-to-day interactions with
friends and acquaintances — Love others unconditionally! — to the way I approach my studies — Throw yourself into your work! — to the way I feel toward myself — Why hate yourself when you can love yourself! But, of course, it’s not so simple. The high lingers for a while after my run is over, but inevitably it fades, lost among the banalities of the everyday, succumbing to stress and anxiety and pessimism. Reality sets in again. In the midst of a good run, it’s easy to say, How stupid
of me to ever lose sight of this perspective that gives me so much peace and happiness! But in truth, we’re inconsistent, ever-changing creatures. Achieving mental peace and clarity and remembering this transcendent feeling of oneness with the universe is a pipedream. Sure, a good run seeps into the experience of the rest of my day: afterward I am more centered, optimistic, calm. But the rosecolored glasses that accompany that surge of euphoria at the height of my run will inevitably come off. It’s unfair, then, to beat myself up for
forgetting, for losing perspective, for being cynical and pessimistic, for becoming sad and depressed, for getting tangled and lost over and over again. Instead, I try to pat myself on the back for simply making the effort to incorporate a practice into my life that transports me to a realm of optimism and euphoria at all. I cherish these moments when I am lucky enough to escape my everyday and to feel in touch with something else. I must thank myself for running, for chasing happiness, even if it always slips away from me.
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the fading light a Me nd oci n o ph o to s pr e a d
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visuals by henry demarco
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freshman
FOMO words by RiyA SINHA visuals by hENRY demarco
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e’ve all seen that scene at the very end of Pitch Perfect where the main character, Becca, played by Anna Kendrick, gets the guy, wins the a capella competition, and solidifies her friendships in her a capella group. Perhaps the most impressive part of this is that she achieves all this by the end of her freshman year of college. Before coming to college, I was convinced that I knew exactly how freshman year was going to play out — I was going to move in, join a few clubs, and find friends that would be by my side for a lifetime. While I knew college certainly wouldn’t be just like the movies, they still unconsciously informed my expectations for what my first year would look like. What I didn’t expect was to be standing alone on Sproul as flyers were thrown at me from all directions, which compounded my feeling of loneliness among the hustle and bustle. Walking back to my dorm, I tried to make some sense of what I wanted to do, but that just made me feel more lost. How could I be expected to apply to clubs and meet people when I didn’t even know what I wanted or who I was going to be? I saw the impending deadlines, and I felt like I was going to miss out on the “perfect” event or club just because I hadn’t paid enough attention or talked to the right people. There were so many organizations that shoved their flyer into my unexpecting hands on Sproul, yet I felt like I didn’t have enough information to figure out if I would belong in any of these clubs. I was scared that I would
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with the rise of social media, it is so incredibly easy to feel like we don’t do enough, like we aren’t enough.
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get stuck on a path that I didn’t want to go on and make some irreversible decision. I thought that as a freshman, I needed to have everything for the next four years figured out right away, or else I would miss out on all the potential professional and personal development that college had to offer. This feeling, FOMO (or fear of missing out), is not a new phenomenon. But the rise of social media and the social comparison it facilitates makes it incredibly easy to feel like we don’t do enough, like we aren’t enough. In a study by professors at Nottingham Trent University in England, FOMO is fueling social media addiction, as people constantly
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feel the need to refresh their feeds to make sure they aren’t missing anything major. As I scroll through my Facebook or Instagram on a Friday or Saturday evening, it is easy to feel like everyone is already living their best lives in college, attending festivals and parties every single day. On social media, it seems like they’ve already made a group of friends, going out to meals, and filling their Friday nights with parties and other social events. Realistically, I know this isn’t the case, but thanks to the power of photos and the culture surrounding documenting nearly every single thing we do, it can often feel overwhelming to simply scroll through my feed. I certainly haven’t
found a set group of friends yet, and I think that everyone (including myself!) has to get more comfortable admitting that it takes time to form genuine and deep friendships — the kinds of friendships where both people reach out and make an effort to be there for each other through thick and thin, making memories that create a deeper bond. While I’ve been surrounded by most of my childhood friends for several years, I’ve only been in college for a semester — it makes sense that I don’t feel the same level of familiarity and comfort. But as I look online, it starts to feel like I’ve fallen behind in some way, and if I had just pushed myself to attend
another event during orientation week or applied for another club, I could also be having more fun. This starts a toxic loop in my mind about the past and decisions that I no longer have the power to change. In a New York Times article, psychology Professor Dan Ariely says that social media makes us afraid we’ve made the wrong decisions about how we’ve chosen to spend our time, compounding our feelings of anxiety or stress that we’re somehow missing out. And though this is ultimately an isolating feeling, I realize that I’m not unique in my struggles — freshman year is hard and can feel isolating for so many people, but we just don’t share
that online. I had the opportunity to interview senior Salwa Meghjee, whose journey through Berkeley echoes many of the thoughts that I’ve had throughout my first semester. “I think I came in with not super high expectations, but I still thought I was going to make a ton of friends, and just go on all these adventures with my new friends and find the best people ever,” Meghjee says. However, while she did find great friends during her freshman year, she also started to get depressed, which affected her year in numerous ways. “It was very hard to navigate how to build a new friendship and be very mentally ill and to have a fun college experience and also not
being able to really function. It was a hard first year,” Meghjee admits. This journey has affected how she views friendship, and FOMO as well. “I’ve definitely had a lot of FOMO [in college]. If my friends are going out, I have to go even though I haven’t slept in three days and I’m exhausted, I still want to go cause it feels like I’m going to miss out. And it’s been like a really hard lesson to learn that there’s always going to be another time, I don’t have to go this time,” Meghjee says. However, she thinks her FOMO has compounded over her years at Berkeley. “I think my sense of FOMO has only gotten worse because I sat out on things in freshman year. But
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then I started to feel like I was getting more distant from my friends and I get very irrationally worried that people are closer to each other than they are to me,” Meghjee says. Now, she says she has learnt to deal with these feelings and fears that may arise. “I think therapy has been really, really helpful. Especially talking it out with a neutral third party. Cause I can talk it out with my friends, but they’re so biased, they know you. And I think asserting myself more has been really crucial, like saying, ‘No, I don’t want to do that; I want to do this. Can we trade off or go back and forth or do what I like to do sometimes?’” Meghjee says. Learning to deal with these feelings is a journey, and her words convey that this is an ongoing process, something she is still grappling with. Even though my FOMO was definitely heightened by the transition to college, it is a feeling that can occur
at any moment of life, and it creates extremely unrealistic expectations about how we should lead our lives. We aren’t going to be invited to every single event or get-together, and we may not be liked by every person we meet. But I firmly believe that we should be secure in the imperfect relationships that we do have. If we turn our focus to documenting where each of your friends are or who is hanging out with who, we forget the quality moments and memories. And while I don’t think taking photos or using social media is an inherently negative practice (my camera roll has almost 15,000 photos on it), I believe they do become detrimental when they are our principle concern when spending time with friends. To move away from your home and become independent forces you to grow in so many ways, from learning how to adapt to the college
environment, carve out a career path, and so much more. That means that the dynamics of our friendships and relationships in college are also bound to change. It’s important to understand that and remember that everything we see online is a filtered publication of people’s best moments. As I go through college, I hope that I can learn to appreciate the intentionality that is required in order to cultivate the kinds of genuine and earnest friendships that we so desire. These moments, requiring vulnerability and openness, are probably not the ones that will be documented on our Instagram stories for all to see. They take place in the everyday, the mundane, the moments we don’t think to capture. Recognition of this alone won’t make it any easier, but the process of growing and learning to navigate this new territory excites me just the same.
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&
DEFIANT DANGEROUS The Girl Gangs of ‘70s Japan
words by ANNI WANg
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bedience, modesty, courtesy — for centuries, these were the expectations for women in Japan. Under immense societal pressure, Japanese women were expected to serve as dutiful wives, to work on their family’s farms, and to singlehandedly manage the domestic sphere. But with the arrival of World War II, Japanese women first began to challenge these traditional gender roles, as a slow trickle of women made their way into the male-dominated industrial workforce. Still, despite this progress, the reality of equality remained grim for a lengthy period — Japanese culture remained disapproving of working women, wages for women were far less than their male counterparts, and women continued to lack basic rights, including the right to vote. Ironically, while they were oppressed in their daily lives, Japan’s wartime propaganda machine used women as glowing symbols of national pride, hope, and beauty. Propaganda made it clear: the ideal Japanese woman was still a stark supporter of the state and of her husband. It’s no surprise, then, that the 1950s and ‘60s were marked by a plethora of women’s and social justice movements, which bucked against the oppressive systems that had long permeated Japanese society. Women made their way to the forefront of the political sphere, leading movements to abolish institutions like
the prositution system implemented by the Japanese ruling elite and influence government policies in favor of the lower classes. But most fascinating was the formation of legions of sukeban, which loosely translates to “girl gang” — a movement born in the flames of defiance and independence, in a flurry of combat boots and organized crime. These gangs of teenage girls were a formidable force in postwar Japan, with the sole purpose of challenging the traditional sexualization and oppression of women that had historically defined Japanese society. Brandishing katanas and tucking razor blades under their skirts, sukeban followed a strict hierarchy and moral code. Violations of hierarchical rules, such as displays of disrespect towards fellow gang members, resulted in punishments, including cigarette burns and public beatings. The sukaban movement is most noted for its fashion. Through their personal styles, sukeban challenged traditional gendered stereotypes — their long black skirts, for example, contrasted the traditional short white garments of Japanese schoolgirls and were an outlet for self-expression and defiance. Weapons such as razor blades and swords were hidden under these skirts as a means of both self-protection and a statement of power, fashion, and revolution. Converse sneakers, long-permed
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hair, dark red neck scarves, customized skirts with embroidered anarchic messages, and pencil-thin eyebrows were also favored among gang members. According to Alicia Kozma, author of Pinky Violence: Shock, Awe and the Exploitation of Sexual Liberation, sukeban have fashioned a unique legacy, becoming “representations for the social, cultural, and political dichotomies that Japanese society was experiencing at the time.” In addition, Kozma writes, the sukeban style of “behaving badly” inspired many Japanese women: “Seeing this type of resistance to those expectations is thrilling for most and cathartic for many.” With their outrageous fashion choices and criminal behavior, sukeban directly challenged the notion of the ideal Japanese woman, proving that Japanese women are indeed more than just objects to be exploited by the Japanese government. Because of their involvement in organized crime, sukeban
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were considered a threat to not only the traditional Japanese woman but to the whole of Japanese society. By the 1970s, major cities like Tokyo were filled with girl gangs sporting neon permed hair. The largest sukeban gang, Kanto Women Delinquent Alliance, was rumored to have 20,000 members, effectively making them the largest gang in Japanese history. Sukeban participated in petty crimes like shoplifting, while also dabbling in more serious crime, like break-ins and public conflicts. One particular Sukeban, K-Ko the Razor, commanded a private army of 50 women warriors and was revered for her cruel fighting methods — she was known for slashing an enemy’s face using a sharp razer blade she kept hidden between her breasts. The cultural impact of sukeban has extended far beyond the Japan of the 1960s and ‘70s. The United States, for example, was first exposed to sukeban style in the form of the iconic character Gogo Yubari from Quentin Tarantino’s 2003 cult film, Kill Bill,
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With their outrageous fashion choices and criminal behavior, sukeban directly challenged the notion of the ideal Japanese woman.
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Sporting a dark black uniform, a rebellious and criminal streak, and brandishing a silver chain mace, Yobari pays homage to sukeban and their criminal crusades. Modern Japanese gothic fashion movements, including the dark harajuku fashion trend, also bear striking resemblances to the sukeban movement. With its dark pleated skirts, exaggerated makeup, blood-red lips, and neon-dyed hair, the dark harajuku movement, which aims to address the deteriorating mental health of many young people in Japan, borrows much of its style and iconography from sukeban. In addition to dark harajuku, the Yankii movement is a striking modern example of the reaches of sukeban into the twentyfirst century. A youth culture based upon embracing class distinctions, Yankii members embrace the punk movement. Rock n’ roll music accompanies the red and blonde dyedhair and the kanji-embroidered long jackets of Yankii members, a not-so-subtle nod to the bold fashion choices of the sukeban movement. Though Yankii members prefer intimidation over physical violence, they ultimately embrace the same ideals of their sukeban predecessors — a sense of community is of utmost importance to these young rebels. The dark harajuku and the Yankii movements are modern evidence that sukeban continue to inspire modern movements of young people to address social stigmas and fight oppression The reign of sukeban may be over, but their struggle and mission lives on in the countless Japanese rebel punks who are continuing the fight against injustice.
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Vancouver, Shot on Kodak Portra 400 a photospread
Visuals by Zachary grove
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cover photo by Noah Kentis
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Caliber Magazine Issue 19 / Fall 2019