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YOUTH & IDENTITY ISSUE ONE
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CONTRIBUTORS MAYA COURTNEY-BEDI OWINY LUBANGAKENE
CLAUDIA WATSON MARLA SUNSHINE KELLARD-JONES JOHN LIVESEY ARCHIE TIGHE-EMERY POPPY SEPTEMBER-PETERS ELOISE BARR TOM OUTEN
DANI OREFO GEORGIA MIA-MATSELL
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EDITOR’S LETTER Ten months ago, I’d never thought I’d be here writing this editor’s letter after finishing the first issue of my own zine. This zine began as a pipe dream, a stray thought circling through my head during the beginning of the summer. I felt a profound sense of pride in my accomplishments thus far and in the beautiful set of people I was, and am, surrounded by. It was born out of a desire to express myself, along with a genuine curiosity about my peers. Even though there are many extraordinary publications out there that do just this, I feel there was truly no place for me to share my innermost thoughts nor hear about the experiences of others in such a way. Navigating what it means to be a young person, especially nowadays, is no easy feat. We are dealing with first loves, schoolwork, feeling powerless, technological challenges and mental health issues, among many other things. I do not want to detract from the gravity of these issues by mentioning first love or schoolwork, I do wish to highlight the complexity of the youth experience.
I was very much inspired by my friend Dani and the fantastic job she did with starting up her own zine. Creating a platform for young people to share what they love, what they hate, what inspires them, what they want to change and so much more. Reading, editing, and cultivating this content was one of the most important things I have done to date. I could not be more impressed by those who submitted to Skinned and I am truly honoured that you have trusted me with your work. Creating is never easy, and having the courage to share you work is even harder, so thank you from the bottom of my heart. And finally, Why skinned? I, too often, find myself lost in self-reflectionmapping out where I’ve been, what I’ve done and how I have come to this place- to this person. I am hyperaware of the privilege and resources that I have at my disposal, which has led me on to the question: what I am I doing? I’ve had to skin myself, figuratively, and engage with what really mat4
ters to me. These facets of my identity, of a shared experience is the perhaps the most cherished aspect of my growing up. So what do young people have to say when they can say anything about everything? Hisham x
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Angry, Black and Looking
39 Days with Borderline Pe
Joe Drag? Drag Black Boy in
Why Do We Need Q
Christians Have Jesus, I Ha
Unilateral
A Fresher Fra
Apotheosis o
To Those Who Have Nev
g for a boyfriend / 8-11
ersonality Disorder / 12-14
g Joe! / 12-19 Crisis / 21-23
Queer Icons? / 24-25
ave Angela Davis / 26-27
l / 28-31
aught / 32-36
of Blue / 25
ver Understood / 22-23
Angry, Black &
looking for a boyfriend
By Marla Sunshine Kellard-Jones
Whilst I may not be Rihanna, I am certainly no Frump… ...so why, aged 17 do I still find myself standing and dancing at a party with my 1st kiss virginity in pristine condition? Am I too quiet? Am I not forward enough? Heck, am I going to die alone? If, after allowing these tormenting thoughts to circulate through my mind billions of times, I finally pluck up the courage to ask a friend for advice on how to ‘get some’, the usual response is ‘just lean in, you’ll know what to do’ or ‘you just need to go for it’… but that is not useful advice, whatsoever. My middle class environment has labelled me – a mixed race, Black woman, a sluggish unfeminine brute who will never be one of them, blonde, blue eyed, thin; both physically and culturally. Whilst I am forever grateful that going to a private school has given me a sense
of entitlement, it has sadly distanced me further from a black community, who from the off, never fully accept me. I realised that I was different from the other girls when I saw that they were never being compared to men, or being asked to show their ‘strength’. I am not a violent person, yet this label of being out of control and aggressive has, and continues to be dumped on me. Why is no white girl asked whether or not they will win in a fight, or compared to a mongrel…? I would never win in a fight against someone who attends the gym regularly and drinks enough protein shake to grow an extra limb… so why do they expect these behaviours and or characteristics of me?
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I have come to understand that these micro-aggressions are, once again, examples of the language used to dehumanise Black women. They cannot feel pain, they are strong, wild, and violent, and therefore do not need to experience the desires of a women.
But what I have learnt after many a year in cultural and ethic solitude, is that I do not want to ‘get with’ any of them. Why would I want to let a person’s slimy tongue down my throat, when that same tongue has most likely said the words ‘reverse racism is real’, or ‘all lives matter’. So It angers me that two intelligent now I ask myself, am I really missing mixed race girls in a year of 250 plus out on that much to begin with? I have found the answer to be a restudents have yet to be kissed or sounding, no. asked out. Whilst some may argue that it is simply a case of no one liking us, I feel that the ‘not finding us So, to all my fellow sisters, attractive’ has its origins in the hisand brothers, who will not, and torical racist representation of black should not conform to the stereand mixed race women. I will never meet the expectations of the middle otypes of the white man’s needs; class male’s ideologies of beauty, be- be proud. There are others out there, you just need to wait until cause I was never in the ‘race of beauty’ to begin with. My entire be- you can escape the vacuum that ing goes against what they find to be is the private school system. Sadthe model partner, and therefore I ly, until that day arrives you may was never, and will never be a wom- need to play the long game… an to them. I will simply be a loud, And who knows, maybe you’ll angry black woman who doesn’t meet your Malcom X or Angela know her place, and needs to Davis one day soon. ‘shhhhh’. 11
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So that’s where I’m at with drag at the moment and it’s fun. I just do it for fun and it’s a different way of performing.
JOE:
I found drag through drag
race like every other little gay boy, and I first kind of did it for theatre. I went to an all boys school and if there was a female role I would do it because you always got more lines. We did Les Miserable and I got Madam Thenardier, one of the bigger female roles in drag and it was so much fun. I then started to think of what my drag character would be, my drag character is fully me but in more drag make-up then normal and that’s saying something. So I was playing around with a few names at first. Firstly I was Lilith, next name was Joenepher Arc (my names Joe and second name is Nirvarc haha funny) and I think at the moment I’m kind of settling on just doing the name Red. My drag character is just me but in heels. It wasn’t much of a distinction between me and her. Gender is overrated. If I feel more feminine, I’m in drag and even when I’m feeling feminine and I’m still just a boy just not putting on a wig. 14
MAYA: Have you ever got any shit for doing drag? JOE: Not particularly. I would not go out in drag in public, I definitely wouldn’t go alone. I would have to go with a crowd of people to feel supported in public and definitely not at night when its dodgy. Most of my family and friends have been supportive. There were a few people that were dodgy about it at first but when they saw it wasn’t me being trans they were ok. I few people were like “are you a girl now”? They instantly thought that doing drag meant I was trans. It is a performance to me. They were like “no, you’ve put on a dress and heels and make-up, you are trans now”. I was just like ummm, not really, I don’t do that stuff normally. My mum was a bit nervous at first because she was just nervous for me, she wasn’t nervous of it; she was scared of how other people would react. But honestly she loves it now, she’s great. She was more scared that I was going to get hurt or hatred for it.
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MAYA: It’s sad but you are kind of guaranteed to get shit and get hatred for it. JOE: I get looks around school like “that’s the kid who did drag”, but I’m over it. The majority of people in school are great and were like that was sick. However, you do get those dicky two year 7’s like “oi are you the fucking guy that did drag”. My sixth form is pretty chill but obviously some people are still like “you batty boy”.
the people in the years below were really dodgy. People would call me “faggot”, like the normal kind of stuff and all that shit. One of my friends picked him up and put him i a bin haha, so that was alright. An other one of my friends fully backhanded this other guy.
All my friends were cool with i and I think you naturally gravitate to people that are going to be accepting of it. But it was weird working out, up until a certain point, where people were kind of ok MAYA: What was your old school like? with me and I started doing drag an being more flamboyant. You see the JOE: My old school was an all boys people who really back off after school. There were people in my year that point. that were dodge about it. A lot of 16
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MAYA: Where you about 15 when you started drag?
want think queer to th
JOE: Yeah I was about 15, school playes were around year 10/11 and that’s when I started MAYA: doing it. It’s been nothing but ok te fun honestly, I love it. JOE: queer Ru Paul has kind of made drag trendy. Like look at these queer that male models wearing dresses. would Like ooo drag race, gender flufluid id, it’s so cool now. I’m just bit, like no, these are people lives I’m a and it’s not a trend. I want it ident to be accepted and I don’t want going ident it to be taken advantage of. what There is so much of gay culQueer ture, especially in drag race where the jokes and the vocabu- term by th lary from that comes from a still specific New York seen, where ing u there was a lot of black and If I latino gay men. That in itself that is a bit dodge for mainstream, was s it, I white sis people to be like “this is us now”. They don’t
Photography & i
Maya Courtne 18
to appreciate that. They k it’s fine to take from r culture but not give back he community.
: Do you think queer is an erm to use?
I personally identify as r. I would say I’m a gay r person. I wouldn’t say I’m trans or anything. I dn’t say that I’m gender d. I just say that I’m a queer. I would say that a bit off kilter. I still tify as a boy but I’m not g to let the term of “I tify as a boy” constrict I do and how I behave. r used to be a derogatory but it’s been re-claimed he community. Some people l don’t like that word beused or get offended by it. was in a crowd of people didn’t like the word or still being traumatised by I wouldn’t use it.
interview:
ey-Bedi 19
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To Those Who Have Never Understood... If the mind is a fortress, I’m having to rebuild the walls. There was a night when I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t stop crying, shaking and feeling unnerved by nothing at all. Every morning after that night, I felt sick and tense, as if waiting for someone to pull the rug out from underneath me. What I came to realise was that I was suffering from an anxiety disorder. Something I had neither understood nor experienced before. What scared me most about my over-anxiousness was that I had lost myself; my independence, my emotional stability, my capacity to comfort and understand myself. I couldn’t trust my own mind. I was so afraid of never feeling right again. I constantly relied on the company of my parents, which often made me feel foolish and child-like. Everything always felt so distant, like I was watching life from somewhere deep inside myself. I became envious of friends who could escape the heavy, nauseating feeling which constantly lived within me. I was angry that they were happy and free whilst I was being put through hell by my own mind and body. But I also felt ashamed and guilty for falling apart in the face of so much love, affection and support from the people around me. That’s not to say that they all completely understood what was going on – many of them still don’t. But you can’t blame people for not understanding what they have never experienced.
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However, what did help me accept my anxiety was realising how so many people around me had been through similar experiences; the issue is far more widespread than I had ever really imagined. For years, the expectation of what mental health issues ‘look like’ has been manifested in self-harm, suicide attempts and being sectioned. But these expectations are so far from the truth, because in reality there are different scales of depression, different triggers of anxiety and a range of different age groups, ethnicities and genders who are affected by these problems. What I also began to understand was how people hid their true mental state, as if they were attempting to suppress it from themselves and the ones they loved out of fear or doubt. No one wants to be stigmatized or misunderstood. But I felt desperate not to feel alone. I wish people talked as openly about mental health as they do about the weather. Hiding how we truly feel only creates barriers and ostracizes ourselves from those who actually may be able to help. There are people I know who suffer from depression and anxiety yet I could never talk to them about mental health for fear I would be overstepping boundaries or making them uncomfortable. Yet talking could be what makes us feel better, less afraid, more normal. Mental health has now become a priority in my life; I can’t go to every party or drink carelessly like before because the potential consequences are too great. So forgive me, and people like me, who don’t reply to your message straight away, don’t come to that party when we said we would, don’t smile at you that one occasion we pass each other in the hallway. It’s not you, I promise. I’m just having a bad day.
By Poppy September-Peters
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The Apoth eosis of Blu e The sun light linge rs , Lik e the hau nting c ast Of a night ma r e . Vivid and pro found -
Set fr ee f ro m t he r ed pr ecip itation To a He r cule an Blu e As though red e mption Wa s not a t the exp ense o f He r soul . The sun light linge rs , Lik e Pl ato or Aristotl e I n thought . No w the Blue li ng ers , As i f Sh e co mma nds He rs elf a n ame A t suna mi of fea r and t re mb ling
Dissip ate s into ca l m And out of th e Blu e S ettl es He r tabula ras a . Allo wing Her b rea th To cond ense , To le ap in f aith , And to be si len ced And put to de ath The Blue was slow to dis appe ar.
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A collection of Poems By Claudia Watson
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My hands were stained red with blood, Of where I had mutilated myself before, Manipulating my form, To be something I’m not, To be something you’d want.
I neglected to notice that, What made me imperfect was the scars that I had and the changes that I made, Hands
My hands were stained red with the blood, From where I thought I should change.
Our hands just didn’t fit together, Always slightly uncomfortable, Having to force to entwine, Mismatching parts of a jigsaw puzzle.
I learned that hands aren’t made for each other, And that in time you learn to deal with the discomfort, As long as you hold on it will get easier.
I tried to change my hands to fit yours, Cutting of pieces of them that stuck out, I wanted them to fit.
You didn’t, You gripped me loosely, While I was falling,
But I have so many so many wounds from many times before,
Struggling to cling on.
Where I had cut away pieces of myself, To fit people’s hands, And I realised that I couldn’t continue to harm myself for others, I couldn’t keep changing myself for people who wouldn’t change for me.
I fell,
Far away from you, And I’m sorry, I have bruises too.
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You only loved me lights out, Skin bare, Legs spread, On the armchair in your room.
I remember that night with clarity, The sky was clear and I looked for the stars, As you searched for some feeling within me.
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The Fire Within
Don’t touch broken glass. You can’t piece me back together Like some project You can marvel at what you’ve done.
We were always told not to play with fire, You just liked the warmth as I burned myself down.
Little did you know, What would rise from the ashes-
Now you’re going to get scorched.
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