Table of Contents MAIN FEATURE MY LOVE-HATE RELATIONSHIP WITH INSTAGRAM - PAGE 4 Naomi Desai examines social media activism, and how supporting social justice issues should move beyond the screen.
DRIVERS LICENSE - PAGE 18 Alex Poole critiques Olivia Rodrigo’s hit single “drivers license,” and explores how it might mark a new era of making and interacting with music.
COMMUNITY
THOUGHTS
PRATT INSTITUTE AND URBAN RENEWAL: HOW PRATT STIMULATED TWO COMPONENTS OF GENTRIFICATION - PAGE 8 Nina Martineck analyzes the origins of Pratt’s gentrification, and how the Institute’s history of urban renewal still has lasting effects today.
UNBOUNDED YOUTH - PAGE 20 Melanie Tran addresses the importance of childhood imagination, and how its impacts stay with us long into adulthood.
FINDING MY PIECES - PAGE 12 Dev Kamath reflects upon their experience discovering their gender identity, and how it is an evolving process in self-acceptance and affirmation.
CULTURE BTS AND THEIR ‘LOVE YOURSELF’ MESSAGE - PAGE 15 Nicole Delp sheds light on the importance of K-pop group BTS, their music and their message of self-care and self-love.
MY OWN BARBIE - PAGE 23 Keithly Vite writes about her complicated relationship with Barbie dolls, as well as the importance of representation for all ages. All articles from this issue, as well as exclusive online articles, are available on prattleronline.com.
Letter From the Editor Prattlers, While Nina, The Prattler’s managing editor, and I brainstormed themes for this issue last winter, we struggled to find the right word to define time and all of its complexities. We searched for a definition that could describe living during an unprecedented year, where current events became historical, where both nostalgia and looking ahead became part of our rollercoaster of everyday emotions. How could we invite people to write about this strange period of not knowing what day it is, of reverting to old versions of ourselves, of trying to reflect on all of this and move forward? “The Ageless Issue” is, in a way, a tribute to the things we remember, to the objects, moments and memories that extend beyond specific time periods. Whether that’s through articles that examine our school’s questionable history, social media activism or the importance of childhood, this edition of The Prattler makes it clear that time, above everything, can be strange, frustrating and rewarding all at once. We hope you enjoy, and thank you for your readership and support throughout this year. See you again in the fall! Fondly, Carly Tagen-Dye Editor-in-Chief
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Carly Tagen-Dye MANAGING EDITOR Nina Martineck
CREATIVE DIRECTORS Tien Servidio Jessica Tasmin ADVISORS Christopher Calderhead Eric Rosenblum
Cover by Tien Servidio prattleronline.com Instagram: @Prattler theprattler@gmail.com
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Feature
My Love-Hate Relationship With Instagram BY NAOMI DESAI ART BY JESSICA TASMIN
When I open Instagram and am forced to see my Discover page every morning, I’m hit with an overwhelming amount of infographics. They tell me of the “Truths About Womanhood” or “How to Support the AAPI Community,” and while both are important causes to me as an Asian American woman, it’s the last thing I want to see at 6 a.m. It’s exhausting to relive my experience as a woman and a minority every time I open the app. I joined Instagram in middle school as a way to catch up with friends. When I got accepted to Pratt during the COVID-19 pandemic, that old online presence was the first impression that I made on everyone I met in college. The first picture I ever posted in seventh grade is still on my feed, and though it’s embarrassing, I can’t delete my cringey posts, especially when I use them to see how much I’ve grown. Unfortunately, this idea of growth has now disappeared from
Instagram and other social media platforms. While there was always an immense pressure to have a balanced follower-following ratio, get lots of likes and have witty captions, there’s now an additional pressure to always be politically correct. I first noticed this last summer, when George Floyd was murdered by police and a surge
Feature 5 of protests followed. Similar to many people across the country, I was outraged by Floyd’s death. In response, I inspired my parents to donate to the NAACP, signed petitions in my community and wrote letters encouraging residents in swing states to vote in the 2020 presidential election. I realized that I could either spend my time texting with my best friend about our shared anger, or I could utilize it to actually help the social justice causes that I cared about. Other people decided to post a black square in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.
When this was called out as lazy activism, people moved on to sharing infographics with educational resources. I first thought this was great. I was learning about Black-owned businesses in my community, as well as new ways to explain the meaning of the BLM movement to those who didn’t quite understand it yet. What I soon realized, though, was that the infographics and the black square were nearly the same thing: after you posted either of them, nothing monumental changed. The deep rooted problem of racial injustice in this country cannot be fixed by a social media post. When you lay in bed and click three buttons to share links, you aren’t personally doing anything to make a difference; instead, you’re just telling other people to do it. When I convinced my parents to make a donation to combat racial injustice, I didn’t go to Instagram to research which organization would be best. Social media sites are not newspapers that go through numerous fact checks before publication. I realized this firsthand when I saw a well-curated Tweet targeted against Mitch McConell before the 2020 presidential election. I absentmindedly liked it without
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Feature looking deeper, only to realize that it was from The Lincoln Project, a group of anti-Trump Republicans. I was horrified, especially since Vox has reported that founder Rick Wilson is known to use abelist and racist slurs. There’s a reason why your teachers always tell you not to do research on Wikipedia; it works the same way on social media. Blogger Alicia Kennedy reiterates this sentiment. In a recent blog post, she stated that “a lot of language that sounds radical, sounds true—but would it pass... if it weren’t presented in a pretty square? Would it read as credible if it were not being shared widely, making one’s own share of it feel obligatory?” In my case with The Lincoln Project, I was lucky that I only had a handful of followers, who personally knew that I wasn’t a Republican. However, if I’d made that mistake on Instagram, where I have significantly more followers, I don’t think the response would have been so kind. Kennedy points this out as well. “I also do not want to present my thoughts as definitive. They’re not!” she wrote. “But the authoritative tone of Instagram Information™ gives
me pause, because it wants to be understood as definitive, as a guideline for behavior—online and off.” In a world where cancel culture exists, when people disagree with you, they have no problem letting you know. Second year architecture student Cheyenne Valstar has received various direct messages in regard to her Instagram stories. She believes it’s the anonymity that causes angry messages in her DMs. There’s something wrong with social media when it’s acceptable to send a rude message virtually, especially when one would never say that directly to someone’s face. Valstar thinks that posting about politics, “makes those who are around you...aware this [cause] is what you believe [in].” While she has a point that these posts can make your peers more comfortable by knowing where you stand on certain issues, they don’t prove that you actually care. It’s incredibly easy to just say that you support a cause: what it actually comes down to are your daily interactions. This is the entire struggle of being a person of color in this country. There are people who simply have an implicit bias
Feature 7 against us, but cannot recognize it within themselves. Adding to the massive slideshow of Instagram stories doesn’t change that we’re still experiencing microaggressions in our day to day interactions. There’s racial injustice in this country because people aren’t listening to communities of color. All we’re asking for is for people to listen to our experiences and reflect how they’ve contributed to racism instead of trying to prove how woke they are. The time that is spent making and posting infographics can be spent reading books by Black authors to understand how you contribute to white supremacy or volunteering for an organization that you care about. As someone who cares deeply about social justice issues but doesn’t post about it on Instagram, there’s a huge fear that I’m not proving myself and my support. Valstar relates to this problem, stating that, “It’s not without stress, so some people just don’t need that in their lives. I think, as long as you, in some form of your life, feel like you’re being vocal...that’s good. It doesn’t have to be on social media.” I’m on Instagram because my friends are on it, but also to create a photo album of memories. While
I have many gripes with the app, it’s how I met all of my friends at Pratt, and how I found out about The Prattler to be able to write this article. While I wish I could just simply delete Instagram, I subconsciously know that I won’t. The same way I joined the app through peer pressure is also probably the only way I’ll leave it. Still, caring about social justice issues online has become a trend. These causes deserve more attention than the few seconds someone will see it on your Instagram story. If you believe there’s a problem in the world, instead of thinking about what you’re going to post, think about what you’re going to do to change it.
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Pratt Institute and Urban Renewal: How Pratt Stimulated Two Components of Gentrification Pratt Institute prides itself on its 25 acre green campus in the heart of Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. It’s quite the commodity, as most New York City colleges don’t have access to traditional outdoor spaces. Because Pratt’s campus presents itself as natural, perhaps as old as founder Charles Pratt himself, we often don’t question the validity of its seemingly innocuous gardens. But how, exactly, did Charles Pratt acquire 25 acres in the middle of Brooklyn for the construction of a trade school? The short answer: he didn’t. The long answer begins before Clinton Hill was established. Not much is known about the area upon which the neighborhood was built, apart from the fact that it belonged to the Lenape people before Dutch colonists reportedly purchased the land from them. The area remained largely undocumented until the 1860s, when oil baron Pratt decided to build his home on Clinton Avenue. Then, a few streets over on Ryerson, he built Pratt Institute. In 1887, Pratt Institute opened its doors to twelve students. Six months
BY NINA MARTINECK ART BY TIEN SERVIDIO
later, 400 students were enrolled in engineering, architecture, design, library science and domestic studies classes. Anyone could attend the school, regardless of class, race or gender, making it the first college in Brooklyn to keep those demographics out of its application process. Nonwhite people could take all the same classes as white people, and women could take most of the same classes as men. Easily accessible by the elevated train running down Grand Avenue, and affordable for people in the working class, the school was revolutionary. We may wonder how Pratt Institute gentrified a neighborhood that it practically built. Charles Pratt was a model philanthropist, sharing his wealth through endowments to local schools and investing in quality housing for the working class. Sure, his campus was a few streets over from some of the most opulent houses in Brooklyn, but it seemed that Pratt truly was built on the premise of helping people. It almost truly was. Things got trickier in the mid-century, once Charles Pratt passed and
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10 community his family no longer had ties to the school. By then, Brooklyn had changed, and Pratt Institute found itself needing to do so too. The problem didn’t lie with its desire to move onward, but with how it decided to do that. By the 1950s, the surrounding area’s median income began to drop. As people moved to the newlyconstructed suburbs, Clinton Hill became a largely working class and low income neighborhood; a stark contrast from the millionaire’s haven it once believed itself to be. Crime rates went up and the safety of the neighborhood was perceived to go down. Brooklyn as a whole seemed to be in a stagnant place, unable to develop because of the lack of loans granted by the Home Owner’s Loan Corporation (HOLC). Clinton Hill, a redlined district, was no exception. Enter Robert Moses. During the postwar period, Moses was responsible for the design of the interstate highway system, the United Nations campus and numerous New York bridges. His work, however, went beyond supplementing the fabric of the city: he wanted to tear it up. Moses did this by way of “slum clearance,” or the razing of communities he deemed undesirable. The clearance gave way to urban renewal. The urban renewal cycle begins when a powerful system, such as the HOLC, designates an area as a “slum,”
barring the residents from taking out loans that would change their situations. Someone powerful, like Moses, sees the area as harmful to the wealthier parts of the city and aims to clear it. The US government provides the funds. Private developers, also using government funds, build projects, which are then sold back to the city’s residents. Their price ranges and discriminatory laws often prohibit the people that had been cleared from moving back. Pratt Institute was a renowned school for professionals, and Moses viewed its neighbors as unworthy of being there. In the 1950s, he began to displace them from Clinton Hill. Ryerson Street, Grand Avenue, Steuben Street, and Emerson Place were truncated with heavy iron fencing, and the elevated train that ran down Grand Avenue was dismantled. He brought in large, corporate-level architectural firms to expand the campus’s interior, and the cleared areas were outfitted with new high-rise housing for the middle class. (One of these would later be acquired by Pratt for student housing, and is now present day Willoughby Hall.) As Moses wanted, Clinton Hill followed Pratt’s example. The undemolished brownstones and apartment buildings around campus were renovated and sold to upper middle class families. Businesses moved in, new constructions popped up and more art students swarmed the area. This is the Clinton Hill we know
community 11 today: the half-historical landmark, half-renowned arts district, with its centerpiece being the lush idyll of Pratt’s campus. People who didn’t fit this new image of Clinton Hill were not invited back once it had been renewed. It was not renewed for them. We, as students, aren’t clueless to Pratt’s history: we’re told on day one of class that we stand on colonized, gentrified land, and we can all guess to what the term “arts district” really alludes to. But Pratt’s gentrification of Clinton Hill is half of its grapple with displacement and exclusion. Essentially, Pratt Institute gentrified itself. When Charles Pratt opened his trade school, each class cost four dollars; adjusted for inflation, that’s still only about $119 a credit. Today, we pay almost $2,000. The cost of living in Clinton Hill has steadily increased, which was largely Pratt’s doing, so students below a certain income level struggle to live here, even if on campus. The average income of dependent students’ families tops $75,000 a year, still less than Clinton Hill’s yearly average of $111,000. The school’s gradual shift away from technical degrees, and towards the visual arts, has ushered in a different population: one that, in turn, amplifies and expedites the gentrification process. Pratt has started, continued and validated the cycle. This isn’t to say that Pratt can’t grow
and change as an institution. But, as students and active members of a community that has exiled others, we have to question if this school was built for us. The short answer is yes, as Charles Pratt worked tirelessly to ensure that it was built for everyone. The long answer, however, goes back to our sprawling green grass and the bones of the dismantled neighborhood it grows upon. Quite literally, we stand upon their shoulders.
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Finding My Pieces Gender forms a part of your identity before you’re even born. Expectant parents learn of their baby’s sex on a sonogram as early as 14 weeks. Babies are brought into the world with the words “it’s a girl!” or “it’s a boy!” Gender can be restraining even from your first day of life. Trying to fit into the cookiecutter shape you are assigned, particularly when that’s not what you want to do, feels constraining. It’s like you’re stuck in a box that you don’t fit in. Growing up, that feeling of disconnect with my gender, and occasionally my body, made me feel out of place. I’d ask myself questions: Is it because you don’t hang out with the other girls enough? Should you act more feminine? Should you like more of what other girls like? My idea of what gender and being female was was based on how my peers, as well as women on TV, presented themselves. I thought that, to exist as and be comfortable as a woman, I had to learn to dress and act feminine. Before the start of eleventh grade, I cut my hair short. It wasn’t a spurof-the-moment decision, but something that I’d wanted to do for a long
ARTICLE AND ART BY DEV KAMATH
time. Going from shoulder length hair to hair that was barely an inch off of my scalp made me feel like a different person. I felt a kind of relief, a feeling of elation. A little thing like a haircut unburdened me of some of the pressure I felt about gender, and I loved that feeling so much. I couldn’t stop running my hands over the shaved sides for a while. That moment was what I think of as the first piece of the puzzle clicking into place. College was the first time that I got to both learn about and see gender identities outside of just male and female. I met many people who felt the same way I did, and who helped me get to know myself better. I met people who were out, who could experiment and express externally what they felt internally. They gave me more confidence to try and find that hidden puzzle piece I was looking for. These people also gave me a name for that piece: nonbinary. For a long time, everyone described me as
14 community just being a tomboy, but in actuality, it was never about that. It was always about not being a girl or a boy because I didn’t feel like I was either. I took Pratt’s Connections course twice by accident (I thought I signed up for Connections 2, but actually signed up for Part 1, and then got too nervous to tell anyone I’d done it before.) At Connections, there’s an exercise where we’re asked to think about and write down which aspects of our identity mean the most to us. Having done Connections twice means that I did this exercise twice. The first time around, I struggled to put how I felt about my identity into words. I was hesitant to write anything down. The second time, I felt more confident because I finally understood myself in ways I didn’t before. I’d managed to accept a part of myself that I didn’t realize I was even afraid of. I started using they/them pronouns last year, and every time someone uses my correct pronouns, that giddy feeling of relief comes surging back into me. It sounds weird to say that I get so happy when someone respects my pronouns. However, after spending so much time feeling like I didn’t fit into my assigned gender, or feeling like an imposter because I still responded to she/her as well, it now feels like an affirmation. It feels like an affirmation that I can be nonbinary, that I can be myself. Gender means something different for everybody. It can be a big or a small piece of the puzzle of your identity, and there’s no singular correct way to “be” a gender. You don’t owe anyone masculinity, femininity or androgyny; being comfortable in your own body is what is more important. Hopefully, I will find that piece of my puzzle somewhere along the way too.
Culture 15
The me of yesterday, the me of today, the me of tomorrow (woah) (I’m learning how to love myself) With no exceptions, it’s all me
BTS and Their “Love Yourself” Message by nicole delp art by naomi desai
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Culture You’ve shown me I have reasons I should love myself (oh) I’ll answer with my breath, my path The me of yesterday, the me of today, the me of tomorrow (woah) (I’m learning how to love myself) With no exceptions, it’s all me - BTS, “Answer: Love Myself”
which originated in 2017 with a three-album series, BTS has also spread a message of safecare to people of vastly different ages and backgrounds. The band teaches listeners how to learn to love yourself first, flaws and all, before anything else. The message became so influential that BTS partnered with UNICEF’s “End Violence” program to expand the campaign, which has since raised millions of dollars to help end violence among children and teens. Longtime fan Naomi Desai feels that BTS’ music and message is particularly impactful.
The concept of self-love has often been linked to self-care and mental health. However, over the last four years, it’s also been associated with something else: seven member K-pop group BTS. BTS emerged from a small entertainment company in South Korea called Big Hit Entertainment and weren’t expected to last long. Debuting in 2013, the group comprises leader/producer/rapper RM (Kim Namjoon), vocalist Jin (Kim Seokjin), rapper/ producer Suga (Min Yoongi), dance leader/ rapper J-Hope (Jung Hoseok), lead vocalist/ dancer Jimin, (Park Jimin), vocalist/dancer V (Kim Taehyung) and main vocalist/dancer Jungkook (Jeon Jungkook). BTS’ albums discuss topics that Korean teens experience, like relationships and mental health. Their fanbase, referred to as ARMY (Adorable Representative M.C. for Youth), has grown with each passing year and continues to find comfort within the group’s lyrics. Fast forward to the present day, and the seven rookies are now the biggest band on the planet. Among their honors are their appearance at the 2018 UN General Assembly for their UNICEF campaign, as well as being the first Korean act to perform on SNL and to get nominated for a Grammy. Through their “LOVE MYSELF” campaign,
“While most celebrities have causes that they care about, a lot of them stop after they mention it in an acceptance speech or post about it on social media,” Desai said. “BTS doesn’t. They know that they have a huge following and can reach millions of people worldwide through their music.” When she started college this past year, Desai, like so many in the world, struggled to adapt to the COVID-19 pandemic. “During a time like this…[BTS’] ‘LOVE MYSELF’ message is extremely relevant,” she said. “They’ve been a great source of joy in my life, because their music is a constant reminder that I’m not alone, and that it’s still important to put your all into everything you do.” BTS has also helped me through some tough times. Their music made me realize that I wasn’t a nobody when I was a freshman, and gave me reassurance during my parents’ separation that there wasn’t anything wrong with me. In a time when depression and other mental illnesses among young adults is common, BTS’ music helps many others to move past dark times, too. “I think a big part of why people of various age groups and backgrounds have a deep
Culture 17 connection with BTS is because of how open they are about mental health,” Desai said. “I’m in a BTS Facebook group with people who are in their 30s-50s, and when [their new album] ‘Be’ came out, we all found comfort in it because, despite our differences, [we were] all struggling during this pandemic. Having an album that openly discussed the struggle of this time was a huge reassurance that [I wasn’t] the only one finding it hard to manage.” Although they sing in Korean, BTS still conveys their message to all people. This success comes from how much passion the band puts into their music and performances. Even if someone doesn’t want to look up the translated lyrics, they’re still able to discern the feelings being portrayed through the music’s composition and emotion. Because BTS cares so much about the “Love Yourself” message, they can communicate it through their music and help those who are struggling. The more you learn about BTS, their intricate performances and the messages central to their songs, the more it makes sense why millions of people worldwide love them so much. As Desai put it, “They know the whole world is watching. Because of that, [BTS] has no choice but [to be] open about this struggle.”
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Culture
drivers license
BY ALEX POOLE ART BY TIEN SERVIDIO
On January 11, 2021, “drivers license,” Olivia Rodrigo’s debut single, went #1 on the Billboard Top 100, making her the youngest artist to ever debut at the top of the chart. Since its release, “drivers license” has broken Spotify’s single day streaming record for a non-holiday song, as well as the debut week streaming record on both Spotify and Amazon Music. It’s been certified doubleplatinum and has gone #1 in many other countries. “drivers license” is a runaway freight train of a song, and one of the most popular ones of the streaming era. At this point, you’re probably thinking either “duh” or “I’ve never heard this song before.” “drivers license,” and Rodrigo herself, are simultaneously unique and cookie-cutter. The song is a power pop break-up ballad in the tradition of Taylor Swift. It’s one long crescendo, beginning sparsely with Rodrigo’s throaty vocals accompanied by a minimalist piano melody. By the end of the track, Rodrigo’s rage has fully simmered over. She lets out multi-layered vocals, including the immediately iconic repeated bridge, complete with the heart-wrenching, bellowed lyrics, “I still fuckin’ love you.” It’s a song I wouldn’t ordinarily seek out, but when it comes on the radio (which, again, is all the time), I enjoy it. Rodrigo’s heartbreak feels earnest, despite her youth, and the song is immaculately produced. What truly makes “drivers license” unique and potentially timeless, though, is how ubiquitous it is to some and foreign to others. On a weekly Zoom call with my friends from high school this past Friday, not a single person in a group of ten besides my partner and I had heard it.
However, among tweens and on social media platform TikTok, “drivers license” is unavoidable. In a recent edition of the New York Times series “Diary of a Song,” Rodrigo details how she included a certain pause in the song specifically to be used as a transition for TikToks. To some, this could be seen as inorganic or pandering, but her decision was prescient; that part of the song, with the pause included, is fodder for hundreds of thousands of TikToks, and counting. Many other TikToks utilize the “I still fuckin’ love you” bridge, some authentically, many more as parody.
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It’s still unknown if Rodrigo will follow up with more hits, or if she will be seen as a one-hit wonder that perfectly encapsulates the TikTok era (I would bet on the former). This may just be the tip of the iceberg, as artists, especially young ones seemingly born fluent in social media, master the art of social media engagement. More and more songs will be made with TikTok (or whatever app comes next) in mind. “drivers license” itself may not be ageless, but its creation, as well as the thought process behind it, may be the new normal.
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U n b o u n d e d
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Unbounded Youth As soon as silence cut through the air, the music box was cranked and winded up again. Its seemingly eternal rhythm continued once more. The pendulum enclosed within the box swung back and forth in synchrony with the lullaby. The steady beat gave way to a melody of chimes. Protected underneath the box’s glass surface, the patterns created by the letters “I” and “V” were fixed into a circle. They were merely embellishments that held no significance to my young observant eyes. The peculiarity of what filled the center did little to hide the emptiness of the circle’s face. But the music box was a figment of my imagination. Instead, what stood before the eyes of a child who had yet to understand the meaning of time was simply an old grandfather clock. I had perceived it for what it meant to me rather than for what it actually was. I let my relentless imagination unravel and manifest itself. Growing up, my twin sister and I always played together with our Webkinz. These moments captured the surreality of our imaginations, as well as our own comprehension of age. We would play out various scenarios with our stuffed animals, harboring their own unique personalities. As we played, we shifted between being infants, teenagers and adults. The behaviors we enacted stemmed from our perceptions of our surrounding environment. Watching television and watching the people closest to us became our first definition of maturity. The surreality of my imagination, however, extended much further. When I was playing, I became a dragon or a pegasus soaring through the sky. My stacked Crayola markers
BY MELANIE TRAN ART BY AMBER DUAN
became my lightsaber and sword while a pillow became my shield. A single bed sheet magically transformed into an extravagant gown, while a blanket sufficed as my lovely cape. I was ageless, I was boundless, I was timeless. I don’t think time is ever on our minds when we’re young; rather it’s taught and embedded into our daily lives. What we created and wielded as kids was a double-edged sword. Time brought us order and efficiency, but at the expense of learning about our own individuality and interests. The time between sixth and twelfth grade became a daunting countdown to having to make one of the biggest decisions in my life: choosing the college I wished to go to. But what made the process harder was having to choose between my own interests and future with the limited time given to me. As expected, my future won, and my own curiosity became buried in the dark. The child who thought they could do all they wished faded into a fantasy, replaced by responsibility and the realities of living. Or so I thought. Now, as a second year undergraduate architecture student, I realize my inner child hasn’t been replaced; instead, I find I was simply forgetting them. I wasn’t conscious of this until the second semester of my first year. After running into many dead ends with a conceptual design project of a library, I began to ask myself why I decided to become an architect. The answer was simple. I was passionate about architecture as a kid. Each building I walked into, whether it be a house or a
22 thoughts skyrise, was an adventure waiting to be embarked upon. The spaces fueled my curiosity, their lighting making them more magical. The reason I’d struggled with my project was because I’d forgotten what architecture meant to me and what I wished for it to be for others; a timeless experience bounded by endless curiosity and exploration. Being at home because of the pandemic, however, shifted the use of conventional building materials such as chipboard and basswood sticks to unconventional ones, like food, books and recycled scraps. I felt like a kid again as I used these for assignments that opened imaginative possibilities. Window blinds and their cords became floor levels and elevator shafts. The oval-shaped holes of the laundry basket were inspiration for apertures, while layered leaves transformed spaces through their reaction with light. A mirror reflecting within another mirror paralleled the continuum of space and lost time, while a pile of fortune cookies became a Frank Gehry-inspired form. I believe our years as youths are moments we must never forget, because they are moments in which we perceived the world as endless. To remember our inner child is not to remember what we want to create, but what we could create.
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My Own Barbie
As a kid, I didn’t particularly care who Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong were, because Barbie landed on the moon years before they did. Seeing “The Nutcracker” at the Houston ballet was nothing compared to seeing Barbie spin around on-screen to defeat the mouse king in the Barbie film of
ARTICLE AND ART BY KEITHLY VITE
the same name. In 2008, I wanted my mom to put Barbie’s name on the ballot instead of her preferred candidate’s. Barbie was a powerful, successful and kind woman, just like I wanted to be. I still love her for that. The original Barbie was released on March
24 thoughts 9, 1959 with the first marketing campaign directly advertised to children. For the first time, little girls were given the chance to choose their role model. In the ‘50s, Barbie was a frizzy orange-haired thing with the exaggerated brows, blush, red lipstick and black eyeliner of the times. In 1968, the first African American friend of Barbie was released, with the first two Black and Latina Barbies following in 1980. The most beautiful thing about Barbie is that she contains many identities; she can be almost anybody without contradicting herself. Her critics seem to think of her solely as Malibu Barbie, a carefree Californian beach girl with an unrealistic body type, willfully ignoring all the times that Barbie has excelled in competitive career fields and earned several graduate degrees. The Barbies that populated my toy box rode around in the Malibu Barbie car after a shift as a teacher, headed to the Olympics and would be back in time to report for duty as president to solve world peace. Because Barbie is everything, a kid only needs to search their imagination for what they need from her. My child imagination, however, was stifled by the fact that the Barbie that dominated the screen, store aisles and toy box was the blonde, blue-eyed one. If you were lucky, you might be able to buy a Black Barbie or a white brunette Barbie, but I could never quite accept that Barbie didn’t look like me, or, rather, that I didn’t look like Barbie. I loved Barbie. I loved that she was smart, strong and able to be a good friend. I loved that she was a princess, a musketeer and a ballerina. So I would put on a tangled, blonde Hannah Montana wig and a pink princess dress to try to look like her. It never worked. My black hair poked out from underneath the wig and I thought my skin looked more like the dirt under Barbie’s feet. A heart-wrenching experience for me, to say the least: I tried to measure up to Barbie and
found that I didn’t even compare. I lost interest in the whole Barbie franchise as I grew up. The release of the “Barbie Fashionistas” line in 2009, a series of Barbie dolls with different looks and styles, only vaguely registered. I remember the release of the “curvy” Barbie in 2016, only because it caused such a scandal (even with her new bodies, Barbie still didn’t have enough appeal for the 2010s.) Thankfully, the 2012 release of the “Barbie Dolls of the World” line didn’t even show up on my radar, because the Barbie from Mexico, my country of birth, came with a chihuahua and a passport. If I’d come across that tragically tonedeaf attempt at diversity, it might’ve been enough for me to write her off altogether. I was still waiting for Barbie to offer something new, even if I didn’t know it. I didn’t find it until 2019, after I’d moved away from my hometown and was living on my own. I was shopping in Target and took a detour through the toy aisle. There, I saw her: Barbie 121, the Hispanic Barbie with a silver prosthetic leg. I burst into tears right there. It was a small bandaid on a psychic wound. I remembered all the times I stood in front of the mirror looking back and forth between Barbie and myself. I remembered scrubbing my skin raw hoping that it would reveal a lighter layer underneath. I remembered the feeling of loving Barbie so much and myself not at all. This wonderful, simple plastic toy had moved me to a point where I sobbed in relief in a public bathroom. For the first time, I truly looked like Barbie. I didn’t buy her then. Instead, I left the doll for the next little brown girl to come across. Hopefully, she wouldn’t need the moment of healing I’d just had. Though I didn’t buy Barbie 121, I did recently buy Barbie 147. She has brown skin, brown eyes and brunette hair: my own
thoughts 25 color palette. She even has a little gold necklace with a circle charm, exactly like one I own. I didn’t realize how much love and tenderness I still held for Barbie until she came in the mail and I squealed in delight like I was still eight-years-old. That’s the kind of effect Barbie has had on kids since 1959, and will continue to have for years to come. Smoothing her hair and straightening her clothes, I felt how timeless she truly was. Barbie may be a little late in evolving, but if there’s one thing I know about her, it’s that she’s resilient and not going anywhere.