COLLECTIVE COLLECTIVE X X FASH ION WITH PE RSPECTIVE.
FALL 2020
NO. 7: I DEALISM // REALITY
ACKNOWLEDGE DGEM ME ENTS NTS ACKNOWLE The Collective X team would like to express our immense gratitude to all of those who contributed to this issue of the magazine. To the writers - you are the backbone of our mission, shedding light on the narratives too often neglected, the stories too often unheard, the perspectives too often dismissed. We need more voices like yours, and it is your great minds that fuel our magazine. To the artists and models - you give form to our words, energizing the pages and crystallizing the content into art. You make the magazine what it is, constantly raising the bar for us all and doing it flawlessly. And to any and everyone else who helped bring this issue to life - thank you. This year has been so incredibly difficult, and the fact that you contributed to making something with us amidst the stifling energy around us, means you have something to be proud of. Finally, to the reader - you are what keeps us going. You are doing more than you know simply by hearing your peers and engaging meaningfully in our community, even amidst a pandemic. We love all of you. Thanks for sticking by us no matter what. Zak Hanoyan Co-President
Letter from the Editor Thank you for reading this issue. Amidst this pandemic you have chosen to spend your time reading this magazine, and we could not be more grateful. Maybe you’re procrastinating a final essay, coping with loneliness during COVID, or taking care of relatives and in search of a break. Whatever the case may be, we appreciate the dedication you give to our art, while we try and give back to you. We constantly blur the lines between what is real and what is perceived. Does our reality shape our perspectives or do our perspectives shape our reality? We hope in this issue you are able to face some harsh realities and also some wild and whimsical ideals. In times like these it is important to remain grounded, but it is equally important to give into yourself and let your mind wander. Reality shapes our understanding and our emotions and idealism allows us to expand those horizons and process our reality, they live in a harmonious balance within us. Throughout this issue you will see the gradient between our ideals and our reality; just as you see them within yourself. LeiLani Lattimore Co-President
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CONTE NTS 02. Letter to the Editor 04. Facing my Sketchbook 08. 60,000 Sharpening 08. How the Soul Dreams 13. Maps and Imagination 16. Dreaming 20. Gender as a Performance 27. Unwanted Match 6, 17, 20, 23 Fashion Features
CONTRI BUTORS AUTHORS & e ditors Ke lle n Cooks Zah ra Masi h Grace Tran Le i Lan i Latti more Jack Fasse Victoria Clarke Ke lly Lu Luciana Viscarra Photos Kari na Guo Mare n Ogg Allison Arteaga Ruby M ead
EXECUTIVE BOARD Ke lle n Cooks Le i lan i Latti more Zak Hanoyan Tayyaba Ali Ke m ba Coope r Kari na Guo Marissa Cam piz Ke lly Lu Grace Tran Zah ra Masi h le io koga
graph ics KE M BA COOPE R TAYYABA ALI MARISSA CAM PIZ
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Facing My Sketch
I
carried my sketchbook everyday to class. It was a leatherbound book with large, flamboyant multi-purpose pages, waiting to be drawn upon. It wasa required for each of my art classes. Day in and day out my sketchbook would sit among other sketchbooks. Though the respective owners were all disciplined in different media, their books were always a sight to see. Even the slightest flicker of the pages hinted everything from beautiful paintings to effortless pencil drawings. The doodles were designed by masters, their ideas scribbled into reality with emotions coded in colorful strokes. With every look and each critique, I began questioning my own work. My sketchbook didn’t have flawless one-lined portraits or detailed landscapes. It was half-baked ideas and pictures that I would erase and redraw continuously, in hopes that the wandering eye would see it in awe. Each minute spent with my sketchbook became a tedious drawing and erasing routine, where I edited simple sketches in the fear that they were not “perfect” enough. As time went on, I began to resent my sketchbook,
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thinking it only as a glaring reminder that my work is not good enough for the others to see nor discuss.
fection of my peers, but only now did I sense an original style that formed with each page.
After graduating high school, my sketchbook would collect dust at the top of my bookshelf as I started anew in college. My sketchbook did not accompany me as my academic interests shifted, nor did it experience the aesthetical growth and progress of my art. With no further obligations to art classes, I managed to avoid the ideal sketchbook almost in its entirety and whatever artistic thoughts lingered in my mind were drowned in the overflowing pool of schoolwork.
With no neighboring sketchbooks around and no artistic expectation labeled to my work, I began drawing with a powerful sense of freedom. I did not care for the perfection of my work, but only the sense of fulfillment it brought me. I had come to realize that my ideals of artistry rarely aligned to the reality my sketchbook faced. I always wanted my sketchbook to be a safe space for my art to flow while simultaneously resonating with my thoughts, yet I never gave myself the space or
Yet, things changed when the pandemic started. With the chaos ensuing in the world around me, I felt somewhat lost in navigating quarantine. I found myself shifting through the pages once again, taking an unfamiliar pride in the work that barely saw the light of day. I no longer looked at the edges of my drawings as failures, but more so as a feature that differentiated my work from others. Perhaps before, my sketches attempted to mimic the work and per-
hb o ok the acceptance to treat my sketchbook as such. I guess, in a weird way, the pandemic taught me how to prop-
erly relax amidst the chaotic nature of it all. Had it not been for the forceful grounding of quarantine, I would have never opened my sketchbook, nor considered looking at the pages through
my own eyes. ∎
by Zahra Masih
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MAISIE
Photos: Ruby Mead Interviewed by LeiLani Lattimore
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LL: How would you describe your style? MM: I find it very difficult to define my style, it's inspired in large part by the 80’s. I guess I would describe my style mostly as grandpa core or grandma core. It’s colorful, bold, absurd, and vintage. I love statement pieces, especially sweaters that catch your eye or pieces that people would typically think were ugly. It's a fun challenge to style them. LL: How has your style changed over time? MM: Well when I was very young, I think my style was pretty similar to it is now, very experimental and I was making my own clothes. But then my sewing machine broke and I went to private school so I had a horrible preppy phase in middle school. Then I got really into thrifting in 9th grade and started dressing like Mac Demarco, with muted colored baggy clothes, a real dad look.I then got very into trashion which is creating clothing from actual trash. I did my senior capstone on it in high school, but then I realized that although the pieces served an art purpose I wanted to get back into working with textiles. I started by simply tailoring some of the things that I thrifted and the summer after my senior year I bought a sewing machine again and kinda just taught myself how to use it. Since then I have just been cutting up thrifted pieces and resewing them into new things but I don’t really know what I’m doing entirely yet. This summer I launched a hat company (@mod.slop on Instagram) that made hats from old fleeces that my friend gave to me in quarantine because thrift stores were closed at the time. Now, I like more colorful pieces and tend to dress more feminine, and my style is very carefree and playful. LL: Does identity play a role in your style? MM: Identity is so intertwined with fashion because fashion describes who you are and how you feel to the outside world. I think I have always expressed who I was in that moment through my style so yes. I think that was why it changed so much growing up - I was
F A S H I O N
still finding myself, going through a lot of phases, changing my style based on my influences like music, but I guess I always am changing, so my style will never be defined finitely. I dress for the person I want to be on that day. LL: I love that, dressing for the person you want to be. Going off of that, what inspires you? MM: I am very inspired by trash and discarded materials. I see so much potential in waste because it is an endless resource that can be reused easily and requires creativity to do so. I also love it because it is so sustainable, unlike fast fashion, when I use trash and discarded materials I can give something another chance, a second life. I often have blank canvas syndrome unless I am looking at something discarded because the possibilities are too endless. Also you can never fail when using discarded materials because what’s the worst that could happen? It is incredibly rewarding to give something a second life and make someone happy! I used to love the Project Runway challenges where they had to use unconventional materials and trash to design their clothes, it really inspires my process. LL: Okay, well what is your goal with your designs, what do you want to do in the future? What is the aesthetic?
F E A T U R E
MM: It’s hard to say, but if I had to give a definite goal it would be to make people feel good in their bodies, free, bold, and expressive. LL: That’s beautiful; okay last question. How does your style reflect your reality or your dreams? MM: Well, as I mentioned before I dress for the person I want to be. I dress how I want to feel or how I want to come off so I guess my style always reflects the reality that I want to create that day. LL: I like that, shaping your own reality based on what you desire. Thank you so much for your time!
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mages: 60,000 60,000 sharpe sharpen niing ng IImages: by Allison Allison Arteaga Arteaga by Material: infrared film and pinhole camera photography “Surreal bodies and beings escap ing violence, existing in the airy space between a dream and reality. National amnesia and personal rec ollection drift in and out - this is just one of many moments.�
we beat it out, one step at a time chills riding down the backs of our spines. the revolution came to us and we embraced it like no other. it spoke to us in dreams and everywhere we went, it dripped off of us, seeping into the cracks of the streets where they told us not to run. it feeds us and gives life to our perpetual torch that blazes into the night when all they want us to do is sleep.
How How How th th the e e Soul Soul Soul Dreams Dreams Dreams JOI JOI JOI NT NT NTPOE POE POE M M Mby by byGrace Grace GraceTrhan TRAn tran & & & Ke Ke Kelly lly llyLu Lu Lu
we are roaring flames; we are immortal energy. we listen for the sounds in between the music and we fill our souls up with impassioned song. there is fire in the air and it electrifies.
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Grace Tran
I have a vision Of an endless, still, shallow ocean of soft, gentle water Against a hazy purple and pink sky, clouds floating in and out of view sparingly The sun is out of sight but its crepuscular rays fill the scene as if I were in a prism The water is such a perfect reflection that it looks like the dawn’s elixir, liquid sky Two heavens: the one above me and the one in which my feet wade I am there, ankle-deep, my hair against my bare back and my skin saturated by the misty air I feel weightless, cleansed, free of worry, hatred, disgust As I lower by body into the water it dances around me in ripples and chimes in a chorus of droplets I am one with my surroundings In that space I have no purpose but to lay there and exist There is no rush to take everything in, I am free to feel the sensations at my own pace The emotions come and go naturally, like the push and pull of a tide. This serene place exists only in my mind Sometimes the world around me comes close to it— A watercolor sunset on a powdered-sand beach The sprawling view from the top of a mountain An inside laugh shared with my closest friends A blue sky above me on a cloudless summer day A light breeze blowing through my hair driving down an empty highway— But never will I find myself in that eternal place Only in my dreams. Kelly Lu
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NATHAN POWELL How would you describe your style?
Interviewed by Kellen Cooks
NP: I’ve always been deep into fashion, but in mainstream fashion culture, I saw that comfort was normally neglected, so I always try to put comfort first. I’ll go outside wearing the loosest robe or housecoat, and I’ll feel comfortable doing that. I definitely trend towards soft and loose clothes, soft colors, soft fabrics, but I always keep a little edge with some form-fitting stuff to maintain my form. Did this sense of comfort and fashion thing since day one? NP: When I first came to dashiki on Amazon, and I’d just was so out of place and life, and I knew to be a ray of for myself. then, how I myself is normally opposite of how I’m feeling, so when happy, I’ll be in all with COVID, I tend of bright pastel colors, because everything around us is don’t need to feed into that message of some bright pink shirt today.
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arise once you got to Cornell, or has it been a Cornell, I actually bought a wear it everywhere, because I had no idea where I was at in that I needed sunshine Since present the actually I’m really black. Now to wear a lot right now gloomy and I us all being in this state of misery, when I can wear
In both aspects of comfort and emotions, I’m wondering how you’ve adjusted your style to 2020, during a time where the public sphere is largely digital? NP: I’m not going to be wearing uncomfortable when I’m doing change outfits between classes. normally start the conversation, so I’m There are others where the camera is off of my way to dress up for that. Also, I’ve heritage, so I have this mask that says “What’s up!” in Haitian Creole, which has become usually try to challenge assumptions of how Black to dress, and attempt to mesh all of them to show how we can all these spectrums.
things that actively make me nothing at home but I tend to On Zoom, in some classes, I going to look nice for those classes. all the time, so I’m not going to go out been getting more into my Haitian “Sak pase!”, which means part of my new identity. I people and gay people are supposed coexist no matter where we lie on
Could you go deeper into how you subvert stereotypes for your multiple identities through your style? NP: My wardrobe tends to be very masculine in tones, but I counterbalance that by scoping out body. I have a lot of really long clothes, like my two the time, and those come down to my knees. plaid ever, but they’d be dresses if they didn’t front. Another thing I do is think about how feminine energy often involves seeking admiration, while masculine energy often involves seeking that admiration, so I blend the two by trying to attract attention with something shiny or just out of the box. Outside of that, I also think about intersectionality, because I think that there is a lot of gatekeeping within Black masculine culture, and I try to insert myself in a way where I’m comfortable with being different. Honestly, not much of my clothing is coded within culture beyond my Haitian clothing, but instead I’m trying to challenge how Black culture has internalized these gender paradigms to such extreme extents, as a lot of us see ourselves as already too vulnerable and discriminated against to become more different.
textile with a lot of plaid and cool my own feminine form within my long plaid shirts that I wear all They’re the most masculine have the buttons to the
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SAKPASESAKPASE SAKPASESAKPASE SAKPASESAKPASE SAKPASESAKPASE SAKPASESAKPASE How does your style reflect your reality or your dreams? NP: I have this dynamic where I’ll be wearing certain clothes that make me feel better, and eventually I’ll stop faking that emotion and literally feel better. Connecting that with dreaming, my style allows me to live in a fantasy where I pull myself out of those dark places. I think it’s prevalent with our generation to hear a compliment and not internalize it because we’re so insecure, and I feel that too, but it’s the compliments and my fashion that allow me to personally start internalizing that admiration and love. This is so interconnected to my identity that I can’t see another way of presenting me, as it has deeply become a part of this gradient between my realities, dreams, and the middle ground.
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By learning to internalize that love, I’ve become the manager of multiple Cornell Dining units and I’m graduating a year early, but when I first got here, I didn’t believe that any of that stuff was possible. It was through fashion, and my job, that this happened. Actually, let’s have a little break to talk about capitalism, because having the funds to buy the clothes that made it possible for me to do this WAS A NECESSITY, as there are people that aren’t allowed to have this experience due to the way that our system works. Cornell Dining allowed me to invest in fashion, and I’m definitely seeing the benefits from it now.
S A K P A S E
I
Creating Space
t all started when I was two or three, and my family spent weekend after weekend driving around the Tri-State Area looking at open houses. As my dad relied on old Hagstrom map books to find his way from house to house, he taught me the basics of interpreting these intersecting lines and miscellaneous colors. It did not take long for me to slowly register the map within my mind and match it with my surroundings, to the point that I would start crying when my dad made a wrong turn. Once we finally settled in Ossining, NY when I was around four, I began to visualize cartographies not within reality, but within my spatial imaginary, and I expressed this through drawing these small, rough-shod, make-believe maps in the corners of loose-leaf paper. My parents noticed that this was something unique that I loved to do, so we took the Metro-North down to Pearl Paint in Chinatown (R.I.P!) and bought an 11x17 black marble artist’s notebook, the first of many “map books” that I’d decorate throughout my childhood. The spine of every book was torn to shreds as I always had the book splayed open on the floor and pressed my elbows down on my map to keep the pages from shifting. Every line had to be drawn with a Uniball Onyx Extra Fine pen, NOTHING ELSE. Every map was guaranteed to have a coastline on the Eastern side of the city (never the West), a meandering river fostering a dense downtown, and were always, ALWAYS, unfinished. Some were left unfinished after the first waterway was drawn, as there was just something off about that one riverbank. Some were unfinished as the unknowing family member spilled a drip of their drink, ushering a tidal wave that crashed through the harbors of my imaginary metropolis of ink. Some were unfinished even when they were 95% done, because it got boring drawing the suburbs, repeating the same street patterns over and over and over again. The maps evolved over time. I started as a meticulous land use planner, giving names to every street, business, mall, and parkway, no matter how cluttered and illegible the map became. Later, I learned how to make my lines crisper, my intersections clearer, my city names cringier. I kept churning through these Pearl Paint books until high school, when sports, schoolwork, and extracurriculars slowly invaded my free time, and I didn’t lay down on the carpet and whip out a Uniball for another four years. That was until my first semester at Cornell, when I was forced to buy a 14x17 sketchbook for an environmental psychology class, and one night I decided to dig back into the recesses of my mind, and make a new map to see just how much my cartographical imaginary has developed over time.
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underdeveloped
nature sanctuary
empty beautiful
untapped
preserved
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When it came to the process of making this map this year, I really had no plan. It becomes this ethereal trance, dreaming infrastructures and methodically, intuitively translating these dreams into something tangible. This time around, I needed to escape, and tap into an inner consciousness where time dissolves, problems crumble, and new worlds unfold. Within this map specifically, a twin cities metropolitan area is illustrated with dramatic topographies and a small mountain range running in between the two cities. Also, “AG” means agricultural land. That is the most I’ll elaborate on the reality of the map, because one of the main aims of the map is to lack explicit definition and allow as much room for interpretation as possible. Oftentimes within our modern digital cartographies of Google Maps, the viewer is swamped with potential destinations to feed our consumerist tendencies, and these digital maps often don’t encourage the same nature of self-provisioned wayfinding that print maps used to provide. It almost seems as if there is an averseness to visual emptiness, as if every square inch of the map must be covered with a restaurant name or land use. Still, I feel that this averseness to visual emptiness on the map leads to humans developing a disrespect for the natural environments that are often labeled as “empty”, “underdeveloped”, or “untapped”. These maps can lead to the reproduction of a colonialist spatial imaginary regarding how designers and planners develop their personal views on sprawl, nature, and emptiness. With a looming American future (and current) of climate catastrophe, mass disease, exacerbated economic inequality, and housing unaffordability, we have all borne witness to the dangers within Western gospels of growth and progress. The dreams of our American leaders, our founding fathers, our empire-builders, required ownership for freedom. Required dominion for happiness. Required displacement for innovation. That’s not natural. It’s definitely not sustainable. There is a radical potential in delinking our dreams of the future from the ruthless self-interest of the past and present. Within my map, I attempt to highlight emptiness as necessary and beautiful, and highlight land use as not an integral part of the territorialization of the Earth, but more so an addition that we added to our spatial understandings to instill order to the landscape, and boil down the mystery of Mother Earth into something that is more regimented, understandable, and profitable for us humans.
“2020 just ain’t it. At all. We’re in a global pandemic, on the precipice of a dystopian fascist state, in the middle of an economic recession, during a period of emboldened white supremacy. We all know how it’s been. Yet, during times like these, it’s vital to be able to unlock what can be.” 2020 just ain’t it. At all. Yet, during times like these, it’s vital to unlock what can be. There is no precedent for the change we need. Science alone may assist in our process of synthesizing our challenges, but cannot grasp the complexities of our poetic experiences, and can easily fall on deaf ears. History alone may illustrate the pathways and power structures that built our present, but can quickly become accelerant for our growing collective pessimism and nihilism. We need to combine it all, see everything as inspiration, think within the grayspaces,
and imagine beyond our borders to imagine, and thus manifest, a future that is anywhere near one worth living. For me, it’s all about my maps. They allow me to tap into a well of power informed by my experiences, but unspoiled by external societal pressures. They are my vessel to decolonize my dreams, and create anchors in the future that make the present something worth enduring and enjoying. I stumbled into my vessel as a toddler, but I believe we’ve all got a practice, a breach in the void that allows us to blur space and time. I just hope we all will have a chance to find it.
K ELLEN COOKS
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The Lucid Passage
Artwork by Maren Ogg
to Earth
by Luciana Viscarra
I roam through an unrecognizable land, nothing around me bears resemblance to what I’m used to, yet I have no sense of fear or alarm. To my left and to my right, everything around me appears dim and colorless; but when I look up, I find myself instantly in awe, staring at millions of tiny flickering lights. Feeling weightless, I ultimately realize that I stand beyond the comforting caress of certainty. There is a ground below me, but I can’t seem to decipher its composure, its rules, its sustainability. I see Earth, small, glowing in the distance, a sphere constituting all that I know. As I adjust to this perplexing and novel environment, beings appear all around me, doing things I’ve never seen humans do — yet I am not afraid. Some seamlessly take off into the stars, while others disappear as they walk right in front of me. I ask myself, “Where am I? What am I doing here? What’s my purpose? Am I capable of these extraordinary abilities?” A small iris pops out of the ground, as if on my command, and it answers my question in a melodic voice. The flower tells me I have a shield, able to expand as big as I let it, able to wander through the depth of time, able to repel even the most destructive force imaginable. Faintly I hear a saxophone playing my favorite song… the song crescendos by the second untilfinally I begin to open my eyes, and I am on Earth once again. Laying in bed eager to shut off my alarm. 16| COLLECTIVE X
Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top. -Virginia Woolf
SHARON FERGUSON
Interviewed by LeiLani Lattimore How would you describe your aesthetic? SF: To me, an aesthetic is how you choose to express your own understanding of yourself. What are the things which make you happy, and how can you share that with others, regardless of whether you know them or not? Some days, what makes me feel the most comfortable and most importantly, confident, is dressing in the soft pastels of soft girl or Y2K fashion; but most days, it’s dressing in black from head to toe in E-girl fashion, and using textures, graphics, silhouettes, and a lot of chains to diversify and complete a look. Each of these styles leaves a unique impression, and shapes how I choose to interact with the world that day. If I wear something experimental for my own style, will that allow me to be bolder in my interactions with others, or should I wear something more within my comfort zone for my own peace of mind? It’s important to ask yourself these questions, because how you dress can have a huge impact on your mood, and consequently, the world around you.
How has your aesthetic changed over time? Does identity (race, gender, sexuality, etc) play a role in that? SF: Embracing my sexuality and understanding of the fluidity of gender has had a huge impact on how my style has changed since I began to explore it. As a teenager, I struggled a lot with finding my identity and learning how to express that in how I dressed and behaved. I believed that because I identified as lesbian, the only fashion avaible to me was either butch or femme. By defining myself by my sexuality to such a great extent, I didn’t realize that I was actually holding myself back. Gender is fluid, sexuality is fluid, and the way that someone dresses or acts does not define their sexuality and vice versa. So as I am on a journey of relearning of who I am and how I view my own sexual identity, I have to also teach myself how to pull apart the connection between my sense of fashion and my own validity as a member of the LGBTQ+ community. 17 | collective x
How has your aesthetic changed over time? Does identity (race, gender, sexuality, etc) play a role in that? SF: Embracing my sexuality and understanding of the fluidity of gender has had a huge impact on how my style has changed since I began to explore it. As a teenager, I struggled a lot with finding my identity and learning how to express that in how I dressed and behaved. I believed that because I identified as lesbian, the only fashion avaible to me was either butch or femme. By defining myself by my sexuality to such a great extent, I didn’t realize that I was actually holding myself back. Gender is fluid, sexuality is fluid, and the way that someone dresses or acts does not define their sexuality and vice versa. So as I am on a journey of relearning of who I am and how I view my own sexual identity, I have to also teach myself how to pull apart the connection between my sense of fashion and my own validity as a member of the LGBTQ+ community.
What inspires you? Why did you choose this style? SF: I’m most inspired by my friends! Aw that’s me!
SF: Yes! I love seeing their personalities in how they dress. I like taking elements of what my friends wear and incorporate them into my own wardrobe. Not only does it help cultivate my own style, but it also helps me feel closer to them. By taking little style choices from my friends, regardless of gender or sexuality, it helps me further separate gender expression from my choice in clothing. I feel free to express my femininity or masculinity in how I choose to dress on any certain occasion, again allowing me to feel most comfortable according to how I feel that day. 18 | collective x
How do you think your aesthetic helps you? SF: When I get the opportunity to dress up, I feel at my most powerful -because I am planning to look amazing, it puts me in the mindset to feel amazing, too. After all, it’s hard to feel bad about yourself when you look your best. Getting to dress in E-Girl fashion allows me to express more of myself, to tell a story of who I am through my clothing. My aesthetic helps me feel beautiful, as it should for anyone.
Interesting, how do you think it hurts you? SF: The hard thing about looking for o utfit inspirations is constantly comparing myself to those models. Instagram is a favorite of mine for keeping up to date with the latest style trends, but seeing the skinny, white ideal of E-Girl fashion definitely has an impact on how I view myself. However, what changed my outlook on that was finding models who looked more like me. I feel more included when I see womxn of color breaking barriers and proving that I don’t have to be pale and have straight hair in order to look like a “real” E-Girl.
How does your style reflect your reality or your dreams? SF: I think because I’m actually very sensitive, having such an edge in my style reflects that I want to have more of an edge to me. It’s a reminder that it’s okay to be vulnerable, and dressing in all black reflects that emotional state -but I should also be strong and tough like my favorite barbed wire necklace. Every day, I’m learning lessons about what it means to be human, and how to share my own uniqueness with the 7 billion people that are also going through their own experiences; and I’ve found that fashion might just be the best way to accomplish that. Thank you so much Sharon! I love talking to you and I absolutely loved this conversation! 19 | collective x
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CX: How has your fashion style changed over the years? What inspires you?
“I
Overflow: It’s actually really funny that I’m even doing this interview because I used to get roasted by my two sisters about how badly I dressed when I was younger. I was the person wearing plaid on stripes but in the worst consider my body way possible.
to be a canvas. I want people to see a flow of colors when they look at my outfits. My style kind of comes along with revelations that I have within my life, especially regarding queer-ness and transness.“
But now, it’s different. I just have outfits, you know? I don’t want myself in a box where I’ll only do this style or that style. I just look for whatever looks good to me and can hug around my body in a way that I like. I feel like everything influences my style. Right now, I’m into minimalism. I get it from this one game called Mirror’s Edge. It’s a minimalistic world with color accents in the background that brings the whole thing to life. I consider my body to be a canvas. I want people to see a flow of colors when they look at my outfits. My style kind of comes along with revelations that I have within my life, especially regarding queer-ness and trans-ness. It’s about becoming more secure and loving of myself in those spaces and allowing myself to present in a way that cishet people would consider “bad.” But in reality, they just can’t take the sexiness. My style is changing, though. I’m about to do a big
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release called Femme Fatale Ove but I’ll tell you what - I’m about to on the block. It doesn’t matter wh you’re gonna like this.
CX: What do you envision as the e OF: Black women because black w print to everything.
CX: What clothing items do you g and why?
OF: I skateboard so I do like stree
erflow. I can’t say much be the sexiest bitch hat gender you are,
epitome of style? women are the blue-
generally like to wear
etwear for its comfort
and because it’s over-sized. I’ve been kind of doing this renaissance-style now. For the long term, I’m trying to look into tech wear and cyberpunk aesthetics. It’s expensive but I love the idea because it’s all about the future and this present sucks. I also like this brand called Acronym so if they want to give me free shit for repping them, I’m here. CX: Where do you usually buy your clothes? OF: There’s this UK brand that also doubles as a music label called Inspected. It’s a small business and they say they do men’s streetwear, but I think it’s really for any
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sex. We don’t need to classify that anymore. They do minimalism really well and there’s some days where I only have Inspected on. It’s my go-to brand and I have the most amount of clothes from there. That’s from both not wanting to support fast fashion and also because I feel like people are really selling themselves short. When you go out and find these smaller brands, they’re sometimes cheaper on sale and better quality. But that’s not to say that these businesses are always going to be cheaper than fast fashion; sometimes you just gotta wait for the sales.
CX: Do you prefer fashion over function? OF: 100% - I will go out in 30°F in a button-up shirt. I don’t care how cold I am, I’m boutta flex on the whole situation. I only like silent flexes; I like to use my actions instead of words to get my point across. CX: Has your creative expression been affected by the pandemic? If so how? OF: 100%. Post April 3rd I dropped my album, Main Line Revelations [listen at https://project-overflow.bandcamp.com/]. Pretty much every song I’ve dropped after that only dropped cuz of the pandemic. I’ve made some songs that are internalizing and responding to George Floyd’s murder. Recently I dropped a song called Free the People, aka. FTP. I’ve used this song as a way to spread awareness for a bail fund, and the protests that have been happening here in Ithaca. I’m happy that people found it in their hearts to donate and I’m happy I’ve found a way to help [this beautiful, vibrant] community. I’m also releasing an album called Inciting Libido; if you like WAP, I got the music for you. I’ve been exploring more in this hyper sexual genre of music. I find that being able to express yourself with your body is a way to free yourself from what society deems beautiful. ∎ Interviewed by Zahra Masih and Grace Tran
26| COLLECTIVE X
Chocolate queen
Quarantine and smash?
I can’t date you but I’ve always wanted to hook up with a black girl
What are we smashing? Your face? The patriarchy? Any hope I had of finding a decent person on here?
let me put my head between your legs
big booty hoe
my little freak
be my slave n***a
send nudes baby
normally im not into girls like you…
Hola pretty girl
UNWANTED MATCH
Damn what that ass do
the tragedy of app dating for the moderN-day woman of color
you’re really fucking hot
wanna be my exotic freak?
Would bang you…
Good at giving head lol? Good at having actual conversations lol?
27 | collective x
Dating apps have expedited the dating process; conveniently delivering potential partners in one swift hand movement, all on a platform that can feel more like a game than dating. This rapid and dramatic rise of these apps’ popularity has been met with both praise and controversy. At the center of this critique is a debate over whether dating apps benefit or harm, the consistently unprotected, identifying woman of color. For those who have never used a dating app, each one offers different iterations of the same basic premise. The app offers you options: other users in the area who match your described sexual orientation, age filters, and geographic proximity. You, the user, get to sift through these options and let the app know which profiles you like and don’t like. If you like someone, and the person with that profile likes you back, the two of you are matched. What happens next is all up to the users.
I can’t date you but I’ve always wanted to hook up with a black girl Would bang you…
However, maybe too much is up to the user, and as a result these dating apps help empower bias against the marginalized rather than combat it. Mobile dating apps that allow users to filter their searches by race – or rely on algorithms that pair up people of the same race – reinforce racial divisions and biases. Letting users search, sort and filter potential partners by race not only allows people to easily act on discriminatory preferences, preferences it stops them from connecting with partners they may not have realized they’d like. Research has shown that users of these platforms view multiculturalism less favorably, and sexual racism as more acceptable.
sorry i don’t date black girls. i just matched with you as a joke…
send nudes baby
Aggressive, hypersexualized messages and unsolicited, explicit pictures are simply par for the course for many people who use online dating services. Yet these negative experiences are not distributed equally.Instead, they cluster around particular identities (e.g., feminine-identified, racialized, and/or gender non-conforming users), users) and the design of the platforms themselves contributes to this inequality (Noble & Tynes, 2016; Srnicek, 2017). With the anonymity some of the users feel on the dating app, they tend to send dehumanizing content that reinforces the stereotypes associated with different groups of people.
For women of color we can categorized their experiences into four areas: exclusion, rejection, degradation, and erotic objectification. Exposure to these experiences incite feelings of shame, humiliation, and inferiority, negatively impacting the self-esteem and overall psychological health of racial and ethnic minorities. Studies have shown that while being rejected on an individual basis by white men didn’t have a significant impact on well-being, the dating app environment itself — in which whiteness is “the hallmark of desirability” — led to higher rates of depression and negative self-worth. self-worth Race-based rejection from a fellow person of color also elicited a particularly painful response.
wanna be my exotic freak?
Monae, 28, Black, Heterosexual Female:
To start, a big question I get when I match with white guys is, “You like white guys?” And then they will keep going, and ask about my involvement with white guys. They are very preoccupied with my history with Whaite guys. I personally feel like at least with Bumble, the way it works is I match with someone and have to message them first for them to be able to even talk to me. So even if I never dated a White guy, clearly I’m interested so what’s the point of asking so much? And with some dudes, it’s almost like a fetish or an accomplishment to be like “Hey, I banged or dated a black girl.” It’s weird. I don’t run into much blatant racism. But when I do, I always hit up my friends like here’s another boy wonder. It’s like we all know how they are.
Anonymous, 28, African American, Heterosexual Female:
I haven’t been on a dating app in over four years. The only dating app I was on was Tinder and the vibe I got from it was the white guys just wanted to experience having sex with a black girl.
Carolina, 39, Afro Latina, Heterosexual Female: People always dismiss my feelings on this, but no one wants to date a woman of color who is fat. Black men want mixed women or a White woman with a big ass. White men just want White women or Asian girls. Latin men want White girls. Black women are at the bottom of the totem pole and being plus-size puts you at even more of a disadvantage. I’m not on any site at the moment, I’m not interested in talking to anyone right now. It’s much better than being disappointed, being disrespected, or sexually harassed on these sites. People are quick to dismiss someone when they say that color isn’t an issue, yet those people aren’t the ones living it on a daily basis like I am. There’s subtle and not-so-subtle racism. Or there’s sexualization and only being good enough to be a “friend with benefits.” Many of the men lack consistency, common decency, and respect. I have “playfully” been called a big-booty hoe. I have only been texted during weird hours of the night. I’m over it. I just want to be alone and maintain my peace of mind. Francine, 29, Hispanic, Homosexual Female: I can’t remember if someone was ever racist to me through a dating app. At least not in a direct way. But I definitely have experienced it indirectly. MANY times women would stop talking to me as soon as they found out I was Hispanic. I remember I would always tell them I was Guatemalan (Central American) and they would automatically lose interest. That rejection came not only from White woman, but even from other Hispanic/brown-skinned woman, which is so messed up to me. I feel like rejection due to race, social class, and the way one looks is VERY common in the lesbian community. Especially in New York. Lesbians in NYC are always aiming to get the best of the best. They have VERY high expectations. When you use dating or hook-up apps like Tinder or Grindr, one of the first questions people ask is, “What is your background?” And the answer to that question determines the rest of the conversation.
Anonymous, 27, Afro Latino, Transgender Female: I was on an app down in Miami and this older white guy, maybe mid-30s, with a very toned and muscular body, sent me a message. He, of course, wanted to hook up and have sex with me. I told him I don’t do hook-ups, but we could meet for a drink, I also mentioned that I would not send him any nude photos. He then became very aggressive and said, “You’re not that cute anyway, you ugly n****r, you f*****g s**c.” I just laughed and blocked him. People assume that because the LGBTQ community is oppressed, that the White people within it cannot be racist, which is insane. I’ve experienced a lot of racism on dating apps, and the gay community is notorious for it. You’ll see things written in profiles like, “No fats, no fems, no blacks, no asians, etc.” all the time. It comes 29 | collective x from gay, white males.
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