Contrast Volume 12, Issue 1

Vol 12. Issue 1

VASSAR COLLEGE FALL 2018 volume 12 issue 1

IDENTITY EDITION instagram: vassarcontrast

www.contrastmagazine.org

contents 05.

Letter from the Editor

06. #Aesthetic

10.

On Hair

12.

Logomania

18.

Elements of Expression

20.

Two Faced

30.

Nail File

32.

Cloud 9

38.

The Drag Life

42.

EB Board and Contributions

letter from the editor

Part of the liberal arts experience can often feel like an endless whirl of buzzwords, jam-packed with context, history and interpretations but often treated like an intellectual accessory rather than a means to critically think, reflect and create. These past eleven years Contrast has taken meaningful words and worked collaboratively within and outside of the Vassar body to share our collective points of view.

For this semester’s issue, we asked ourselves and our contributors to explore the ways we think about, talk about and represent “identity” beyond its textbook definition. We contemplate the control or lack thereof that comes with representing the intricacies of who we are and how we want others to perceive us online. We self-reflect on the prevalence of logoed clothing and what these symbols ultimately signify.

We get personal about modes of expression and the ways societal norms both hinder and motivate how we choose to reveal different elements of the self. We rethink how we see and imagine attributes given to the human body and the impact of digital technology on how we can manipulate representations of the real.

All in all, we hope to leave you inspired, intrigued and interested in exploring “identity” from a range of questions and perspectives. We hope to leave you with the kind of curiosity that might lead to a creative response, much like what we have hoped to have done with this issue.

Dana Chang

-05-

#AESTHETIC A reflection on online identity and the freedom and fears of self-curation.

Elizabeth Johnson

You guys are curating yourselves. That’s crazy. Those are words I never thought I would put together. My Women’s Studies professor stood before our class one Monday morning and completely grilled us. I’m not sure how the discussion in my Global Feminism course went from Thai women working in sweatshop factories to Instagram and self-made fame, but we found ourselves both defending our generation to her and simultaneously agreeing with her frustration, accepting that in our current digital culture we allow ourselves to continuously invent and reinvent our online identity .

Once, I was a 7th grade girl with the Instagram name @blairwaldorf13, a homage to my adolescent mean girl idol.

I posted pictures of my daily headband, my dog, selfies with friends and I trying on clothes at the mall, and endless documentations of every single one of my Starbucks orders. Of course, all of my posts were overly filtered using Instagram’s presets (Sutro and X – Pro II were my personal favorites). I was by no means a photographer/blogger/influencer/or any of the things endless amounts of people make money for on social media nowadays. I was just 13, seeking validation, wanting to feel more important than I actually was.

To have grown through formative years of self-esteem with Instagram, through the app’s own transformations, has left us in a perpetual state of uncertainty when it comes to our digital identities. Who do you present yourself as? Are you still the person you originally were when you first got social media? Per existential thought, one is always changing every day. You can’t ever be one universally recognized “self ”. I would hope I’m not the same person I was in middle school, but there is a consequential difference between the real self and the Instagram self. Both change.

The former is most likely due to life experiences, education, trauma, and the influence of other people. The latter though entails a transformation that is much more concerned with aesthetics.

Aesthetics go beyond the actual content within the individual photographs being posted to Instagram.

While there is the side of Photoshop, Face Tune, false clear complexions, and body altercations via edit, where identity curation really manifests is in the Instagram feed. It’s in the color composition of one’s overall account, the photographic content one selects and the captions (or lack thereof ) strategically crafted to aid in one's visual identity. You become a curator for your own personal gallery, writing curator’s notes (captions) meant to be just engaging enough for people to care.

This obsession with aesthetics has driven people towards an intense need for individuality. It feels natural to strive for originality but what happens when everyone’s looks are so heavily influenced by each other that even in seeking a unique curated self-presentation, you end up with just a mass of subtly varied content creators. Put enough effort in and almost anyone can make themselves seem more relevant than they actually are.

The inherent ambiguity tied to digital identity means that practically anyone can create an online presence and aesthetic even if anonymous, and even, as is the case for @lilmiquela, if the digitally represented user isn’t even embodied. The Instagram account @lilmiquela showcases the life of a computer-generated model, a 19-year-old robot.

Despite this, her fashion is up to par with the best models of the modern day, she supports social issues like Black Lives Matter and often posts pictures with celebrities and other Instagram models. There’s a question of whether or not Miquela’s existence is commenting on something, how easy it is to completely fabricate a successful life via social media, or if she’s just a fun and fascinating graphic design project. She’s not real yet she represents so much of modern reality – the Instagram lens we live and create our lives through.

The reality of identity is in question when one has the ability to self-curate like this. Can we be genuine if we spend so much effort curating our photos to strategically represent ourselves to seem a certain way? Does this make people find us more interesting in real life? The complex dualities that come from having to constantly keep up with our online and offline personas keep us in an identity limbo with positive and negative consequences. Instagram can both hurt and help one’s own image of themselves. On the one hand, people are able to explore their identity in freer, more accessible ways but on the other hand, this selective representation of identity is a virtual one that might not always translate into the reality outside of our screens.

-06-

-08-

on hair Austen Juul-Hanson and Yume Murphy

We all have spent time taming our hair; manipulating, dictating, and snipping to our likes. But what drives us to such lengths that we feel impulsed to burn and chemically dye at times? Like the heads of the many-headed Hydra of Lerna, the manifestations of white hegemony such as racism, queerphobia, heteronormativity or classism attack us, assimilating our own conceptions of feeling whole and beautiful into the same homogenized ideals of beauty and normativity that is neither applicable nor accessible to all of us. This hydra establishes hierarchies of good and bad: smooth hair is good, frizzy hair is bad, women with long hair are good and the list goes on.

Thus, our hair carries loaded meaning. Hair has been an integral part of how we perceive and present ourselves to the greater world. Its presence or lack thereof racializes, classifies, and genders its wearer intrinsically. How it performs for us sorts us into categories of identification. Hair is cultural, economic, political; a money making business. Below are some responses, reactions and speculations when people were asked, Does hair liberate or constrain you?

Graphics by Elena Schultz

-10-

“Since I just shaved my head I feel super free and I feel like when I had long hair there were certain things I had to fit into, like dressing more feminine and wearing makeup and now with no hair I get to play with all aspects of fashion and I don’t feel like I have to live up to any specific gender parameters even though I still fully identify as female.”

- Lilah “As a black woman, hair can feel extremely constraining at times, I especially during periods of high stress. Growing up, many young black girls are taught that their hair and the process of doing it is a chore rather than a valuable part of your body.

After some time and a whole lot of self-awareness, I was able to grow up and appreciate my hair for what it is.”

- Ari “When I color it is super liberating because it’s rainbow like me. It makes me feel super queer and magical. But when my hair, in general, is a mess and I’m in a bad mood sometimes I wish I didn’t even have hair, because I don’t want to deal with it.”

- Megan

“Honestly, if anything — I use my hair to hide myself. Like, I got bangs to hide my forehead which I didn’t like, and when I’m feeling really insecure i make my hair really big and curly to kind of distract from myself, and when I’m “Constrain - I’ve never used feeling really confident I’ll put it in a ponytail. But my hair as a means of expressing myself, so I feel when I was in my freshlike it’s just another thing I man year I had my hair have to make presentable. really long which covered my back and neck, which If I don’t like how it looks I would help with my body cover it with a hat or bandana, and that’s not a liber- insecurities. But then I cut it all off to above my ating feeling.” shoulders and it scared me - Sophia so much but also kind of forced me to embrace my body more.”

“It can do both, for people - Estelle that grow up their whole life being micro-managed and helicopter-parented “When I first started wearthey often find that they can’t even control their own ing my curls natural at 17 body, being constantly told I felt really liberated and powerful and like I was what to do, how to feel, how you should look sets a diverging from white beauty standards, but lately I’ve constraint on one’s sense felt like even though my of self. Most people see it as just hair but for that per- hair is natural I’ve subconsciously still been trying son, the ability to express to fit into a white/heterthemselves through their onormative standard of body not only helps confidence but also helps them beauty with the way I style it, keeping it long etc. and feel more at peace with I’m not into it!!! So I think their internal selves.”

I might shave it off lol bc - Bryan even though the thought is kind of terrifying I feel that might also be really liberating.”

- Mary -11-

LOGOMANIA With the popularity of branded clothing, logos have become like barcodes— self-identifying the aesthetic and monetary value of what and who we wear.

Photographs byJackson Hardin, Hannah Benton & Austen Juul-Hanson

-12-

-14-

-17-

elements of expression In dialogue with three Vassar student artists on their relationships with the intersections of art and identity.

Meghan Hayfield

It’s impossible to not find expression on Vassar’s campus, whether it’s at the deece, the library, or grabbing coffee at Express. In sparkly eyeshadow or metallic clogs or striped tee shirts, identity is explored visibly on a daily basis. Through everyday conversations, identity is further reinforced, allowing for contemplation and observance of how identity dictates life. With these sentiments in mind, I decided to explore some of the Vassar art scene and talk to student artists about their creative intentions and expressions.

“I never thought about the way that my art and my own personal identity were connected until I came to Vassar,” Dakota Peterson, a senior who created a series of embroidered underwear for Contrast, said. “I never made art because I wanted to express myself in a certain way, and then I came here and realized, obviously identity’s connected, I’m a non-white person and so inherently my work will be political or people will view it that way. I like the idea of owning that.”

-18-

Latoria Bailey, a first-year and new member of Ujima, an all-POC and audition-based group for student artists and musicians, reflected on how her art and identity connect. For her, art is solely about displaying identity for the world, a means of uniting people with similar identities in order to verbalize a sense of pride.

Art is political in a world where identity is political.

“As a person of color, once you become anything, like a singer or a writer or anything, you have to use your platform for people of color. “I want to appeal to people of color and to pride in my identity.”

Bella Deng, a first-year from Shanghai, China, said her Vassar identity has influenced her own fashion designs.

Deng, who has studied at Parsons School of Design, created two pieces for Contrast. In one of her designs, a feminine cloak drapes over leggings, highlighting the “collision of identity,” that she said she’s noticed on campus. In another, Deng used Iceland chunk yarn to reflect on incorporating her attraction to high fashion

into life as a Vassar student. This juxtaposition of identity highlights how the exploration of one’s identity can prove that confidence and confusion often coexist.

“I’m trying to say that we can all rediscover our own identity under the cover of Vassar’s campus,” Deng said.

But while Bella Deng’s designs are in some ways theoretical, Dakota Peterson’s underwear designs are universal. Though underwear is everyday, Peterson’s designs are anything but routine. Colorful and eccentric, they epitomize celebration.

“I’m making a bunch of really weird pieces of underwear, some will have fur on them, a lot of it’s going to be nylon and mesh and earth colors, so sort of different skin tones, and then also pops of color— maybe a neon pop of orange, or green or pink or something. The idea is to do some weird experimental underwear. I will probably embroider some of it with fake hair too. It will be really weird and bizarre looking, but I’m excited about it,” Peterson said.

Widespread but often avoided in conversations, Peterson believes that underwear can be an important talking point when it comes to body identity. “In general, everyone feels weird about their body parts, and people not seeing them with clothes on,” she said. “Because our society favors certain bodies over others, I feel like underwear is a place where it’s very intimate. It’s also a great way that people celebrate their bodies.” Peterson said she decided to explore pubic hair through her designs because while everyone experiences it, no one talks about it.

“It is a secret part of everyone’s identity, and everyone goes through it, but no one talks about it,” she said.

“I like the idea of making stuff that speaks to that.”It’s in the everyday that our identity is most clearly reflective and influential.“I like to observe how people move around, dress themselves for their day-to-day lives, which reflects their personality and how they view themselves,” Deng said. “It becomes part of their identity.”

Similarly, Latoria Bailey said she uses art to explore features of herself and others that celebrate race and invoke pride. “I enjoy doing portraits, specifically of African-American people, and displaying their features, or self-portraits displaying my features,” she said. “It builds confidence in myself.”It’s impossible to create anything without incorporating your background and ideas. Expressing yourself through art both impacts identity and is impacted by identity. And for some student artists, art becomes a second breath.“I have a bit of an identity crisis when I’m not making art,” Peterson said.

Art can be a way of rediscovery, allowing for an exploration of how the everyday aspects of ourselves— our race or our pubic hair or our fashion, can be reimagined. Perhaps the conversations and explorations of identity at Vassar— whether it’s through fashion or art— allows for an embrace and a challenge of identity. Art allows for a conversation that words can’t always provide.

-19-

TWO FACED Photographs by Dana Chang & Jackson Hardin

-21-

-22-

-24-

-26-

-30-

self-portrait on her nails and I told her I would come back one day because the designs were super intricate and cool.

But I always fuck up my nails. I like the primary colors— blue, yellow, red, and I did that the second day I was here and it was my favorite nails I’ve ever had.

NAIL FILES

What do you think your nails portray about your identity?

That I don’t care a lot. Because I think that if every guy was honest, painting your nails is cool, it looks cool, but the restrictions of hypermasculinity, especially for black men, cause a barrier and a stigma around painting your nails. I feel more confident with my nails painted. I’m straight and cisgender, and I’ve definitely done a lot of reflection on my sexuality and identity since coming to Vassar. But how nails play into that is just through the added confidence. I’m comfortable— I’m not going to let the idea of gender tell me what to do.

Q&A ON BLACKNESS, MASCULINITY & PAINTED NAILS WITH JENS ASTRUP ‘22.

Keira Seyd

How were you first introduced to the trend of painting your nails?

I’ve been painting my nails since second semester in senior year of high school. None of the guys at my high school painted their nails. But, one day I was at my friend’s house and she’s painting her nails when I got there. I decided to get one finger painted and then from there I got two fingers painted, etc. It was actually only when I got to Vassar and I saw someone else with all their nails painted that I painted all of them.

What’s your go-to nail look?

I usually stick to lighter colors. I think going all black one day would be really cool but I think lighter colors, like purple, pink, light blue, are better with my skin tone. It just looks prettier. It makes me really happy when I look at them— rather than looking down at dark colors.

Do you paint them yourself?

I actually can’t paint my nails. I’m horrible at it. I have different people paint them around campus. It’s fun picking out colors and it’s actually pretty social for me since I’m sitting down with whoever is painting them for a minute. I’ve only gotten my nails professionally done twice— one of which was in Poughkeepsie. The woman doing my nails had this

You mentioned the added stigma of being a black man and painting your nails— can you expand on that?

Already being a man, there are different expectations that come with toxic masculinity. But, being a black man, it adds a whole other layer. For black men in general, you always have to be tough, you have to be hard. I’m always nervous painting my nails a little bit, especially around my black friends.

When I get my haircut, for example, and I get it cut at a black barbershop, I always hide my nails or I just clean them off beforehand. I went to a men of color conference and I actually wiped my nails off. And it sucks because I always tell myself that part of the reason I paint my nails is to erase that stigma for other black men and redefine black masculinity, but I just get defeated by the norm. I wish I had a friend, a black friend, who painted their nails but even my friends wouldn’t do it. My great uncle thinks its really stupid. When I came home for fall break we were going out for dinner the first day and he says to me ‘wipe those nails off before you go, you have to.’ And I did— but it sucked. My family doesn’t support it— the older men in general because they just stick to their outdated gender traditions.

How do men painting their nails contribute to the notions of masculinity in your opinion?

I think it proves that we have made progress through eliminating and redefining what it means to fulfil this stereotypical image of a man -- it’s more fluid. I sadly don’t think there’s been as much change within the black community.

That’s just the case for a lot of things. But, hopefully, my kids won’t grow up with this idea that painting your nails is reserved for girls— it’s an accessory for all genders.

-31-

cloud 9

Photographs by Hannah Benton & Dana Chang

-32-

-33-

-35-

-36-

the drag life Contrast Editorial Director Sam Greenwald on the present and past of VC drag culture.

Sam Greenwald

An issue about fashion and identity wouldn’t be complete without mentioning drag. And the scene for drag on campus is only heating up, with at least three major queens visiting just last year. Kim Chi, the Drag Race super-star, was hosted by CHOICE for a performance and panel discussion, while the Greens invited an old-school camp queen named Hedda Lettuce for a lettuce eating contest and stand-up set.

The third queen, Zenobia, is an up-and-coming performer from Brooklyn that appeared alongside Vassar drag queens from the emerging student organization VC Royalty. As we rocket into this exciting new era of drag, it’s important to stay grounded in the meaning and value of drag for queer people to avoid reducing it to a visual spectacle. These themes and more came up in an interview with Jonathan Perez, class of 2020, who helped found VC Royalty along with their persona “Miss B. Haven”.

Jonathan describes the inspiration for their persona as a fusion of vintage, kink pin-up and Lolita aesthetics while remaining firmly rooted in their Latinx identity. Furth, they

see Miss B. Havin as an extension of their own identity that brings out their best during moments of performance and even afterwards. This becomes possible by bolstering a sense of self-positivity that isn’t always present without drag. For Jonathan, drag is not just a medium for artistic expression but also integral to their Latinx and transgender identities Balancing these two sides of drag, the visual and the political, is central to their mission in bringing drag to campus.

These two facets of drag were apparent from their early exposures to drag. Jonathan first saw drag on TV by watching RuPaul’s Drag Race, then found drag in real life through local drag ball culture. While Drag Race has certainly provided representation for drag queens on an unprecedented scale, Jonathan is weary of the way “drag has been mainstreamed and catered to a white audience.” This often manifests through an emphasis on queens that beautiful and “passable”. The commodification of drag culture has turned drag into a full-on celebrity career for those queens who appease big name studios. And yet, countless others are left behind as their culture is appropriated by straight audiences for profit.

By contrast, the ballroom scene remains in touch with the subversive origin of drag as an underground space for queer people of color to flourish. Most famously depicted in the 1991 documentary Paris is Burning, and more recently dramatized in the TV series POSE, drag balls consist of various categories in which competing “drag houses” of queer found families try to more persuasively embody dominant gender stereotypes. These spaces fostered communities that eventually gave rise to organized activism, as Jonathan notes, “Gay rights started with trans rights, and a lot of the trans women spearheading that movement were affiliated with the ballroom scene.” Think of the Stonewall riots, with Sylvia Rivera and Martha P. Johnson at the forefront, supposedly throwing the first bricks. Jonathan has had a chance to keep this culture alive by interning at an LGBTQ non-profit in Boston that hosts weekly vogueing sessions as a form of community building.

-38-

-39-

-40-

Photographs by Xuewei Zhao

In starting VC Royalty on campus, Jonathan hopes to move our engagement with drag away from a Drag Race model and closer to the ballroom. Instead of just sitting and watching a famous queen perform, Jonathan wants “to invite people to participate in getting into drag and have a more authentic experience with it.” They’ve already had a handful of successful events, from a barn show at the farm to a POC show in the Villard room (where Zenobia was featured). By deconstructing drag as an object for mass consumption and instead using drag as a tool for reconstructing queer communities, Jonathan’s mission falls in line with the legacy of another great Vassar drag queen: Sasha Velour.

As the winner of Drag Race season 9, Sasha has certainly benefited from the mainstream drag-industrial complex. She’s also been part of a trend in which skinny, white, look-queens tend to do well on the show. And yet, during her time on Drag Race, Sasha worked to provide some critical commentary. Her interview footage was frequently used to give historical context about drag’s counter-cultural origins, not to mention her much meme-ed and classically Vassar sound-bite: a deadpan “don’t joke about that.” Above all, her platform for the crown included a vision for a “future of drag” freed from normative beauty standards, which her

conceptual style and bald-headed drag both nod towards.

Given Vassar’s reputation for experimental theater, gender studies, and art history, it’s no surprise that it would graduate a queen like Sasha. During her time at Vassar, she majored in Modern Literature and modeled for Contrast! These days she’s based in Brooklyn (proving the Vassar stereotype true) producing her own drag magazine to provide representation for other boundary-breaking drag queens in print media.

She also hosts a monthly show, Night Gowns, to create a space where the future of drag can start thriving today.

As for the future of drag on campus, Jonathan acknowledges that most members of VC Royalty are currently juniors. With the need to pass on the torch approaching, they hope that enough kindling has been left to keep the tradition alive. Maintaining the vitality of the org is essential to carrying on Vassar’s role in critically engaging with drag as a political project. As Jonathan puts it, we need “to remind people that drag is radical” and that “seeing drag as just entertainment really devalues it.” Continuing to actively engage in the production of drag shows as community spaces is central to this goal.

-41-

executive board Editor-in-Chief

Editorial Director

Head Photographer

Fashion Director

Film Director & Treasurer

Editorial Assistant

Blog Assistant

Fashion Assistant Olivia Guarnieri

Mercedes Hackworth

Jamelia Watson

-42-

Ariana Bowe

Noah Jackson

Charlie Hobbs

Blog Assistant

Kayla Vasquez

Hannah Benton

Jackson Hardin

Blog Director

Kristie-Anna Covaci

Sam Greenwald

Dana Chang Head Photographer

Layout Editor

contributions Two Faced Models: Nicole Gonzรกlez, Danielle Quick-Holmes Photographers: Jackson Hardin, Dana Chang Creative Director: Dana Chang Fashion Editors: Kayla Vasquez, Olivia Guarnieri Fashion Assistants: Keira Seyd, Hannah Schwimmer, Yume Murphy Logomania Models: Satchell Bell, Anna Carpenter Grayson, Julien Peck Photographers: Hannah Benton, Jackson Hardin Photography Assistant: Austen Juul-Hanson Illustrations: Sophia Yoo Creative Director: Dana Chang Fashion Editors: Kayla Vasquez, Olivia Guarnieri Fashion Assistants: Austen Juul-Hansen, Kanako Kawabe, Yume Murphy, Claire Platt, Hannah Schwimmer Cloud 9 Models: Maggie Kennedy, Vanessa Rosensweet Photographers: Hannah Benton, Dana Chang Creative Direction: Dana Chang, Mollie Kather Fashion Editor: Dana Chang Fashion Assistants: Olivia Guarnieri, Claire Platt Layout Assistants: Dana Chang, Gina Pepitone,Tuscac Docher, Curtis Eckley, Meghan Hayfield, Isabelle Paquette, Kelsie Milburn -43-

contrastmagazine.org