February 10th, Sunday: Noise, Peace

[content warning: eating disorders, mental illness, self harm]

Written by Zoe Mueller | Edited by Aidan Fry Designed by Maggie Dawkins

Lone piano notes unfurl into the theater, ricocheting its asymmetric geometry into my bloodstream. Human presence is rendered intangible, as if the contours of existence blur in the absence of light. Tangled in religiosity, I feel metaphysically abstract like the splattered colors of Jackson Pollock. You commodify my body as a market aesthetic, a sacred curation exporting diluted visions. I am reduced to a soundless display, insecurities pocketed in the hollow recesses of my ribcage. You objectify pure physicalities - the soft curve of my breasts and purpling bruises that blossomed during late night rehearsals. It is a gritty ritual abandoned backstage: the wreckage of broken toenails, inflamed ligaments, and chronic aches. It is a dimension beyond the plane of reality, existing above the secular distractions of expired milk and unlaundered socks. If only I could transcend Saturday evenings, when I rinse my mouth in alcohol and binge on dark chocolate. It is a grotesque and regressive cyclic addiction. I consume and reject, my reflection a futile distortion in the studio’s funhouse mirror. You tell me to eat, and I would, and I want to, but I prefer bitter emptiness over suffusions of guilt. The calories would saturate my skin, nestled like pressed spring flowers or muffled prayers. I recite dysmorphic fictions like poetry, my psyche caved in under the weight of I will never be enough. The mental abuse is a raw and intimate struggle of self-inflicted violence. You reckon my existence as a museum exhibit, a discarded collection after the artificial constellations fade. Once I felt ethereal: a psychedelic mosaic of flesh and sinew. Now I’m lost in Pollock’s abstraction, the damage unseen and seething. All that remains is the fermented taste of honey that swells beneath your tongue.

The In-Betweens of the Gender Spectrum

By Johnson Lin and Ceci Villaseñor

Edited by Janet Song

Photography by Alex Kim

Designed by Lauren Yung

When I was in first grade, I vividly remember watching my dad cry in court as he was sentenced to deportation. After that I grew up with just my mom and my sister in my household, so I was never raised with the full picture of masculinity. Last semester, I fell into the BTS rabbit hole. It started out with listening to “Boy With Luv” as I worked on a few final projects—and before I knew it, it was 4 AM, I had finished my second BTS documentary of the night, and I had class at 9. I used to say that growing up without a prominent father figure in my life didn’t really affect me at all. I was very young when he was deported so I can’t

recall what life was like when he was home and thus, haven’t felt any tangible absence. But I remember listening to Saba’s “PROM / KING’’ while I was studying abroad in Beijing, where the lyrics were challenging me on my preconceived notions on my identity. The lyrics, “My grandfather taught me how to tie up a tie ‘cause my dad lived in NY / That’s prolly why I was shy, so self-conscious,” had me thinking about my experience because my grandpa had also taught me how to tie a tie. I realized that there were a lot of characteristics that I could attribute to growing up without a dad: my struggle to be assertive, my thoughtfulness, self-esteem issues, the fact that I felt more

comfortable socializing with women, and my repulsion to the male body, including my own. I probably sound a little delusional, yelling from somewhere deep in this bottomless pit while my past, not BTS-obsessed self peers at the edge of the hole in suspicion, but seriously, what’s not to love about them? BTS’s discography spans so many genres, offering something for everyone. Their dances are stunning. Each member has his own charm and humor. And, of course, they are very good-looking. BTS began to bleed into my life. I started and ended my day consuming BTS content. Even when I exercised, I watched dance

practice videos to motivate myself. My favorite way to end a run was with a video of “Go Go” from one of their online concerts. The music sounds upbeat, and although you can tell they’re tired, since it’s near the end of the show, the performance is high-energy. I liked watching them dance through their fatigue and the way their clothes swished as they moved. I first got into fashion my senior year of high school. At the time, streetwear was blowing up and two of my closest friends were really getting into it. I picked things up from them and started to get into it, mainly because I thought it would help me get a girlfriend. Well, I got a girlfriend, but then I ended up falling in love with fashion anyways. I’m big on self expression, but as someone who hates being bad at things, I could never dedicate the time to get good at painting or drawing. Fashion requires no technical skill and instead lets me show everyone who I am. The first thing I ever got into was palewave, an aesthetic dedicated to just wearing pastel colors. Yet the first time my mom ever saw me wear a pastel pink hoodie, she said, “That’s a girl’s color.” I think BTS dresses well, even outside of their performances. Sure, maybe it’s all their stylists’ work, but I’d like to think that somewhere between all of their press appearances and sponsorship advertisements, we can get a glimpse of each member’s actual sense of style. So I tried dressing like them. I’d miraculously find an outfit or two from a performance or rehearsal video that I could replicate, and soon, out of the blue, my friends were receiving pairs of pictures from me: one, a mirror selfie of some outfit of mine, and the other, the BTS costume

that inspired it. I even paid a friend of a friend (plus an exorbitant amount for shipping) to buy me a sweatshirt from Korea— all because V wore it. As work piled up right before my exams, I’d joke that I wanted to be BTS, imagining that my life would be so much better. And honestly, part of me was serious. Wouldn’t my life be easier if I was a hot Korean idol? I wanted to be worrying about when I would go on tour next instead of when my paper was due. I wanted to be performing in front of hundreds of thousands of people, not running red-faced on a treadmill. And I wanted to be wearing the same things they wore and have my clothes fall on my body the same way theirs did on their bodies.

I continued to bewilder my mom with my fashion choices. While my mom has always been a little more progresive than most Asian parents, she also can’t help but express some more conservative views, even to this day. I’ve been wearing cross body bags for the past three years and my mom still tells me to stop wearing purses. She is vehemently against me getting my ears pierced, which is exactly why I bought fake earrings while I was studying abroad in China. Despite agreeing on multiple occasions to let me try to grow my hair out, she takes it back as soon as she thinks my hair has gotten a little too long, telling me, “Go cut your hair, princess.” Often after I go shopping, she’ll comment, “How did you turn out like this?” She can’t seem to shake the feeling that I might be gay.

Once, my cousin came home to visit me and meet my then girlfriend. While I went upstairs with my girlfriend, my mom pulled my cousin aside to ask if she thought I was gay.

It was clear to her that I’m not masculine. It might be because of her conservative ideals. But I also think she fears that this is a product of not having my dad around when I grew up, and feels that it’s partially her fault for not being able to raise me “normally.” I danced ballet somewhat seriously all through high school. Six to seven days a week, I’d be in the studio for either class or rehearsal, so six to seven days a week, I’d stare at my body in the mirror. Mirrors are useful for dancers—if you notice your arm isn’t quite making the right angle, or maybe your leg is in the wrong position, you can fix it yourself. But of course, I also noticed the things about my body that couldn’t be fixed. My butt and my thighs: fine for real life, too fat for ballet. My flat chest: good for ballet, not for the outside world. In fairness, while it’s certainly not my mom’s fault, the household I was raised in has certainly influenced me. I grew up playing dolls with my sister. I grew up shy and self conscious. I had a really hard time learning to assert myself and I honestly still do. I didn’t play any sports. I didn’t even learn to ride a bike until high school. Sometimes I go as far to wonder

if even my voice that I’ve come to hate for being higher-pitched is a result of growing up without a dad. But these are all thoughts

I’ve had in the past year. It used to manifest in a more general self-hatred. Now, I understand these characteristics as mine, bringing me one step closer to accepting them. While I noticed things about my body

that made me feel less woman-like, I still thought of myself as a girl. After all, I was making this observation in a ballet class,

an activity typically associated with girls. I didn’t chafe that much with the expectations of being female. Instead, I simply accepted that even though I didn’t always think I looked like a woman, I was one. But somehow, watching BTS this winter and trying to present myself more like its members made me question how attached I was to womanhood. Did my desire to be “like BTS” include a desire to have a male body? And what exactly did it mean to be attractive like them, a group of men which has evolved from its almost hypermasculine debut and embraced a softer, more feminine image? Despite not conceptualizing this influence, I’ve always been drawn to more feminine styles, starting from my love for pastels and vibrant colors to K-pop trends to high fashion where brands like Saint Laurent and Ann Demeulemeester play with gender roles. My favorite designers now are Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo, both of whom got their start in the fashion industry by dressing women in men’s clothing. While I’ve never thought of myself as genderfluid, I prefer to toe the line more so than being thought of as masculine. Whether or not I truly believed it, my fashion choices for the past four years have been subconsciously telling me that I don’t identify with masculinity. I guess I’ve changed a bit since high school. I’ve learned a little more about gender identity from readings in class and listening to my friends’ stories. I’ve learned about how being both Asian and female can color someone’s experiences in overlapping, inseparable ways. I’ve also gotten into fash-

ion, although it’s somewhat male-skewed as the friends who introduced me to fashion are men. All of this—my knowledge, my interest in fashion, my relationship with my body, BTS—has reshaped my conception of my gender. Before, I saw myself as squarely in a little “female” box with doors open for other people, but not for me. Not that I wanted to leave my box. But now I feel like I’m on a wide open stage, free to leave if I wanted to. In this day and age it’s stressed constantly that gender is a spectrum and it’s okay to be anywhere on that spectrum. Yet, despite attending a school that stresses this and knowing that gender is not binary, it still feels like I have to cross a certain threshold before I can venture into the middle of the gender spectrum. I feel very loosely about my pronouns, but I don’t feel gender-fluid enough to start using “they/them.” I’ve never experienced strong body dysphoria. I’ve never felt misgendered. I’ve only felt a little frustrated. I’ve just assumed that I should’ve tried harder to fit into these boxes. But fashion has helped me start to deconstruct these boundaries. I’ve been peeling them off, layer by layer, stripping myself down to my naked self, free of these prescribed rules. And now, I’m finally ready to start each day putting on the clothes of my own choosing, whatever that may be.