Tristan & Abigail

his photos & her words

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18 janvier 2016

Since my semester has been torn apart, I find myself again wishing I could make a living with social media. I find it a bit strange that I have and do want to create some kind of account of my life on youtube, or Instagram etc. but I don’t have an inclination to take photos. I don’t know where I would start to make any kind of movie. I know I could learn. So maybe that’s why it keeps nagging me.

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~Merry Christmas~

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this makes me happy

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daisy chains

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BIRD

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weird hand

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cheer

Some holiday signs that have told me I’m almost fully adultified:

1. The days leading up to Christmas seem to fly by rather than gradually build. Gone are the days when you got off school days before Christmas and the last days that were actually spent in school were passed watching Elf and various other Christmas movies. There were Christmas themed school activities and Christmas was everywhere around you almost right from December 1st.

2. I have realized that my Christmas break isn’t really a break and is more of a period where I can do things I’ve been meaning to get around to while I was stuck writing papers and taking tests the last couple months. There’s a pressure to get things done because I won’t have time come January. And it’s a different kind of pressure, but still looming and intimidating.

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winter schminter

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automobile incidents

Whenever I see a book or a movie that starts out with, “when so and so’s best friend/mom/dad/child died in a car crash...” I instantly DO NOT WANT TO READ/SEE IT. That idea for killing a character is so overdone, and frankly, a little meaningless now. My heart no longer wrenches for whoever’s loved one dies in the crash because there’s only so many times where I can feel sorry for an imaginary character over the same damn ‘tragic event’. 

Often the fact that it was a car accident that did it is irrelevant to the rest of the story itself. The story is usually based purely on the person’s death and how it affects the character in some way. I realize that car accidents are fairly common causes of death in real life, but why would anyone want to write fiction to be common?

My plea to fiction novelists and screenwriters everywhere is this: please stop using car accidents as mediums of death in stories.

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lonely hand

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it’s meaningless

Because of the classes I took this semester, ideas surrounding gender, sexuality, masculinity, femininity and hegemony have been floating around in my head. These are all things I guess had passed through my mind before but I let them go as an ‘oh well, what can I do about it?’ These last couple months have made me really sensitive to comments about what’s appropriate for men and women to do or not do or comments about people’s sexual orientation. I find myself struggling to separate myself from a lot of these limiting ideas.

In September, when we had a party for our friend’s business at our house, one woman commented to me that I’m ‘such a good little party host’ and that ‘my mother must be so proud.’ I smiled politely and mumbled something like ‘yeah, she must be.’ Then last week, at our Christmas open house, another woman said that I’m doing such a good job at preparing the food and offering guests appetizers. While both comments from each woman may be true, I really have troubles with the idea that they were happy with my performance because I’m a girl—that they are glad to see I’m performing my household duties so well. In both cases, we were hosting maybe around 20-30 people and my parents could use some help. Since I’m an only child, obviously that leaves me to be the helper. But what I wish I could make people understand is that I help because I want to make everyone at have a good time, not because I feel that my gender means I need to be portraying a adoring hostess role. My mother is not proud of me because I’m showing promise of becoming a good little house wife. My mother is proud of me because I’m welcoming our guests and helping make them feel at home—I’m being an inviting and respectful person.

I don’t like the idea of certain activities being masculine or feminine. Those ideas were created by us anyways. There’s nothing more ‘manly’ about fixing a car other than, culturally, we have decided that it is. There’s nothing more ‘girly’ about cleaning other than we say it is. Something I’ve thought about a few times is gender ideas around cooking. Preparing meals at home is still very much a thing women are expected to do. So why, when cooking becomes professional, do we see men as chefs? Why is it respectable for a man to be a chef but not normal if he cooks meals at home for his family. It makes it seem like that when cooking becomes something very formal and professional then a man obviously needs to handle that. I know there are lots of female chefs too but I think you get my point.

It’s exhausting when I hear people use language to support gender roles. I know that people feel that they exist because they’re ‘right’ or ‘natural.’ But there’s nothing natural about it. They have been invented. The problem is they are so prominent in every aspect of life that gendered behaviours are learned from a young age—even though we don’t know it. As we know from things like religion, nothing is harder than trying to tell someone that what they believe is ‘right’ is only that way because they think it is. If you ask someone why their religion is ‘right’ or why certain things are more masculine or feminine, they will say something that boils down to what your mom says when she tells you to clean your room—‘because I said so.’

Another one that gets to me is the idea that women have this motherly instinct and a father could not possibly care for his newborn infant as well as the mother. The only reason we assign females to child care is because they’re the ones who have to carry the child. Fathers can do the job just as well—but most never try. Culturally we decided that females were better at bringing up children. Is a child going to suffer because their father stayed at home with them instead of their mother when they were a year old? I don’t think so. People have great relationships with their fathers even when they go to work all day and see their kids on the evenings and weekends. I don’t see reasoning behind why the same could not be true for women.

When I hear girls saying that they can’t wait to be moms and stay with their kids at home, or I hear guys saying they want to be the man of the household and support their wife, I pray it’s because they genuinely want to. I pray that they don’t want these things because cultural ideals tell them they should.

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don’t think i’ll ever get tired of her (on the left)

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self love

What is it about people that we want to tear others down when they accomplish something for themselves? Why do we put forward this belief that everyone is beautiful in their own way and then criticize the Hollywood actress who gained ten pounds after she had a child? Where in ourselves are we programmed to bring ourselves up by putting others down?

There must be some sort of biological reason for why we put others down to make ourselves happy (if someone has already identified the exact science behind it I am unaware). Otherwise, doesn’t it seem like a counter productive behaviour?

One could blame capitalism and consumerism I suppose. If it were not for the pressures to look better than others or have nicer things then maybe we wouldn’t be as unkind. It seems that consumerism breeds this kind of competition. But not just between yourself and everyone around you—it also develops competition within yourself. The entire beauty and fashion industry is fuelled on the continued hatred of people toward themselves. We are constantly trying to be ‘better.’ We want to get ‘better’ skin, ‘better’ hair, a ‘better’ body, or a ‘better’ wardrobe. What does that even mean, ‘better?’ Aren’t we, as individuals, the one who decides when we have reached ‘better?’ Isn’t ‘better’ relative? A magazine or tv show cannot judge whether you have bettered yourself. Only you can.

Maybe feeling of jealousy or dissatisfaction with ourselves when we see others succeed is a natural instinct adapted to the world today. If we think someone is doing ‘better’ than us, we perceive it as a threat. Only now, 9 out of 10 times someone else’s success isn’t really a threat. Your friend from college losing a bunch of weight or your friends success in their career does not restrict our own capabilities. Most of the time, we feel bad about ourselves because it seems that, compared to everyone around us, we are not as successful. I think the big secret here—that really shouldn’t be a secret—is that other people’s success does not equal your failure.

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simple days with the girls

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fear

Many times I wonder what impact I can have on the world and worry that I won’t get the chance to make it, because what good is your life if you don’t use it?

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moomoo

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compression

Like anything in life, the feeling of certain things is very hard to express to those who have never felt them. The feeling of the last weeks of a university semester are very easy to describe, but hard to express the feeling of to others. These last weeks and the weeks to come are filled with multiple tests, assignments, and papers due in the same week or on the same day. It’s filled with deadlines for a few days later that you don’t even begin to work on until you’re done the assignment that was due today. No matter how well you budget your time or try to stay ahead, the pressure of all the work due at the end of the semester is, to put it plainly, absolutely crushing. This is the point in the semester when you have surpassed mental fatigue, and are now physically drained as a result of your studies, as a result of the pressures of what you’re actually trying to accomplish in school. University becomes all encompassing, draining, and makes even your desire to do other things fade. The last exam you write is the only thing that truly sets you free.