#cathyferreira

[drcknowledgeandpower]

In the fall of 2013, I took a class that would forever change my life: Art & Women, an art history class with -- as the name implies -- a focus on women. For the final project, we were instructed to create something unique and meaningful; something that would span beyond the confines of the classroom.

I decided writing an essay just wouldn’t cut it. I decided to instead direct a video on a peculiar interest of mine -- horror films -- and critique them from a feminist perspective. It’s everything you might expect, but with a biting academic edge. (I had really done my research.)

So the plenary with speaker Debra Zimmerman really struck a chord in me. As someone with a love for film, hearing a woman speak on a medium that is wildly overpopulated by the opposite gender was something that was quite inspiring to me. 

In my videos (attached is the preview; the full video is on my channel) one of the issues I bring up is the way women are portrayed in horror films: there is a touch of violence to the way we are sexualized; a touch that in many ways promotes domestic violence and even rape against women. I believe that, if women were directing these films, a lot of these problems would be eradicated.

Think about it. Why is it that a genre of film with a tradition of having female protagonists have mostly male directors? Sounds kinda fishy to me.

[drcknowledgeandpower]

Race & Ethnicity: Growing Up Latina

Growing up as a first generation American was nothing short of surreal for me. Everything, from jokes to stereotypes to full-blown prejudice, led me to believe that I was too "white" to be Latina. My skin tone, my mannerisms, my way of speaking: to my black and Latin@ friends, I was white. I attended a POC-majority elementary school. My high school was composed primarily of Latin@s (of black or aborigine or mixed descent). In other words, people who were a bit darker than me. People who assumed I was white, because I was, in fact, lighter-skinned. 

And in some sense, they were right: I am white. My parents, not my peers, were the first people to refer to me as such. "Morena clarinha", they called me. A "dark" white person. A brown-haired girl of European descent. Branca.

Branca.

Allow me to clarify something: "branca" (branco) in Brazil is not the same thing as "white" in America. White in Brazil means "of European descent"; white in America, on the other hand, implies a lack of identity; it means you are not black, not Arab, not Asian, and certainly NOT Latin@.

This is not acceptable. Not for me, not for anyone.

As I got older, I began to realize this. And it confused me. Because at the same time my POC friends were telling me I was white, my white friends were telling me I was a POC. 

So who was I? Certainly at the time, I did not fit anyone's stereotype of a Brazilian woman. I was light-skinned, short, and gawky. I was not a Victoria's Secret model. I did not know how to samba or play capoeira or whatever it is Americans think we Brazilians do.

But I was also a bit darker than my white American peers. I did not burn in the sun. I did not listen to Taylor Swift. I did not wear Uggs with leggings. I did not quite relate to these people, not as a white person, not as a white woman.

So who was I? A white Latina, I concluded. If some believe this to be contradictory, here's my question to you: How dare you?

How dare you try to rob me of my identity; of my history and culture? Who the hell are you? WHAT are you? Certainly not qualified to talk about Brazilians as if you knew a damn thing, that's for sure.