Blogs

These are the books we said have been important to us, in understanding gender (our own, and the way the world divvies up this category). What patterns can we see, taking our books (and our gender role models?), as a whole?

A very influential and incredible friend gave me the name Polly when I was 12, so I chose it as my username. This person was the first friend I had who allowed me to be myself. Because of her openness and understanding, I changed a lot in the three years I knew her. She astounded me with just how smart she was about life, emotions, and relationships. She was empowering and brutally honest at the same time. Even though she is only a few months older than me, I looked up to her as a role model.

My avatar is a painting that my dad and I created together. I love working with colors and abstract shapes to try and make finish products that I find visually appealing. While making art with my dad, we don't have any rules other than trying to make something we like. Personally, I am trying to change how I think about gender and sexuality from what I learned from society growing up: rigid "boxes." I think that the fluidity of art is similar to the reality of gender and sexuality, and I am keen to learn more.

It can be quite surprising to step back for a moment and think- not once, not twice, but many times- about which visual should represent your internet presence. It seems silly to hesistate over such a simple task, but it is difficult to find one image with those implied "1,000 words" that will be the right words you want people to associate you with. How I precieve my avatar will be different than how anyone else interprets my avatar, so maybe my self-satisfaction is the priority in this decision. I can't be sure. 

I ultimately landed upon a very physically distorted, black and white film photograph of a nude woman standing beside the decrepit walls of a presumably run-down building. Our eyes follow the light coming from an unknown source to her left, which bring her body to full attention. But there is a huge, bulbus burn mark on the photograph that completely obscurs her face, her most identifiable feature. She becomes a pair of legs.

As a photographer, I love returning to this photo and finding comfort and frustration in it. The subject's identity is lost in the photo because of a perfectly placed physical distortion. That's how I feel about choosing an avatar because so many aspects of my life, my identity, and myself as a being become invsisible the moment I actively single out one image to represent me in a way that I hope others will precieve me. This selection process dilberatly manipulates, distorts, and limits how the public views us. 

I'm an absurdist. I'm also a musician and my stage/performance name is The Fenceless. The photo I've chosen illustrates a phrase that inspired me to choose this stage name, which goes along with my personalised definition of absurdism, in which I believe anything is meaningless, so therefore anybody has every right to assign anything any function or meaning they choose. I took this photo while on a trip to Northern Kenya two years ago, and it is of a chicken perched comfortably on a fence made of sticks. It just happens to illustrate a phrase that I heard for the first time this past year during a debate in my literature class. One of the students couldn't pick a side in the debate, and he said he was “sitting right on the fence” about it. That stuck in my mind, and irked me because of its discomforting connotations about limitation in expression and choice-making. It didn't bother me in the context of the present discussion, but in issues in life in general, when people take opinions on “current issues” or make statements about “right” or “wrong.” I haven't fully thought out my philosophy about this to a point where I can eloquently present it, but it goes something along the lines of working towards the removal of the ability to separate opinions or stances, therefore eliminating the issue to which it pertains. I think that separation of parties is what contains and fosters the glaring dynamic for having a conflict in the first place. I don't like homogeneity. I like contrast, mix, and confusion. I don't like fences. I like open spaces which allow liberty and motion.

Hello everyone!

My name is Liane and I came to Bryn Mawr this year from the amazing city of Portland, Oregon. Although I love being here, I had to leave a lot behind to make that possible. My avatar is a photo of me with one of my best friends from home taken at a picnic just before I left. That afternoon was the last time I saw many of my friends and so that moment holds a lot of significance for me. It also reminds me of the way my life was before I came here and all the wonderful people that I left at home. It was hard for me (as I am sure it is for everyone) to leave all of that behind in favor of a new, far away place. With that in mind, it was very difficult for me to make the decision to come across the country and start over on my own, especially when many people I knew stayed together in Oregon. As I continue to piece together this next part of my life here at Bryn Mawr, my family and friends from home will always be in the back of my mind reminding me of not only where I came from, but where I plan to go.

When I was growing up, my favorite hobby was reading. Now that I've "grown up," my favorite hobby is still reading. I suppose in that regard, I haven't changed much. Or at all. I've always believed that while a picture is worth a thousand words, a thousand words is worth a thousand worlds, because that's where those words can take you. To one thousand different places. 

Literature has already done what ever other field of study is trying to do. It has brought us to the past and to the future. It has created new creatures, peoples, vaccines, technology, languages, methods of transportation. Indeed, it has discovered the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. How could anything else hope to compare?

Because I believe so much in the power of words, I chose my avatar only after I had created my username (or pen name, if you will). For those of you who don't know, Frindle is a children's book about a fifth-grade boy who decides to start calling pens "frindles" instead. The other children in his school begin to use the term as well, and soon the nation joins in, to the point that twenty or thirty years later it is an officially recognized word in the dictionary. This showcases how important words are to a community, and how a word means only what the general population believes it means.

Also I enjoy puns, and a pen name in which the name meant "pen" was just too good an opportunity to pass up.

Well hello everyone,

I am one of the many Mawrtyrs named Abby in the class of 2017, and one of at least three in my dorm. That's where my username comes from. It's kind of self-depricating, in a way; like, I'm just another Abby, with nothing special about her, which isn't the case at all. But I personally think it's funny in a dry sort of way, and distinguishes me from other Abbys moreso than calling me "Abby 3" or something along those lines.

The picture of me was taken around Junior year of high school, by my best friend, while we bought supplies for our first big physics project of the year. I typically make faces in photos, since I'm not one of those people with the perfect photogenic smile, and I think it makes me seem more approachable, anyway. Besides, in every horror film it's the woman down the street who never stops smiling who turns out to be the murderer, not the girl who sticks her tongue out as you as you walk by in the beginning of the movie. She's got nothing to hide.

I also don't mind putting my face out on the internet, attached to my work. I feel like even if I wake up twenty years from now and think everything I've written here is juvenile and stupid, I won't regret it and want to deny that I'm the one who wrote those things. Everything I write is going to be a reflection of how I think right now, and that will make my work something of a time capsule for future-me to laugh at, maybe feel a little embarrassed about, and then think of fondly.

Hi Everyone!  My name is Kelly, I wasn't in class with you all on Thursday.  

I guess because I haven't met you all it took me a while to figure out which picture I wanted to use.  Although I relatively enjoy taking pictures, I wasn't sure what picture would adequately represent me.  Then I thought to myself why I want to take this class in the first place... I selected my avatar not because this is was a great book necessarily, but because I struggle with being fully comfortable with feminism.  As a Black-American woman, find myself in a love-hate relationship with feminism.  Of course I believe in not only equality, but also empowerment, for women (AND ALL MARGINALIZED PEOPLES), but I find myself always asking, "What type of woman are we talking about here?  Who is this movement really for?"  Historically in many social movements, Black women have been involved but never able to share their narratives and full unencumbered selves, due to a lack of understanding of their intersectionality as Black women.  Understanding that these two identities constantly impact one another, I struggle to fully align myself as a feminist because I feel that I would have to alienate my blackness in a sense, therefore my specific needs and wants as a black women.  I hope that in this course I am able to evolve in my thoughts from our discussion and course work.  See you all tomorrow!