thank you for being vulnerable. but yeah, as a cis woman, boyhood always made me wistful in a way that i couldnāt really place. i am a woman and am comfy with that. personally, girlhood and womanhood are an important part of my artistic vision and practice as that experience has its own lessons and experiences that i wouldnāt trade for the world. however, i think the (what seemed to me when i was little) lack of societal pressure from the helicopter of culture for boys was something i was for sure envious of. as i grew up, i realized men and boys have plenty of their own societal pressures to reject or succumb to. i have two younger brothers and the novelty of boyhood sort of wore off for me as i watch them grow up. but thereās still a piece of young me that longs for the potential of earnestness in young male friendships and adventure. i think it would also be cool to walk around at night with headphones on in a lot of places.
Jun 28, 2024
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i really also think about how much boys are taught ways to perform masculinity & how it is legitimised through tangible things like building a career etc but with women i find that from a young age our identity, behaviours, & thoughts are always spoken about in relation to other people/things ā gender roles within the family, how weāre perceived by men, our friendships with other women, our relationships with material things etc etc ā and this shows up in the labels that women are often given too! so and so is someoneās daughter, girlfriend, wife, mother etc etc. i envy the freedom of boyhood so much, the freedom to just be (this is not to discount the toxicity of traditional masculinity, i just think that boys are still afforded more āplayā and therefore have more opportunities to develop their sense of self).
maybe i am also biased because of how iāve grown up & whatnot but i never really understood what it meant to quote unquote be a woman or perform femininity. i only saw this modelled within my nurturing friendships with women as iāve gotten older but when i was younger, in church it was always āok well donāt do this or that because x y z will happen to men if you doā or within my extended family it was often āare you seeing anyone? when are you having kidsā. damn what happened to asking about how iām doing or what my dreams are!!!
long rant sorry !! but thatās my long winded way of saying āi feel youā haha
Jun 28, 2024
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as a trans person it's hard to tell how my experience would have differed if i was a cis boy, but i have no nostalgia for it whatsoever. i guess i did have a good deal of freedom but wasn't really able to do anything with it. i think other kids could tell something was...up with me decades before i could and i certainly didn't think other boys considered me one of them even though we were friends. all my relationships with them were very arm's length.
so i think this kind of stereotypical boyhood experience heavily depends on who you are and who you're around, because plenty of boys, cis or not, don't really get to have it. very grass is greener situation as taterhole mentioned!
Jun 28, 2024
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and I feel lucky about that; it made me who I am today!
But as an adult woman I can definitely relate and I imagine what it would be like to feel that sense of freedom from being perceived as a woman and the societal expectations that come with that. Sylvia Plath said it best in her journals:
āYes, my consuming desire is to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, barroom regularsāto be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recordingāall this is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always supposedly in danger of assault and battery. My consuming interest in men and their lives is often misconstrued as a desire to seduce them, or as an invitation to intimacy. Yes, God, I want to talk to everybody as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night...ā
I do think though that itās fruitless to fixate on these things, imagining the grass to be greener on the other side and essentially wishing you could have grown up and lived as another person, because 1 itās not possible 2 the life you imagine has so many downsides to it too that you canāt even imagine not having experienced itself and 3 if you were a different person then the You you are now wouldnāt exist, and that would be a shame! I also think men are having a tough time now and many of them are probably just as neurotic, inhibited, and fearful as women.
Obviously people are free to reject these notions and live life as whoever they want, and I respect and appreciate those who choose to do this, but Iām not interested in doing that for myself. Instead, I challenge the boundaries of what it means to be a woman in the ways that I can, which feels like the right choice for me!
Jun 28, 2024
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liking ur rec = saying hi when we go to get our morning papers from the end of our driveways (picture me doing so tony soprano style)
Aug 12, 2024
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started writing this a few hours ago when i first saw this ask, then decided against posting but i've since changed my mind. there really is no justification for it outside of entitlement. even from a selfish lens, there's no long term benefit to its usage. it harms the world and culture in more ways than one.
a.) the water and energy usage that isn't a secret at this point. "no ethical consumption under capitalism" yadda yadda and yeah corporations are extremely culpable in the state of the environment but there really is no need for chatgpt and the planet is already too delicate at the moment.
b.) the exploitation of workers in the global south. this program is not just a computer figuring it all out, there are in fact humans behind it. it reminds me of the acceptance of fast fashion and how people have the tendency to divorce the idea of the garment worker from the garment they wear when all clothing is handmade in some way, shape or form. you need hands to man a sewing machine, you need human eyes to moderate content. also, content moderation can be a thankless job with psychological repercussions.
c.) the erosion of social skills, humanity and media literacy...this one is very personal. like, you have a cushy email job but can't write an email? you need a computer and a worker in kenya to get paid a dollar an hour to figure out a daily routine for you? i've seen the program churn out blatantly incorrect information. fine tuning a prompt or chat or whatever to give you the exact (possibly incorrect) answer you need isn't really that much less work than sharpening your research skills by cracking open a dictionary or using boolean search keys in google. again, the main issue with this kind of stuff is the entitlement to convenience, with no thought towards the repercussions within and outside of us. we are losing major recipes (critical thinking and media literacy) here, people!
i probably did an iffy job are coherently articulating my thoughts here but i am in fact, human. and thatās the beauty of it all.
Oct 1, 2024
i donāt work w oils often, mainly tempera, collage, and digital but this is the one i'm still most proud of as of late bc itās way bigger (18x24) than i'm used to working <3
Oct 14, 2024