Brooklyn Nightlife

When I was in my teens I got introduced to NYC nightlife. When I was about 14, there was a club for underage kids in Staten Island that would play freestyle and hip-hop and have live performances. I meet my friends there every weekend for at least six months. A few years later my friends and I started to go to clubs in Manhattan, but less often. We would mostly go to Limelight and Palladium, but I also remember going to a few other places such as Club USA and Sound Factory. The primary visuals were through different lighting techniques. I remember that the Palladium had a pool full of balls and Club USA had a slide going from the first floor to the second floor. The fact that the Limelight was an old church also added the visuals inside. At this time it was popular for girls to dance in cages on pedestals. At this time in my life going out was more about being with friends and about the music. I liked going to Tuesday Goth night at the Limelight, but I only got to go a few times because my friends weren't really into that. I went to see live concerts as well, but the visuals were provided by the performers and varied accordingly.

After college I got interested in going out at night again and started to go out every weekend. My friends and I went out mostly to small bars that had dance space. We became regulars at two bars in the lower east side, Ludlow Bar and Plant Bar. There were not too many visual aspects and we were going out for the music and the people. Ludlow bar played mostly old hip-hip hop and dancehall reggae. The crowd was racially diverse and down to earth. Plant Bar played more electronic and house music with a little hip-hop and 80's mixed in. This place had more of a white crowd and it was also down to earth. We would also go to bigger clubs, other parties or live venues depending on the DJ.

During these times, my friends and I had plans to see DJ Shadow one night. He was supposed to be playing somewhere in Dumbo, but when we got there a sign said that the show was cancelled. The sign on the door that said if you wanted to go to a party you could go to an apartment around the corner. We figured, "why not?" and ended up spending the night with some artists in their loft space. It was completely gorgeous with various lighting and structures built. They told us that they were throwing a party at the Lunatarium in the near future and we decided to go. It became another spot, but it was more expensive and the crowd was not as friendly. The big draw to these parties was the visuals. The music was good, but did not compare to the visual attraction. There would be tents set up with lights, various life size sculptural art, video art projected, large hammocks hanging from the ceiling to swing on, etc. and it was in a warehouse building in Dumbo that had a few of the bridge and the skyline.

I ended up moving to Japan, but my friend who was always with me during these times continued going out every weekend. She found out about warehouse parties in Bushwick that were called "Danger" parties. When I got back, I went out sometimes and enjoyed these Danger parties. We also recognized one of the guys from Lunatarium and found out about their parties (Winkel and Baltick). The last time I went to a Danger party they had a party on a boat in Bushwick with a 1930's theme. A band in costume playing 1920's music greeted you when you arrived on the boat which had a DJ and video art inside, an old time band up top, a tarot card reader, two people bbquing and party goers of whom a few were dressed up as though it was the 30's. In order to get to this boat you had to go to the address sent via email which was a warehouse in Bushwick that had a woman hanging from the ceiling performing in costume and a man playing an old wooden piano. That's where you pay the 20 dollars to get your ticket to get on the bus that brought you to the boat.

It seems as though these warehouse parties are growing. I now also get emails from a group of at least two women who also throw very visual parties and are a part of an organization that actually gives classes and offers opportunities to get involved. In fact, the New York Times recently published an article on these parties - http://nyti.ms/cbsq2D

The following are some pictures taken on New Year's Eve 2008 at a Winkel and Baltick party.

If I was to analyze the visual aspect of these parties and relate it to social justice/awareness/issues, the first thing I would say is that it does not draw a diverse crowd. A friend of mine who is African-American does not want to go to these parties anymore for this reason. The crowd is predominantly white. It feels like the parties are put on by and for people who move to New York City in hopes to be involved in something artistic and creative. I would also guess that the people involved have had opportunities for high levels of education, but this is hard to see just by looking. I do not think it's a conscious decision to create a somewhat homogenous event.

Graffiti - The Bronx vs. Williamsburg

Sometimes I take train through the South Bronx when I do fieldwork with my job, evaluating arts education programs. As I look outside the subway I notice the graffiti. It adds colors to the neutral landscape of concrete, brick and metal fire escapes. I started documenting some of the graffiti I see, but not only because I like the way it looks. It's also because of the stark contrast between the graffiti in the Bronx and the graffiti in my neighborhood, Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

There are some similarities. Both areas do have murals on the walls. However, the murals in the bronx are usually for a specific institution such as a school (below, left) or store. I found one piece done for a store in Williamsburg as well (below, right).

The walls in the Bronx are mostly filled with tags. Some are are easy to read and others take more effort. Some tags are just writing and some are colored for more emphasis. I noticed that the tags I saw along the 4 train line were interesting to read. As in the photo below, they said things like, "Mute" or "Sad". Other photos I took also included tags such as "Melo", "Piff", "Easy." The words reflect the culture in the South Bronx. Meanwhile, the graffiti in Williamsburg was much more illustrative. There are characters and images that look like more traditional paintings. The graffiti in Williamsburg represents the culture of the neighborhood as well.

When I compare the graffiti, it both seems to be generated from a mutual interest of self-expression. For me, I think both are attractive to look at, but I can also see that the graffiti in Williamsburg as something that would be more respected by society due to the style. I think about how hip-hop was born in the Bronx, but then the graffiti in Williamsburg feels more sophisticated in relation to societal norms of viewing art. When I see the contrast I think of the contrast in class and education between the two neighborhoods and how it's reflected in the graffiti. The graffiti artists in Williamsburg may have innate illustrative talent, but I also wonder whether they are more likely to have an education background that included a higher level of visual art instruction. We all know that the education of children in the South Bronx, in and out of school, does not compare to the level of education among the residents of gentrified Williamsburg. I think this would be a great photo study to explore because of these reasons.

Visual Images from the Food Industry

When I was 15, my friends (especially the guys) were interested in watching documentaries called "Faces of Death", which documented brutal and/or unusual deaths of humans and animals. When I watched it there was a clip from a slaughterhouse. It was my first visual exposure to how cows are killed for food and it changed my life. I did not eat meat of cows, lamb, pigs or any other animals again until last year, after temporarily listening to an acupuncturist who incorrectly told me it would help a health problem I have. I am now back to avoiding meat.

Current issues in the food industry have brought awareness to genetically modifying animals so that they are many times the weight they would be naturally. Food turkeys are albino. Factory farms have grown into unsanitary conditions, in addition to being places of utter torture. Nutrition and other health concerns have finally grabbed the attention of the masses.

My knowledge of animal rights was updated last summer when I visited an animal sanctuary. I was not expecting the intense stores that I heard from the people who run the place. I heard stories of abuse of factory farm animals, as well as the results of racing horses. There were other random stories as well. In addition to listening to all of this I also saw the results. There was a gigantic pig, a chicken that could not stand due to its massive of body weight, a horse without eyes, a chicken with the bones of its wings exposed, and strange looking albino turkeys. I would like to document the images I've seen. As a start, I recently I briefly volunteered at an animal sanctuary in Woodstock, NY (existence was primarily focused on rescuing factory farm animals) in exchange for a few photos (see below).

However, the problem with animal abuse is not only within the food industry. All chemicals are tested on animals, from shampoo to Coca-Cola. The images I've seen have gone beyond food and into other aspects of life such as Elephant training for tourism in Thailand, animal testing for cosmetics, cock fights, bull fights, horses that are raced until they are crippled, and visiting animal sanctuaries in Upstate New York. It's traumatizing to see and hear about these things, but not as traumatizing as the truth behind the imagery.

TEENS ON SUBWAY OBSERVATION**

On my way home from dinner tonight, about 8 teenage boys got on the L train at Union Square going into Brooklyn. They were of different heights and probably early high school, possibly middle school age. They all wore jeans and either sneakers or Timberland-type boots. Some of them had jeans that were hanging below the waistline and some had baseball hats on; fashion was linked to hip-hop culture. They wore mostly neutral colors and their skin colors varied from white to dark. They were particularly easy to observe because they were so loud; playfully loud. They were repeatedly saying, "Ohhhh"... gradually increasing in volume.

As our train left the station they were yelling about a girl who had no shirt on, as if she was on the platform in Union Square. After that I could not understand what they were talking about even when I tried. A few of them hung on the bars and slightly swung from the bars. If their volume started to decrease some of them would start yelling again. Most of the other people on the train ignored them and some looked their way out of curiosity.

When I observe NYC teenagers on the subway or around my apartment, they often speak loudly. I try and listen, but I often cannot fully understand what they are saying. They may say words to describe what is happening in the moment, or possibly talking about their friends, but not much more. When I saw these boys on the train, I couldn't understand what they were talking about at all. I wondered if they had an inside joke that they were talking about, like many teenagers may, but I could not tell. There is something in that sub-culture that I am not completely literate to.

Interior Design

When I go out to eat at a restaurant, I love when it's nicely designed. The food is most important, but I find that they go together. I wonder if the design of the restaurant can make the food taste better? Interior design is an important marketing strategy for most businesses. For example, red and yellow stand out the most and, combined with florescent lights, don't make people want to relax and stay a while. This is perfect for McDonald's fast food; a logo that stands out in a crowd and a restaurant that makes people want to leave quickly.

For homes, popular colors are often pastel colors to accent the room. I have lived with white walls for most of the past 15 years. I am not a homeowner, so I often think that I will be moving in a short amount of time and never invest in painting the walls. However, after so long of being tired of white walls, I've decided to do something about it and decided to do something dramatic. I painted the wall that starts in my living room and goes through the hall to the bedroom dark red. It's amazing how a color can influence it's surroundings. I'm starting to wonder if I should have chosen a calming color and somehow made it work. Maybe I just need to get used to it?

Office Space

If there were not so many social issues to attend to in the world, wouldn't cubicles be illegal? If you put a child facing the wall in public school you can get into a lot of trouble. They say that this is corporal punishment. Yet, so many adults sit like that 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, for years and years. I do not understand how some people view this as healthy and normal.

I am currently employed in my first office job that has cubicles. I evaluate arts education programs and I cherish the days I'm able to do fieldwork. The whole office is grey and the wall are about 5 feet high. I now work there part time. Working there full time was visually disturbing for me. Although some people who work there do not think much of the visual environment, it negatively impacted my mood and my job as a whole. I will never again work in an atmosphere so visually confining. It is true that the computer opens up the visual space and acts as an outlet to the outside. For me, it's not enough.

If cubicles were to be considered a necessity, I would think that people would protest so that their cubicles are a somewhat decent color to look at, instead of drab neutrals. Most people would not paint their house a drab neutral without accenting the room with something to offset it. Yet, the visual culture of offices continues to perpetuate the experience of forcing people to endure such sights.

FACEBOOK - TEEN OBSERVATION**

My little sister Christina, who is 16, has an ipod, a laptop, can't remember life without cell phones and is an avid Facebook user. She has 453 Facebook friends, most of whom indicate that they are in her high school network. Since I am her Facebook friend I can view a certain aspect of her life whenever I want. Facebook allows me to see what her life is like outside of the family. I can tell who her closest friends are by seeing them repeatedly in photographs. She has 162 photos that she did not post herself and about 170 that she posted. I really have access to a small clip of a documentary of her life with her friends.

The photos include typical teen photos friends, always smiling and looking like they're having a good time. There are also other photos of the girls making sexy poses, such as at the mall with mannequins or at the beach in bikinis. When I was her age, we didn't pose in bikini's together. I'm not sure if it's the result of mass media or if it's just that we are different. She lives in New Jersey and she goes to a high school with a good reputation. She has had photography classes and you can see some of the photos get more experimental through the point of view or composition.

When I look at her wall or view the photo comments I can see bits and pieces of conversations she has with her friends. I know that her and her girl friends tell each other some form of "I love you" on a regular basis and they tell each other that they are pretty. They sometimes post little web cam videos that are about 30-60 seconds long saying nothing much besides "hello" and possibly "I love you".

I can tell that most of her friends are white, but there are some other nationalities/ethnicities mixed in, some of which are not easy to tell just by a photograph. Two of the boys that seem to be a part of her group of friends are black, but their ethnicity is hard to tell. One time at the dinner table at my father's house (she's my father's daughter) she agreed with me that something he said sounded racist. It made me think of a photo on her Facebook page lounging next to a black boy at a friend's house.

Without Facebook I would not know these things about Christina. Some of her other Facebook friends her own age must have the same experience if they choose to click around her Facebook pages. I wonder if it brings her and her friends together, if it adds space or if it adds a superficial dimension to their relationships. I think of high school as a time of being self-conscious. If this is true for most teenagers, how does Facebook play into that? One fact that cannot be argued is that growing up with Facebook as a part of your life is different than when it was not an option. What does it mean for those who do not have access to Facebook in today's society, like many kids growing up in low-income households? It is adding to the cultural capital that helps more affluent children to succeed as adults? These are questions I can ask, but I at this point I do not have the answers.

The Beauty of Documentaries

There seems to be a recent trend towards documentary film and using film as a tool for education. Some of these films are more beautiful than others. I enjoyed Super Size Me, but beautiful is not a word I would use to describe it. Recently, I watched two very beautiful documentaries; The Botany of Desire and March of the Penguins.

The Botany of Desire explained the benefits of biodiversity through four short story documentaries about the history of apples, tulips, marijuana and potatoes. The movie was informative and the photography offered the viewer an aesthetic experience. It speaks to people who do not normally critique the production of agriculture, as well as people who are knowledgeable about the subject. In today's society, learning about where our food comes from and what we eat is become more and more of interest to people.

The March of the Penguins began and the logo for National Geographic came on the screen. (It was written and directed by Luc Jacquet and co-produced by Bonne Pioche and the National Geographic Society.) It made me think of what life would be like without National Geographic. National Geographic brings us some of the world's best photography and have been putting people in awe for generations. The beauty of nature and world cultures is rarely communicated so beautifully as in the photography associated with National Geographic. Aside from the skill level of the photographers, there is also the subject matter they capture. Most people will never get to see aspects of nature that are brought to us by National Geographic. It allows us to see the most obscure creatures in existence and travel to the most remote places on earth., both with an aesthetic experience.

The film captures the whole 9 months of the emperor penguin breeding ritual and present it as a full length documentary film. With the narration, the penguins feel as though they are animated. They are monogamous during these 9 months and exhibit family like behaviors that humans are familiar with. They do everything they can to protect their child from the harsh winter and show signs of feeling bad when the baby doesn't survive. They also show signs of affection among their mate and child during this time. According to Wikipedia, there was even some controversy about the messages of family values that the film communicates, but the director confirmed, "... they are just birds."

CHILDREN ON SUBWAY OBSERVATION**

The subway is a place for people of all shapes, sizes and colors, as I mentioned in a previous post. This includes children and teenagers as well. Teenagers can often be found alone on the subway, camouflaged with the adults. When they are in groups, they may talk quietly together, again camouflaged into the environment, or they may become much louder. When groups of teenagers on the subway are loud, they are more easily visible.

Small children are often on the subway with their parents. Some small children like to sit backwards and look outside the window of the train. I saw this on my way home today and it reminded me of the small children on the trains when I lived in Tokyo who also enjoy looking outside the window of the train while sitting backwards on their knees.

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS OBSERVATION**

Outside the window in my living room is a high school. I have observed the students of this school for hours and hours, but often broken up into small chunks of time. When I go to work, I see them in the morning walking quietly down the street alone. When I'm home, I see them in the afternoon walking down the street, usually in pairs or in small groups. The main thing that catches my eye is the context of the situation. Many of these students do not live in my neighborhood and it's visually apparent.

I live in the North Side of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which is right next to the water facing Manhattan. It's a predominantly White, gentrified neighborhood where most of people who reside here are not originally from New York City. If I walk to the South Side of Williamsburg, it's predominantly Hispanic or Hasidic. If I walk the opposite direction, I end up in Greenpoint, a predominantly Polish neighborhood. If I go further into Brooklyn, the neighborhoods are still predominantly White for a few more subway stops. Almost all of the students in the high school across the street are Black and Hispanic. Although they usually speak with an American accent, I cannot tell what their cultural ethnicity is just by looking at them. They can be African-American, Latino(a)-American, from the Caribbean, from Africa, or they may even have a mix of cultural ethnicity. Similarly, if they see me, they probably cannot see my cultural ethnicity either.

I see the students come from the L train in the morning, most often from the train that is heading in the direction of Manhattan, indicating that they could be from Bushwick or Canarsie. I see them going back to the train in the afternoon. They may stop at the deli on the corner outside the train station, especially for breakfast, but that's it. They go from the train to the school and back on the train. The security guard/police officer stands outside when they are dismissed to make sure they do not stay in front of the school for long. They are told to leave immediately.

So, there are Black/Hispanic teenagers going to school in a White neighborhood and are told by the police that patrol their school that they must not stay around the school. They do not seem unwelcome here, but there is a discomfort has bothered me about this for some time. There are many students who go to schools in neighborhoods other than their own throughout the city. But, for me, when I see this, I think of the segregation that exists in this city and would like to welcome them to stay in the neighborhood for a while.

Memories of Race - Reflection on Reading

For this journal entry I will answer the questions posed in an article included in assigned reading, Culturally Relevant Pedagogy: Ingredients for Critical Teacher Reflection

How frequently and what types of interactions did I have with individuals from racial backgrounds different from my own growing up?

Interactions with people from other racial backgrounds became more and more frequent as I got older. I lived with my father in Staten Island while I was growing up, where the majority of people were Italian-American. I was surrounded by a vast majority of white (primarily Italian-American and Jewish-American) people. On the weekends I stayed with my mother in a diverse neighborhood in Kensington, Brooklyn where people were of different races. I remember wondering if it would feel different if I touched the hand of the black policeman in the store. I remember another incident when I was very young. We were in Macy’s and I asked my mother, “If some black people are called niggas, what’s the word for white people?” I remember her getting so embarrassed and saying, “Don’t say that in public!” My mother also brought me to work, where African-American women were the majority.

Although my parents never spoke of race, the other children who lived on my block in Staten Island often did. They would mostly say derogatory things about black people and occasionally say things about Hispanic people or even Jewish people. Being the only Jewish person on my block, they would turn to me and say, “No offense” when speaking negatively about Jewish people. They would mostly talk about how cheap Jewish people are and how they were happy they were that the two other Jewish families were moving away. It wasn't as bad as the way they viewed black people, who, to them, seemed to be full of only negative traits. This type of pre-judgment confused me and I didn’t like it, but I didn’t think much of it. I only remember one time when I challenged my friend asking her how she knew what black people were like if she didn't know any.

In middle school, the student body started to include more black and Hispanic students. In 7th grade, I made my first African-American friend (Marquis) and Puerto Rican friend (Diana). Diana stopped hanging out with me and became friendlier with the black and hispanic kids. I didn’t know what was going on at the time and I don’t know how I may have appeared in regards to race relations. I had mostly white friends and a few acquaintances who were either hispanic or black, like this one black girl who would pass notes between me and another friend, but they stayed acquaintances at the most; no close friends like Diana.

By the time I got to high school, my school was even more diverse. I think it was about 50-60% white and 40-50% non-white. As I started to notice boys even more than before. There was one black boy, Junior, who really liked me, but black or white, I wasn’t into him. The boys I liked were always my friends, who were mostly white. One time another black boy asked if I had a date for the Valentine’s Day dance. He was so cute. I would have freaked out if he was white or black, but since he was black, I freaked out more. He didn’t push it. I remember being so happy thinking that someone so cute seemed interested in me and left it at that.

I had a high school friend who was Irish-American and dated a black guy. She wasn’t a very close friend and I actually never met him, but she often talked about how it was an issue and how her white guy friends gave her such a hard time. Later on, I one of my best high school friends, who was half Italian-American and half Puerto Rican, got a black boyfriend. He was a skateboarder, father was a doctor, and was a nice guy... seemed like a guy a parent would approve of. However, her father gave her such a hard time that he made jokes regularly and sent her to stay with a relative in Cape Cod for the summer so that she would stay away from him. I drove him up to see her. The separation didn’t make much sense to me. I just though her father was a little nuts, for this and for other things.

In high school my closest friends were mostly Italian and Jewish. I didn't really pay much attention to the diversity around me. One of my closest friends was Philipino and I didn't even think about the fact that he was eating very different food for dinner and didn't think much of his mother's Spanish-sounding accent. Looking back, I can see that my school was pretty segregated. I had black acquaintances, but no black friends. Some of the other white kids had black friends, but not many. When the Rodney King incidents happened, fights broke out regularly and one girl got her hair lit on fire in the lunchroom. On a positive note, I thought that the step club was really cool and wanted to join, but I didn’t have the guts to try. I wasn’t consciously aware of the severity of race issues. I just let it be. Nobody ever talked to me about it and I kept my thoughts on other things.

My first year of college was upstate at a predominantly white school. I remember feeling the absence of hip-hop which added to my unhappiness there. I remember realizing that even though I was into alternative music at the time, the presence of hip-hop was a big part of my life and my upbringing. Without hip-hop and with only a small group of black kids that stayed away from the others much more than in high school, something didn’t feel right. I told my friends back home, but that’s as far as it went.

I transferred colleges after the first year and went to Hunter College where I took a course called Multicultural Women’s Writing and fell in love with belle hooks. Belle hooks, along with Toni Morrison, Amy Tan, and Alice Walker, opened up my eyes to so much of what was going on around me. I couldn’t stop reading. I even remember sitting with a girl in another class who I knew from my high school and she was telling me how segregated our high school was and how the students were tracked based on race. I didn’t even really think about it until she said something, but it seemed true. There were mostly white kids in my honors classes.

I transferred to art school (SVA), but I spent a lot of time in Barnes and Noble reading about gender, race and class issues. While I was in SVA, I started to date much more. I also started dating guys of different races, ethnicities and classes. I dated a Japanese guy, a Puerto Rican guy, an African American guy… and then there was the guy from Barbados… he became my first love. I learned a lot from that relationship and the other guys I dated. For now, I leave it at that, but the story goes on.

Who were the primary persons that helped to shape my perspectives of individuals from different racial groups? How were their opinions formed?

The hatred and comments of people around me while I growing up made me question the ridiculousness of why you would hate a whole group of people without knowing them. I can only assume that their opinions were formed out of ignorance and inheritance.

My relationship with Kelvin (the guy from Barbados) shaped my perspective of race a lot. Dating him also made me see how racist the people around me could be. My father didn’t acknowledge our relationship and seemed racist. It was suppressed and repressed for many years, but now I know for sure that his views are mixed up. My mother is not necessarily against interracial dating, but is against interracial marriage. She was fine with him being my boyfriend until we started to get serious. Even saw one of my friends would make prejudged comments about Kelvin as if he was a stereotypical black guy from the ghetto that just stepped out of mass media. Meanwhile, her boyfriend sold cocaine and beat her up once. Things even came up for both, Kelvin and I.

Also, one of my best friends of 10 years is African-American (mixed with Irish and Native American, but primarily of African decent) and our many conversations about race have influenced me.

Other people who were, or are, not as close to me in my personal life have also shaped my perspective. When I worked as a waitress in an Italian restaurant on Staten Island I hung out with the Mexican guys in the kitchen and the Mexican bus boy. I saw how difficult it was to learn English from and ESL book and was amazed when the cook told me he was a direct decedent of the Aztecs. Teaching in NYC public schools also gave me insight into black and Hispanic cultures around me.

Have I ever harbored prejudiced thoughts towards people from different racial backgrounds?

It wasn't until almost my mid-twenties did I start to think more about Asian culture. In my early twenties I had a two Asian girl friends who were close to me and told me about the stereotypes they faced. They told me that men thought they would be submissive because they were Asian. I didn't really like the fact that it existed, but I didn't really understand it. After moving to Japan and living there as a teacher, my perspective on Asian society, and therefore Asian people, changed. I can tell about the many great experiences I've had because there are many.

Living in Japan gave me the experience of living as an immigrant, as someone who is illiterate and someone who is a racial and ethnic minority. All of this forced me to learn about myself in new ways. There were many good things about this, but there were also aspects of the culture I didn't like. I think this is natural, but I must have been hit with some culture shock because my sensitivity to gender issues was very high. We all have many roles in society and while I was living in Japan, my role as a woman, and the role of women around me, was different than I had anticipated. Regardless, I didn't expect gender issues to affect me since I knew I'd be a foreigner, but I was wrong.

I had been interested in gender issues before my move to Japan. After a few months in Japan I began to notice the discrepancy in gender relations and it really bothered me. There was a student at the company I worked for that was recently married. She had to give up her job as a pharmaceutical rep to become a housewife. She was bored, so she studied English. She was unhappy she had to move from Tokyo to Osaka because she was now married and that's the plan her husband was leading. She wanted to visit Canada to study English, but he didn't give her permission right away. Since she was close to my age I invited her out one night with my friends and, to my surprise, she ended up making out with some guy she met. We never talked about it. I had another student who told me how jobs became scarce for women as they got older because they were expected to quit their careers and get married. One of my managers confirmed this. I was also told that Japanese men were very sexist by Japanese women and told that Japanese men regularly cheat on their wives by foreigners. I then had a middle aged male student who was married with a family tell me he loved me and wanted to date me. Such gender issues even surfaced in my friendships with Japanese women. One of the woman I still talk to spent 5 years in a relationship with a man and she knew he was cheating. Every time she spoke to me about it I told her to leave. She hasn't mentioned him to me in the past few contacts we've had.

However, some of the most disturbing part of my insight into gender issues in Japan were through male English teachers. I noticed on a few different occasions that they were treated a little different by men and women. I also began to notice that men who visited Japan stayed longer than the women and more foreign men remain permanent citizens than foreign women. There were also the way that Japanese women were around these foreign men. What seemed to me to be a regular guy was really something special to these women. Foreign guys were almost always able to find Japanese girls with ease. Then the stories came... there was the American photographer who left his ex-wife waiting for 5 hours to get a good shot and didn't think much of it. His new wife served us when we went to his apartment to learn about photography. There was a Canadian guy who studied the occult and was particularly unattractive, but had a girlfriend who was gorgeous and it completely fed his ego. He thought foreign girls were jealous of Japanese girls, a common idea that was bounced around. Meanwhile, his girlfriend was in a marriage that was not filled with love and he thought it was great because she was given money by her husband. The worst, I think, was the English teacher from Maryland who enjoyed hanging around junior high school girls at the schools he worked in. There was an incident that happened before I got hired at that job that questioned the level of sexual relations he had with these girls, but he somehow got through it and remained employed.

The stories could go on. All of this made me a little crazy. One day, when I was commuting to work, I walked over to a man who must have been about 50 years old. He was staring at a girl who must have been in junior high school and staring at her short skirt in a way that made me uncomfortable. I asked him if he liked "it" and nodded at her short skirt. He smiled and said yes enthusiastically. I must have caught him off guard. My response was, "It's your little sister." My Japanese wasn't good enough to articulate anything better and he was just a guy on the train.

I began to understand the stereotypes my American friends told me about before moving to Japan was a thought. I began to feel I understood why Asian women were looked upon as submissive. I did not see any signs of women's rights as we know in America and only an acceptance of women in an inferior role. It took a long time to get over these views and I’m not sure if it’s just suppressed or if I have really worked through it. I can say that I have learned a lot through hindsight and that when I focus, I feel compassionate rather than uncomfortable dislike for the women who go through this. I needed to remind myself that I entered Japan from the vantage point of an English teacher and that I did not get a holistic view. I also reminded myself that I did enjoy my time with a few Japanese women friends. It's unfortunate that social pressures in Japan, and Asia as a whole, are so strong that when women are in a bad situation, they feel that is the only way. I think one way that Japanese women combat this is by not getting married. Marriage is on the decline in Japan. I also think that they view gender relations and sex differently than we do, in a way I don't fully understand.

A friend of mine always reminded me how gender issues in Japan are not much compared to the rest of the world. I agreed, but the gender issues in Japan were in my face and in my life. As I said before, I think it was a bit of culture shock and lack of understanding in cultural difference.

Aside from my experiences in Asia, there are times when I do not feel confident about the way I am perceived by low-income minority culture. I sometimes feel self-conscious that I am judged as priveledged, ignorant, and/or racist because of the color of my skin. Also, I think that the history of the Christian religion has been corrupt due to committed genocides and I don’t understand why people would continue to follow it. However, my 2 best friends are protestant and my husband is catholic.

If I do harbor prejudiced thoughts, what effects do such thoughts have on students who come from those backgrounds?

If you have students who come from a background in which you harbor prejudiced thoughts, you can easily act in subtle ways that are negative and harmful. In my experience, students can sense these things and are very aware. I once had two students from Mexico who had a teacher that did not like Mexicans. It was something that they could not get over and brought their experience into my classroom a year later. We had to have a few discussions in which I tried to separate their view of me from their experience with her and reassure them that I did not have those views.

I hope I can effectively communicate to my students that I am open to who they are and that I hope they can be open to who I am. I will do my best to provide a curriculum that celebrates any differences and similarities that exist.

Do I create negative profiles of individuals who come from different racial backgrounds?

At this point in my life, I am embarrassed to say, I need to be careful with the way I see Asian women from Asia. I realize that people are not stereotypes, but when people seem to portray negative characteristics that represent their negative stereotype, people of any race/culture, I sometimes feel discomfort.

Art to Shock - Orlan

Following leaders like Duchamp and Warhol, artists have been pushing the boundaries of what can be considered art for many years. One French woman, Orlan, has taken this to an extreme. Her body is her art, like many others, but the art is the transformation of her body in the most literal sense. Based on famous paintings of women, she alters her own face to match characteristics of the women in the paintings. She puts her ideas together as though her body is a living puzzle piece altered by plastic surgeons.

She calls herself a feminist. The manipulation of her body to look like women who have been deemed as beautiful represents the reality of what some women may be wishing for. Numerous women look at other women in mass media, wishing that they could change at least one of their features. Orlan actually does it. She has gone through at least 9 surgeries and currently represents one side of what happens when you decide to alter the way you look. The results do not reflect the glamorous results of celebrity experiences of plastic surgery. Celebrities have 'top' make-up artists, 'top' designers, 'top' cinematographers, 'top' photographers, 'top' editors, etc... to make them look better. Plastic surgery is one factor out of many.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4816435/

RAMP IT UP - MUSUEM OBSERVATION*

The National Museum of the American Indian sheds light on the origin of skateboarding and contemporary skateboarding culture among Native Americans in the show Ramp It Up. Most people can probably guess that skateboarding is related to surfing, but how many of us actually realize that it has evolved from surfing, which is a native Hawaiian sport and, therefore, a Native American sport. The show gave a snapshot of the popularity of the sport among Native American teenagers and exhibited skateboard art done by Native Americans. These boards often educate the viewer about aspects of Native American History. My favorite was the the skateboard that showed a graphic depiction of the U.S., repeated four times. Each map represents a different period in a timeline starting in the 1800's and going up to 1990. All four of them were in black and white, starting as mostly black in the 1800's and gradually becoming more white through 1990, when most of the map is white. The color represents the increase in land that has been taken over by "Americans". I was surprised to see the timeline go all the way through 1990.

NYC Subway Beauty

In the NYC subway I find comfort in looking at all the different shapes, sizes and colors of the people, knowing that each of them must have someone in their life who finds them beautiful. If you look closely enough, you can see their beauty too. I like to think that beauty comes in all shapes, sizes and colors. People take the visual aspect of the NYC subway for granted. Where else in the world can you relax and observe people with such diverse features? If it was a symbol for global human interaction, we might actually reach world peace.

Evolution of a Model

My last post reminded me of another video I saw a few years ago (below). With all of the special effects out there, people portrayed in mass media do not look real anymore. This is true of Lady Gaga, who seems like she would be an average looking girl from NYC when she's not on camera, as well as models.

Watching this video brings back memories of when I was 19 and my boyfriend at the time, who was a photo retoucher, was assigned to work on Cindy Crawford's face. I wasn't too shocked at that time; it was already commonplace. A friend of mine from college worked for a porn magazine when he graduated SVA. He also used photoshop, but it was often used to make sure the surgery scars on their breasts were not visible. Today, these alterations are often done for film/video/tv, as well as with print, as in Lady Gaga's video.

All of these alterations have had an effect on society. Many girls are self-conscious about the way they look because of all of the images that are imposed on us regularly and, more recently, men are also affected. The video below shows the process behind creating contemporary images of beauty and is sponsored by Dove, a company that would know about this type of thing. The video confirms that the images of beauty that many people aspire to replicate are not real.

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Lady Gaga

I’ve been invaded. I live without cable and have, for the most part, avoided pop culture for years. As soon as I realized what culture could be like outside the American mainstream multi-billion dollar corporate industry, I was hooked. However, recently something has been seeping through the cracks of the wall I’ve put up.

The color's radiating through her fashion are exciting. Her clothes are like art; she's a performance artist. She has a beautiful voice, but it's the visuals that make her stand out for me. She follows the recipe for pop culture; catchy dance beats and sexual images. She's got a music background outside of pop corporate culture and uses it to win over the world through mass media. Whoever is working with her to get this done is doing a great job. I think one of the names that I read of was RedOne, a famous pop producer of many other musicians. Lady Gaga unlike many other pop artists, is really instrumental in writing her songs, creating her fashion and performance art. She feels like a contemporary Madonna.

Last year, I heard the name Lady Gaga and googled her name to find out she’s one of the latest pop stars and didn't look much further. I forgot about it for a while and then a close friend asked if my self-made 2009 holiday card (a photo of a display window of a clothing store in Williamsburg, BK during the holiday season) was a photo of Lady Gaga. I couldn’t imagine why she would say that and I noticed that my husband downloaded the song Pokerface. I few weeks later I decided to google her again and I found the video for Bad Romance, my introduction to Lady Gaga.

I was shocked. I wanted to watch it again and again. Maybe I don't watch enough tv. The theatrical composition, the costume/fashion, her body... I figured I must like it and watched it again. I thought, “Lucky her; what a recipe for success.” I googled again, found that she’s actually 5’1” (which is my height) and thought, “Of course she wears shoes that give her more than a few inches!” They probably altered the whole video with After Effects or something. I guess music videos are altered all of the time, but I'm not used to watching them and I'm just really into her fashion. I watched it again staring at the fashion, analyzing the special effects, and thinking about how sexual she has to look to be successful.