Informal Writting Assignment 5-"Crime" Against Fashion

After reading and watching about the story of the Mexican-American about the Zoot Suits, I soon remember about my experience during my early high school year about committing crimes of fashion and other aspects related to it. Throughout my childhood, my parents, especially my mother held a very important role in terms of the clothing I wear. My mother was the one who always bought my shirts, dresses, skirts, and pants. I was a pretty obedient daughter who accepted every clothes she bought for me.

In Indonesia, the type of clothing that is normal for female is the one that is polite. In our culture, women seldom show even a little of their sexual parts except for those who are brave enough and of course for those who sell their body for living. In my junior high school and high school, how uniforms were worn and our overall appearance are essential as it can affect the overall grade. The blouse and skirts are all custom made, which means that every student had to be measured individually to fulfill the school requirement. The blouse has to be in a certain fit, cannot be to tight or to loose; the length of the skirt has to be below the knee. Aside from that, we had to wear very long socks that have to reach above our knee. So between the skirt and the socks, there could not be any skin revealed. Moreover, the hair should be tight up in ponytail and the bangs have to be properly clipped. The purpose of that is to create a sense of politeness and tidiness, which is how Indonesian women are known.

During my first year of high school, I began to watch an American television series called The OC, which is acted by young celebrities including Mischa Barton, Adam Brody, Rachel Bilson, and Peter Gallagher. The show is basically about the life of high-school students in California. As I started to get addicted to the show, I began to like the kind of summer clothing that Mischa Barton and Rachel Bilson wore in the episodes and began to think that the clothes I had were so old-fashioned. I thought it was really cool to wear “mini” dresses and “mini” pants, especially when Indonesia’s weather is always warm all year. Since then, I demand to buy my own clothes. I started to wear hot pants, mini dresses, and not-so-polite tops. I can see that my parents shocked when they first saw me wearing these clothes and lectured me about the bad image my clothing would represent me. When I was about to go out with my friends, they began to inspect the clothes that I wore before I go. Often I went out quickly so they did not have the chance to see the clothes I wore that day. I remember when my mother always yelled at me whenever she found out that I was wearing clothing that kind of exposed a lot of skin, like I was committing a crime. I felt that just because I dressed like that, did not mean that I was a slut, or a prostitute. It was just some kind of way for me to rebel against the boring tradition that says that women have to dress in a certain way and a way for me to express my young and adventurous soul. Like in the movie, just because a lot of Mexican teenagers wore the Zoot Suit, does not mean that they are a bad person. I did not stop there. In school when I decided that I did not want to clip my bangs, I was humiliated in front of the whole students as an example of a girl who is rebellious against the rule, as if I just burned the school building. 

As I grow older I began to realize that our community is formed in such a complicated way. Fashion is not just a form of personal expression; it can also express a normative value of a community. Like in the movie, I am sure that those teenagers often wear those Zoot suits because of a self-expression purpose. However, they instead being labeled as rebellious kids who had no manner and always make trouble. I personally think that people should be judged from their character rather than from the things that are considered normal, such as from their clothing.

14 Days Experiment Starts Now!

Here is the link to my 14 days experiment:

http://awholenewplate.blogspot.com/

enjoy :D

Informal Writting Assignment 4-Bitch Media

The blog is about a nonprofit organization, which provides and encourages an empowered feminist’s perspective response to mainstream media and popular culture. Bitch has a diverse audience and diverse topic that is being brought up, such as gender, sexuality, power, and agency prescribed by the mainstream media. The name “Bitch” comes because the writer, Rebecca West said that every time she expresses her opinion and being brave to speak up her mind, people often labels her as “bitch”. I think that she feels that women who are confident to express their mind to address issues that emerge in society can be determined as a role model to everyone. So if being an outspoken woman means being bitch, the people in magazine are proud of being one. 

- Blog Post 1- Race Card: Has Beyonce Knowles Betrayed Women of Color? By Nadra Kareem Nittle.

This article talks about how Alibhai-Brown, a British journalist who is a well-know commentator on issues of immigration, diversity, and multiculturalism, argued that Beyonce betrayed black and South Asian people by appearing light-skinned and blonde on a magazine front cover. Nittle is not saying that this situation is not going to give certain impact, such as low self-esteem, on children and teenagers of colors who read it. However, she disagrees if Beyonce is being blamed for the issues of cultural imperialism and white supremacy because the issue whether Beyonce is trying to make herself white is still unclear. It could be just the effect of lightning and make up from the photo shoot. I certainly agree with Nittle because I think that it is important for the public to not quickly judge certain people due to hasty generalization and it is unfair for a public figure to be blamed for such racial problem based on only two photographs, which clearly everyone knows that the photographs have been edited by the magazine.

-       Blog Post 2- Race Card: Xenophobia and Racism Surface in Reaction to Reporter Lara Logan’s Sexual Assault in Egypt.  By Nadra Kareem Nittle.

Sexual assault and beating that happened to Lara Logan, a South African television and radio journalist, when she was covering a story as a CBS reporter stimulate arguments within the American public. Logan is being re-victimized by people saying that she should have known better that it would not be safe to be alone in such a dangerous country, especially for a young blonde Western woman. The public also blamed Logan for not knowing that Islamic Egyptian men are “beasts”. The writer states that people, who blamed Logan for to know better because she’s blonde, are not only sexist but also racist. Can they guarantee that if Logan were brunette or dark-skinned, she would not have been raped? Absolutely not. Moreover, for those who blamed that Islam has to do with Logan’s assault, would the situation differ if the Egyptian were Christian? The fact is that Egypt is also the home for many Christians. The group of women and soldiers who rescued her from the attack could also be Muslims. I personally think that, again, people should not make hasty generalization without analyzing the situation as a whole. It is best to blame directly the individuals who attack Logan, than to blame the whole nation or religion.

Looking at two articles the Bitch media had discussed, which was focusing on the public issue and comment about Beyonce being called unconfident of her dark skin color and tried to change it by appearing “bright” at the front cover of a magazine and the issue of the good looking reporter who was sexually assaulted by Egyptians when she was covering news there, I conclude that the Bitch media’s intention and purpose is to guide and straighten up public’s aggressive opinion towards issues that are still “fresh” and “hot” by saying that there are possible reasons and arguments about those issues that is more reasonable.

Informal Writting Assignment 3- Valley Fair Mall

Valley Fair Mall is located along the Stevens Creek Boulevard, and it was opened since summer 1956. One of the best things in the Valley Fair Mall is the free parking, which provides convenience service for its customers. Because the mall is located in San Jose, it must have been aimed for the San Jose Community. However, after looking at the San Jose fact sheet about the statistics of people, I personally think that the overall mall condition does not represent the San Jose community as a whole. Last Thursday, I discovered and explored the situation at Valley Fair Mall by visiting different kinds of store, including Bebe, Louis Vuitton, and Forever 21.

Bebe is a women’s designer store, which was originated from San Francisco. When I walk into the store, I was mesmerized by the colorful and glittery outfits. The kind of vibe that Bebe is creating is young, wild, and sexy. The clothes are mostly open; as in allow people who wear them show their intimate body parts, like breast, ass, and thighs. The sizes are usually smaller than usual and the store does not provide clothes for plus size women. Bebe advertises their product by using dancing-like mannequins, as if they were having a good time in clubs or bars. The models Bebe uses in their campaign are mostly Caucasians, which I interpreted as their main target customer. This fact is contradictory with what the San Jose community’s racial background, which proves that White people is minority compared to the other 68% that came from different ethnicity. 

The next store I went was Louis Vuitton, which is one of the most luxurious shopping venues in Valley Fair Mall. The store interior is really well designed. Not to mention the storekeepers who treat the customers like kings and queens, assisting the customer one on one basis by following the customers wherever they go and alert in determining what customer need. Louis Vuitton is indeed a store for upper-class society, The price of their goods ranges approximately from $600 to $7,000.  Besides Louis Vuitton, there are many other stores that are on the same level, such as Hugo Boss, Tiffany’s, Sony, Nordstrom, etc. However, according to San Jose fact sheet, almost 60% of San Jose citizens have average income and lower, which most of them use primarily for basic necessity, like rent, food, and education. The existence of these stores decreases the mall’s devotion to the San Jose community. Moreover, looking at the mall’s overall structure, it delivers the message that the building is strong and elegant. The first story of the building is filled with expensive yet upper class stores, such as, Louis Vuitton, Banana Republic, Hugo Boss, Tiffany’s, BCBG, etc, and is covered with marble floors. Marble is a type of flooring material that gives the buiding an aura of richness. It is a natural stone product and also durable, so it is known for its expensive price. So with the existence of marble floor in the first floor, the Valley Fair Mall gives a sense of elegance and luxury, which once again does not represent the majority of San Jose community.

The second floor is not as luxurious as the first floor. The flooring is covered with carpets and the type of stores on the upper level is more affordable than the ones on the first floor, such as, Forever 21, American Eagle, Hollister, etc.  Food court is also located on the second floor, which has various types of affordable food, including Japanese, Chinese, Italian, Korean, and Mexican. Next store I visited was Forever 21. The atmosphere of forever 21 is really young and exciting. The store was full of teenagers who are searching for low cost clothing yet still up-to-date and fashionable. In this store, I see different kinds of people come from various nationalities.  Maybe it is because of its affordable price and good quality of clothing that attracts people spending their money there. This store is probably the example of store that represents San Jose community economically. 

Even though the Valley Fair mall benefits San Jose area financially through tax, the mall represents very little of the community itself. What the mall could improve is to eliminate class segregation between the first and second floor so that low-middle class people aren’t discriminated against the upper-middle ones. Moreover, the mall could also provide more affordable stores, especially men’s store since the stores available are dominated for women. It could also provide Movie Theater as an entertainment for basically everybody, so that everyone could enjoy the Valley Fair Mall facility. To make this happen, San Jose community could sign petition proposing this idea to the Valley Fair Mall officials. Let’s make it happen! :D

The Matrix

“You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.”

-Morpheus,  Matrix (1999)

Starring Keanu Reeves, the movie was phenomenal since it was first released.  Not only because of its amazing action performance, which presents Carry Ann Moss jumps to the air in slow motion and kicked the police officers who try to arrest her as the opening scene, the movie itself also has relation to a philosophical understanding.

In the allegory of the Cave, Plato engaged the idea of the experience of prisoners that have been kept away from civilization. They were seated faced to a big wall, and were only presented with shadows of people, trees, and animals. To them the shadows were reality because they had not been exposed to any other thing besides the shadow. However, one prisoner was freed, and he had the opportunity to explore other things, such as the brightness of the sun, the real animals, and was exposed to other humans. The meaning behind the story is that the prisoners in the cave symbolize how human being were exposed to things others offer them in life, but the freed prisoners symbolizes how human being perceive the true meaning of life by having a philosophy.

I can really see the connection between The Allegory of the Cave and the movie Matrix. Neo’s experience in the Matrix, who had double lives, as a computer hacker and an office worker resembles the prisoners who were kept in the cave. He just perceived the world as it is and just kept on doing what he’s doing without knowing that he’s a part of the Matrix. Orpheus resembles the guard who freed the prisoner, as he opens Neo’s way to find meaning of his life by choosing whether he wants to stay and continue to live without meaning and expectation, or he wants to explore an unimaginable truth and find who he truly is. 

When faced with the situation of choosing between taking the blue pill or the red pill, I personally need a lot of thinking to make up my mind. In the Plato’s allegory of the cave, of course the choice would be to see the real world instead of just living handcuffed on the cave just watching shadows on the wall. But on The Matrix, choosing between the regular life and this other digital life is more difficult. On one occasion, who would want to live in a situation where everything until know is generated by a bunch of machines? On the other hand, who are ready to accept the fact that people are controlled by machines and being the chosen one to battle it? Both of them are tough choices, and if I were given the opportunity, I would not want to live in such a way that people just lay down, plugged into some kind of machine and just basically “dream”. And because I have my prima facie value, I avoid being away from my family and friends and being taken to some ship where all I do is sit and think while eating vitamin oatmeal. Maybe it is easier for Neo because in the movie, there is no scene where he has family or loved ones, and most likely he pretty much hates his life. So by taking the red pill, Neo would be able to start over again and at last being excited and have goals. But for me, blue pill would be nice :)

The Examined Life

Examined life is a documentary film, which shows top philosophers of our time to share their own view about a particular philosophical idea in the everyday world. I want to mainly focus on a philosopher called Slavoj Zizek, who specializes in cultural study as his ideology, shared his opinion about the world. He is called as one of the hippest philosopher by The Telegraph for his interesting way of thinking about basically everything, particularly about how would it feel like to be trapped inside an all-body condom. He is also a brilliant critic of political, philosophical, literary, artistic, cinematic and pop cultural topics. What makes his video interesting is because he really brings the audience to an actual site of what is really called an ecological catastrophe.

The first thing Slavoj Zizek points out is people’s perception of reality. Almost everyday, people throw something away to the garbage but all they know is that the trash guy is going to take it all away from our sight. Trash does disappear from their sight, but what people do not see is that it is not really gone, but it is being accumulated together, creating a mountainous problem. I have never been aware of this problem before I watched Zizek’s video, so I am really surprised about the outcome of people’s actions, which are thought was really normal, could bring such unimaginable amount of dump. Just in United States, average people produced approximately 4 pounds everyday. The biggest landfill, which is located in Las Vegas called Apex, carries 50 million tons of rotting trash. As more and more trash is produced, more landfills are also needed, which could destroy the natural resources, disturb animal’s ways of life, and also cause health problems. So this is how messed up our world is. That is why Slavoj Zizek describes the world as a catastrophe.

Zizek also connects ecological problem to ideology. Ideology is often being interpreted in a wrong way, which is often viewed as an imaginary concept of ideas. On the contrary, ideology really addresses real problems. One of the ideology mechanism is the “temptation of meaning”, which basically searching for a meaning to every incident that happens. For example, some people view AIDS disease as a punishment for living a sinful life. That is where ideology enters, which is when people have meaning to something.

The most interesting idea that Zizek brought up in the video was that there is no such thing as a balanced world. The idea that people always perceive is that the world was once a very beautiful place that is filled with everything perfect, but then human started to live, exploiting the resources, and developing new technologies that harm the nature and cause lots of environmental problems, including global warming, extinction, etc. However, Zizek stated that there is no such thing as a balanced world. The nature had already been in catastrophe, and the best thing is that people are allowed to benefit from it. For example, the most wanted natural resource is oil, which is often used for fuel. Oil itself is made from a natural catastrophe, including various unknown remnants from the past. One thing that we can do to the environment is to accept it and appreciate it the way it is.

My question to Zizek, if we continue to love the earth the way it is and keeps on taking advantage of it, wouldn’t we just hurt the environment? If we just enjoy it like we do now, how much time will we have left to enjoy the rest of it? The undeniable fact is that our world is injured right now, whether it is already impaired from the beginning or not does not really matter anymore. What people can do now is to support and actually take part to perform eco-friendly activities, such as recycling and conserving energy, which could save our planet.

Implicit Association Test

The Implicit Association Test is used as a tool to determine people’s roots of thinking and feeling. The Implicit Association Test that I took was Race-Weapons one. At first I was told to categorized two groups of people, which is African Americans and Caucasian by pressing button “i” or “e”. The instruction was given by the test, and I had to follow which one should we press, between “I” and “e” depending on what I was told to. After that, I was told to categorized two groups of things, which was “weapons” and “ harmful thing”, which was given in the same instruction. Then I had to connect both of the categories into one activity. At the end of the test, there are questions about what I think about Caucasian and African American in general, followed by questions about my personality. The result I got from the test suggests me that I have a moderate association of African Americans with weapons compared to Caucasian American.

Racial profiling often happens in real life, effecting people’s decision making. For example, a police officer who stops people because he or she belongs to a certain racial group. Some people do racial profiling consciously, but some don’t. Since I was little, I was taught to hang out with people who come from different race and to see them through their personality, not from their race. So I basically always try not to racial profile people. However, the test shows that I moderately associate African American with weapons compared to Caucasian American, which reveals how I feel unconsciously about the idea. I personally think that the result is related to an incident that just happened to me a couple years ago. When I was waiting at the bus stop with my friends, five African American came towards our direction. We thought that they were also waiting for the bus.  Slowly, they came near us, started to ask for our wallet, while showing us a gun that one of them had inside their pants. When we refused hand out our wallets, they brutally took our bags and ran away. So even though I have tried not to have negative impression as such towards African Americans, because not all African Americans have the same rude attitude, the test shows that I am affected by that particular experience. From this experience, I learn that the test really helps to reveal how people feel unconsciously about a particular topic.

After the Race-Weapons test, I decided to take the Gender-Career one. In this test, I was asked about my general view about the topic first, such as how important is family or career to me, what is my family’s income, whether I am planning to have children, and who my caregiver was when I was a kid. After that basically the same thing was done like on the first test regarding the “I” and “e” part, except this time, the group is between female and male names, with family or career. The result suggested that I moderately associate male with career and female with family, compared to female with career and male with family.

Looking at the result, I think this test does not really reveal to my own condition, but also reveals about what kind of environment I am exposed to. Both of my parents are working, so personally I think that working females are very normal. My father and mother both equally work hard and try the best they could on their field. So since I was little, I have always wanted to work in the office just like my mother and grew up with Oprah Winfrey as my role model besides my mother. I envy her hard work and her accomplishments, which really brings out her charisma. However, as I grew up, I am exposed to the environment where most of my friends’ mothers are housewives. So I began to absorb the thoughts that most of women stay at home to take care of their family. Even though until now, my goal is to become a successful businesswoman, being exposed to other kind of environment really affects me unconsciously about certain topic.