Is there such a thing as a 'broke' New Yorker? (Some thoughts)

3:58 PM

What does one have to do to get an apartment on East 11th street? Or a brownstone in the West Village? I'm starting to think it's impossible to make it in New York without a humongous endowment or a shiny pair of rich parents.

I was walking towards Magnolia Bakery with my roommates the other night (the W 11th street location) and was confronted with the most beautiful pieces of real estate I had ever seen. It was dark and quiet out (QUIET??? IN NYC???) First impressions were: a serene residential area, that is hip enough for a young kid, quiet enough for a writer, and beautiful enough for someone with expensive taste.

Some of the brownstones had their lights on inside and when I peered, I fell in love. These apartments have foyers and common areas. I saw a living room with a piano and a cello displayed from the floor-to-ceiling windows. Red doors with place mats, children's rooms with pastel colored walls, TVs, laundry rooms, breakfast rooms, toy rooms, so many rooms!!!! Spacious and sophisticated flats with chandeliers and carpeted floors. How can this be mine? I want the things, I want all of the things.

The struggling 20-something is a common character in the City, and I romanticize the heck out of that person. I want to be waiting tables while searching for a good writing gig, going to my friend's concerts at the local bar and thrifting all my clothes. However all those "struggling" twenty something's are still making rent, wearing cute hats and having brunch on Sundays. Which makes me wonder, is it possible to have a subsistence wage (by New York standards) while working a shitty job? Or are all these 'starving artists' actually not hungry at all. I'm sorry but 'broke' is not going to sample sales and paying for a studio in the East Village.

To me, it seems like you are required to have a trust fund, a loaded savings account or some supportive parents to be a young adult in the City.

I know I'm not getting the whole picture here, and I'm only talking about the young people who I've been exposed to. I know there are people who are living the actual real struggle in New York, and to those people whatever I am saying here will seem superfluous. I am only speaking to what I feel.

It's a hard realization knowing that I only have 2 and a half years of college left, and after that my scholarships, student loans, and parental support will all go away. The thought of this terrifies my anxieties, and complicates the dream of being young in the City.

What comforts me however, is also realizing that I am 19. Who the heck has done anything by 19? And I can give myself enough credit to believe that I haven't wasted these fragile years of my youth.

I have learned (in my whopping 1 month and 2 days of living in New York) that there are ways of living cheaper-ly. I bought used snow boots at Buffalo Exchange, my friend is cutting my hair tomorrow, and I stopped buying my groceries at Whole Foods. (Whoa about $300 were saved in that last sentence!)

Ultimately, I am an expert on deferring today's worries to a time when they are more pressing and urgent, so how about I do that for now and enjoy of my parent's support for a little bit longer? (Applications are going out as we speak and I hope the next blog post will include some exciting emails from potential employers???)

I will continue to contemplate what my goals are, and if there are opportunities to succeed for a girl (me) that is starting from scratch and has no substantial economic safety net to fall on. While I do that, I'll keep peering on the lucky one's brownstone hoping that they'll invite me in for tea.

Sweating and Reflecting in one of London’s Finest Parks

1:31 PM

Today marks my 267^th day of living in London, and 4th day before I leave. The idea of leaving London is a little bit unbelievable—actually, the fact that I have gotten so habituated and have become almost a “local” in a city like this is the unbelievable part of the situation. Regardless, it’s a sad departure, something that as of recently I’ve realized I’m not particularly ready for.

An unexpected situation forced me to get out of bed this morning and go outside for a brief second. With the stress produced by the end of the academic semester: finals, moving out, figuring out travel, etc., I’ve been too busy to notice the surprisingly favorable weather that London’s been having these past few days. The city has ditched the gloom and adopted the sweet smell of spring with a delicate warmth and promising blue skies.

When I encountered the sun, I decided studying for finals could wait a few hours. I thought it would be a great idea to dirt up those Nikes that have been hidden under my bed, rock the spandex for a while and go out for a run. London’s parks are probably some of the most amazing pieces of constructed landscape I have ever witnessed, my favorite one is Regent’s Park.

Regents Park is like the British version of Central Park but 100 times better. There is biking, football (soccer) fields, lacrosse, runners, yogis, walkers, hikers, families, cute couples, English breakfasts, gardens, and there’s even a zoo in there. I walked to Regents Park and then attempted to run for a little bit. Admittedly, I am a terrible athletic person, my attempts are genuine and full of motive but the execution is just not the prettiest thing to watch. So I found a space that was surrounded by trees that almost created a type of room with walls of overlapping branches. As I was lying there, secluded from the rest of the crowd, I could stare up at the blue sky and the tree’s leaves and take a minute to reflect.

The reason I’m not ready to leave London is that I could never take enough time to fully absorb all of the things it has to offer. There are many things that make London great, but the greatest one is the effect it has on the people that inhabit it. It has an effect of making you feel like you are participating in the making of history just by walking through its narrow streets. Never has a city been so historic yet so modern-thinking and evolutionary. It’s a city that thrives on young people and is ruled by the old and elite, a city that embraces diversity and awards you experience. Every step in London is a learning opportunity. From bricks that have existed since the 15^th century, to halls and rooms that housed the most influential people in history, or for being a shelf of the most quoted literature ever.

It is popular consensus that London is awesome, so I don’t even have to make a case for that. But London makes people awesome too. It brings in millions of millennials who are looking for ways of defining themselves, and then throws them out armed with all the knowledge of self-discovery and awareness that they can possibly afford. It’s like a slap in the face telling you that you are independent, self governable—and if you are not, that London will make you that way.

After my escapade into the tree nook, I went out to walk around the perimeter of the park. I kept encountering all these metaphors during the walk. The multiplicity of greenery against the background of a city skyline; people feeding ducks in a constructed canal; the complexity of the flower gardens and the colors of the flower beds that changed with the seasons; all these things were alluding to the fact that London is only so great because of what the powerful people in it have made of it. I wasn’t sure what it was that I had contributed to this illustrious city, and I wasn’t ready to leave it before I did.

I was ready to leave the park though; my body had given all that it would give after that last squat so I decided to put it to rest.

With the philosophical mood I had set at the park, I headed back home. Recognizing through each of the streets I crossed, all the things London had to offer me. Everything I’d ever wanted was given to me on a silver platter here: independence, freedom, an excellent public transportation system, great Indian food, reliable networks, interesting people, a change in the seasons, the list is endless.

Maybe I hadn’t gathered the courage or the ability to offer anything back to this city, but I have a feeling I will eventually find my way back here to pay my dues. In the meantime, I give London my complete admiration, absolute gratitude, and utmost respect. I say adiós temporarily to one of the greatest places I’ve ever called home—with love, me.

Now I’m in serious need of a shower, I really did work out a sweat.

Brighton, the land of impulsive decisions?

5:08 PM

Hello! Today's blog post is a sort of "story time" if you will. Not all of my posts are going to be political or academic, which I hope is alright with you. (Happy reading :)

Brighton is a town on the south coast of England, a few hours drive from London. It is typically known for having a bit more of a "laid back," liberal atmosphere. It hosts hundreds of new restaurants, has a huge LGBT community, a bustling night life, thriving music scene and is overall an awesome conglomeration of vibrant culture. Ever since I stepped foot in Brighton I realized this seaside town was unlike any of the ones I’d ever visited before. The beach is an undeniable part of who I am ever since I can remember, though the ones I’m used to are a lot warmer and sandier. Although Brighton is nothing like my esteemed beaches in San Diego, I fell in love just as fast with its atmosphere, its aura and its group of young, diverse people. Anyone that has visited Brighton before can attest to the distinct, sort of historically-loaded alternative vibes that characterize the tone of the place. It’s hard to pin point, or express with words but it is refreshing and renewing, and at least for me, influential. Some may say I might have taken the cultural influences a little bit too far during my last visit.

Something about the graffiti on the walls, the independent record stores, indie coffee shops and hipster young waiters and waitresses was alluding to the fact that I had to, just had to, semi-permanently modify an aspect of my face. The cool outlandish vibes of Brighton set me on edge for a few hours, long enough to get me inspired, and to drive me very far out of my comfort zone.

After a very satisfying Indian meal and several hours spent at a coffee shop, my friend and I had the ingenious idea of getting me a nose piercing. We casually deduced that Brighton was probably a very cool place to get one—perhaps even more appealing because of the miles away it was from my parents? Possibly. The waitress at the Indian restaurant was sporting a rather noticeable collection of face piercings that drew my attention, and when I asked about it she responded enthusiastically “You should do it!” She directed us to the unfortunately named, but renowned piercing shop called “Punktured.”

Only a few blocks down from the restaurant we found the place. Punktured was hard to miss, distinguished by a hot pink exterior with intimidating overarching letters that spelled out the purposefully grammatically incorrect word. The inside was even more unsettling, the walls were lined up with glass cases full of all types of body jewelry imaginable, some that I couldn’t even guess what part of the body they were meant for. The people there looked substantially more badass than anything in my league but I decided to go in with my head held high and confidently request for someone to pierce my face. After I booked an appointment and waited out the hours nervously, it was finally time to get “punktured.”

I can honestly say it was the most excruciatingly painful experience of my life—it helped to have my loyal instigator and friend (shoutout to Kendra!) taking pictures of my tearful eyes, handing me tissues and holding my hand, but the experience was nevertheless dreadful. I would genuinely not recommend it to anyone, unless you were sure you really, really wanted it. But when I looked in the mirror I loved it. It was a completely foreign object that my body was actively rejecting, but hey I’d done it, and I was proud. At last, pierced I walked out of the shop; they even gave me a punch card in case I wanted to go back and get more piercings (the fifth one is free!)

From then on, Brighton will always signify an exciting place of risk and change for me, a beach where anyone can experiment and embrace "differentness." There will always be a fun story to go along with a postcard of an instance where youth and the unpredictability and naïve impulsiveness of it all truly flourished.

As you can probably guess my mother completely hated and rejected the whole thing (after I'd done it) and pleaded me to take it off. I figured I was abroad for a few more months, and I could remove it at any time and have my nose go back to normal. I kept it in for a while until I eventually took it off. I don't know what it is about society that naturally finds the image of piercings and tattoos repulsive and unprofessional. I decided to take it off not because I disliked it or because my mother wanted me to, but because prospective employers would treat me differently because of it. I understand that tattoos and piercings are both unnatural alterations of the body, but they are nevertheless forms of expression. A company or a group of people shouldn't be concerned with an individual's decision to mark of perforate their bodies as they wish. It is not a mark of character or ability. It's even a highly accepted cultural and religious practice in some regions.

I would like to know what you guys think about tattoos and piercings-- is it becoming a form of discriminating against employees? Most of all I hoped you enjoyed this little personal story! It was definitely fun for me to write and reflect on :)

BTW.. what I mean by the experience being dreadful, is fully due to my insanely low pain tolerance--not because of the facilities or staff of Punktured, Actually, everyone there was lovely and extremely professional! If anyone was completely set on getting a piercing I would refer them to that place without a doubt.

Misogyny in Modernity: Female Body Censorship on Instagram

1:22 PM

Hello! I've been meaning to write about female censorship online for a long time—I’ve wanted to start a blog for even longer—so I decided to do both today.

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Tiggered by an essay I read by Petra Collins (ultimate feminist//personal hero) [http://www.petracollins.com/?page_id=222] and the perfect assignment from my professor Dr. Hopf I decided to do some research on Instagram's policies and address how the company is deleting constitutionally protected speech/images from the app and further denting society's long withheld taboo and preconceptions on the female body.

Feel free to read my essay below and leave comments (I'm by no means an expert on any of these topics, so don't be too harsh).

Misogyny in Modernity: Female Body Censorship on Instagram

Instagram—a mobile phone app that has reached over 300 million users (Constine)—has been the social media locus for artists and photographers ever since its launch in 2010, as it has fostered different kinds of expression and has allowed for people to interact and start conversations. In the new age of digital art, there is an ongoing shift from private to public, where content creators can extend their work to reach many more people than was ever possible before. By opening the sphere, new ideas and ways of thinking have sprouted in these social media websites, which have allowed for new topics to be discussed within a mainstream audience. Several recent incidents involving Instagram’s “terms of service” however, have caused controversy on the media platform and has forced some of these talented artists to question whether Instagram is the diversifying, free speech arena that it was esteemed to be, or if it is a misogynistic, censorship-driven network marked by strict regulations and unreasonable banning of images.

Using the app and its social capabilities, feminist artists like Rupi Kaur, Petra Collins, Marilyn Minter and countless others, have challenged conventions and rejected the media’s portrayals of idealized femininity by exploring the female body and portraying it in its natural state. However, Instagram has declared their art as obscene, inappropriate and, as Collins phrased it: not meeting “society’s standard of femininity” (Collins) and has banned their pictures on multiple occasions. Rupi Kaur, a photographer, artist and poet, uploaded a picture of herself on Instagram in March 2015. Pictured was Kaur dressed in sweat pants and a t-shirt curled up in her bed, with a blood stain seeping through her pants and onto the mattress. The picture did nothing else aside from minimally depict a normal accident that occurs to women during the natural cycle of menstruation. Instagram banned the image twice, which spurred controversy around the web. Kaur’s response went viral as she pointed out the inconsistencies of Instagram’s policies, writing “I will not apologize for not feeding the ego and pride of a misogynist society that will have my body in underwear but not be okay with a small leak” (Kaur).

Comments and responses to this case have polarized into two different ways of thinking, some comments praise Kaur’s actions, and other classify it as “gross” or “disturbing.” Collins had a similar response to her picture uploaded to Instagram, a photo of her pubic hair emerging from the waistband of her bikini bottoms. Instagram also banned the image, and Collins published a compelling account on how censorship is desensitizing society and creating an impossible standard for women who want to showcase themselves on the public sphere. Collin’s wrote “The deletion of my account felt like a physical act, like the public coming at me with a razor, sticking their finger down my throat, forcing me to cover up, forcing me to succumb to societies image of beauty. That these very real pressures we face everyday can turn into literal censorship” (Collins). Collins comments show that virtual threats and abuses can feel real and tangible to women who are receiving them, it can cause them to feel forced to act a certain way and be seen as miniscule and unimportant. Situations like these lead us to question, who is right? Does Instagram have the right to ban certain content and allow only what it deems acceptable? Or are these artists protected by the first amendment? The answer to both questions is yes, the real debate is figuring out where to compromise.

In the broadening world of the Internet, where the restrictions are almost non-existent and the access is unlimited, who is responsible for writing the rules? Online censorship is a new field of study in law, and policy makers are still debating what the correct course of action is. Ultimately, private companies that run these websites dictate what gets communicated in the cyber world and as much as they proclaim free speech, they are prone to censor a vast range of constitutionally protected speech. Websites like Facebook and Instagram have the first amendment right to censor whatever they like to tailor their content to fit their image because they are not considered common carriers and thus cannot be prohibited, legally, to employ a content-based terms of service (Heins). Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act or CDA of 1996, protects all internet users who spread information not of their own from liability for defamation, invasion of privacy, and practically everything else except infringement on intellectual property (Section 230). This means that Instagram does not have to censor anything; in fact, section 230 discourages private industry censorship (Heins) in order for free speech to prevail on the Internet. However, it does not prohibit it, and it is in this clause that companies have created their vague and sometimes discriminative, “terms of service.”

For example, taking a closer look at Instagram’s “Community Guidelines” there is a distinct vagueness and subjectivity that characterizes the short posting. The “short version” simply states: “1. Post your own photos and videos. 2. Keep your clothes on. 3. Be respectful. 4. Don’t spam. 5. HAVE FUN!” (Instagram)[1]. The second point is the one that has kept feminist artists and bloggers dissatisfied, simply because it is phrased with a sense of superiority and disgust. No one phrased it better than Magdalena Olszanowski in her essay “Feminist Self-Imaging and Instagram” where she wrote, “Embedded with moral superiority, the phrase is used as a dismissal of nudity with the assumption that either you are a person who should keep clothes on or that showing your body is intolerable and inappropriate in whatever context the phrase is uttered” (Olszanowski). We should consider what the consequences of banning images of the female body are, and how these private corporations are defining for us what the difference between appropriate and inappropriate should be.

Not only is the banning of images like Collin’s and Kaur’s a case of free-speech infringement, it is also a huge step back on the social conversation around female sexuality. Throughout history the female body has been stigmatized and objectified, and feminists artists like Collins and Kaur have been trying to reinvent the way we think and talk about women’s anatomy. The expectations of Instagram’s policy are highly subjective. First of all what is considered as mature content? Instagram’s rating on the App Store is 13+ (Instagram), and they require for everything that is posted to be appropriate to people as young as thirteen. Is menstruation something we don’t talk about to teenage girls? What about natural changes to young women’s bodies like pubic hair, are 13 year old girls not entitled to know about them? Instagram is inadvertently shaming natural cycles of women’s bodies. If a young girl knows she isn’t allowed to post about menstruation, what will make her think it is appropriate to talk about it in real life? Collin’s previously mentioned point of online censorship becoming censorship in our everyday lives is a clear threat here. The power that Instagram has to suppress nude images, or images that depict the realities of the female body can have a detrimental effect on conversations about visual art, sex education and sexual politics—it can stimulate the centuries old taboo, or go as far as halt the discussion of these topics online completely.

The message these images are striving to convey and the response they try to achieve is simply the recognition of female anatomy as something natural and positive, they want people to learn from these images and relate to them, not cringe at the sight of them. It is an effort to counterbalance the dominant pictures of idealized—and sometimes impossible— versions of naked women on the media with real and genuine depictions. Rhiannon Schneiderman, a feminist artist who considers herself an advocate of “period-themed images” defended the case by saying “These women, like Rupi Kaur, are recognizing that cycle [menstruation] and how important it is and how powerful they are for experiencing it” (Schneiderman qt in Frank). Instagram’s intent for keeping the app “clean” is at the expense of advancement in the way the mainstream media thinks about and depicts women. Although Instagram allowing pictures like Collin’s and Kaur’s wouldn’t fix every feminist problem in the world, it is definitely a step in the right direction.

Thinking about censorship, and people or companies who create and enforce it, brings us to question what the motives are for the censorship, who exactly they are trying to protect and what contexts they are designing these polices around. There are no explicit answers to questions like these, however it is beneficial to turn to the ideologies that are deeply engrained in our society and see if laws of censorship are mirroring them. Collin’s, in her essay response to Instagram’s banning of her image, analyzes the types of messages about women that are being shot at us from all different types of platforms. Some of the examples she makes are pop and rap songs on the radio that sexualize women and treat them as prices or things that can be taken without consent; she refers to female rape victims who often are harassed and bullied into thinking their rape was their fault or could have been prevented; she talks about how even powerful political women are scrutinized by their physical appearance and reduced to objects who are solely made to be looked at (Collins); these are all occurrences that are regrettably not uncommon in our society. Although Collin’s statements are true, they are by no means reflective of every single individual in a society, and they do not denote that females are the only ones who are victimized. It is necessary to make clear that it is acknowledged that not everyone in a society degrades women, and that males are also widely discriminated—however, for the purpose of the message that is being conveyed, these statements only refer to women. Like Collin’s suggests, censorship is mirroring the long withheld rhetoric that societies have been regurgitating: females are inferior, they have designated intents and purposes, their bodies have to be shaped in a way that is appealing because they are first and foremost sexual beings, and so on. However, not only is Instagram mirroring this sentiment, it is encouraging it and extending it even further by implementing their policy and banning the harmless art that is trying to oppose prejudice.

Despite the draconian policies of Instagram, women artists continue to post and hold accounts on it. Why invest their time and give away their art on a platform that isn’t welcoming of them? Olszanowski suggested that “Maybe part of the appeal of Instagram and all its concomitant censorship policies is that these women are co-constructing their own space where there isn’t space for them” (Olszanowski). Another suggestion made by Audrey Wollen was to think of Instagram’s censorship as a positive thing. She wrote “Instagram is an inherently normalizing, policing force and our exclusion from that is a sign that the female body still has the ability to horrify, to disrupt... That is something to revel in, rather than resist” (Wollen qt in Frank). First and foremost what the work of these artists is trying to achieve is to articulate the conversation of female sexuality publicly, in a mainstream sphere that can reach a lot of people especially the impressionable youth of the future generations. Instagram is the perfect place for that, it is highly personal and interactive as well being among the most popular apps that form a huge part of contemporary culture. Instagram might as well be a “common carrier” (a term used by the CDA to define big influential platforms like newspaper or television), because it reaches hundreds of millions of people and most definitely influences a lot of modern thought. Feminist artists will not give up the opportunity to revolutionize a modern sphere where the exact audience they appeal to is interacting on a daily basis. Some people may think that Instagram should do whatever they want with their content because they are a private company, however the reality is that they host millions of users, which gives them a moral and ethical responsibility to be as transparent as they can as well as be equal and fair to the content that is allowed to be posted.

Finally, as much as Instagram’s policies are incoherent and are deferring the process of de-stigmatizing the female body, this problem is primarily and originally a societal one. Although there is some progress that has been made in the recent decades, our society still has to catch up and get over thousands of years of female repression. While this will take a long time to resolve, there are things that can be done to speed up the process, especially in social media. A proposition that can be made to compromise the feminist artist’s right to free-speech and Instagram’s “Community Guidelines,” is to have filters available on request instead of imposed. These could be done in different ways: by specifying age on the user’s profile and allowing content on their feed that is “appropriate,” or by allowing a user to only see the image after having given him or her a disclaimer about the type of material that it could contain. Any of these suggestions could work better than simply deleting artists’ works or accounts from the platform and completely disregarding this important wave of thought that needs to permeate our young members of society’s lives and minds in order for some significant change to happen. Meanwhile, feminist artists will continue to captivate critics and supporters alike with powerful artistic manifestations, revolutionizing society’s institutionalized misogyny and achieving ultimate justice for women everywhere.

Works Cited

Collins, Petra. "Censorship and the Female Body." Petra Collins. STUDIO Gallery, 2013. Web.

28 Apr. 2015.

Constine, Josh. "Instagram Hits 300 Million Monthly Users To Surpass Twitter, Keeps It Real

With Verified Badges." TechCrunch. AOL Inc., 10 Dec. 2014. Web. 28 Apr. 2015.

Frank, Priscilla. "15 Feminist Artists Respond To The Censorship Of Women's Bodies

Online." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 13 Apr. 2015. Web. 28 Apr.

2015.

Heins, Marjorie. "The Brave New World of Social Media Censorship." Harvard Law Review

Forum. Hardvard Law Review, 20 June 2014. Web. 28 Apr. 2015.

"Instagram Help Center." Community Guidelines. Instagram, n.d. Web. 28 Apr. 2015.

Kaur, Rupi. "Rupi Kaur on Instagram:." Instagram. Instagram, 28 Mar. 2015. Web. 28 Apr.

2015.

Olszanowski, Magdalena. "Feminist Self-Imaging and Instagram: Tactics of Circumventing

Sensorship." Visual Communications Quarterly. Routledge, 22 July 2014. Web.

"Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act." Electronic Frontier Foundation. Electronic

Frontier Foundation, n.d. Web. 28 Apr. 2015.

[1] Instagram has recently changed the literature of the company’s Community guidelines. The second point has been modified and now reads “don’t post nudity.”

An Introduction

1:21 PM

Maritza Rico

Blog Archive

Is there such a thing as a 'broke' New Yorker? (Some thoughts)

Sweating and Reflecting in one of London’s Finest Parks

Brighton, the land of impulsive decisions?

Misogyny in Modernity: Female Body Censorship on Instagram

An Introduction

Hey there!

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