Names and Individuals in Society

My first name, Vanessa, does not have a deep significance for me as an individual.  I do not dislike it; I enjoy it because it is not extremely common and does not start with an “O” like my sister’s name (that is something cliche and ridiculous that some parents choose to do with twins in an attempt to be cute).  I do not believe that my name defines me in some deep way, but I do find it interesting that the name Vanessa means butterfly (the genus name of numerous butterflies is Vanessa) and I am coincidentally fascinated by nature.  Another interesting connection with my name is that in my favorite Broadway musical, Wicked, the protagonist's sister’s name is “Nessa” which is very similar to my own name.  These connections are intriguing, but they do not add a profound personal significance to my name.

           I did have an experience of profound personal significance this past summer at Governor’s School. While there, my fellow students and I were required to attend an “Area Three” class.  Area 3 was a class concerned with individuals and society, and during one of the first Area 3 classes every student was assigned a “Creativity Project.”  The Creativity Project assignment was simple--create something that shows who you are.  Five days later, we were going to present our creations to the class.  My project was simple-looking, but time-intensive because it required a level of self-reflection that I had never engaged in before that point.  I drew various objects on a piece of copy paper, each of them representing a facet of myself, and I presented it to my class in detail.  I described that the blue and brown blue jay feather that I had drawn in the middle showed how I felt like two people--shy and cautious at some points  while outgoing and rash at other moments.  On the right side of the paper was a teardrop falling on the world, representing my empathy for other people’s struggles and frustration about my inability to act and help those people.  Near the top was a perfect square with a chip in it, representing my impossible perfectionist tendencies.  In the bottom left-hand corner was a bird cage trapping a music note and a heart inside, symbolizing how my fear of not expressing my emotions perfectly hinders me from writing poetry like I used to.  While creating these drawings I learned more about myself than I ever had in the past, and then I laid it out, raw and bare, in front of these people I barely knew.  They applauded and accepted me--the me that was contradictory and confused and a perfectionist and emotional and unsure and simply me.  Before that moment, I had never felt more like myself, or more connected to people whom I had just met.  

          Within the Governor’s School society, I allowed myself to show my soul to strangers, and this in turn allowed me to become more open to the rest of the world.  This is especially difficult in high school, because in school there seems to be an unspoken rule that when you are talking to your friends at lunch you complain about school and homework and gossip about insignificant things.  If someone says something racist that is supposed to be funny you laugh.  If a friend asks you a question you answer the way you should, you do not necessarily answer with your actual opinion.  After creating and presenting my Creativity Project I try not to socialize like I have in the past.  I attempt to be the open form of myself that I found in that classroom--I try to talk about significant subjects with my friends, not encourage things that I find to be immoral, and answer questions with sincerity.  But it is difficult.  I have gotten used to acting; acting how I am expected to in the judgmental social setting of school.  At least I now have recognized that I have been pretending and can begin to change that.

Blog Post 1: The "Others"

http://photos.wingyounghuie.com/p709406511/e770c11cf

Wing Young Huie’s untitled photograph within the “We are the Others” album was published between 2012-2013.  It focuses on a young white woman and black man standing close to each other in the very center foreground of the photograph; the man on the right and the woman on the left.  Both are likely in their late teens or early twenties.  The man is wearing a gold chain necklace, a blue t-shirt with a black design partly covered by a short-sleeved denim blue shirt buttoned halfway down his chest, a bag strapped across his chest, baggy dark gray sweatpants that sag slightly, and gray Adidas with white stripes.  He is standing straight with his hands in his pockets, his stance relatively wide and his body positioned toward the camera.  Half of his face is shadowed, and his face is tilted slightly up while he looks at something in the distance to the right of the camera.  His forehead is slightly creased and he is not smiling, making him appear sad and longing.  The woman is wearing a large, baggy, dark gray hoodie over a black shirt; black cargo pants, and black Adidas with white stripes.  Her body is angled toward the man beside her, and her weight is shifted away from the camera onto her right leg; her left leg is slightly bent.  She is looking down at the ground with an unsmiling face partially in fading sunlight and mostly in shadow; she looks sad and a bit self-conscious.  The woman is smoothing her long black hair behind her right ear; her bent right elbow gently touching the man’s left arm.  Their closeness and the way that her body is angled toward the man while her elbow touches his arm indicates that they are a couple.  They are standing on dark gray, cracked asphalt under a blue sky filled with swaths of white clouds.  Behind the asphalt is a stretch of long, dead, brown grass and weeds that partially obscure the white, flat-roofed building in the left of the background. In the right part of the background is a two-story white house with a neatly trimmed cedar tree, which implies that the house is part of a wealthy neighborhood that desires a well-kept aesthetic appearance.  The distance between the two people and the neighborhood and the unkemptness of the area in which they are standing implies that they are in the poor outskirts of a town.  This could symbolize that they are impoverished because they are standing far away from a rich area, and that they are outcasts of society because they are physically apart from civilization.  The reason that they are outcasts could be because they are an interracial couple, something that is relatively uncommon and that is not accepted by all.   They are therefore estranged from the aristocracy and the “normal;” the ones who have contempt for poor people and believe that acceptable relationships are ones of the same race.  

Young Wing Huie in this untitled photograph and Margaret Atwood in The Handmaid’s Tale present the concept of “othering” in similar ways through the use of color and structure.  In both, color is vital in conveying the “others.”  In The Handmaid’s Tale, colors are used to represent castes; for example, Wives wear blue, Commanders wear black, Handmaids wear red, etc.  Each of these castes is explicitly separated by their different colors, and people of the higher castes treat the people below them as “others” by displaying their power over and contempt of them in various ways.  In the photograph, racial context can be used to infer that the two young people are “others” because of the physical colors of their skin.  Furthermore, the intense colors of the two people in the foreground--white and black skin, a bright blue shirt, dark clothing and hair against pale skin--contrasts with the muted wash of tan and white behind them.  This is similar to the sharp contrast of the castes’ differing colors in Atwood’s novel; the different colors emphasize the radically different people.  The structure of both texts also aids in the depiction of “others.”  In The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood breaks Offred’s narration into Night sections and sections that occur during the day.  Offred acts and thinks, for the most part, as an obedient Handmaid should during the day: “I compose myself...What I must present is a made thing, not something born” (Atwood 86).  Offred understands that in the Gilead she is valued as an item with the purpose of having babies, therefore she acts like an indifferent item during the daytime.  In contrast, she is rebellious at night; for example, she says, “The night is mine, my own time, to do with as I will…” (Atwood 49).  Offred implicitly states that she is human in this thought by using the possessive word “mine”--she is not the item that is possessed, she is the human who controls the item.  This is contrary to the Gilead’s ideal that Handmaids are sexual objects.  Ultimately, the distinction between what Offred is supposed to be and how she truly feels results in the understanding that she is radically different from how she should be--she is not like the Handmaids that the Gilead desires and is therefore an “other.”  In the photograph, structure leads to the recognition that the man and woman are outcasts.  They are literally separated from society, implying that they are too unusual to be accepted into it.  The structures of the two texts, although different, convey the same message of “otherness” within society.

Citation

Atwood, Margaret.  The Handmaid’s Tale. New York: Ballantine Books, 1985.  Print.