issue 25
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Carlin Praytor CREATIVE DIRECTORS Sarah Kersting Enrique Lopez Anissa Rashid Sofia Viglucci EDITORIAL DIRECTORS Charlotte Muth Josh Perkins ART DIRECTOR Sophia Swedback BUSINESS DIRECTOR Belinda Yan EVENTS DIRECTOR Kai Henderson LAYOUT DIRECTOR Cindy Feng MARKETING DIRECTOR Jairo Lima WEB DIRECTOR Diana Tu CONTACT baremagazine.org facebook.com/baremagazine @baremagazine ASUC SPONSORED SPECIAL THANKS TO Mars Mercantile Indigo Vintage Ohmega Salvage
Alan Nguyen Alex Cuddy Ally Zhu Angie Liao Ariana Dideban Ashley Zhang Camille El Ghaoui Caroline Jones Chantal Herrera Cheyenne Tex Claire Winthrop Colette Cosyn Cristal Trujillo Dalton Do Danya Karch Diego Palacios Emily Hom Ezra Alanis Francesca Hodges Genesis Eileen Juarez Genevieve Kirsch Grace Fujii Grace Schimmel Graciella Moceri Gustavo Delgado Isabel Cardenas Andrade Isabel Eagles Jacqueline Wlodarczyk Jacquelyn Greenberg Jah’rel Moyenda Katherine Sheng Kendall Halliburton Lindsey Chung Logan Flores Mai Suarez-Thai Manya Naranzog t Megan Hansen Micaela Stanley Mihai Cipleu Neha Shah Nicole Ship Noel Jones Preya Gill R.J. McIntyre Raina Johnson Renee Fournell Río Vargas Saffron Sener Sam Agoncillo Sunny Lee Simona Zangari Sophie Doucet Tessa Stapp Yasmeen Elkuwaiz Yasmine Rayyis Zahira Chaudhry Zara Saif Zennia Dillon
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speaking tongues
rebuild unpacking remix hey, zines aren’t for you! redirect tag yourself replace material girl
EXECS
Jairo, Cindy, Diana, Sophia, Charlotte, Josh, Sarah Enrique, Belinda, Carlin, Kai, Sofia, Anissa
Photographed by Innovative Design (Ivy Nguyen, Vivian Tiet, Sierra Margolis)
EDITOR’S NOTE Pink mesh over delicate gold—an earring. Hint of blue eyeshadow. Hair. Does this tease you? In featuring a detail shot as its cover image, our 25th issue of BARE begins with a tease: separate components of a cohesive scene, each eliciting a double-take without giving too much away. Unconventionally, issue 25 withdraws from a central theme and, instead, examines process. We’ve extracted from our environment, cutting and pasting the parts we find in order to form textures, layers, and dimensions that are entirely novel and our own. Our photoshoots break down the elements of archetypal fashion photography, juxtaposing that which is artificial and that which is real, that which is two-dimensional and that which is three-dimensional, that which is far away and that which is so close you can almost touch it. “Rebuild” situates highly styled models in an industrial scene, contrasting costume with location; “Remix” crumples, scribbles over, and cuts up original images to form new ones; “Redirect” focuses on
angles and the role of vantage points in generating narrative; “Replace” plays with dimensionality, creating a place within a place and adorning real with fake—or vice versa. The process of deconstruction and reassemblage is embodied in our writers’ reflections on language and words themselves, their articles of clothing, medlies of paper and print, social constructions of the self, and the inanimate belongings that compose our animate homes. Each editorial indicates that small choices are intentional ones and that each individual piece of a narrative is equally integral to its whole. If the devil really is in the details, then our staff’s unmatched degree of intentionality in the production of this issue is entirely justified. #25 examines the bits-and-pieces of our everyday and rearranges them. Revises. Reorients. Reimagines. If you’re anything like me, these words might blur together to become one and, perhaps, this is exactly the point of BARE’s 25th print iteration. Distinct in strategy but consistent in intent, each one resting on a common denominator. “Re-”: once again, anew.
Illustrated by Gustavo Delgado
SPEAKING TONGUES There is no such thing as a synonym. Every word has a specific implication, history, and texture. We think of texture as tactile—a plush velvety robe, a sleek and taut leather pant, or a coarse boar pelt. These physical sensations exist in a world beyond what you can see and feel. Listen to yourself saying ‘plush,’ ‘sleek,’ or ‘coarse.’ Pay attention to the position of your tongue and the protrusion of your lips. Where can you feel your tongue caress the roof of your mouth? This is not onomatopoeia. There is no comical “Bang!” “Crash!” That is for words that sound like what they are describing. But what about words that feel like what they mean?
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The sound of the word mirrors its natural process. You can feel it, can’t you?
Writhing. Moist. Freeze. Chop. I feel them in my body in a way that transcends the physical. These are fourth-dimensional tactile sensations and I want to surround our three-dimensional world in their quiet power. I want to use them with great care and intention. They are ideophones—onomatopoeia’s lesser-known, more elegant, and better-read linguistic sister—sound-symbolism at its very finest. Ideophones are words that evoke an idea through sound. These are often vivid impressions of certain sensations or perceptions, such as sound, movement, color, shape, or action. ‘Moist’ is one that often gets to me. I know that I am not alone. The word feels damp—like it will never dry and will keep accumulating bacteria until mold, rot, and moss transform its texture. ‘Raindrop’ is also remarkably apt. You have the free-falling ‘rain’ which ends in a percussive ‘drop.’ With ‘freeze,’ you have the gradual slow fall of a ‘freeee’ motion that gently halts in a ‘zzze.’ The sound of the word mirrors its natural process. You can feel it, can’t you?
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When this extends to larger units of meaning, moving beyond single words, language can seem almost too perfect. This startling perfection can make one question if anything in this world is arbitrary and rethink the level of free will one often convinces themselves they hold. Take, ‘separate but equal.’ The syllabic partitions in the word, ‘sep-a-rate’, create a disunion that perfectly captures its intention. But ‘equal?’ The single flowing vowel sound unit after the ‘q’ that is rounded off by the soft consonant sound of the ‘l’ is wonderfully opposite in both sound and meaning. The textural sound of the word captures the meaning. Language is an art form and sound paints the picture. Sounds have both a place and manner of articulation. This place can range from your lips to the roof of your mouth and your larynx. It is defined by where the sound stems from and where your tongue is placed. The manner is determined by how much air is or is not let out, what air passage you use, if there is vibration, and how long you can hold the sound for. With this combination of variables, one can produce any and all possibly articulated human sounds. These are the materials with which one can create linguistic texture. Writhing. Moist. Freeze. Chop. Can you feel them now? Language is significant. Language is also personal. To me, it is the means by which I can trace my life. Though English has grown to become the language I am most comfortable speaking in, my first language was Russian. A mark of a former-Soviet ethnic background and a Russian place of birth. But my life experience was migratory. When I lived in Turkey and attended a local Turkish preschool, I spoke near-fluent Turkish. Growing up largely in China, I also speak comfortably in Mandarin. As I started to live independently from my family and choose my own path, I started to learn Georgian and Arabic—my lost mother-tongues as someone of Georgian and Palestinian descent. Each major phase of my experience is punctuated, very literally, by a whole linguistic system of describing and thinking about the world around me. Yet, there remains universality. My first word was “mama.” This is Russian, English, Chinese, Georgian, and Arabic. Chances are, you were also multilingual by the time of your first outward expression of a coherent unit of spoken meaning. There seems to be, then, something intrinsically feminine and maternal about this sound—a near linguistic universal. Almost every language known to humankind boasts a recognizable form of it. Is that sound, ’mama,’ representative of the texture of motherhood? Gentle strength and unconditional love—is this what it sounds like? A repeated voiced bilabial ‘m’ followed by an open vowel? Is this what you feel when you say that word?
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There are linguistic universals and distinctive truths, free will and predetermined fate, and individual existence and common experience.
I am always curious about what people close to me hear and feel when I speak in a tongue that is unfamiliar to them. I have heard that Russian makes me sound softer and Georgian, harsher. I have wondered if what they were interpreting as a textural characteristic of the language was actually a difference in linguistic structure, as they often assume, or my cultural code-switching, acting, and personal conditioning. Do I feel I have to speak with more expression of vigor and hard expressiveness in Georgian because I am subconsciously mirroring the fierce energy of my Georgian family? Do I feel I need to craft and perform a constant linguistic texture in order to be an authentic speaker? I have no answers. Language is both highly predictable and truly arbitrary. There are linguistic universals and distinctive truths, free will and predetermined fate, and individual existence and common experience. What I am trying to convey—the only message I can leave in good faith—is that texture can be more than a tactile sensation. You can feel and create it with sound. Words, like the people who use them, have both baggage and a power that transcends the auditory plane. They have palpable consequences and demand responsibility. Be selective with your language. Be intentional with the textures with which you craft and convey your experience. ■
YASMINE RAYYIS baremagazine.org • issue 25 • 9
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Photographer : Enrique Lopez Production: Lindsey Chung, Camille El Ghaoui, Graciella Moceri, Zara Saif, Nicole Ship, Sophia Swedback, Simona Zangari Location: Ohmega Salvage Models: Sophanit Getahoun, Loella Disto, Matisse Leathers
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Matisse wears earrings stylist’s own, dress Mars Vintage, shoes model’s own
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Loella wears earrings stylist’s own, blouse, corset Mars Vintage, belt, pants stylist’s own. Sophanit wears earrings stylist’s own, coat, dress Mars Vintage, shoes stylist’s own
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UNPACKING
Illustrated by Graciella Moceri
4
:45 AM. Saturday. Bus departs in 45 minutes. My suitcase is empty. My stress laugh kicks in. My eyes are half shut with crust. My body is numb and flailing around my room. I throw the entirety of my closet on my bed and try to sift. I think of the clothes I have back home and reconcile with the thought that I might have to wear my old high school sweatshirts all of spring break. I try to account for the Southern California sun I have nearly forgotten in Berkeley. Three pairs of shorts get tossed in my suitcase. I throw in the only clean button-up shirt I have in case I need to go somewhere fancy, then a pair of swim trunks I just bought for those projected pool days. 4:50 AM. I stop caring and just let my hands grab for clothes. I zip up my suitcase then unzip it because I realize I didn’t pack any underwear. 5:05 AM. I am praying my Uber driver is just
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as delusional as I am this early in the morning and runs some red lights. I am clutching my iPhone, tracking my route. I will be there a minute after departure, but it’s a bus. It won’t be on time, right? 5:28 AM. At this point my Uber driver and I have the same deranged look in our eyes, both of us heated and anxious to make it on time. 5:30 AM! In my mind we “Tokyo-drift” into the West Oakland BART Station and I launch out of that Toyota Prius like it was on fire. I tighten the straps on my backpack, get my suitcase and I stress laugh as I run. I hear my Uber driver yell, “Good Luck!” It’s all or nothing now. I am feeling everything and nothing at once. I am crying at the intersection of 7th and Center Street. My body is beginning to realize that I didn’t sleep long enough to be sprinting. The crisp air coupled with the few new strands of morning light make the morning feel bleak. I accept defeat and Uber back home. I call my parents who are not too happy with my “choices” and book another bus ticket for later that day at a premium. Ka-ching. The one upside is that at least I will get to pack better.
I plop on the floor and slowly unzip my suitcase. I start taking things out and become thankful that I missed that bus. I look through the contents that sleep-deprived, stressed-out, lastminute Ezra picked out, and it’s not cute. The style I thought I had developed and grown into over the past school year was missing. Only after I turned to the clothes that I planned to leave behind, I began to see what I was missing. It wasn’t a cute shirt or jeans: I had left behind the clothes that identified my queerness. I had left behind Me to make room for my old hetero persona. I look over the messy spread on my bed as I try to discern how I had edited myself. The first sign that led to my conclusion was a messy pile of “women’s t-shirts” I bought over winter break. It was a few days before New Year’s and my mom and I were getting in on after-Christmas sales, as we’ve done for years. It had been a long time since we renewed our commitment to the red-tag-savings-alliance, so I was excited. After indulging in family gossip during the ride, we set out on our mission for deals. “Men’s” section after “men’s” section turned up basic, muted assortments of boring clothes. The last store we entered was covered in “sale” signs beckoning me to spend. I followed them to a 50% off t-shirt section. Jackpot. The shirts were cute and fit my 5’6’’ frame just right. I went back to show my mom so we could buy them. However, to my surprise, the first thing out of her mouth was, “Those are for girls.” I played it off as a joke and got in line. “I’m not gonna buy that for you, Mijo. Sorry.” It wasn’t a joke, but I stayed in line. I stepped up to the cashier alone, paid for them, and we left the mall. She resumed the family stories with blissful ignorance, while I resumed the character I had created long ago—the character that protected me and disguised itself in “men’s” section clothes. Careful not to wake up my roommate again, I walk over to the clothes still left hanging in my tiny, shared closet. Among these were a few flashy jackets and sweaters I had acquired in thrift stores and free piles. My favorite jacket stuck out of the tightly pressed articles. It looked like it belonged on a stage with its broad shoulders, bold lines, and sparkly accents. I considered it when I first packed but decided against it. Seeing it hanging there, I realized that it was the very details that made it stand out that scared me into leaving it behind. In my hometown, my uniform consisted of Hollister t-shirts and straight-leg Levi’s. It was less a style than a camouflage. I wanted to blend in and carve away the “different” to shape myself into something recognizable and understandable. It wasn’t until my senior year of high school, emboldened by
Seeing it hanging there, I realized that it was the very details that made it stand out that scared me into leaving it behind.
the idea that I would live hundreds of miles away, that I decided to push out into the limelight. I bought a pair of purple, straight leg jeans (baby steps) and I did something I knew would expose me as a queer: I rolled them up past my ankle and coupled them with a baggy sweater. The audacity! My “bold” choice got no reaction, but I still felt uncomfortable. I no longer had my clothes to make me into “one of the guys.” I felt like a rainbow buoy in a sea of guys all wearing cargo shorts, black t-shirts and vans. I decide to start packing again and discovered my most unforgivable crime: the abandonment of all my booty shorts. I had been in Berkeley for some time now and the Berkeley hills, who I once considered my enemy, had sculpted my ass into peach emoji greatness. I deserved to fill the rear side of my small, black American Apparel booty shorts. They might as well have been rainbow-colored Andrew Christian 80s running shorts, they looked so gay. It was clear why I hadn’t brought those. Without saying a word, or even moving, anyone could immediately assume— in this case correctly—that I’m not like other boys. That half yard of fabric around my “assets” had the potential to expose who I am to everyone who looked. The sun beamed through my windows and I began to see all the memories each piece of fabric helped create. Some shielded me from rain, others came clubbing with my fake I.D. for the first time, but all of them helped me curate who I wanted to be in that moment. I finish packing, but before closing the suitcase, I slip in a pair of very short shorts. ■
EZRA ALANIS
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Photographer: Lalyn Yu Production and Collage: Sam Agoncillo, Kendall Halliburton, Noel Jones, Mai Suarez-Thai, Río Vargas. Models: Rudy Sanchez and Nyah Tisdell
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Nyah wears shirt, pants stylist’s own.
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Rudy wears shirt model’s own, pants stylist’s own
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HEY, ZiNES AREN’T FOR YOU! M
agazines, books and newspapers were cut to shreds. Our markers were drained. Our scissors were dulled. Fifteen minutes were spent just sweeping up the tiny scraps of paper that had floated to the ground, discarded. It was a beautiful, beautiful mess. In January, the Berkeley Art Museum had an in-house reception for students to welcome new exhibitions. As Zine Chair for the student committee, I helped organize a concurrent zine workshop. We took over the art lab, lining tables with any printed material we could collect. Bins of glue and markers were scattered in between taped-down sheets explaining how to make a one-page folded zine. A matching instructional video we created was projected on the wall. Students flowed through the workshop for its two-hour duration. Some sat and worked for the full time, others for just a bit as they experienced the openness of the activity and the medium. In either case, each person at the workshop walked away with their own individual creation, specific in its meaning to them. What happened during those two hours, and what students took away represented the very essence of what zines are, and what they are about. Zines are independently created small-circulation publications. They’re meant to be cheap and accessible, produced by an individual artist or a small printing house. They’ve operated as an underground mode of communication and expression since the early 20th century (though some contend that the first were revolutionary pamphlets like Martin Luther’s 95 Theses or Thomas Paine’s Common Sense). In the 1930s, the advent of fanzines came about from a love for science fiction, the first being Chicago’s Science Correspondence Club’s The Comet. Its cover was wonderfully handwritten and reprinted, with a shooting star darting behind the logo and an imperfect rendition of Saturn placed alongside. In the next few decades, the medium became a platform for the LGBT+ community. This was especially true of urban areas where small groups of people united to collectively create editorial, articleand-art based zines. Lesbian Voices, a San Jose-based quarterly, exhibited poems, stories, essays, and more by queer women from across the Bay. From the other side of the country, Yell of New York City was a longer publication, touching on a range of topics such as police brutality, sex education, and ways to get involved with ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power).
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Photo by BAMPFA Student Committee
By the late 1970s and early 1980s, zines absorbed into the punk rock movement due to its DIY nature and the increased availability of copy shops. They were Xeroxed almost to oblivion and orbited around the music scene. Flipside of Los Angeles is one of the most beloved, serving as an almost mainstream magazine for this underground crowd. In the 1990s, they became the written form of the Riot Grrrl. Angry, gritty, and often a poetic combination of feminist statements and images, these zines mirrored punk bands like Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, and Excuse 17. Today, all these groups remain visible in zines on the internet, at fairs and fests, and at workshops. However, another body is attempting to bastardize the medium in an unprecedented way. What I am referring to here is the corporate body and their cooptation of zines. Examples abound: look to Nike’s London On Air or the “zines” sold at Urban Outfitters. This isn’t new. Nike has been making “zines” since the early 2000s, Urban Outfitters launched their Slant “zine” in the ‘90s, and other companies like the Body Shop and Red Bull have dabbled in the format over the years. But these publications created under the term “zine” are not actually what they claim to be. They are not zines. Why, though? How can I determine what should fit into a medium as abstract and mutable as zine?
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It’s difficult. The line between scrutinizing corporatization and policing the medium is a precarious one. It’s necessary to question and confront the burglary of zines by companies, but it’s equally necessary to protect the fragile complexity and uniqueness of actual zines. One must be done without sacrificing the other. And to do so, we must view the medium via the lens of its three basic components, a zine’s holy trinity: identity, form, and content. Let’s break down the formula. Identity refers to those creating the zine. Are they a woman, punk rocker, member of the LGBT+ community, youth, person of color? Are they a group of people from such identities? Form refers to the tangible configuration of the zine itself. Is it a website, a one-page foldup, a glossy 5.5 x 8.5 booklet? Is it unique, not quite a magazine, not quite a pamphlet, not quite a book? To close out the trio: content. What exactly is being said or done by the zine? Is it recounting personal anecdotes, serving as a periodical exhibition of written work, educating readers on a certain concept or idea, or just existing as a conglomeration of collages? Considering these three together, zines communicate identity via form and content. Therefore, Nike’s “zine” is not a zine. Red Bull’s “zine” isn’t one either, nor are the ones created for sale at Urban Outfitters. They are masks, corporations camouflaging branding under the guise of an underground medium. Almost always slipping up in form, they are publications crafted in the corrupted image of something beautiful— anti-definitions of an anti-definitionary medium. They are impersonations, something else with the name “zine” slapped on. Zines act as a voice for those whose voices are being encroached upon by the very same corporations who
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are throwing “zine” around like a catch-all. Because, ultimately, the corporate “zine” is nothing more than a repackaged, reimagined product, that product being their corporate identity. Rather than an individual object, they are selling their brand—their (in)ability as a company to navigate the underground, reach all audiences, trap consumers with a misnamed collector’s item. They yearn so deeply to seem cool: the word “zine” communicates a certain mystique and edginess. By adding it to a publication’s title, that object becomes cooler. Right? At that zine workshop back in January, among the books and magazines and scraps of paper laid out as sacrifice, there lay a dozen or so A24 zines. Easily mistaken for a particularly aesthetic newspaper, these “zines” were full of color blocks, close-up images, pastel text—everything a zine workshopper dreams of in collage materials. They were there as a showpiece for A24’s campus presence, a sort of advertisement for past and future films by the company, and as an intruder. These publications (which, for eight, will set you back $45), represented the exact sort of masquerade I’ve been talking about—a wolf in sheep’s clothing. So, as I organized my workshop, I relegated these A24 “zines” to the only purpose they were worthy of serving: a destructible assemblage of images and text ripped apart and put back together again into real zines. We tore them limb from limb, carried them off in several directions. Not one remained once the two hours were up. ■
SAFFRON SENER
We tore them limb from limb, carried them off in several directions.
Photo by BAMPFA Student Committee
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Photographer: Kendall Halliburton, Christopher Puga (drone operator) Production: Zahira Chaudhry, Preya Gill, Caroline Jones, Cheyenne Tex Models: Josephine Chiang, Verity Pinter Makeup Artist: Sam Agoncillo
Shot by drone
Verity wears dress Keeper’s Market at Indigo Vintage, boots model’s own. Josephine wears top Keeper’s Market at Indigo Vintage, pants Val and Val Vintage at Indigo Vintage, shoes model’s own.
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Josephine wears pants and top Indigo Vintage, boots model’s own. Shot by drone.
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Verity wears top Indigo Vintage, pants Val and Val Vintage at Indigo Vintage, shoes model’s own.
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TAG YOURSELF I
dread to be bold. Rather, I’m unapologetically malleable, succumbing to any label thrown onto me. Not long does it take to fit me into the mold of your thoughts, maybe three minutes at most.
As a globe-trotter, I am quite the chameleon when it comes to engaging myself with foreign cultures. When in Germany as a child, I picked up the language and a fluent accent quickly to adapt to my kindergartenmates. When in Uzbekistan as a teenager, my palate was the first to adjust to the new environment, allowing me to appreciate flavors that I had never encountered before. Upon my arrival to the States only recently, I acquainted myself with colloquial English around a week or two after settling in, only to be confused for a local. “Which Starbucks drink are you?” Tag yourself. My friends tag me as a Cappuccino. Most often, I’m tagged in traits that relate to being “soft,” a trait I would not particularly identify with. But I deny taking the extra mile to defend myself and instead respond with a “lol so me.” However, despite how malleable I am to new customs, there is something I cannot change–the way I look. My Asian identity and the way it has directed me to dress and, occasionally, embellish myself is not so subtle. One day, I decided to throw on a pair of denim culottes from Uniqlo, a beige letter print tee, a brown beret, and a pair of Mary Janes.
Illustrated by Sophia Swedback
When in Rome, do as the Romans do, they say. It takes me three minutes at the longest to embark on a new life as a Roman.
“An undeniably Korean look,” my friends jokingly commented, as I finished the last few touches on my pigtails. Later, we called an Uber, and things took an unexpectedly dark twist. “Where are you from?” our driver asked midway through the ride. I told him that I had just flown from Seoul and that this was my first time coming to the States. With a rather surprised look, he turned at me and muttered “Wow, you sound American though. Are you sure you’re Korean?” Stunned, I wasn’t sure how to interpret or process this question but decided to go for the short and classic “Yeah” to end the conversation. But alas, he added a final comment: “I didn’t know Koreans could speak English so well.” This was followed by a brief moment of silence. As we exited the car, I asked my friend how she felt about this exchange. She claimed that his comment on our English was an uninformed generalization, but seemed to have been made in good faith. Nonetheless, a bitter and unsettled feeling lingered in me, as if I had just been denied my identity based on the way I behaved. Unsurprisingly, this has been one of many incidents in which I have been deprived of an identity because it doesn’t adhere to what people expect of me.
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Behind the question of “Are you sure you’re Korean?” lies the assumption that as a “real” Korean I would lack fluency in English. Perhaps, “real” Koreans would also be described as “exotic” and “very Asian” (the reader’s guess is as good as mine for what those titles mean). Some have asked if I had “white fever” or if I was the more “subservient” type of Asian woman. Others ask whether I fangirl over K-Pop boy bands and binge drink boba tea. The last two are, by the way, unfortunately true!
When in Rome, do as the Romans do, they say. It takes me three minutes at the longest to embark on a new life as a Roman.
The disappointment reflected in my interrogators’ faces is almost accusatory. The more resilient I thought I would be against such accusations, the more I found myself torn between adhering to or escaping from stereotypical connotations. Sometimes, I would mask myself as a local. But I can be easily unmasked by by my limited knowledge of the California locale. Other times, I simply refuse to answer. It’s inevitable to be seen as “other” in the eyes of people who have accused me of being who I am. Sociologist Stuart Hall mentions in his acclaimed work The Spectacle of the Other, that dissimilarity or “otherness” establishes identities that are considered inferior to the norm. Uninformed assumptions about cultural values and attitudes, like the idea that foreigners new to the States are not fluent in English, deprive me of my own unique personal identity. As sickening as these encounters have been, it’s not so easy to avoid them. Social norms regarding gender and ethnicity are undeniably constructed through human interactions. In other words, as we navigate social experiences, we accept and reject stereotypes, which incorporate into what society considers normal. Throughout history, discriminatory portrayals of East Asians have been propagated in the media. These stereotypes of Asians have gained the leverage necessary to deny me of my own heritage. In a way, my internal conflict coincides with the sociological notion of Labeling Theory, which refers to how people can gradually become what they are “labeled.” Within the context of Criminology, in which the term was first coined, Labeling Theory suggests that disobedience is a product of socially constructed perceptions. In this framework, features such as “delinquency” or “brightness” can lead to the label becoming true, a self-fulfilling prophecy. In short, you become what others think you are. Because of my international upbringing, I’ve realized that there is no reason to be intimidated by the socially-constructed identity that others have imposed onto me. Subtle or not, certain ethnic or cultural traits that others identify in me cannot impose any barriers to whatever journey I choose to take. In no way should this confine me to an endless search for a single identity that defines me. I consider my upbringing as a multicultural hybrid both a blessing and a curse. A chameleon-like ability to adapt to anything can make it difficult to pin down my identity. Ask me who I am and I might take a while to process my answer—but, at the end of the day, I can tolerate the identity-less self I have embodied. ■
SUNNY LEE
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Photographer: Río Vargas Production: Mihai Cipleu, Ariana Dideban, Sophie Doucet, Danya Karch, Logan Flores, Sophia Swedback, Jacqueline Wlodarczyk Models: Kevin Lu, Chidera Okenwa and Tie Hanawalt (Golden Retriever)
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Kevin wears earring stylist’s own.
Kevin wears earrings, veil stylist’s own, dress Mars Vintage.
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Chidera wears veil, gloves, blouse stylist’s own, robe, bloomers Mars Vintage
Kevin wears earring stylist’s own, blouse Mars Vintage, dirndl stylist’s own, pants Mars Vintage
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Chidera wears earrings stylist’s own, blouse, dress Mars Vintage. Tie wears scarf stylist’s own.
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MATERIAL GIRL
I
n high school, my family moved three separate times into three separate homes. In each of our homes, we hung the same paintings above the same couches, and placed the same couches atop the same rugs. My picture of Alice and her pig, a black and white illustration of Lewis Carroll’s classic, stayed steadfast above my bed while the views outside my window changed from eucalyptus trees to the empty house next door. I’ve known forever that as long as the fake Degas sat in the space carved out for it above the mantle, and as long as the red chairs sat in a ring around the green table, I was home. When I eat here, I am seated beside my two siblings in aged iterations: 3, 6, 9. All the way to 18, 21, 24.
Image from Google (© John Tenniel)
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After dinner, I race them to the TV, crawl under the table to be with my dog, help my parents clean up, sulk to my room to write a paper, text a boy I don’t really like very much. My brother gets himself a bowl of ice cream while he leaves to go “out,” while my sister smears chocolate on her face while she does her math homework while she also texts a boy she doesn’t really like very much. We eat here every night.
My parents worked incredibly hard in each new set of rooms to conjure the same atmosphere of home, and they recognized the importance of decoration, of color, of stuff in this process. It did not matter the shell, whether it was owned or rented, only what (and who) filled it. The blankets stay folded in the chest with the angels. The leather chairs stay cracked. The wooden chair stays creaky. The couch stays blue, the flowers stay silk. The decorative paper napkins I stuffed into a particular drawer in a particular table when I was five on Christmas Eve stay stuffed. The Hello Kitty stickers I stuck under the desk stay stuck. When I moved into my next home, without my parents, I decorated in their footsteps. The first action I took in my new dorm room, before I so much as thought about getting all my ducks in a row, was to meticulously pin a carefully selected set of postcards onto the tiny section of wall above my tiny, tiny bed. Only after I felt I had adequately altered the space did I hang my clothes in my closet, put my books on my shelf, text my one friend from orientation. I did the exact same thing in my first, second, third, fourth, and fifth rooms in my co-op. I am, in these terms, currently in my tenth home. In each home, I, like a materialistic bird, have surrounded myself with my favorite shiny things. My twin XL comforter from Bed Bath and Beyond remains folded at the end of my bed, my coat stays nailed to my wall, my jewelry maintains its position in a wooden box. My painted mirror leaned in the corner, my checkerboard bikini strung between two shelves. When I wear a particularly stretchy tank top I’ve had since I was nine to a party, I pair her with my mother’s necklace, so that they can hold hands if things get rowdy. I might sneak her a drink, take her for a spin on the dancefloor. I apply each layer like makeup, and I wonder what would happen if someone wiped them away.
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When I leave the nests I have built for myself and enter worlds where I have less control, I trail pieces of my carpet from overstock.com at my feet, bits of my asbestos-filled walls in my hair. Dust from the corner settles in my eyebrows, the plastic tiger next to my books crawls into my pocket. I tack postcards purchased from bins to my arms and tie print pillowcases around my waist. I wrap myself in my room so that the things other people have built run off me like oil on water. If you took off my mother’s necklace and if you removed my tank top, if you painted my walls white and raided my closet, if you scrubbed my tattoo from my hip and plastered my piercings, if you stole my painted mirror, I would be like a naked hermit crab, a turtle without its shell, a joey out of its pouch—a fish out of water, if you will. But, luckily, you can’t do that. Because you, dearest reader, are nowhere near me. I’ll leave you with this: because we are a fashion publication, I will draw the appropriate imagery. Picture me in the 2005 Fall ready-to-wear Viktor and Rolf Bed Dress photographed on Tilda Swinton in 2010. Picture me in this exact dress absolutely strutting down the street, sitting on BART, attending the Met Gala, laying on my carpet from overstock.com, texting my sister about that boy she doesn’t like very much at all. I will always be a fish in water (so take that) thanks to the objects I place in between my skin and everything else, as this is how I soften the annoyingly harsh edges of the world around me. With just the clothes on my back and the pillows in my hair, I can simply tune Frank Gehry out if I want. Call me a material girl; I am. ■
GRACE SCHIMMEL
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Picture me in the 2005 Fall ready-to-wear Viktor and Rolf Bed Dress modeled originally on Hana Soukupova and later photographed on Tilda Swinton in 2010 for Anna Italia.
Illustrated by Grace Schimmel
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