My Writing
Fall on Deaf Ears
My Complaints Fall on Deaf Ears
There is a lot of pressure growing up in my family. I'm sure my parents don't mean to put pressure on my sister and me, but honestly, they do. They accomplished so much with way less than I have. They remind me. I hear it. It stings.
As a little girl in the deep south, the matriarch of our family, my grandmother, Barbara Patton, migrated north with her family to escape the smoldering heat and suffocating racism of the Jim Crow era. Her striking story of an escape from blatant racism in the 1940s progressed to the cunning institutionalized racism in the world of professional sports int 1970. Yes, my grandmother played middle linebacker in the first professional football league for women in the 1970s. They were the Los Angeles Dandelions of the National Women's Football League. I've seen some super cute old footage of my then 7-year-old father, Marvcus Patton, playing in the dirt on the sidelines of the football field while his mother practiced.
Speaking of my dad, most boys follow in their fathers' footsteps in sports. My grandfather, Raymond Hicks, was a Los Angeles Police Detective. When my father was nine, his father was shot and killed in the line of duty during a narcotics raid. Now, a single mother, my grandmother was the one who influenced my father's early football career. Guess which position my father played? Yep. Middle linebacker. From the dusty, dirt field as a midget league player at Darby Park in Los Angeles, he enrolled in UCLA hoping for a spot on the practice squad. He went from a walk on in college to a 14-year career in the NFL.
Then, there is me. I dared to enter the same arena as a student-athlete in gymnastics. Complaints about injuries, long hours in the gym, or missed skills fell on deaf ears. My family overcame odds in the face of racism and poverty. It feels selfish to complain. They remind me of this fact. Often. Sometimes, I want sympathy, but in reality, expecting that is a set up for disappointment. No one can do it but me, so I keep pushing. No complaints. No days off.
#football #gymnastics #UCLA #studentathlete #lapd #marvcuspatton #barbarapatton #LADandelions
What if I Don't Want to Wear a Dress?
One way society has attempted to control and genderize clothing is through dress codes. Oftentimes, you will see a more in-depth dress code for women as opposed to men. Additionally, many dress codes suggest that while women wear skirts or dresses, men are required to wear pants, the other way around would be frowned upon. In the photograph above, an office uses this graphic to suggest gendered clothing for the workplace. One question to consider is why must women be directed to wear jewelry and heels while men are similarly confined to their own social construction of gender.
From an intersectional perspective, race and size frame the dominant image of beauty. For example, Abra Chernik describes an alarming scene in the mall as she was just out of the hospital for a day pass (Chernik 2002). Nearly starving to death from anorexia, Chernik was celebrated for having an unreasonably low percentage of body fat. Her honest response to the man was “I’m dying of anorexia, don't congratulate me.” For Caucasian women, the more fair, thin, and blonde, the better. In the African American community, size is compounded by race. The idea of being thin is not valued the same. It is assumed that a larger size is thought to be acceptable. The misconception is that black women prefer being overweight, which minimizes their valid concerns about weight and health. As Naomi Wolf concludes in The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women, no longer does the word, beauty, make women feel proud but it is used as a tool of oppression…to make her feel inadequate and self-conscious (Wolf 1990).
The simple idea of a men's clothing section and a women’s section is a very subtle and normalized way to gender clothing. These are ideas I had not considered before taking an Intro to Women's Studies course. As a female who identifies as a woman, I hope to work as an ally by not using the word, beauty, as a tool of oppression. Interesting ideas that though they may not apply directly to us, we have a human responsibility to consider.
#dresscode #genderconstruction #beauty #genderstereotypes #genderidentity
My Fave Children's Book
The Phantom Tollbooth
By Norton Juster
Illustrations by Jules Feiffer
Summary: For Milo, everything’s a bore. When a tollbooth mysteriously appears in his room, he drives through only because he’s got nothing better to do. But on the other side, things seem different. Milo visits the Island of Conclusions (you get there by jumping), learns about time from a ticking watchdog named Tock, and even embarks on a quest to rescue Rhyme and Reason. Somewhere along the way, Milo realizes something astonishing. Life is far from dull. In fact, it’s exciting beyond his wildest dreams!
(source: inside cover)
The Phantom TollBooth is one of my favorite books. As a childrens' book, it was one of the books that molded my literary journey. The book features a young boy who, although he has everything a boy his age dreams of, is still somber. The boy, Milo, is bored of his toys, bored of learning, and bored of life. That is until he stumbles upon the tollbooth. After it transfers him to a whole new world, he goes on a long journey ultimately seeing that learning can be fun and exciting. All of the city's characters are named clever idioms about writing and English grammar. For example, after getting stuck in the “doldrums'' due to lack of thought, he enters “Dictionopolis.” Here, Milo discovers people speak with either too many or too few words.
I'm attached to this book because not only is it a fun story, but it also taught me ways to better my grammar at a young age. I think a lot of people can relate to the idea of feeling bored or used to the same old surroundings, but I love that The Phantom Tollbooth shows that by using creativity and proper English grammar, you can make even the dullest of days exciting. Hmm..it might be time for another read with my more mature eyes!
