To the class of 2010

You don't know me yet. But you will. I guess it doesn't really matter anyway, all you need to know is i'm a senior at our college, and I can't believe how old I actually am. I've been there before, sitting in those seats, staring off into space while some dean tries desperately to explain the rules without seeming uncool. I've been there, eyeing my roommate, wondering whether or not we'll get along. I've been there, stressed out about making a good impression, about finding the "right" group of friends, about not standing out too much. You might look at me and wish you could grow up faster, to get rid of this awkward first year phase. Well guess what. I'm actually really envious of you.

You've been asking me a lot of questions this week, and I've answered them. But there's one thing that you all seem to over look. It's the one thing that I overlooked when I was a first year like you. Really, forget all your silly questions about beer drinking and escaping campus police. All you really need to know is this: at this school, nothing will come easily. If you were looking for a school that was going to give you everything you need, that was gooing to support your every wish and desire, that would cater to every interest and friends would come out of the woodwork; if you were expecting a place where you would finally find "your people" guess what: you're going to be disappointed.

Our college is a place that "won't train you for anything, but will prepare you for everything" . Its true. Chances are, after four years, you won't leave here knowing exactly what you want to do. that's right, i'm even talking about you, you pre-med, pre-law, post-doctoral researchers etcetc... I used to be one of you. Then I was a writer. Then a women's studies major. Then a therapist in training. And now, now after four years of academia and ridiculous amounts of tuition I can tell you with complete and utter confidence that I have absolutely no idea what i'm going to do with my life. You think that's scary? It's not. Let me explain.

After four years, we are standing on the brink of the infinite abyss. How we choose to jump in will ultimately determine the way we live the rest of our lives. Some people will shy away from this unknown: it's scary and risky. They will do what is safe and secure, perhaps a job with Morgan Stanley or work as an accountant for some TNC. And that's fine. I don't know about you, but I did not spend 40+ grand a year just to work in a cubicle for someone. What I mean to say is, our school won't serve you anything, it will prepare you for everything. What you do with that knowledge is up to you and you alone.

So yeah, worry about what y ou're going to major in, worry about what classes to take, which teacher is the hardest. Worry about getting caught drinking, about pledging fraternities, aboutboyfriends and girlfriends. Worry, go ahead. But don't worry too much. Know, at this school, you can't be invisible. I see you, you in the back row, pretending to be too cool with your yankees cap lowered over your eyes, dozing off when you should be listening. I see you, paranoid about the freshman 15, joking about it, but skipping two of three meals and running every day. Like I said. I've been there. I know how it is.

Know that the friends you choose will the the ones to define you. Choose them with care. Break out into the unknown. College is the time in your life to make silly decisions- dye your hair pink, get a tatoo, pierce you nipple. Do what you have to. This is the time to do it. At no other point in your life will you be able to blame your mistakes on "college experimentation". Have no regrets, hold you breath and dive right in. And know, that there is someone out there who gives a damn. Even though you don't know me, and you probably never will, I'll be pushing for you. No matter what.

What's the use?

I’m having a feminist existential crisis. What is with this stupidity that seems to plauge the women of my generation? I can’t seem to figure out if it is intentional or if it is some kind of haunting disease that is incurably passed on from one ditz to the next. Is it some kind of intentional game, some game they play to win the hearts of oafish men who would like to believe that we are as dumb as the girls on TV? And if so, does this charade actually work? Is their sex so easily fooled into believing that these women are nothng more than a low cut shirt and a short skirt? I want so badly to believe that it is intentional, that it is some form of ancient witchcraft to fog the minds of men so that we may have our way… but I severely doubt it. Watching these girls prance around, toss their hair and say idiotic things like “loves it!” and “that’s soooo sexy” makes me want to rexamine myself- am I really of their kind? How did I end up so different?

I remember a conversation that I had with a certain 8th grader while trying to pry her away from MTV episodes of the Real World.. I sat down on the couch next to her, and as her eyes were glued to the screen, mine were glued to a book. The girl said nothing of the book, only that it made me “look smart.” Her mother sugggested that I take her to the library and pick out some books for her, so that she could read instead of watching so much tv. The idea of going to a library didn’t warrant even a cringe from her (a cringe, I suppose, would’ve insinuated that she had been to the library before and did not like it), rather she stood there with a blank look of disgust on her face.

When I was in 8th grade, I was reading Rushdie, Kerouac, Wolfe, Fitzgerald. The way I see my little cousins ignoring the family at dinner because thye are engrossed in their game-boys was the same way I used to act when I had a good book. I remember my father asking me all the time when we were at restaurants “what book is it this week, jess?” And I would simply hold it up to show him the cover, annoyed at his insistance in having a conversation with me while I was so clearly trying to get lost amongst the pages. What was it that drew me to literature? I really have no idea. Even now, when my life seems exceedingly hectic and fast paced, I retreat to my corner and pick a book off the shelf, and as if I were being counciled by an old friend, things fall into place. Nothing else works.

I don’t really know why I turned out this way, I never really gave it much thought until recently after a few awful encounters with women of my generation. I asked my friend rachel about it. She’s a vibrant, brilliantly intellegent woman who can argue with you about politics while kicking your ass at soccer. She too has noticed this frightening lack of intellect in our sex. “ How do they get like that?” I asked her. She responded with another question “what makes strong women?” I read a quote off her wall by Beauvoir “One is not born but becomes a woman” We sat and thought about it for a while, neither of us knowing what to say.

At her soccer game earlier that day, I sat in the bleachers and overheard some of the other teams talking. The teams were co-ed, and the way the men talked about “having to have the women” made it seem like a horrible handicap. Clearly they weren’t watching the game because Rachel was the best one out there. But what astonished me was that there were girls sitting with the boys, taking their abuse, and some of them even agreeing. As the game went on, I felt my face flush with anger as I heard the girls giggle at the boys’ brutish comments on how they would never tackle a girl on the field. I heard the girls flirtatiously ask about the rules of the game, as if they had never seen it played before. It made me want to turn around, grab one of them and shake them, saying that amazing line from I heart Huckabees “ wake up pretty girl, the joke is on you”. Girls like that are worse than anti-feminists: they perpetuate a lie every single day, in the classroom, on the sidelines, in the bedroom. It makes me sick to think that some people may see me as too boldly overstepping my “role”, my role which is supposidly to be like the rest of them, whose idea of international relations is buying a Gucci bag. Seriously.

I think about it, and I think about it, and I think that maybe it’s lack of knowledge. As if, somehow, somehwere along the line, someone forgot to tell these women that they don’t have to take the abuse of society, they don’t have to fit the mold of beauty (that same disgusting mold which even occasionally drives me to skip meals) and idiocy. It occurred to me one day when I was explaining to one of my little cousins that I was a feminist. “What’s a feminist?” she asked me. She must’ve been 13 at the time. I stared at her, completely dumbstruck. At first I thought she was kidding, but then she asked me again. When I explained to her that a feminist is someone (man or woman) who believes that women are equal to men and should be treated as such (equally, but not necessarily the same), she asked me why I was a feminist.

It’s a question I get a lot, actually. And it’s usually followed by some comment like “you’re not butch enough to be a feminist.” Or “ what’s a pretty girl like you so worried about anyway?” They don’t get that it is because of the way I look that I am the way I am. They don't understand that if I don't fight for myself, if I don't stand up and show that I am actually more than what I appear, no one will. It is my only way of earning the respect of others, but at the same time, the respect of myself. How is it consistent to go through life feeling as if I am an equal, believing in my equality but allowing others to treat me as a subordinate?

I was raised with a twin brother, I know all about the conscious and unconcious discrimination against my sex, because I was raised with it. I am still in awe of the way my parents raised us, and yes, we fulfilled some stereotypes: my brother is far better at math than I am, but my appreciation of languages out-does his. We broke stereotypes too, however: he is a sensitive musician, I am more athletic. My parents did a wonderful job of letting me believe that sexual discrimination was a thing of the past, and they honestly told me I could be whatever I wanted to be. But now, looking back, I know that every parent must feel a certain amount of cognitive dissonance when they say “you can be whatever you want to be.” When their son says that he wants to be president, it is a distinct possibility that one day he could be, but when their daughter declares her dream to be president, they accept it with a pat on the head and a nod, knowing full well that she will most likely be married at 27 and have no ambitions for entering the political realm.

I remember being 15 years old and arguing with my parents about politics. My mother told me not to argue, “it’s not ladylike” and I snapped back “who ever said anything about being a lady?!” From that day on, she has insisted that I go into politics.

But the point of this very long rant about my sex and our seemingly inherent depreciation in intellect is not about me. The point is that I often find myself questioning: what is it that I’m fighting so much for? Or better yet: for whom? The airheaded women of my generation and my daughters generation will never understand. And so the everso popular existential question arises: if you are in a cage, but know nothing of its bars, nor the outside world, are you free? Is ignorance really bliss? I remember talking to an escaped slave (www.iabolish.org) who spoke at my highschool a few years ago. He said that while he was a slave, there was no concept of freedom in his mind. The word did not exist to him, and so he did not know what he lacked.

Perhaps that is what we women are, slaves who are hopelessly addicted to our captors (the facist beauty standards, the misogynist pop-culture, the “roles” of good, moral women who don’t want their children to grow up to be rapists, murderers or –gasp- gays.) We are addicted and glued to our captors the way that 8th grader was glued to the tv screen, we fulfill our duties as “woman” and in return, we get a nice slap on the butt and some crude comment. But it’s the only attention we get, and so it makes us feel worthy. A simple Pavlovian method of submission from the day we’re born to the day we die, drooling over any kind of attention we get, that we are begging to get, from the other sex. Some of us have escaped the endless cycle. I don’t know how, but we got out.

I want to free my sisters, and educate them, but I’m so tired of it. I’m tired of the game. I’m tired of their counter-productive, self-fulfilling prophecies of idiocy and failure. Count me out. Why am I fighting for women who don’t even know what they’re missing, who mock me and won't know what to do with the equality when it is handed to them?

All I want

This must be the summer of devastating and heartbreaking emails. It must be. I recieved the latest from a man I met in Spain (a man of 25 years, I think, but still a boy in so so many ways). Somehow he had found my email address, I know I didn't give it to him because our parting was tense, among other things. I don't think I ever officially said goodbye to him; it was one of those times when there was nothing more to say- as if saying hello itself was the big mistake and the tumoltuous events which followed were simply the tangential rivers of consequence.
One thing that has always struck me about this man is his incredible grasp of the english language. His email described detailed accounts of a woman he met, a woman who reminded him of me. "I remember that I had always found her very pretty, albeit a little too skinny and sullen, like some type of rare flower. She's but a young teenager, but today she made an impression on me. And the reason was that she reminded me of someone I knew. She was wearing some long white skirt her toes peeking through it's bottom rim, a brown tank top, an assortment of accesories, and her hair was pulled back and held in place by some metal clippings (I don't know what they're called). Her timid smile and shiny eyes hint at a certain intelligence and liveliness somewhat hidden by her semblant of sweetness. She reminded me of you. We but talked briefly. Coincidently she's leaving in just a few days to the U.S. to study there for a year. I thought of you. She had to go and said goodbye. I missed you."The email continued with a heartbreaking account of a romance that I only wish I had the capacity to have, a romance he must've created on his own with pretty delicate words woven like lace into his memory, but his memory alone. I do not remember these things happening, but to see them written down and displayed before me makes my heart cry out and wish that they did, that I would be capable of inspiring such poetry. But I know I am not.
I went to a friend's house and drank beer and played darts with some of the guys. As per usual, I was the only girl, and as drunken conversations are wont to take us, we entered the territory of discussing girlfriend problems. The boys came to the unanimous conclusion that every girl is some type of crazy. I, of course, hated that conclusion and demanded to know that if every woman was some type of crazy, what type of crazy was I. One of them blurted out "yeah, but Jessi, you're not really a girl." another said "oh yeah, you're some type of crazy, we just haven't figured you out yet". Maybe I do fall into that terrible generalization of my sex. But even so, the point is that we need to find someone that doesn't see "our type of crazy" as crazy at all.
It brings me back to a phone conversation I had with a friend, recently returned from Costa Rica and desperately missing a relationship left behind there. we were talking about "types" , you know, the "type of guy" a girl goes for etc. After some thought I came to the conclusion that my "type", the "type" I have always wanted but never quite found, is just someone I can be 100% myself around. Someone with whom I didn't have to put on a show, someone who would take my good with my bad, and find my eccentricities to be charming rather than obnoxious. Someone to whom I can say "Here I am: I, insecurity; I, loving; I, bold woman; I, timid girl. Take it or leave it" It's true, our society and our silly girl-magazines try to tell us that some people like "bad boys" and others "pretty boys" etc etc. But really no one is like that. No one really sticks to a superficial type like that. Sure, we all have what our "ideal" would be, but something deeper always guides us.
Still, all I really want is to be alone. To continue this perfectly blissful state of independence that I have been swimming in for the past few months. I don't know why this is so hard for people to understand. Some people think it's just that I haven't met the right guy yet, that i haven't been looking in the right places. But the thing is, i'm just not looking at all. I'm tired of the show, of the big act. I'm tired of the stupid games. it's gotten to the point where I don't know if people are genuinely the way they act, or if it's just part of the gig to get what they want. Are they listening or are they off in their own world, thinking of some flowery and witty pick up line disguised as poetry, hoping that this time they'll catch me, that i'll fall into their trap and then, just as quickly as I fell, they'll leave me in the dust. I'm tired of the chase, of the stupid flirtatious dance. Give me someone who can happily sit and watch saturday morning cartoons with me (clad in boxers and some dirty t-shirt), or let me just do it myself in peace.