The Field

Ice-cold drops of water sprinkled down. Seeing them, it was almost as if they were falling in slow motion. They were in a state between true snow, and true rain, caught in between two worlds, not knowing what they were. The drops made contact with blades of grass, flowed down them, and rolled across the ground like beads of crystal. In the center of flow, there was a tree, its leaves spread out creating an umbrella for the figure under it.

I brought my head up. It was hard to see through the rain, and the leaves that hung in front of me, but the field was generally flat so I could see farther than I thought. There was a single person standing in the distance. I couldn't tell who he was. He was in dark clothes. Or perhaps the clothes were just wet. It doesn't matter. He looked like a messenger from the devil. He came closer. I could see the droplets of water and a few snow flakes on his trench coat. The sparkles on him made it seem like God was trying to attack him, like white blood cells attack a foreign body. My heart was beating harder as I felt a lump in my throat.

There was an explosion. Fire was everywhere. It was hot. Beads of sweat were floating in the thick smoke, and I could hardly see anything. I blinked rapidly so that I could manage some sight for the time being. People were running every where. There was the sound of machine gun fire getting closer. Then there was another explosion. It knocked me onto my side, and I landed on the street. Looking in front of me, I vaguely made out a figure, in black, walking towards me with specks of white ashes on his dark jacket. I could not see his face.

The rain seemed magical. It was dropping in slow motion still, half frozen. The man walked forward, looking at the woman under the tree. "She's probably just another homeless girl," he muttered to himself. "I wonder if she even speaks... A timid creature she is." He walked closer, bending down under the umbrella of the tree, his eyes fixed upon her, one hand on the weapon in his belt.

He was awfully close to me now. I noticed his hand on something metal behind him. I didn't know what it was at the time, but I was suddenly very awake. Thoughts and emotions flew into me as if I was shot by an arrow. I thought he was simply another one of those brainless boys that tried to take advantage of any girl who he found alone. He was also a black figure, wearing a dark jacket with white specks on it. I knew it was snow, but I felt hatred. He was there thirty years ago. Did he remember? I did not care. I blamed him for what happened that day. Between those two explosions, I had lost my family, my school, my life. This tree was the only sanctuary I had left. He was not going to take it away from me.

The man came closer, and then he was right next to the woman. They were looking at each other with an intensity unknown in the mortal world. His expression became suddenly kind. "Do you remember me, my dear?" he whispered.

"What kind of man are you?" I screamed. "You take away my family! You took away everything from me!! You have no morals, men like you. You're just a freak of war. One of those people who kill for fun. What do you want with me? I don't deal with people who lack a soul, or those who are so corrupt that saving them is beyond God himself." I was angry, sad, scared, and out of breath all at once. My heart was beating very hard and fast now. I was ready to kill the man where he knelt.

"Excuse me? I did none of those things ma'am. I don't think you remember the events of that day correctly. Perhaps you passed out because of shock. I saw the explosion, and then ran towards it to help people. When the second explosion happened, I saw you on the ground, barely alive. I ran to you, picked you up and hid. The soldiers came through the town after. They killed everyone who was left. As if they were playing some game, they relentlessly murdered maybe fifty or sixty people all at once! I saved your life!"

I looked at him, taken aback. I had thought this man was the mastermind behind my pain for thirty years, and here he is not the man I have been looking for. I felt that lump in my throat again. I could not tell if it was tears or rain that were flowing down my face, but whatever it was, I felt depressed, mournful, and sorrowful. The man came closer and embraced me. Typical. But it was nice. I felt very tired now. I thought I had finally found the man I needed to kill, but instead he was the man who let me live. But for what? I live in pain. Should I thank him or should I not? What should I say?

The man looked at the woman. He had a look of pity on his face. She was not the type of woman who he thought she was. She was strong, and lively. She had gone through a lot of pain and survived it all. "I would have never survived through even three years let alone thirty if I had lost what you have lost." he said in a voice that was low and steady.

Both judged each other simply based on the gender and appearance of the opposite, without knowledge of the actual person. Both were wrong. Outside forces can often skew our thinking, and make us form assumptions about ourselves in our minds. We must remember that the only constant in our world is within ourselves. Gender does not exist in the soul. It only exists in the physical world. If we base ourselves within, then we can avoid such pains, and such sorrows in the millennia to come. 

A Passage Through Time

I do not know whether the dinosaurs had gender inequity problems, or if they thought about that before deciding to attack each other. I do not know if birds, snakes, sharks, monkeys or apes have gender inequity problems, or if they think about it. I do not know why it is that we, human beings that were a part of the natural world, happened to create this gender inequity problem or how we created it. As creatures of nature, this inequity should not exist, as it does not exist in all other species (or the other species simply do not recognize it). I do not know whether, when we first evolved around 60,000 years ago, we had gender inequity problems. I do not know whether we had such problems even after then, closer to the times we are familiar with. I do not know when discrimination defined by gender started, but I know that it exists today.

If we travel back to the start of the twentieth century, it is clear that gender inequity has changed in form. Back then, the discrimination against women was more evident and clear to see. Women were made to stay in their homes, look after children, following the "Cult of Domesticity" as it was called. Advertisement was not as large scale as it is today. The inequity across genders was focused more upon work opportunities and what people did for work rather than on the way women were looked upon.

Today, advertisements have reached a new level. The ways in which advertisers put down women have become more and more intricate and subtle as people start to realize how they have been manipulated throughout the past few years. Similar to how new technology sparks during wartimes, new strategies of advertisement are sparking now, as advertisers fight a war against a population that is becoming ever more aware of the trickery that has been thrown upon them. Along with the advertising world, new computer software has made it possible for advertisers and modelling agencies to create pictures in magazines that I find it hard to call human. I feel like images in magazines that are modified by computer software are the work of evil. They might seem nice to look at, at first. However, in the back of the mind, it creates doubt. In the Beauty Myth, Wolf stated that "To airbrush age off a woman's face is to erase women's identity, power, and history" (83). This doubt is doubt in one self, doubt in one's abilities, in one's power, in one's knowledge, and in one's appearance. This doubt is created because somewhere in the back of our minds, when we see those pictures that aren't human, we know it is not possible to be like that. But as human beings, we always want what we cannot have.  Knowing that we can never be a computer generated image, we start to doubt ourselves because of the constant failure to achieve something that is unachievable. This is the evil that comes with advertisement.

Is The End Just a New Beginning?

The theme of death is present in a great many books, including Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf. I personally find this theme a bit frightening. Some people say that death is the end, that there exists nothing after it, that time stops. Others choose to believe that death is a new beginning, perhaps to another life, either here or in another realm. I believe in the idea of reincarnation. But at some point, I start to think that all these explanations of life after death are made simply to minimize the fear of death. In the book, Mrs. Dalloway, one of the characters, Septimus, a World War I veteran, commits suicide. During his time in the War, he had felt great loss, including the death of his friend. He is suffering from a form of post-traumatic-stress disorder, and as a result, no longer feels a part of this world. He is losing touch with reality and so chooses to end his life. I find this whole scene quite frighting, that events in one's life such as a war could have such devilish effects on the mind. However, when I think about it, the fact that Septimus had this disorder after the war is not very surprising at all.

I have been brought up believing that any form of killing is bad, no matter in what situation, that it is a move against nature to harm the soul of another creature. Now, imagine that this is what you have believed your entire life. Suddenly, you are drafted into the military, against your will. You must go to fight an enemy that you do not know, in a world you are unfamiliar with. All that you do know is the person next to you. However, nothing is constant. Your world is shaken out of balance. The people next to you die, or are injured and replaced with new recruits, who also die or get injured. The only constant is within yourself. You run around, diving into holes and behind walls for your life, and as you do, you realize that you are standing on a column sticking out of the pit of hell, and a single wrong move in either direction will lead to a long fall into a bottomless pit. This is how I feel Septimus's mental state was after the war. I think it is truly horrible to have to think like this, because just writing it down made me feel very uncomfortable. To have to live through it is another task entirely. 

Identity Part II

For a lot of people, first impressions are important. Sight is the first interaction between two creatures. As humans, we are designed to utilise our five senses to make judgements about our surroundings, and creatures surrounding us. Because of this, first impressions are important. The things we see become primary for those we do not know. The way we dress, therefore, makes different impressions on different people, in different situations. In Mrs. Dalloway, the uncle, Uncle William, said that "a lady is known by her shoes and her gloves" (8). This means that a lady is known by what she wears, not by what she says. This, I thought, resembled an older time's thought, as at some point, women were to just be silent and stand as figures. What women said was not always important, but what they wore was because it made a statement, as everyone only looked at them from afar. I think this idea has come forth in many ways. For example, when one goes to an interview, one generally dresses up nicely so that the interviewer will get past that first barrier of sight, so that he or she will not judge based on appearance. For example, when I went for my college interviews, I dressed up so that my interviewer would pay attention to what I am saying rather than my appearance. I think that perhaps this may be more evident on the female side, as this statement made by Uncle William is trying to say. I think that because women are or were seen very much as physical objects of desire rather than people of equal status, they were judged more harshly on their appearance. Using this image, I find it hard to imagine myself, if I were in that position, to be able to dress to an interview where my interviewer does not judge my appearance as soon as I walk in. This brings me back to the idea of identity. What is a woman's identity if she is seen as the clothes she is wearing rather than the words she speaks or what is in her mind? It seems that the female identity in this situation, according to Uncle William, has been written out by an outside force. It was not decided upon by the females, nor was it agreed upon. But this outside force unfortunately has constructed a wall in between the true female, the mind and soul, and the perception of females. As a group, we must fight to break down this wall that his blocking us from seeing the true women.  

How Accents Make a Book More Bearable, And a Bottomless Gorge.

When I first heard the name of this book during an all-high-school-meeting, I thought I had heard wrong. I later asked a friend what the name of the book was. I was somewhat amused to find that the book was indeed titled The Vagina Monologues. At the time, still in my junior year, I did not think I would ever read such a book. Yet here I am, approximately one year later, having pulled my way through it. The book contains a great many graphic images and it is by far the most revolting book I have ever read. Phrases in the book such as "You cannot love a vagina unless you love hair" made me very uneasy (9). Following this chapter, which is called "Hair," there are a number of sections that are ever more descriptive and detailed. By the time I got to page 24, I was ready to put the book down and never even glance at it again! One small caption on page 25 saved me. The caption, which reads "Jewish, Queens accent" helped me lift my head above this grotesque cloud known as The Vagina Monologues (25). I read this chapter, called "The Flood," with what I thought would be a "Queens accent" and was able to find the chapter a bit more amusing than I found the previous chapter. What I needed to do was to read the book as "amusing" rather than "disgusting" and in doing this, I could walk through the book mentally unharmed.

The way The Vagina Monologues is written also helped me get through it. Although I did not initially realize this, the book is written in a very "quick" way. What I mean by "quick" is that the speaker changes almost every paragraph. At first, I thought it was the same person speaking, but when I realized that it was a collection of phrases from different people, I found it very interesting. The way that Eve Ensler, the author, put these phrases together to make this monologue, making sure that it made sense the whole way through, is an incredible feat. This also made the book easier to read for me because I wasn't, in a sense, lingering on the same thought for too long. Lingering on a single thought in this book for too long could be fatal. What I had to do was to keep moving quickly from one idea to the next, never stopping until I reached the end. It was like running across a gorge with skinny pillars as stepping stones, where if I stood on a single pillar too long it would crumble from my weight. I have to be light and skip through it, not letting the gorge take me. I suppose this is quite a dramatic example for a book, but this is the first book, and hopefully the last, that I have read with such endless uncomfortable imagery. I am glad it is over. Moving on to Mrs. Dalloway is a nice change, coming back to the ground on the other side of the gorge. 

The Emotions of Starvation

Reading the Hunger chapter in The Beauty Myth,  I was intrigued to find a few details that confused me. In my previous post, I stated that exercise was the correct way to be thin, not by dieting and not eating. However, Wolf states that "One fifth of women who exercise to shape their bodies have menstrual irregularities and diminished fertility" (192). I am confused as to what she is saying here. Is it that exercise is bad? I find it hard to believe that exercise at a good level could be bad for a human being, knowing that we were once built to run for hours based on the persistence hunting hypothesis (before the time of weapons, we used to run after animals until they could not run anymore because they do not have a cooling system that is as sophisticated as ours).

Another point that I found interesting is Wolf's explanation of the emotions hunger brings out. When we hear the phrase "like a hungry animal" many of us think of a wild beast going crazy. I never put this idea into context until I read this chapter. Wolf states "Hunger makes women feel poor and think poor" (197). At first I did not understand why she specified women in this statement. After some thought, however, I came to the idea that perhaps she specified women because when women get hungry, the body not only becomes starved, but the women also feel the need to think about what they are eating, how much they are eating, and if they should eat. Because of this, I feel like although a woman may have all the food in the world in front of her, she may still feel poor because she cannot bring herself to touch it. Wolf also states that "Hunger makes successful women feel like failures" (197). I took this in the same context and thought that women who are starved are using all their power to think about what to eat and what not to eat, and so are too tired to think positively of themselves and so dive into negativity. This, I think, also applies to men in many cases, simply because hunger makes us all feel like we can't do anything because we physically don't have the fuel to do so.

The Disease

Having just read the Hunger chapter in The Beauty Myth, I felt a bit horrified. I originally thought that the "not eating to get thin" idea existed but not too wide spread. The statement that "Many are hospitalized, many die" scared me to a certain degree (179). How is it that people know that not eating is harmful in many situations and that both women and men (but mostly women I think) do this often if they feel pressured from the outside world. The idea that we need to be thin has been there for a long time, but the ways in which we get thin have been chosen for us by the media. Advertising of things such as cigarettes, diet tablets, and other sources of "thinness" point us towards the wrong way of being thin.

I also think that being thin and being fit have been confused. They are not one in the same thing. Being fit often results in being thin, but simply being thin does not at all mean that you are strong and fit. The goal should be to be strong and fit, not thin. Exercising and physical activity is what we were built for, not staying motionless. Therefore that should be our primary cause. Wolf wrote that Vogue stated that a woman who had become thin unnaturally "'look as though she has not had enough milk as a baby and her face has that expression one feels Londoners wore in the blitz'" (185). The second part of that phrase, I think, brings out how women feel when they put themselves through the torture of not eating. It is an awful expression to have on one's face. The face loses all color and expression, looks deflated and sickening, and scared. I personally have never understood why everyone connects fatness to eating directly without first going to lack of exercise. I suppose it connects to the fast food industry as well. As people have been realizing that fast food makes us unhealthy and obese, I think they have decided to not eat fast food without replacing it with other food. They have assumed that it is the "eating" part that makes us "fat" and not the fact that fast food is wildly unhealthy.

Something that scares me is thinking of the future. If we keep going down this road to thinness in the wrong way, a lot more people will have many problems. We need to emphasize exercising a lot more than we do today and decrease the emphasis on beauty and fat. The negativity that comes with the word "fat" is astonishing, and it should have never been there. 

A View From That Place in South Asia

Over break, I interviewed my grandmother for our class. Before the interview, I had gone through the questions and had given a guess as to what my grandmother would say for each one, based on the types of instructions given to me by my parents in situations. I was quite relieved to find out that my guesses and my grandmother's answers were quite similar. At the time I interviewed my grandmother, I had just begun to read The Beauty Myth. When I came to one part of the definition of the beauty myth: "Strong men battle for beautiful women and beautiful women are more reproductively successful" I asked my grandmother what it was like at that time when she was growing up in terms of beauty and the perception of it (12). She responded by saying, "We didn't think about that at home. We were more focused on what we were doing. That is how my mother taught me to be and that is how I am." However, she also said that, "Our parents didn't let us cut our hair. This was not for religious purposes but because of the idea that girls looked beautiful with long hair." So the idea of beauty did exist back then at the superficial level even if it was not as prevalent. My grandmother also went to an all girls school and had very strict rules determining when she had to wake up, go to sleep, finish playing, do homework and so on. However, she mentioned, these rules were not just for women, but for everyone. It was a very disciplined culture back then.

The idea of the "housewife" still did exist though in some ways. I am unsure as to how it was seen in those days, whether it was simply a division of labour or whether it had more weight on the gender side. My grandmother said that her mother (my great grandmother) used to cook lunch for the children and my grandma's father and send them off to school and work respectively. The way that I saw this in my head, the way that my grandma described it, however, seemed to make her mother more like an old sage, to which all other members of the family went to seek food, shelter, and advice.

School was very different for my grandmother. She went to an all girls school, and there was a very strict dress code. She mentioned that everyone was meant to dress neatly in the same uniform and the uniform had to be worn in the same manner by all students no matter what age they were. There were also no school dances (because it was an all girls school). It was very focused on studies (essentially the bare basic nature of a school).

I found it very interesting to learn that what I had imagined of my grandmother's life, knowing the world my parents grew up in by their stories, was so close. I suppose that my guesses were quite general though, hence their accuracy. It is, in essence, the life of someone who lives in a reasonably poor area of the world but can afford to go to school and eat daily.

Racism In Disguise

Racism has been a problem in our world since whoever it was first decided to state that color or race is equivalent to status. In the United States of America, racism went so far as slavery until the 1860's. Then it was used as a tool to keep White status above all others. Since that time, racism has become less blatantly obvious and more masked beneath other words or phrases. The aspect of racism that is to do with beauty and color has not at all been masked but promoted. Today, women who model are constantly changed to achieve the look designers are searching for. By the end of the process, the pictures no longer look like the models at all. In The Beauty Myth, Wolf states that "airbrushing age off women's faces has the same political echo that would resound if all positive images of blacks were routinely lightened" (83). The fashion industry is changing the color of women, and by doing this they are stating that there was something wrong in the first place which is a show of racism. As mentioned in the film, Killing Us Softly 4, by Jean Kilbourne, we are constantly and consistently told through advertising that lighter skin is more desirable.

On a trip in India, I was taken aback when a friend of mine said she was working on getting her skin lighter. When I asked her why, she pointed at a picture of this woman in a magazine. I did not like hearing this. I felt like my friend had lost the sense of herself a bit because she was looking in a magazine and comparing herself to the "model" on nothing but a surface level. Perhaps this thought of mine was a bit harsh. I was reminded of this story when Wolf stated that "To airbrush age off a woman's face is to erase women's identity, power, and history" (83). I thought my friend didn't know who she was any more, that she was anything but a face.

I know that the media are to blame for this imbalance in women. Wolf made the statement: "Editors must follow the formula that works. They can't risk providing what many readers claim they want: imagery that includes them, features that don't talk down to them, reliable consumer reporting. It is impossible, many editors assert, because the readers do not yet want those things enough" (83).  I feel this statement gives the idea that editors have no choice but to create this effect of using women as nothing but pictures on pages. I also felt that it was trying to show how magazine companies use excuses such as this to argue themselves out of having  to try and find better, less hurtful advertising methods. At the end of this statement, it even seems like editors are trying to turn the blame onto the readers. I feel that there is a lack of responsibility taken by the editors, given that this statement is true. 

Circling Beauty

The idea of beauty is ever changing. Just yesterday I saw a tree outside my window that I thought was the most disgusting tree I had ever seen. Today, it seems like any ordinary tree. Tomorrow, it might seem like a beautiful tree. If a person were ever to buy a tree in a shop, he or she would pick the one that looked best, or that appealed to them most. If everyone kept buying the "good looking" trees, and the other trees died out, would there eventually be only good looking trees? I think this is an interesting thought in that it would be interesting to see what would happen if all the trees were "beautiful." How could we perceive beauty without variation? I do not know whether we would be able to tell if a tree is beautiful or not if all the trees were beautiful. It is like when parents tell us that "everyone is special in some way" and many of us think to ourselves, "well that is just another way of saying that no body is!" Reading through The Beauty Myth, I found another phrase that made me think about this idea even more. This idea, that "Women must want to embody [beauty] and men must want to possess women who embody it" made me think (12). Lets take this scenario for example. If men were only attracted to beautiful women, and if the same was true for women towards men, then all their children would be "beautiful" and eventually everyone would be so since both men and women are consistently choosing partners who are "beautiful." In this scenario, everyone becomes like the trees I described earlier. If everyone is beautiful, how would we be able to say that somebody is beautiful? Also, I mentioned that the idea of beauty is always changing. Perhaps, in that world where everyone is beautiful, our senses will start to work in the opposite way, that is, to see "imperfection" rather than to ignore it. Maybe our perception of beauty will change, and what we see as beautiful today, will be ugly tomorrow. I find it somewhat difficult to see that happening anywhere but in theory, but then again, I am still fairly new to this world just as many others are. I have no doubt that my perception of beauty, whether to do with people, or nature in general, has changed since I was younger, and will continue to change as I grow and change. Beauty, in this way, is circling like life, like the earth around the sun, and the sun around bigger stars, and bigger stars around the super-massive black hole and the centre of our galaxy. 

The Mental Side?

I was reading through The Beauty Myth today and a phrase popped up that made me think about the idea of beauty in general. The phrase I found was, "The quality called "beauty" objectively and universally exists." (12). I agree with this phrase in that the idea of beauty exists everywhere no matter what religion, what culture, what ethnicity we are. The idea of beauty is, as I see it, parallel to the idea of perfection. There are many areas in which these two ideas overlap. Universal perfection is unattainable because no one can be perfect in everyone's eyes. Some of us associate celestial and heavenly beings as "perfect" such that a human being, or mortal being could never achieve the same thing. Universal beauty, too, is unattainable because no one is beautiful in everyone's eyes. Only the "perfect" beings can be universally beautiful because they aren't bound by one human form but can morph into whatever form is considered beautiful by the individual who it may concern. We cannot change appearance and shape. But we can all be perfect or beautiful in someone's eyes. The interesting thing about beauty is that its perception changes with time. For example, when I see a person on the street, my first reaction towards them is fear. I think they look scary. However, if I see them more often, pass by them every day, I will eventually become accustomed to their appearance in my world and therefore start to see them in a different light other than scary. Another example of this phenomenon is in music. Far too often have I listened to a piece of music my sister showed me, disliked it, listened to it for a week playing off of her computer, and then started liking it all of a sudden. Our ears are the instruments we use to detect sound. Hearing is one of the five senses. Beauty is seen by our eyes which control our sight. Sight is one of the five senses. Our senses all develop over time and adapt to whatever world we are living in. At first, they may be reluctant to appreciate a new feeling, a new sight, a new sound or taste. But they will become accustomed to the new sense and eventually welcome it. Therefore, it is very possible that someone could seem ordinary one day, and seem like a god the next. So beauty is like a being that is growing alongside all of us, with us, in our minds. 

Will-power?

Throughout history, women have not been given very many freedoms. Because of this, they have not had much choice in life, or been able to choose what they want to do for themselves. Now in the present, however, women are more free than before. They can choose their path through life for themselves, and they can decide to stay or leave. Jasmine, in Jasmine, by Bharati Mukherji, states that "I changed because I wanted to." (185). Here she is finally expressing her own will. Before, she had been pretty much controlled either by her family in her youth, or by her husbands. A comment was made in class about how all her nick names were given to her by a man except the name Jasmine itself. I think that this name too is a statement of individual power for women. Because it is Jasmine's own choice, the name represents that power of choice for women. It is a change from the old world to the new. I think today, that women have much more choice than they did before. Perhaps they still do not have the same opportunities as men just yet, but I believe we are moving in that direction. I think as our world tries to make things more equal, more and more opportunities will open up for women, and therefore more choices, and so women will have more free will than ever before. However, as this happens, I also cannot help but see that men's choices are decreasing with the constant effort to promote the choice of women. This might be just to the slightest extent, but in some situations such as certain fields of jobs, people are pushing so much for numerical gender equity that it is sometimes easier for women to get these certain jobs than men in the same field simply because of this fact. These fields, I think, are fields such as engineering, and science related businesses. It would be very interesting to see if the opposite were true as well in jobs that were, at one time, considered more feminine such as jobs at fashion magazines or clothing design businesses. I wonder whether it is easier for men to get a job in such industries now days. In the end, we are moving in a positive direction when concerning the choices available for women today. I am curious to see at what stage we will be 30 or 40 years from now.

Strength and the thought of strength

In the article, "If Men Could Menstruate" there is a lot of emphasis on the idea that men take some physical aspect of themselves and try to turn it into a positive utensil. One thought that this brought into my head is connected with sports in our school. It is very interesting to see that in our school, there are far more boys that girls doing sports of all kinds. There is a very small group of girls who are "intense" enough to do sports and all of them seem to go into the same two or three sports. It is sad to see that most of them are turning away from running however. There is a strikingly low commitment to running from our school's female population. Track and Field has so few girls that our teammates are being stretched to do far more events than is fair to the average hard working human being. Although in the article, men tend to overemphasize their own power, on Track and Field, the equality between men and women stands true as both the girls and boys on track work just as hard and work together on races and practices. No one asserts control over the others, but instead we try to teach each other with mutual respect given to each individual. The only way in which the equality does not exist between the genders is with numbers. The number of females at ASL who are willing to do Track and Field are so low that the boys half of the team almost triples it in number. I think that there either is some lack of confidence for a lot of girls in our schools to try these sports, or some strand of laziness. There is absolutely no reason that the girls at our school cannot do running. In fact, there is no reason that anyone in the whole world cannot do running unless they have some biological defect that keeps them from running. As human beings we are meant to run and so we should all embrace the thing we were biologically created for together and in equal numbers if we can possibly do so. I think that many more girls should do running and stop being afraid of the supposed "pain" and just go and try it. Running is not pain. It is fun. 

Identity

From the past reading, we find out that Ofglen, the one that was Offred's friend, has dissapeared (we find out very soon that she is dead), and Offred says that she never knew the Ofglen's real name. Now the new Ofglen is there and Offred comments on how hard it is to find someone in "a sea of names" (295). This brought to light a fact that I hadn't thought of since the beginning of the book. We had a discussion in class about whether or not the "Of" part of the Handmaid names were referring to the fact that they were owned by whoever's name followed the "Of." If this is the case, then this is not a name, but a label to be placed on an item so that one does not lose it. This brought into question what is identity here? It seems that as long as the Handmaids live with their respective commanders, they have no real identity other than that they can be identified as this commander's handmaid. The very last sentence of the book, however, cleared some of this up for me. It reads, "And so I step up, into the darkness within; or else the light" (307). I thought that this statement drew a perfect line from the loss of identity to the gaining of it. We don't know what happens to Offred after she goes into the black van, but we do know that it could be positive for her. It might be that if the handmaids, having been taught not to have an identity, start to regain their old sense of self, they are sent away in the black van. It is a bit sad to think that in this supposedly futuristic world, people no longer have an identity, that there is no place for identity in our world of tomorrow. And that the only place for individuality and identity in the world of tomorrow is outside that world, in the land of the outcasts. So, to be free, to be an individual is now to be an outcast?

What it is to be human (Nature and Balance III)

In the past week's reading, I finally found one sentence in The Handmaid's Tale that truly stood out to me more than the rest. The commander, while with Offred in the club says, "But everyone's human, after all" (248). He states this in response to Offred's questioning about the club and its legality. I enjoyed reading this statement because it was the first time we ever saw the commander say something truly meaningful for our lives as well. It was the first time I saw a glimpse of a man with intelligence in this future apocalypse world. As I read this statement, I thought of what the commander could have meant. He could mean that humans, by nature, need to live without restriction, that we are not meant to live in a cage, as we are animals. He could have meant that freedom is a human's only choice, and so disobeying laws was the only way someone could feel  they were still human. Perhaps it was too much for me to expect of the commander. He goes on to state that "Nature demands variety, for men. It stands to reason, its part of the procreational strategy. It's Nature's plan" (249). Now I know that he is going to say something about women and how they are some sort of variety for men or something close to that. I was disappointed. The fact that he said "Nature's plan" also irritated me because in a previous Blog-post, I had stated that nature created the balance between man and woman and he has taken that statement and distorted it to make it seem that nature has created woman for man. He continues to say, "Women know that instinctively. why did they buy so many different clothes, in the old days? To trick the men into thinking they were several different women. A new one each day" (249). This is possibly the worst statement in the book so far. The commander has essentially stated that by nature's law, women are toys for men to play with. The men buy new toys when they get bored with the old ones. I think he has misunderstood nature's laws because he is used to living in this future world where they do not teach what nature had once created, and what we had forgotten. He also is completely ignorant of the rules of balance. Balance is non-existent in this world, this apocalypse. This is why this world, I believe, will fall apart, if it isn't falling apart already. 

Sun and Moon (Nature and Balance II)

Offred is an interesting character. In the beginning of Chapter Thirty, she talks about something I found very interesting - the night. She asks, "Why is it that the night falls, instead of rising, like the dawn?" (201). This was interesting to me because it connected directly with my idea of balance in the world. If we take the sun and moon to be opposites, then one must rise while the other falls. This does still happen, however, if we take Offred's view of the night rising. To see her view, we must imagine the sunrise and the sunset. During sunrise, the sun is coming up and the darkness is falling back. You can see this very clearly, and imagine it almost like a dome opening itself from one side to the other. During the sunset, you can see the darkness rise as the sun falls. So here is our balance. One always rises while the other falls. But one can never be without the other. How would we know what light is without the darkness? We never enjoy things until we have felt their absence. This could be compared to the fragile balance between men and women in society. As one side rises, the other falls. However, neither can live without the other because of the way nature has been built upon this Earth, because of the way we are. If either the male or female lines were to disappear, our human species would come to extinction. And so, in a sense, I suppose we could say that we as a species, and all other species like our own resemble the very thing that give us life - the sun. Interestingly enough, in this story, the Handmaids have been given the color red, and the Commanders, the color black. Darkness is usually associated with depression, sadness, negativity and death. We discussed in class that red also symbolizes things that give the characteristics expected of the Handmaids. In the book, Offred describes that the "night falls because it's heavy, a thick curtain pulled up over the eyes." (201). The night could represent the Commander, while the dawn represents the Handmaids. Commanders are supposed to be dark, powerful, generally negative people. And so, they are the night which smothers all happiness from Offred's life. They are the thing that takes away her freedom. But at the same time, for balance, they could soon be the very thing that helps Offred escape. 

Future Apocalypse

Today we hypothesized about how this new future existence with what seems to us as odd laws had come to be. An idea that stood out was that perhaps, in accordance with "The End of Men" by Ann Friedman, the women in society had gained so much power that men started to feel their own power drain. Hypothetically, if this happened, then the men felt that they were becoming useless. They felt stifled, suffocated, and endangered. This new world was unfair to them, and they couldn't cope or comprehend the reality of it. And so, they plotted. They planned the downfall of the democratic society, the shooting of Congressmen as Offred describes, and they planned to separate the jobs of women so that the individual females would no longer hold much power. As Abraham Lincoln said, "A house divided against itself cannot stand." The men used this idea to go forward with their plan and to gain control over the women who were outranking the men in society. However, as they put their plan into action, they also made a grave mistake. In Lincoln's speech, the word "house," in this context would refer to the human species, not to men or women alone. I believe that we were built by evolution to coexist as all animals have with two genders. We were not meant to live without the other half of our species. The men did not understand this, and so when they did "divide the house" they also isolated themselves from each other. They now no longer have any companions, no friends to be social with, no comrades to converse with. Just as all humans want what they do not have, the men want companions, someone they can really talk to and connect with. A clear example of this is when the Commander asks Offred to come play Scrabble with him just for fun. He needs someone to talk to and to be friendly with, so he uses his Handmaid. However, Offred is not a creature that has forgotten all feeling and sentiment. She knows that because there is this longing for companionship in the Commander she can use him, perhaps to escape. Men, by trying to attack the other half of their world, the females, have attacked themselves. There is no understanding of balance in this world!

Books about dry futures

Having recently read the beginning of The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, I have found certain similarities between it and two other books I have read in the past which are The Giver and A Brave New World. All three of these books have a setting in a future time with utopian-like societies. They all are quite dry in terms of the society it self. In order to keep the people in order, it is necessary to take away the "individual." It seems that this statement is a big part of all three books. In The Handmaid's Tale, women, and the rest of society, have very specific roles assigned to them. At the top there are commanders, and as we get lower, we pass guardians, and then we come to Handmaids. We have hypothesized from the evidence in the book that the handmaids go around birthing children instead of wives doing that. They are, in some sense, like the birthing mothers in the Giver. In the Giver, each person is given a specific job, and being a birthing mother is one of them. Babies that are born are then assigned to families. Similarly, in The Handmaid's Tale, handmaids go around to get children. However, throughout the book, but most evidently in chapter 5, there seem to be no children. We have speculated as to whether this might be because of radiation poisoning, which could very well be the case. Interestingly enough, there is a bio-hazard symbol on the cover of the book on the Handmaid on her legs. Also, as far as future utopian societies go, there are no lawyers, and universities here, and so people cannot get educated and think for themselves, nor can they argue cases because there is no one to stand up for them. If someone were to stand up and complain, they are alone in the world, like a single needle pointing up in a pile of needles on their sides. It seems like people imagine the future as dry, and in this book, we see a future where women are exploited for their biological features, and given jobs such as being a handmaid who runs around giving birth to children. Another interesting point in this story is that color is a major factor. In such a dry world, colors designate someone's status and occupation. For example, the handmaids wear red. In The Giver, color is very important too, as there is not to all except for the Giver and the Receiver (the Giver in training). It seems that authors are thinking about how to make these "utopian" societies seem without color, and so they either get rid of it entirely, or they categorize it and latch even color to the grey, utopian system. It will be interesting to see how this story unfolds as The Giver ended with the boy being able to see color and being able to see what the society truly was.

Natural to Unnatural (Nature and Balance I)

Equality is something I support heavily. I hope that there will be a day when all people look upon each other, whether they be female, male, white, black, of any religion or of any country and be able to talk as friends not foes. The balance in the world is something we have forgotten over time. When we first evolved, the differences between men and women (as far as I know) in terms of work was more a division of labor rather than a set of distinguished classes, each at a different level. Rank may or may not have existed between members of tribes, but I do not think it existed between the genders within the tribe. The division of labor, for example, women would take care of the children and cook while men would go hut, was (once again, as far as I know) probably because life seemed to balance itself out that way. I don't think there were any rules against women going hunting or men taking care of children and cooking but no one questioned it because no one cared. It was not an issue of social pride or of status. However, in the modern world, as we have come to the economic age that we are in today, we no longer have this natural balance. I believe that this is due almost entirely to the fact that the world is no longer natural. Our lives are governed by the economy, not by the essentials to life. We no longer use our minds to figure out the best way to stalk and run an animal to death, but to look at the stocks and run opposing companies to the ground. Instead of becoming more competitive with other species, we have turned upon ourselves. In "The End of Men" by Hanna Rosin, a lot of emphasis is given to how we are already moving past the stage where men and women are equal and that many more women have been acquiring high ranking spots in companies and that more of them have been graduating from college. I personally am indifferent to this fact, but look more broadly to the fact that we are fighting ourselves. All this competitiveness has come between our genders because a long time ago some guy found some shiny yellow metal and was struck by greed. When he had the gold, he had the power because everyone else wanted it too. He decided what to do for the next few hundred years. And now, women have found the stash of gold and are raiding it. However, as much as I do support equal rights, I do not think revenge is the right way. If revenge is taken, then there will be a series of wars back and forth till the end of time.