Church Camp

I've run out of meaningful things to talk about on this blog so I figure I'll talk about my experiences. Many summers of my life I spent time at church camp. As someone with religious parents, I’ve been to a variety of different types of church camp. The one I went to for most of my younger years was the outdoorsy, “connecting the Word of God with the World of God” type. Later years were focused less on team building and nature-y things and more on moral discussions and pop/rock church music. I never made that many friends because I was pretty shy most of my life but that just gave me a better position from which to watch all of the summer unfold. And I feel it’s only right to share the lessons I learned.

In elementary school one summer we did a rock climbing thing. There were these kids who for our purposes we will refer to as George and Elroy. We all went on a trip to some cliffs in Wisconsin after spending time learning how to climb safely and correctly. George and Elroy were competing for the affections of a gal named Jane, because what is summer camp without romance and drama? Jane had made it clear that she was only interested in George but Elroy wouldn’t back off. Everything George did, Elroy tried to best him. In Wisconsin, we were climbing one day casually with George and Elroy in a race to the top. They seemed to be neck and neck until suddenly George and several others started jumping back down. Elroy laughed and continued and it was almost cartoonish the way things played out. He dragged himself all the way up and pulled himself right into a hornet's nest. So if your friends all jump off a cliff, you should probably jump too.

In 9th grade, I went to a little weekend retreat where I had so many great experiences that I was just rearing to go the next year. We were put into small groups for Bible-related activities and discussions about leadership and listened to religious seminars. One day, we had a nice Christian sex-ed talk. We joined with a couple small groups and filed into a small lecture hall. As we were all sitting down, each of us was handed a bookmark. The one I received had a picture of a smiling young gal and said “I can make people happy without taking my clothes off.” As a young impressionable girl whose mind is filled only with sex as an attempt to please others, this changed my world. I felt so enlightened every time I looked at that bookmark.  We spent a lot of time doing role plays. How to tell your boyfriend that you don’t want to have sex. How to tell your mother when you walk in on your dad sleeping with the neighbor. We did a fun little voting game about when it’s okay to have sex or not. I learned a lot that day, like there aren’t that many different ways to say “no sex is safe sex” and church leaders don't like to acknowledge that gay sex exists. But the takeaway they made sure we left with was: If you think you’re a STUD, you’ll lose the U and you’ll just have STD.

There’s lots to learn at church camp about all different things and I think whether or not I enjoyed all those years of camp, I certainly grew from them. These are just two stories that I happened to think of but that have no real connection to each other. They’re just some of the great things I learned in my youth. (If anyone's interested I have many more stories and lessons available to those who ask including but not limited to things around solicitation, frogs, and the scientific method.)

One of the Guys

Jordan was my neighbor since I could remember. He was in fourth grade when I was in kindergarten but that’s my only reference for how old he might have been. We had played together forever and I loved him. He taught me that you could get gum by peeling away the stems of this plant and chewing on the insides. He put worms down the back of my swimsuit and then showed me how if you cut them in half then the top half grows a new body. He tried to skateboard off of his roof and also tried to jump from his garage roof onto a slip’n’slide waiting below in the yard. He told the worst jokes ever like “Why was the watermelon different from the cantaloupe? Because the cantaloupe was orange.” He was my best friend.

He was older than me and bigger than me and I was always struggling to keep up. He had friends his age and I was just a little girl who his parents probably made him humor. But I think I held my own alright. When he was the only one who could climb our tree, I taught myself how to. When he wanted to play football in the yard, I tackled right back. Over my dead body was I going to let anyone beat me. No matter how much bigger or stronger or taller. And certainly not a boy.

His family moved away when I was in first grade and then I was left alone to play with kids my own age. My new best friend was a girl and we were the biggest, strongest, and tallest in our class. We were faster than all the boys at recess and our chain was unbreakable when we played red rover. But still the boys didn't share the balls with us. Of course some days were jungle gym days and other days we all played tag or red rover as a class, but every other day the boys played with balls and the girls played make-believe games. Don't get me wrong I loved make-believe games but sometimes you're just more in the mood for kickball.

Throughout early elementary school I watched my female friends' soccer skills get ignored only for the boys' to be praised. I watched as I (objectively the most athletic girl in my class at the time) was never good enough to play with the boys at recess. I watched as other girls got teased for wearing pink and painting our nails and having sleepovers and being "girly girls". If my handwriting was neat then I was "too girly." Even playing board games at indoor recess, no one took us seriously. If a girl won then it was a fluke or we were cheating. If a boy won it was because he was good. Because if you're a girl, you're automatically bad at Risk.

I was already what one might call a tomboy but all of this pushed me to be as traditionally boyish as I could. I did everything to be "not like other girls." I was going to be smarter and stronger and better than every boy and they would have to acknowledge me then. I was going to prove that I was just as good. I was going to make the boys treat me like one of them.

By fourth and fifth grade I was mean. I did my best to intimidate every boy in my class because I thought it would earn me some respect. We got teased for playing "girly" games, making dolls out of erasers, talking during recess. We got kicked out of foursquare games and we weren't allowed to play this stupid building game in indoor recess. So I kicked shins, talked back to people, to show that I wasn't buying their superiority crap. I was smarter I earned a place at the top that gifted class but I still wasn't good enough.

In middle school, with all girls, it was like a breath of fresh air. I got the respect that I earned. If I was smart then people acknowledged that, if I was athletic, if I was fun. For once in my life I didn't have anything to prove. I was as successful as I pushed myself to be and there were no boys to tell me I wasn't worth as much.

Then I got to Uni. After 9 years of playing softball, the boys still didn't trust me to catch and throw in Ultimate Ball. For the record, I'm good at Ultimate Ball. In PE I got ignored. In class I got talked over. And I watched this happen to all of my friends as well. In any math or science class you can bet the person that people ask for help is gonna be a boy. Because you can't trust a girl to know anything. The "good" team in sports, plenty of boys and shockingly, there are less girls. Because girls can't play sports. The kids who are laughing and rolling their eyes as girls talk in class discussions are the boys. Because god forbid a girl have something valuable to say. Even in my friendships with boys I was defensive and scared. Because what if people thought I was just some boy-crazy slut? How I dress, how I act, what I do all seem to be check boxes on a scorecard for if I'm as good as the boys or not.

I'm sick of playing this game. I'm tired of running this never-ending race that I can never win to prove that I'm something I'm not. I don't care anymore if I make it to "one of the guys." My success is because of me and because I pushed myself and it's valid with or without the boys' stamp of approval. My intelligence, my athleticism, my character is not measured on the boys' scale. And I don't have to be as good as the boys. I'm better.

What the Future Holds

Thinking about college and what I want to do with my life is a lot of stress. Sometimes I just want to go to a small college,  double major in art and animation, and then move to Portland and have a my dream job at Laika Studios. I’d have a nice little apartment and a dog and just live life doing what I love. Too bad I can’t do that.

What I care most about in the world, though, is children. I care about making sure that children are safe and happy, and that all children have equal opportunities through equal education. I want kids to have schools that are safe and comfortable places. I care about there being up-to-date curricula and testing that are meant to help kids succeed. I care that schools are adequately funded so that kids can get a good education regardless of their family’s income. I care that schools are places where students are respected and respect each other. And most importantly, I care that students come out of schools well-educated and able to access all different things. I want the sky to be the limit.

Too often, though, public schools crumble because funding only goes to the schools in rich neighborhoods. Girls don’t feel safe or welcome in their own schools because of rampant sexism and sexual harassment. Kids experience constant institutionalized racism and the school to prison pipeline is going strong. All these things are so important to me to change and it seems like so much to do and I’m really just a kid. I know when I go into the world I’m going to be the girl that no one takes seriously, the black girl that is too angry about nothing, and the girl who’s always trying to make something out of nothing. And all of that seems really scary.

It seems scary for there to be so much to fix in the world and at times it seems like there’s no chance of ever just being happy. Because there are always going to be people who are treated unjustly and not given the same respect, rights, and opportunities as their more privileged peers. And as long as that’s happening, it seems so irresponsible of me to run off to Laika.

This blog post is kind of all over the place because I’m not sure what my point really is. How can you spend your life helping other people but also making sure that you can do the things that make you happy? I never feel more alive than when I’m talking about or working on injustice in schools or working with kids and yet I’m also not too great at handling the stress that comes with that either. Once could even argue that I don’t really have the right to be stressed because I’m not the one in the worst position. I disagree with that personally. Someone else always has it worse than you but that doesn’t mean you aren’t allowed to feel what you feel. It’d be a job that’s endlessly frustrating but also so important. But art makes me happy. So do I put my happiness on hold to follow my passion? Or do I ignore my passion in attempt to be happy?

Honestly those questions are dumb, though, because I can always do both.

Not Skinny

I find myself thinking a lot about what it means to be Not Skinny. I never am sure where I fit on the range from skinny to fat, only that I’m not skinny. I joke around about it a lot but my weight is one of the things I’m most uncomfortable with about myself. Every fitness testing  I dread height and weight because I know I’ll weigh too much for my height.  I’ll have to know my BMI isn’t what I want it to be. I stand there on the scale fearing that the person behind me in line will accidently look in and see the number on the scale. I know in my mind that it wouldn’t matter- even if it did happen, no one would care. But that doesn’t make me less ashamed as I wait for the teacher to record my weight.

I don’t know why exactly I’m so embarrassed. I spend hours going through Instagram and I see plenty of women who are Not Skinny and they have nothing to be ashamed of just like I have nothing to be ashamed of. A body is a body and people shouldn’t be made to feel bad for how theirs looks. I constantly see other women being praised for being “thick” and I feel that I could fit into that category myself. But thicker thighs and some kind of ass don’t make me feel better about my stomach rolls and love handles.

I find myself getting annoyed as I write this. I think I’m shallow to be honest. Why do I care if other people find my body attractive? I know I shouldn’t but I do. I often think things that contradict what I actually believe. In my heart I truly believe that if I were just smaller, if I took up less space then maybe people would like me more. This is crap and I know that I definitely wouldn’t like someone less for being Not Skinny. But it’s hard to convince yourself of that in the moment where you take up the most space on the couch or when you go out to a restaurant and see that everyone else is eating so little.

I’m questioning whether I actually want to write this or whether I’d rather start again and try to throw something together because this is too personal for me. Maybe it would be better to write about anything but body image issues but it’s tiring to censor myself so I’m just trusting that no one will mock me and that someone else will understand.

Getting to Know Me

I don’t know what to write. What is important enough to write an essay about and yet unimportant enough to share with a whole class or people you aren’t close with? I’ve been asking myself this for the past week as I’ve been trying and failing to write a satisfactory blog post. They say to write about something you care about but doing so is also to invite judgement. How do you write something that means something to you without seeming pretentious or fake-deep or trying too hard? The answer is you don’t. So why try?

I think I’m so used to being ashamed of the things I like that I end up being too afraid to actually enjoy them. As much as people say “be yourself” and “don’t worry what others think of you,” I think that’s something that significantly contrasts with our culture and society. We are taught to be ashamed of certain aspects of our life but to have no shame in other places. I think it’s very natural for people to have a hard time shaking fears that they will be judged for who they are and what they like.

At this point in my life, I’m pretty comfortable in who I am. I think. I love sharks and art and the 1975 Wonder Woman TV show. I sing a lot and watch the same four movies over and over and I dance really badly. I still won't really sing around other people because I'm afraid of sounding bad and making a fool of myself. I’m not exactly sure what I'm afraid would happen if someone didn't like my singing. There's some idea in my head that people wouldn't want to be friends with me if they heard. But that really makes no sense because I really doubt that people choose their friends based on their singing abilities. Sharks I love endlessly and shamelessly and I don't think I could be embarrassed over it if I tried. Art is a personal thing for me and so to openly share my art with others makes me feel vulnerable still but I think I've gotten past the shame. I know I have a ways to go before I'm unafraid to like what I like and want what I want but god knows I'm more secure than I was in middle school so overall I’m proud of myself. And maybe people do judge me for my dancing, but I try my best not to care.

Nonfiction Writing

We Hate Macon

Being one of two black girls in an English class that's reading a book about race and appropriation is an experience that I wouldn't say is particularly enjoyable. It's all too commonplace here at Uni though- being one of few or the only black person in a class. What makes it even less fun is that because I am mixed, white people often choose to forget that I am not any less of a black woman for that. Angry Black White Boy by Adam Mansbach discusses the gray lines of white ally-ship, which can be a difficult conversation.

A lot of people want validation that they are indeed Not Racist and are "good white people" or such. Mansbach challenges this idea in saying that white people should be criticizing their whiteness openly as opposed to looking for ways to deny it. But often when discussing the book, I see white people in the class pushing whiteness off of themselves before they criticize whiteness. And this is essentially what made the class dislike Macon.

Macon talked about being “blacker” than the students at the BSU and more radical than John Brown and he had a lot of rhetoric that was intended to separate himself from white people. Being “down for the cause” doesn't take away your white privilege. It doesn't make you no longer a part of the power structure that constantly minimizes and oppresses people of color.

It felt almost as if the non-black majority of the class was reading the book and looking down on Macon for all the wrong reasons. People see him as an extreme (which obviously he is) and criticize based upon that but I think part of Mansbach’s intent was to show that Macon-esque thoughts are not at all uncommon. Few people go around robbing people in cabs and organizing Days of Apology, but it's not uncommon for people to speak about having or wanting to have an “honorary black card” or permission to say the n word because they're somehow different from other non black people and the rest of the white supremacist power structure.

We have a class full of Not Racist, rap listening, liberal non black people. And while there's nothing wrong with being any or all of those things, at times it can feel like an army of less extreme Macons and then the two black girls in the class.