My Doctor's Office

As I recently was accepted for Medicaid I have made several trips to my local doctor's office, Lafayette Medical Center. Located in Bed-Stuy on Lafayette Ave, just west of Bedford Ave. My trips to this office have been painful and not because of the procedures or shots or anything to do with the actual doctor's visit. The staff behind the glass when you walk in does not acknowledge you and the waiting area is stark and unwelcoming. You could easily wait at the window for ten minutes without being acknowledged. It is up to you to capture the attention of the secretaries. Those with most success tapped or knocked on the windows or shouted through the hole at the bottom. The windows are overwhelmed with signage which I was able to take a few photos of - pictured here:

These signs...due to my observations on all occasions of being at the office are ineffectual. All loud and disturbing patrons were, in fact, seen in the office. On one occasion, upon entering the doctor's office area, to the second waiting area, I found myself sitting next to three adolescents blaring music with vulgarities and profanities from their cellphones while they flicked the flame on a lighter and sexually 'danced' in one another's laps. This seemed to be rather routine and normal as no personnel attempted to control the situation.

The staff is trying to control the patrons with these signs, but from my observation, no one is reading the signs. It is a little humorous...but not after waiting over an hour for a scheduled appointment and after feeling a profound sadness for the ills of the medical world we live in today.

cigarettes

I have been smoking cigarettes since I was 21. I am now almost 28. But today, I haven't had a cigarette for 15 days. Why have I been smoking for so many years? It began when I was abroad in Copenhagen, Denmark. The girls that I was in the studio with would all go out to this lovely window in the hallway every hour or so during class to have a cigarette. They would always invite me and I would always join, wanting a break from work. I declined cigarettes left and right because, why start? But then one day and I can't remember too precisely, I decided to take one and to try it. It wasn't love at first inhale but there was something satisfying about the experience. Then I bought these 'natural' cigarettes called bidi's and fell in love with the experience of smoking alone in the tiny backyard of where I lived.

At a time when I felt so horribly alone, it was as though they were my companion...always there for me. I could sit outside and stare out at spaces just thinking without feeling out of place.

Being a very visual person, I also fell in love with the packaging aspect of cigarettes. So many precious little sticks inside of a delicate box or wrapper for your own personal enjoyment. It became an obsession. A new pack of cigarettes was like the best gift I could ever imagine...the visual beauty of the package was a huge draw for me. I began smoking Lucky Strikes simply for the packaging. In some countries, like Thailand they put graphic warnings on the boxes of cigarettes. When I traveled to Thailand in 2007 and 2008, I bought these cigarettes and had to develop this strong mindset of denial and carelessness.

Smoking is a very social activity...when I backpacked in Europe it became very easy to make friends with others at the various hostels I would stay at, just by sharing a cigarette. The strange thing about smoking for all this time is that I never considered myself a smoker. I never wanted to imagine that I was addicted. I knew how bad it was for me and I remember my famous quote from childhood in regard to the death of my great aunt Kay - "She cigaretted herself to death."

 Cigarettes are sometimes viewed seen as a sign of rebellion, or those that smoke are "cool" or "nonchalant" or "going against society" but in fact smokers become a slave to the tobacco industry by forming an addiction - spending hundreds of dollars in taxes and being in absolute misery when traveling by air and unable to have a cigarette for an extended period of time...and on and on.

 There is so much I can write about the topic of smoking, but most important to me is wanting to overcome this addiction. I want to show myself that I care about myself. I have been hurting my health for too many years and I want to take that back. I also have been a runner and have seen the effect that smoking has had on my running. Been in denial about it forever, but I am already noticing my running improving just a little - which is a whole lot.

 A favorite quote from Mark Twain on the topic; "Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times."

Burger King and Gulf

Saw these two signs next to each other on my way home the other night and thought it was interesting how similar they are. Are gas and fast food worthy of the same advertising campaign? Perhaps.

TO OTA

The way things change. TOYOTA becomes toota and his face turns into a bird. It's a nice thing that we can make changes in our world as banal as these. Yet somehow they become profound - a comment to society. I'm not talking about things that would be deemed 'street art' but about the marks that the 'every day' person makes on their world. The gum they stick under their seat, the bag of chips they throw to the ground, their name they write in sharpie followed by 'was here.' We are all capable of making these comments. So I wonder...how do you comment? What do you leave behind for others to see or feel?

'Frisk Me'

The girl sitting across from me on the bus today had a large necklace she had made and ironed herself out of beads with the text 'Frisk Me' in red letters in a red outlined white rectangle. I will do my best to recreate what it looks like here with marker. She was about 5'7", black, athletic build, delicate features and lightly make-upped face. She couldn't be in higher than 10th grade. She got onto the bus tightly packed amongst her four girlfriends who made their way to the back of the bus slapping each other lightly, giggling and screaming false alarms. Once they sat down they bantered about classes and social stuff at school. I had my headphones on but turned down the volume just enough to keep a vague idea of what they were going on about. About two seats down from Frisk Me sat a reflective and stealthy corn-rowed ebony young man who slowly stood up from his seat revealing his boxer shorts bubbling up out of his jeans while the girls all looked at each other and Frisk Me said, "Where do you think you're going?" To which he said nothing and continued on his way pretending not to hear.

So that is the story of my bus ride...but the phrase "Frisk Me" is lingering on my mind. Why would....anyone....want to be frisked? She so deliberately chose this phrase, as her necklace was handmade and carefully planned out. Does she mean it in a sexual way? It's almost a statement of making her body public property. Why would someone want to be objectified like that? Have her parents or guardians seen her necklace and how do they feel about it?

Just youtube'd "frisk me" and found this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-eFnyGbJME

I'm a little afraid of what it might be like growing up in this sex-crazed media world.

make up makeup

I have worn makeup since the 9th grade. My mother encouraged me to conceal my zits with cover-up and I haven't missed more than a day or two in the last 13 years of my life without putting makeup on. Under eye circles? Cover them up. New freckle on my forehead? Cover it up. Red blotchy skin? Cover it up. Real skin peeking through? Cover it up. Ads for foundations, concealers, cover-up sticks, blemish correctors have all somehow made their way into my psyche and have become my daily routine. Many advertisements pitch themselves as 'showing the real you.' Who am I doing this for? Is it for me? Is it for everyone else? The interesting thing I've noticed is that I put on concealer and a light application of foundation even whether I am going out into the public or not.

Regardless of how wrong I believe these following statements are...they are embedded in me: I feel vulnerable without makeup. I feel ugly without makeup. I feel less desirable without makeup. I feel unworthy without makeup on.

The makeup I'm talking about here is coverup. Makeup made for the intention of concealing one's 'flaws.' In the last year, I have been battling with this struggle due to my boyfriend's insistence that I stop hiding myself from under a veneer of makeup. He claims my glow is gone and my face turns into that of a lackluster baby doll. I can't help but to continue having these crazy thoughts such as, "well maybe he can't see the real me when I'm not wearing makeup" or "He's just saying these things to be nice."

I have battled with a low self-esteem most of my life (who hasn't), and feel that in the last two years I have become stronger; yet makeup remains like a ball and chain to my very self. I used to PANIC when I would spend the night somewhere without my makeup, now I still panic but I am becoming aware of how irrational these thoughts and feelings are - which seems to be the first step to becoming comfortable in my own skin.

Is this only a struggle that women go through? Any men reading out there? How do you feel about makeup? Any women out there who don't wear makeup? Did you used to? What was your decision? Do you feel conflicted about it?

fake organs

My (boy)friend has been working on an architectural solution for a cathedral to fit an organ. It turns out that the pipes you see on an organ are (sometimes) decorational and not where the actual sound is coming from. I just thought that others maybe ought to know this.

From Wikipedia: 

The organ of the Severikirche in Erfurt, Germany, has a highly decorative case with ornate carvings and cherubs.

The visible portion of the case, called the façade, will most often contain pipes, which may be either sounding pipes or dummy pipes solely for decoration. The façade pipes may be plain,burnished, gilded, or painted.^[48]

[edit]

hoodies

Hoods. Hoodies. Hooded sweatshirts. I like them. Plain. Pullover. No logo or design. That's exactly my favorite fashion.

 A hooded sweatshirt feels like protection. It feels like a hug from a lover. I would like to explore this idea of hooded sweatshirts and their place in society. Their place in the fashion world.

 The kind I like:

 The kind I hate:

If I had to wear the 'kind I hate" I think I would be in a bad mood. This is an interesting idea...how can the clothes that you wear affect your cognitive being? Halloween can be very empowering - choosing to wear something new and the abandonment of your dressing routine. Would I be more brave if I dressed daily in a fire-fighter's clothing?

Back to 'wear' I started.
From Wikipedia:

History

The garment's style and form can be traced back to Medieval Europe when the formal wear for monks included a long, decorative hood called cowl worn a tunic or robes.^[1] The hooded sweatshirt was first produced in the United States starting in the 1930s. The modern clothing style was first produced by Champion in the 1930s and marketed to laborers working who endured freezing temperatures while working in upstate New York.^[2] The term hoodie entered popular usage in the 1990s.^[3]

The hoodie took off in the 1970s, with several factors contributing to its success. Hip hop culture developed in New York City around this time, and the hoodie's element of instant anonymity, provided by the accessible hood, appealed to those with criminal intent.^[2] High fashion also contributed during this era, as Norma Kamali and other high-profile designers embraced and glamorized the new clothing.^[1] Most critical to the hoodie's popularity during this time was its iconic appearance in the blockbuster Rocky film.

By the 1990s, the hoodie had evolved into a symbol of isolation, a statement of academic spirit, and several fashion collections.^{[citation needed]} The association with chavs or neds in the UK developed around this time, as their popularity rose with that specific demographic. Young men, often skateboarders or surfers, sported the hoodie and spread the trend across the western United States, most significantly in California.^{[citation needed]} The rise of hoodies with university logos began around this time.^{[citation needed]} Tommy Hilfiger, Giorgio Armani, and Ralph Lauren, for example, used the hoodie as the primary component for many of their collections in the 1990s.^[1][2]

It's fascinating that the hoodie has become a symbol for such things. It does provide its wearer protection from the outside world. A way of hiding or becoming anonymous. Just recently hoodies were on the news in regards to the killing of Trayvon Martin. 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/21/trayvon-martin-million-hoodie-march_n_1371403.html

The visual culture of a hoodie was strong enough for this to happen? 

This site is under construction.

As New Yorkers, so I believe I can now also call myself, we see a ton of construction. Whether a building is going up or down or being worked on, there are visible signs denoting the 'construction.' Just today I came across a new kind of 'under construction' sign at my nearest subway stop of the G train at Bedford-Nostrand. On the side of the Brooklyn-bound track large offwhite sheets of fabric closed off the view across the span of the whole platform. There was no heavy sounding machinery or any overt signs informing about the site being under construction. After being used to the MTA preparing an extensive amount of signage and notifications this strikes me as a bizarre sight.

dorothy or...

At the coffeeshop I work at there is a little girl living next door who often comes by with her father. She is to either be addressed by her name, Elona, or when dressed in a blue checked dress, Dorothy. I find it amazing how this 3 year old identifies herself as a different person when wearing different attire. She is, of course, Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, a movie she has been watching nonstop for the last few weeks. What made her parents buy her the costume? Is it alright to encourage dressing up? Why should such a fantastical play idea only have its rights on Halloween, anyway?

Our Accumulations

Dear Diary,

I have too much stuff. Just today I tried to get rid of things...spring cleaning, you know? But as I went through all of the objects in my world, I found myself getting stuck in moment after moment of memories that each item of clothing or knick-knack brought forth. Csikszentmihalyi writes that, "...things stabilize our sense of who we are; they give a permanent shape to our views of ourselves that otherwise would quickly dissolve in the flux of consciousness."

Why is it that we all become buried in our stuff? Does it happen more easily to women than men? I got talking about this the other night with my boyfriend's mother and her sister. All of the us seemed to agree that a women is more likely to have sentimental attachment to objects than men; making for a more difficult departure with their 'stuff.' This was all based on first hand experience. My boyfriend's mother explained the situation in which she recently donated the remnants of their garage (they just moved) to a neighborhood church. Before it was to be collected, her husband began to go through the items asking if she was sure she wanted to get rid of them. At first she did the same thing that I found myself doing, reminiscing about the memories tied to the object and said, "I wanted to keep everything and tell the church picker-uppers to turn around and go back." While a fair share of the men we know, are able to keep their belongings minimal. Like my dad, he would own just one pair of pants and one tshirt if it weren't for my mom buying him new things all the time and managing his clothing.

There is something of beauty that can be found in every object; the slightly smooth texture that soothes your thumb when you rub it, or the way the orange bit glints in the sunshine. When is the moment that you are ready to get rid of something? What makes me so horrible at this while others can successfully keep their lives minimized with stuff.

There's that saying that one person's trash is another person's treasure. What if the one person is never able to give up their trash?

photo retouching

It is almost impossible to see an image in today's society that has not been retouched. We all know about the 'airbrushed' supermodels in magazines but how about your friends on facebook airbrushing themselves in iphoto before posting their photos online? Its obvious when a photo has been made to look vintage through various filters easily accessible on the iphone, but how about using photoshop to blur out blemishes and the clone tool to remove moles and to give a more defined jawline? Embarrasingly enough these are edits that I recently made to a picture of myself and as my finger hovered over the mouse about to click to post, I stopped myself. I decided that I didn't want to share a false impression. But for so long I have been editing photos of myself for the public world that I now feel that all 'real' photos of myself are too ugly. This makes me sick. What's next? People retouching their own children?

When I lived in Seoul, S Korea for a year I had a passport photo taken for an ID. When it was returned to me, the zit on my cheek was not there! A Korean coworker told me that it's very normal for them to retouch your photo before printing it. I kind of liked it but at the same time it's a bit strange to retouch a photo that is solely for identification purposes.

Bud Light Platinum on the Subway

Every hour should be happy. For the other 9 to 5. The night is always young. Every night has potential.

Covering the entire length of the subway car in all capital letters are these words which one reads over and over in a matter of seconds with nonchalance.

How is it that our government can support these advertisement campaigns on mass transit in NYC. Why does alcohol even need to be advertised? It seems to be one of the main subway advertisements that I see, whether its for beer, whiskey or rum.

Taking a closer look at the BUD LIGHT PLATINUM ads...the only image used is of the bottle from the neck down on the banner ads. The bottle is glistening with dew drops. The background is a subdued halo effect of blue surrounding the bottle and fading into blackness. The shiny bottle with its glowing reflective smooth surface draws the eye simply to the text and back to the image in a circular way. There is additional text provided so that you can even tag it in your twitter posts with the hash tag that is provided. The very idea that beer is responsible for having a happy life. Coming from a family where alcoholism is a factor, these ads are a slap in the face. "Every night has potential" the ad pushes in your face the bottle of Bud Light. Every night could be great and make you happy if you simply had a beer. To equate happiness with alcohol is a total disaster. Especially saying that every hour should be a happy hour. Is that to mean we should always be drinking Bud Light Platinum to attain happiness? Alcohol as a drug is a depressant...it cannot make you happy.

The beer was introduced in advertising during the Super Bowl of 2012. The advertsing is targeted for social networking sites and is meant to be spread about via Twitter and Facebook using the hashtag "MAKE IT PLATINUM" Apparently this advertising is working as you can see how many people, "Like" it.

WANTED

Kept looking at this on the subway today. A little bit confused with the smallness of the type notifying you that "wanted" is available on iTunes. Which led me to believe that Sasha Gradiva must be a musical artist with some new hit single called, "Wanted."

This is the first police wanted poster of British history dating back to 1881.

Sasha Gradiva...trying to make a name for herself with the boldened typeface and catchy and seductive colors of red, white and black. Her face is central to the ad making it the focal point. Yet her face is in quite the disguise with all of the makeup she is wearing. "HELP TRAP A SPY!". I'm really not sure who this ad is targeting. Most likely teenagers that would be entranced by the costume appeal and by the game of the ad.

pink plastic flamingos

"F***in' white people and their f***in' flamingos!" was yelled out into the air from the rooftop across the way while I smoked a cigarette on the fire escape. I glanced down at my feet and at the pink flamingo which lay there. I think the man himself is Mike Tyson. It's been rumored that he has a flock of racing pigeons atop his rooftop in Bed-Stuy. He connected his hatred for white people to flamingos in one fell swoop. I felt ashamed. I felt sorry for moving into this neighborhood amidst its gentrification. I am a part of that gentrification. But to what extent should I feel sorry for being who I am and for living in one of the few places which I could afford? Anyway, back to the flamingo. I was interested in this visual culture of a flamingo. Why exactly do people have pink plastic flamingos in their yard and why has it become a symbol of 'whiteness' as I hear?



From Wikipedia: The plastic pink flamingo was designed in 1957 by Don Featherstone while working for Union Products, and has become an icon of pop culture,[1] and won him the Ig Nobel Prize for Art in 1996. It has even spawned a lawn greeting industry where flocks of pink flamingos are installed on a victim's lawn in the dark of night. After the release of John Waters's 1972 movie Pink Flamingos, [2] plastic flamingos came to be the stereotypical example of lawn kitsch.[1]

Trim Pregnancy

This image appeared as an ad on my Facebook page today. I was in shock...is this real? Yes...it's real. A 'trim' pregnancy. I have always thought that pregnancy was more-so an issue of nurturance and selflessness. Making sure you eat properly and avoid any harmful substances to your system. It's not a surprise that pregnancy entails weight gain as you have a new life growing inside of you. Then there's this ad. It's an entire website, www.trimpregnancy.com. The tag line is, "The best kept secret by celebrity mothers revealed"

Why is this ad showing up for me? I suppose I am a female and in the appropriate age range for being pregnant...but this ad is just such an insult.

Taking a look at the ad and picking it apart visually...much to be done. The colors evoke a definite relation to other scammy diet and pill ads that I have seen on the internet. I am reminded also of all of the informercials I used to see when I had a telelvision. Countless ads would play back to back with the latest gimmick for how to lose weight - now!!!! The measuring tape strapped across the stomach almost seems like a choking device for the baby. This ad is also "all-American" with its red, white and blue colors. It has branded pregnancy....TRIM PREGNANCY. No longer just the state of being pregnant.


Once you go to the website, there is a WARNING: "Read this before you let your pregnant and overweight body rob you of your beauty and self confidence...Take action with methods that are PROVEN TO WORK and be a sexy mama!


So...along the lines of what they are saying here is that it is not attractive to be pregnant and that you should naturally lose your self confidence and be robbed of your beauty. What ever happened to the positives about pregnancy?

It gives expecting mothers the idea that they are somehow not going to be able to have a 'normal' body during or after pregnancy. Pregnancy and giving birth - is normal and the expansion of ones tummy is all a part of it!

Fried chicken on the B44

Nothing makes me feel more disgusted then when a fellow New Yorker aboards the bus or subway car with a magical box stuffed with smelly food shit and proceeds to open it and.....eat. I have a friend who claims they feel definitively fatter when a stranger eats in front of them. Like the intake of food is somehow contagious. God, it feels like it really could be to me sometimes too. The worst is fried chicken which often stinks up the bus on my ride home through Brooklyn at night.

Tip Jars

Working as a barista for over three years now in various places I have still not come to an understanding of what makes a tip jar successful. I have tried countless methods to sway the customer into tipping. For one, the tip jar should never be empty but yet it should never be too full. There are customers who tip no matter what, but the majority of customers seem to decide they will tip on a whim. This whim can be perceived as something which can be persuaded.

Take a look at my tip jar today. It has a tiny cute puppy drawing with the label 'tips' on it as it announces understatedly what it is, and there are $1s in the jar.



A customary tradition is to set out a 'bait' in the tip jar when business is just beginning. This is meant for the customer to see that tipping is a trend. It is often true that a customary tipper receives far better attention than a regular non-tipper. Sometimes when someone thanks me for their espresso without tipping, I find myself saying in my head, "You're not welcome."

http://topcultured.com/35-tip-jars-designed-to-make-you-give-more/

girl with a sticker book

Watched this little girl putting stickers in her giant sticker book with pre-laid out pages on the subway just now. There were three bodies on the page, a white girl, a black girl, and a brown girl and the page was empty. She picked out a dress sticker and put it on the black doll. It was interesting to see her make this choice without any pushing from her mother and to think of what might be going through her head as she chose which figure to dress.

Do you remember playing with dolls when you were younger? Were they the same color as you? Did you have the option to play with dolls that were of different skin colors? How might variations of exposure affect the development of a child?

I was also thinking about her sticker book in that it confines her to specific body shapes of the dolls and a limited selection of clothing. From my view most of the clothing were floral prints and some kind of dress or shirt & skirt attire. What kind of messages is this imposing on the girl at such a young age?

Afraid to be Hipster

Hipster. What is a hipster? Why am I afraid of being a hipster? I live near and work in Williamsburg, the 'hipster capital of the world.' The definition of hipster, from dictionary.com is as follows: A person who follows the latest trends and fashions.

I have a pair of eyeglasses that I am embarrassed to wear because of their very inherent 'hipsterness.' I do see better when I wear them and I bought them when I was abroad in Korea where I taught English for a year in Seoul. I enjoyed the aesthetic of the glasses although immediately upon returning to the US, where I could quickly see that eyeglasses such as the ones I had bought were becoming a 'trend,' it made me not want to wear them.

This is a photo of me in my hipster glasses the day that I purchased them in October 2007. I cringe when I look at this photo. I was proud of myself....being so stylish and unique. These feelings only later turned to crush me into hipsterdom when I returned to the US.

Hipsterdom (from urbandictionary.com)
Refers to the hierarchy within the sub-culture of hipsters.
Being a part of this hierarchy often has to do with 'being in the know': knowing what is popular at the moment with art, music and fashion. The hierarchy culminates into a top 1% of people who are what marketing companies refer to as the 'trend-setters', the people that define what's cool and that everyone else inevitably follows. Hipsterdom is generally confined to white people between the ages of 18 to 30, often middle class, often educated in Liberal Arts.

Why is it that following the trends and latest styles has become such a negative thing? It seems to apply to a subculture of people as well...not the massive followers...for example you can't go shopping at Abercrombie & Fitch and follow the latest trends at that store and be labeled as 'hipster.' It seems to surpass boundaries and to me, is almost undefinable. However, when I take a look at the following photo, I do agree that this can be labeled as 'hipster.' I think this boils down to the unnecessary accessories. The hats and scarves which serve no purpose for warmth, just merely for fashion's sake.



Have you ever been called a hipster? How did it make you feel?
What does hipster mean to you?

Valentine's Day

The dust is settling from Valentine's Day. I was on the subway today heading to class when a throng of teenagers entered the subway car with fistfuls of balloons and flowers and overstuffed teddy bears and hearts all over the place declaring the words "I LOVE YOU." It is nearly impossible to dodge from the hype of Valentine's Day. Beginning just after New Years, all of the stores begin to stuff the shelves with heart shaped boxes of chocolates, red and pink stuffed animals, a gigantic selection of cards and images of flowers. Flowers, flowers, flowers. Valentines day seems to be more of a holiday for businesses rather than for the people.

Unlike other holidays, there is a prevalent "popularity contest" on Valentine's Day. In the consumerist society that we live in, it becomes a competition of who can buy more, and who can get more gifts. Especially in middle school, the day seems to turn into this competition and popularity contest. I overheard a girl on the subway exclaim, "Jeremy got me like six boxes of chocolates and this big stuffed animal," to which her friend lamented, "Derek just gave me flowers."

At this age when it is so utterly important to fit in amongst your peers, a day like Valentine's Day could be doomsday to those without a significant other.

dissection of advertisement

Been seeing these ads on the subway recently...not paying too much attention to them until today when I went to observe the collection of the ads on the Communication Arts webpage.

What they have written about the ads is quite different than some of my thoughts. http://www.commarts.com/exhibit/new-york-lottery-campaign.html. They write, "Paying homage to past Lottery campaigns, that inspire fantasizing about winning it big, it's a humorous look at the decadent life someone might live after hitting the jackpot."

I don't find the ads too humorous. These ads reinforce opulent wealth. The amount of wealth that one would inherit from winning the lottery could never sustain the extravagance that these ads display.

These ads arrive during the time where we are all aware of the Occupy Wall Street movement and the focus on the 1%...where this ad plays on that, bypassing the 1% to become the .001%.

The ads also associate the winning of the lottery to the "richness" of "whiteness," as all figures in the ads are white.
What is unfortunate is that someone would mimic the spending of their winnings based on these advertisements.

Its similar to showing an image of someone irrevocably drunken at a bar for an advertisement for alcohol.
The ads look as though they are an everyday photograph, something that is attainable.

interesting parts from readings about language and representation

In the readings for my class, this paragraph struck me.

"He goes on to point out that the word 'barbarian' is simply the Greek word for foreigner (1987: 2); it does not necessarily imply anything negative. And yet, 'every man calls barbarous anything he is not accustomed to; it is indeed the case that we have no other criterion of truth or right-reason than the example and form of the opinions and customs of our own country' (1987: 8). Those opinions and customs are embedded in and expressed in language. So as Montaigne shows, the word for 'barbarian' that in fact means simply 'not Greek' becomes a signal fo everything 'outside', everything 'not like us'. It sets in place an idea of a world structured along lines of inclusion (us) and exclusion (barbarians); of that which is reasonable set against that which is reduced to an unassimilable otherness.

It is also, of course, an example of the capacity of language to fit us to the dominant local views of the world, and to (re)produce the world for us.

- J. Webb, Understanding Representation

Language is delicate and has been shaped over the years by the societies in which we live. It is interesting to think of the original meaning of barbarian and how it has been formed over the years to become something quite negative in nature over our association of dealing with things foreign to oneself.

Foucault considered that human subjects are produced and not simply born. Insisted that there could be no "essential tendencies" because human subjectivity is entirely constructed. Language is an excellent example of this.

Words relate to some more than others. In my class, a student brought up the poignant example of stand-up comedy. Some people may get the jokes while others are left not laughing because the language is either foreign to them or the very material of the comedy act may be directed toward them as a race or societal standing.

MEN WORKING

There is an inherent sexism in construction signage. This was taken on a walk the other day in the Upper West Side of NYC. We pass signs like this all the time without hesitating to wonder about them.

After many years, the construction industry has begun to stop excluding women from its workforce although the signage seems to
fall short of this change. What are the repercussions of such signage? It becomes a known...something that we walk past without acknowledging. It becomes complacently accepted.

From the site, workforceofwomen.org, an almost identical sign was seen and posted about in Washington DC, saying the following, "Springtime is peak tourist season in Washington, DC, and people from across the country and the world flock to see the capitol of a free and progressive society. Unfortunately, these Men Working signs do not reflect the U.S. ideal of freedom and equality, and it would make our nation look much better if these sexist signs changed."

I couldn't agree more.

the beginning

Everything I see throughout the day is a part of my visual culture.