Curls and Caffeine

I’m Not A Pit Bull With Lipstick

Last week, a co-worker asked if I had a boob job. I have three brothers, and very few female friends, so I’m always surprised by this type of bluntness. It reminds me of how I felt watching the few episodes I’ve seen of Sex and the City: I couldn’t relate. My life isn’t about finding a rich husband and buying more shoes. Some women act as if Sex and the City is reality, that we’re all part of some runway walking cohort who love to dish about sex, periods and makeup.

Sarah Palin’s decision to liken herself a pit bull with lipstick is equally troubling. It’s not wise for women to say, “We’re just like men, but with skirts and high heels and glitter.” Femininity is not achieved through wearing makeup or giving birth to recreational hockey players. I know Palin hunts and drinks beer. That seems like an attempt to appear “just like one of the boys,” in hopes that it will gain her credibility among men. That too is flawed.

Women are different than men in more than just their appearance and they deserve serious political representation. By using makeup as the thing that makes her a woman, Palin is allowing all the wrong notions about womanhood to continue. Not all women are obsessed with clothing and shoes. And others don’t take on so-called “manly” traits to try to gain respect. Yes, some women run around with two silicone balls bobbling around, as if that makes them more womanly. But I hope that there are others like me, who don’t consider themselves men with skirts on and who aren’t going to vote based on gender alone.

Oh, and they’re real.

Shakira, Stamps and the Circle of Life

Yesterday marked the official end (hopefully) of my time at John Jay College: I received my degree in the mail.

As I sit at my desk at work, stuffing envelopes full of recruiting materials, I can’t help but love the cyclic nature of things.

You see, this is exactly how my whole college life began. The summer after third grade, my neighbor Gweneth and I made a decent income from our lemonade stand (and we were even pictured front page of the newspaper!). Having spent all of my money on a set of journals from Price Club, I accepted the offer of the strange guy who lived in Gweneth’s basement to stuff envelopes for him.

I’m pretty sure I got paid $4.00 for this task. I’m also pretty sure if my mom knew I was in the basement apartment of some stranger stuffing envelopes with dance brochures she’d be very unhappy.

Regardless, basement man turned out to be Randy James, a local dancer who had just opened up his own dance company. My $4.00 probably went towards a new rock from the Rock and Fossil store around the corner (yes, I paid for rocks).

Fast forward to my freshman year of high school. My gym teacher brought in a dance instructor, Matt, to keep us busy through the winter months. Matt was awesome: a great happy personality who was very patient with us. He taught us an elaborate number to Shakira’s “Whenever Wherever,” and invited us to a performance he was doing in New York City.

New York City! To freshman Gina that sounded exciting, so I went with a friend. What do I find when I get to the performance? Matt is a member of Randy James’s dance company. He’s moved out of the basement and has established an impressive dance company. I still remember a lot of the show; it was “View From the Hudson,” a piece that allowed members to give their impressions of 9-11.

The performance was held in this beautiful Baroque building, I remember walking up the steps and looking up to see JOHN JAY COLLEGE OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE illuminated on the front. It seemed perfect for me.

For the rest of high school, I didn’t look at other colleges. Come senior year, I applied only to John Jay, got accepted and after a failed attempt to escape, finally graduated with my Bachelor’s this May.

And now, with my gold and blue diploma hanging proudly, I sit stuffing envelopes.

Andrew made a good point about internet stalking. His idea is that if someone from your past looks at your site but doesn’t comment, it is the same as staring through someone’s window and not waving at them if they notice you.

I wish this was true, but Andrew and I have both had crazy unwanted people commenting on our sites or sending emails through them. There is a certain type of nut that thinks there is nothing wrong with initiating conversation after purposeful non-contact. Couple that with social networking sites, text messaging and email, and you have a big problem. People that normally wouldn’t have the balls to say something to your face are now sending you rambling poems, commenting on pics of you and providing useless anecdotes about their similar experiences. I would definitely consider these people stalkers.

Digital messaging makes it too easy for creepy people to make contact. And no matter how much you may want them to respect your privacy, there will always be some who feel entitled to contact you. Repeatedly. Through various mediums.

I do think Andrew’s idea works as a general rule (the majority of visitors to my site fall into the category of stealthy silent stalkers), but never underestimate the delusions that these people have about their right to maintain contact or their dedication to it. The people that use my site as a means to monitor me are definitely stalkers, and those that use it as one more way to attempt to contact me (when I’ve made it clear that is not appropriate) are just as bad.

I suppose this is going to be an ongoing battle. I still love the way Molly Piper dealt with visitors on her site. Her policy stays true for all of you that haven’t had a falling out with me. I should clarify that there are people I’ve lost touch with that I’d like to reconnect with. But for the others, I just have to wonder, are you finding what you were looking for on here?

How Social Networking Sites Like Myspace and Facebook Make It Impossible to Move On

There are so many websites devoted to keeping in touch with people (your “social network”), what happens when you want to cut ties?

The Internet definitely makes it easier to interact with people, a simple (or Super) poke or comment can keep friendships going despite distance or just plain disinterest. But while it may be it easier to keep up with your friends, it is definitely harder to dodge them.

People grow apart, whether its because of physical distance or changed values, but it takes more than just a few unreturned phone calls these days to end a friendship. Now, you have to “unfriend” them on all your social networking sites, restrict their ability to view your profiles or (like I did) remove your profiles completely.

What is life like without a myspace or facebook? Well, it’s actually not that private. I started this website as a way to share my artwork, but I’ve found it became more of a sanctuary for all the undesirables in my life. Google Analytics provides valuable (and disturbing) data on who is coming to my site, how they’re getting here and how long they stay. There is this nifty map function that has these great big dots on cities where I have ex-boyfriends, ex-friends, or even Andrew’s ex’s (although I can’t really blame them, he’s awesome). While I appreciate that people are reading my poetry and fiction, I definitely wish there was a way to say, “I’m not googling your name, so yeah, don’t.”

It’s not that I don’t want anyone looking at my site (I understand how The Internet works) but I just wish there was a greater piece of my visitor pie that was coming from genuinely interested people, instead of these bizarre past acquaintances.

Indeed, The World Wide Web is a wonderful tool (and one of the few friends I have left). I really hope that my website can make the shift from stalker cesspit to a place where people can read (and hopefully relate to) my work. But I know that doesn’t mean it will be any easier to move through different social circles.

So what is the solution? Andrew thinks we should have a social mechanism to ending friendships - the equivalent of “it’s not you its me” in relationships. He suggested a codeword, “submarine,” that would indicate clearly to both parties that the friendship was over.

I think there should be a “Do Not Call” list for friends, just like there is for telemarketers. So once you register with that list, the applicable former friends are notified of the legal repercussions of contacting you. But of course, these days, it would have to be a broader “Do Not Friend, Message, Comment, Poke, Twit…” proclamation.

Ok, so that may not be the answer. But I’m done fretting over the kind of people who visit my site. In fact, I’ve started a new blag section (blog.ginacacace.com), so stalk away!

Throughout my life, I have collected scars from people who have hurt me, either with words or actions that belittled, berated or betrayed me. These memories hung, as clear as crisp white shirts on a line, in front of me wherever I went. They were what I looked to when uncertain, and succeeded in keeping me from venturing into new ideas. Although I had known for years that my course of study would not (and did not) make me happy, I failed to see any sort of life outside of it. When I finally decided to discontinue my false life of forensic psychology, I resolved that I would explore all of my interests. I enrolled in writing, art history, evolution and studio art classes at the local community college. I envisioned myself asleep on park benches, my head afloat from my creative endeavors. In reality, I had never subjected any of my creative products to criticism; they were all hidden-poems scribbled over in the margin of my textbooks, or paintings on the backs of my bookshelves-so that when I opened myself up to explore these interests, I also made myself vulnerable to a new sort of pain.

I took part in an art class on mixed media, where we combined painting, collage and sculpture techniques. Each week the class tacked their pieces to the long corkboard and we sat facing them while the professor gave his impressions. The first class of this sort, my piece stood in stark contrast to all the others: mine told a story, one that had come to me recently in a dream and was the product of all my anxieties about my newfound life. The professor spent the entire critique explaining why he felt “there is nothing worthwhile or interesting about this piece.” Initially, I sat in shock, but then I remembered how many times I had let the words of others keep me in my place, and decided that I would fight against him with every piece of art I made.

I politely raised my hand and asked whether I had misunderstood the assignment, explaining that I had acted under the assumption that art was supposed to come from emotion. So that, any piece made honestly was made well. He replied, he didn’t care about my personal life–he just wanted something aesthetic. I knew that his words had the power to stunt my entire journey, but refused to give up. In the coming weeks, I beat canvases with wires dipped in paint and used my fingers to smooth the glue over my collages. I created images that had special meaning to me, and soon, he began to praise my work. He hung one of my pieces in the school and during the final review, admitted that he wished I would take more of his classes because he felt I was “on the brink of something big.”

Yoga teaches us about himsa or violence. This can come in many forms: physical, emotional or mental. We can experience himsa through being the victims of violence, the witnesses of violence, or by being the perpetrators. I have perpetrated the a great himsa against myself in the past by not having enough confidence. My art professor’s act of himsa came at an important time in my life, as I was no longer willing to give negativity power over my experience. By having my first piece rejected in such a disrespectful manner, I was able to face my greatest fear: not only did my professor not like my art, but he didn’t like me! In the past I would have let that destroy me, but instead I moved from there and said, “Well at least I don’t have to worry about impressing him anymore.” I was then free to make my pieces for myself.