The Eb and Flow of Personal Space

As a frequent patron of the MTA I have been on my fair share of crowded buses.Yes, if you are a user of public transport your palms will now start sweating as I make you relive every time you’ve been on an extremely crowded bus.You will be familiar with the feeling of a stranger, varying in degrees of unsettling (if you think this is harsh you have not rode the Baltimore City Public Bus before), coughing hot moist mouth air down your neck from behind you, or mumbling into your ear, or having your crotch right at someones eye level for an unbroken 15 minutes, or, oh, God, accidentally touching the hand of some other person holding onto a metal bar for support. How awful.It becomes a consuming game trying to avoid any sort of contact with the people surrounding you as you’re all sloshed around a narrow moving vehicle. The whole sweaty crowd sways together and its absolutely nasty. I will spend my entire ride on the packed bus resenting the people crowding me and being offended that the person behind me is standing so close. I mean, nothing personal here, its just that you’re all bursting my personal space bubble and it is killing me. It is making my skin crawl. Im not even claustrophobic, strangers just aren’t supposed to touch strangers.

From “Abs” to Men with a “V”

I remember in high school that it was “hot” for both guys and girls to have “abs” especially a “six-pack”. It was especially attractive if a guy or a girl had abs at all. It was almost like a major plus. I remember having conversations with my male classmates and they would often talk about going to the gym just to get “abs” so that they could get more girls to notice them and be more sexually attracted to them. However, it seemed to me that they also wanted to get “abs” just so that could feel better about themselves and their own body. It was almost as if they would feel more comfortable in their own skin if they had “abs”. One of my closest friends in high school had “abs”. My friend loved her “abs” because many guys thought that her abs were “hot”. She would always talk about how her abs really turned guys on when she would have sex with them. Having other guys express their excitement and arousal towards her body and her “abs” really made her feel good about herself. It often makes me wonder if those same guys would feel the same if she did not have “abs” and her stomach was just flat.

Male/Female: To be or Not to Be

After reading Dean Spade Mutilating Gender essay I am baffled and saddened. It seems as if gender binary is causing more strife in society than one cares to recognize or admit. Why does every entity in life need to be categorized in order to be accepted? Due to the ancient history of gender roles/identity and my new achievement of joining Biologist I am sure the discovery of karyotyping is throwing a wrench in the system.

The Mirror’s Perception

“It’s not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing—they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me.”
― Stephen Fry

When Are Curves Too Much?

“Excuse me, but what you are wearing is inappropriate.” That is what I was told during my many years of attending Catholic school till the 12th grade. Now what my attire consisted of most of these times where yoga pants or leggings and a simple tee. I did not always wear those kinds of pants seeing that we had uniform skirts to wear that must be only 3 inches above the knee. There were only few chances to come out of uniform. But, that is besides my point. While I thought it was okay to wear comfortable clothes that did indeed cover pretty much all of skin, my school authorities thought otherwise. I understand the rules that contribute to having productive learning environment, but I can never fully agree with the dress code. With the dress code, it wanted to avoid tight clothing or attire that revealed too much, whatever that exactly means. We were basically being told what to wear because as teenagers, school authorities could not trust us to pick out our own clothing accordingly. Now Perhaps I told you these dress codes that were essentially assigned to “everyone” in the  school were not exactly directed to “everyone.” They must have only applied to those with curves. It was one of those invisible rules that were not said but obviously thought.

If I Stay…

In class we talk a lot about the separation of the body and the mind which made me think of where I’ve seen this separation, then amazingly the movie “If I Stay” comes out. “If I Stay” is a recent movie in which the lead characters all get in a car crash and (SPOILER)

Racial Stereotypes in Media

I saw this image and suddenly the racial stereotype in USA media comes up in my mind. Media and advertising play an important role in ours everyday lives. We see so many racial images, films, and TV series that we forget that what we are watching is actually not only meant to be funny or interesting, but also contains racial stereotypes. But these images, ads, and TV series are the reminder to us that there are ethnic stereotypes still exists and they have different meaning and importance in society.

Of Magnums and Male Egos; My Experience With Condoms

Neither of us ever thought we would have this issue.

Illusion Never Changed Into Something Real

My first thought on reading this article from xojane about digitally retouching magazine photos was, “No wonder I’m so bad at spotting celebrities out and about!”

But if you want to go all the way down the rabbit hole, talk to a digital retoucher at a fashion and celebrity glossy, which is what I did. The retoucher I spoke with — who preferred to remain anonymous — is a 20 year veteran of the trade. He came up when digital retouching was in its infancy, when edits were still being painted on with an actual airbrush (like, with real paint). His mentor was the exclusive retoucher for one of the most famous supermodels of the 1990s.

I think in some ways we’re holding magazine photo shoots to an unreasonable standard of “reality.”

BMI bullshit and Fatness

Many people use the BMI scale to judge whether or not they are at a healthy weight, even doctors use this scale to assess health but it was never supposed to be used as a measure of health.