Provo Women's Day
8 March, 2017 

The following is a transcriptof my speech for Provo's Celebration of International Women's Day, 2017.

 Courtney (@CJaneKendrick ) invited me to speak at the Lecture Series that kicked off 2017's Provo Women's Day. I was honored to be able to share my experiences as a woman of color, living in Provo as a student. I was scheduled to speak alongside women who are doing great things in the community, and I encourage you to research their organizations and projects (http://www.provowomensday.com/lecture-series.html). Provo is a weird and wonderful place; beyond the boundaries of the university campus is a community that has taught me about tremendous love and immense patience-- even if there's a long way we still have to go. A link to a video recording of the lecture series hosted by Provo City in the Council Chambers can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNrk-1t3FyY

I thought a lot about what I wanted to say today, and I decided I don’t want to lecture you or throw discourse at you. I don’t want to give you an expansive overview of my history or list off all the mean things kids used to call me growing up. I’m not going to share an encyclopedia entry or dictionary definitions of racism, sexism, or intersectionality. And I’m sorry about this in particular, but I’m not going to give you any advice about how to be a better ally to people of color, because I know that’s what some of you might have been hoping to hear.  

I’m just going to tell you some stories.

I’ve spent the last four years studying storytelling. I’ve written dozens of essays picking apart, mapping out, deconstructing, examining, and experimenting with plot and character. Everyday, I get to broadcast stories from people from all over the world and I’ve gotten to learn from people who are the gatekeepers of the oral tradition in their respective families and communities. I’ve been lucky to engage with storytelling every day, and to be able make my bread and butter out of the study of narrative. This spring, I will have lived in Provo for five absurd and frustrating and astonishing years and more important to me than the diploma I’ll be getting, are the stories that I’ll take with me.

I’m grateful for the opportunity to be able to share some them with you today. Because telling stories is really all I know how to do (it often gets me into trouble and sometimes gets me out of it). And most importantly, I’m grateful to share my story because women of color don’t typically get to share their story in their own words (unless it’s written by someone else or they’ve cast Scarlett Johansson).

This is mine.

I remember the exact moment when my identity stopped belonging to me and me alone. I remember very vividly when the gap between who I am and who society sees began to open wide.

I was 7-years-old.

In my second grade classroom, there was a tent set up in the corner to read in during free time. I remember unzipping the flap and seeing three other girls already reading in the tent. When I put my first foot in, Reilly H., a blonde ballerina who always wore her hair in braids and really knew no better than any of us, looked me right in the eye and said “no brown girls allowed.” She promptly zipped up the flap and I left to cry in the bathroom. (She also told me I was too fat. I spent a lot of my elementary school years crying in the bathroom).

I was 7-years-old.

I didn’t know about black or brown or white or yellow back then. I didn’t know about intersectional feminism, or racism or institutionalized discrimination or micro-aggressions or minority stress or the crime rates against women of color-- particularly trans women of color who it should be our priority to protect right now--

In that moment, I only knew that my skin was brown and for some reason, that that meant I wasn’t allowed to be certain places or do certain things without the Reillys of the world reaching out to close the door on the me because the world decided long ago that we have to measure each other’s worth by what we can see. More often than not, if you’re like me and your skin isn’t white, it’s hard for them to see the rest of you.

When I was writing this speech, I went through every name, every stereotype, every derogatory slur, and every micro-aggression that I had ever heard. I am Filipina-American and I am very proud of that-- I love my family and I love my heritage. I love my body and my history. I even love this country, despite the awful mess we make often make of it. I am a hopeful person. Reilly was a just little girl just like me, and she didn’t know what she meant when she said those words but there’s no excuse for you and I not to know better and be better now. Over the course of my lifetime, I’ve heard reiterations of “no brown girls allowed” in an impossible number of ways, directly and indirectly, from individuals and institutions who actively harm people of color to even my nicest neighbors and friends who inadvertently assert their entitlement through well-meaning words. Sometimes, the most hurtful things come from “nice people.” We shouldn’t be patting ourselves on the back for being nice-- being nice should be the default. Being kind is active. I would rather be kind than nice.

I am a whole person! Just like any one of you, I am an entire painting but often all people ever see is this one brushstroke!

Sometimes, I feel like I’m wearing an invisibility cloak-- a cloak that allows privileged people to to see around me and to see past me. I didn’t bring a presentation or a Powerpoint today, because to tell you the truth, my body is my own object lesson in institutionalized racism and discrimination. Part of my experience as a woman of color, is experiencing a lot of issues with body over the years regarding what it really looks like and what I’m told it should look like. I am 23-years-old but the grade school bullying was never left behind-- it was just transformed into impossible beauty standards that make me super paranoid about what I show and don’t show. I used to be teased about dark skin, my squinty eyes, my fat lips lips, and my messy hair growing up. But now, all those things that were funny about me back then are incredibly fashionable now: people ask me how I get so tan (I was born), they ask me how I do my hair (I wake up), and the first time someone told me my eyes were pretty I didn’t believe them because people used to tease me about my squinty eyes until I graduated high school. In second grade, other girls wouldn’t braid my hair.  Three years ago, I went to a wedding in Alpine and strangers came up and couldn’t stop touching it. (I didn’t come here with any advice for you on how to be a better ally to people of color, but perhaps a great place to start is to never ever touch another person’s hair without asking. Ever.) When it comes to my body, I often would rather be invisible than be seen only in part.

In college, traversing the intricacies of being seen and heard means that some days I’m silent for my sanity, and other days I’m screaming for it. As a woman, my tone and my confidence are scrutinized acutely, and as a woman of color, I find that I’m often being made to educate both peer and professor about institutionalized discrimination, not necessarily because I’ve made a study of it, but because it’s easy to point me out in the classroom. The people of color in your communities and classrooms are not walking encyclopedias on racism and discrimination, and it would be wise, and a real act of love, to not treat us as though we are. I would love to answer your questions, but my office hours are not 24/7.

When a prominent documentary scholar visited my school for a lecture, he tenderly asked me, “How do you deal with the apparently lack of diversity at your school?” I couldn’t help but laugh. The answer is, I don’t deal with it very well and I was relieved that finally someone asked me. When a professor told me that I should have taken the opportunity to teach my classmates about racism when I was faced with hurtful Asian-American stereotypes during another person’s presentation, I cried. When people ask me where I’m from and I know they want to ask why I’m not white, I laugh and I say a different place each time depending on how much the person annoys me. For the most part, I’m fine that my presence in Provo makes it a more diverse & multicultural place but I know a handful of many Filipino-American students I’ve met during my five years at a university that boasts a population of over 30,000 and that is a desperate loneliness I would never wish upon anyone. I can’t describe the comfort of looking into the face of someone who looks like you.

I feel a tremendous longing to belong somewhere safe and still. Being the daughter of immigrant parents sometimes makes the concept of “home” impossible to understand: if home is where the heart is, then home, like my heart, is constantly torn between how I am and how I should be. Many of my friends have an insatiable wanderlust and believe that they must find themselves in foreign places; but to be perfectly honestly I have only ever felt foreign and I have always longed for the familiar.

I know I’m not alone in this world, and I don’t want you to think that I only experience sorrow. I know that I have family and friends and supporters who mutually love and empathize with me. I experience all the joys and struggles of the human experience, and often I experience many of them at once and am overwhelmed by the nuance of it all. I’m aware of the missteps, mistakes, and hurdles we must confront to progress. And I do see great changes being made by great people, with soft and loud voices alike, and I know that diversity and multiculturalism make us better people, individually and collectively.

I’ve tried to articulate today how it feels for me to navigate the hypervisibility and invisibility I experience being a woman of color because today is a day about visibility. A very close friend of mine often reminds me that to love is to be seen. To me, today is about love: a love of self, a love of identity, a love of community, a love of humanity. Today is about celebrating and multiplying love among multiplicities where white patriarchy would have us divide it into something lesser than you or I deserve.

I have some conflicted feelings about the gender binary, but women, especially transwomen, femme folks, and other gender & sexual minorities deserve increased visibility in a world that demands the submissiveness of the marginalized. Intersectionality is essential. Our fight for equality must include and prioritize the most vulnerable among us especially transgender individuals, gender non-conforming individuals, people of color, disabled folks, religious minorities, LGBTQ+ folks, refugees, and the impoverished, the imprisoned, the tired among us. 

Here is the list of the other speakers and their topics: 
Michaelann Bradley - Everyday Strong: Mental Wellness for our Provo Female Populations and How You Can Help
Jocelyn Wikle - Why We See Differences in Work & Pay Between Men & Women

Meredith Lam - Provo's Native American Community: How Outreach is Increasing & Raising AwarenessStephanie Larsen - Encircle Together: The Story of How a House Inspired a Community

Alison Faulkner Robertson - How to Start an Empire in Provo

Here is link to a thread that lists various female-run businesses in Provo that deserve your support: https://twitter.com/tre4/status/839505816931577856

Here is a link to LGBTQ+ Resources from Equality Utah. One of the topics that was addressed was the fact that suicide is the leading cause of death among youth in Utah, particularly among LGBTQ+ youth here in the state. https://www.equalityutah.org/resources/lgbt-resource-guide 

Here are some other resources in Utah that are promoting diversity & multiculturalism, and the safety and connection of marginalized people: 

https://www.plannedparenthood.org/planned-parenthood-utah

https://www.facebook.com/UsgaAtByu/

http://www.uw.org/211/

https://encircletogether.org/

http://www.acluutah.org/racial-justice

https://heritage.utah.gov/utah-multicultural-affairs

Game For Change 

Microaggressions

PLAY: http://www.philome.la/deidrene/microaggressions-and-the-asian-american-experience

This assignment was particularly frustrating because of the software and fickle internet connection. But I think the repetition of process forced me to engage with this issue that is simultaneously important yet painful to me. I mulled around with different issues that I might explore, but microaggressions are something I deal with on a daily basis and I didn’t have a word or language to describe their impact on me until recently. Not one day goes by where I get to forget my Asian-Americanness, and it is not always pleasant. White people get to have nuanced and complicated narratives, but people of color are often tokenized, fetishized, marginalized, and our narratives are isolated to single characteristics that reduce our individuality and our dignity. One microaggression is manageable, but many microaggressions piling on top of each other can be unbearable. A lifetime of passive-aggressive racist comments can feel dehumanizing.

The worst part about microaggressions is that most offenders are well-meaning people who mean no harm. How someone reacts when you tell them they’ve said something offensive can be really indicative of their character, and usually determines the amount of trust a person can put in the offender. In the last year alone, once-important friendships have fallen apart because my identity was constantly invalidated by well-meaning people who decided that I was too sensitive. The moments highlighted in this game are based on real experiences that have happened to me and are written without hyperbole or exaggeration. I wanted to create what it feels like to have these microaggressions pile up.

In an excerpt from “Racial Microaggression and the Asian American Experience” by Derald Wing Sue, Jennifer Bucceri, Annie I. Lin, Kevin L. Nadal, and Gina C. Torino at Columbia University, the researches made the following conclusions about their study:

“Our study provides strong support that microaggressions are not minimally harmful and possess detrimental consequences for the recipients. Most participants described strong and lasting negative reactions to the constant racial microaggressions they experienced from well intentioned friends, neighbors, teachers, co-workers, and colleagues. They described feelings of belittlement, anger, rage, frustration, alienation, and of constantly being invalidated. Common comments from the groups were they felt trapped, invisible, and unrecognized.”

Many more insightful conclusions were drawn from this study, which can be found at the following link: http://goo.gl/VfJzKv

WORLD BUILDING

“What if what you dreamed at night became real in the morning for twenty-four hours in the morning?”

In this world, the forms and figures of our dreams become real for a twenty-four hour period. Reflecting the way in which creation is held in the Unconsciousness, these creations of our sleeping minds have a mediated tangibility but are inaccessible in that they are without physical form- something like a hologram imbibed with the parts of our personalities we have projected onto them. It is a world in which the tenuousness of a collective reality is at the forefront of everyday life, and fact and fiction are treated as two sides of the same coin.

The specificity of the characters in our dreams being realized but not the environments or emotional tenors of the dreams highlights the absurdity of one aspect of our mental creations as part of our daily situations.

Our project utilizes advertisement as a medium in which to convey the relationship between art and politics through the conventions of lived experience. How does this complication effect the social lives of people in the world? How does it affect individuals physically/mentally/emotionally? What types of services and products would people need in a world where dreams and reality were interchangeable? What are ways in which the extraordinary becomes mundane, everyday, ordinary, inconvenient? In what ways might this enhance the human experience? These are some of the questions we asked in building our world. The result are three advertisements that offer a glimpse into a world in which the unconscious and conscious works mix on a daily basis. The services we chose to represent are interested in three areas: the direct interaction with the projections that originate in sleep while they exist, the consequences of the projections after they have gone, and the preventative measures to temper the situation before these dreams are realized.

In the world in which we live, people’s relationships with their dreams vary greatly as a result of their vividity, recollection, and frequency. In the world we created, people are forced to interact with not only their own daily dreams, but other people’s as well. If you dream about a person, you are creating them as a function of your own brain and not as an accurate depiction of themselves, so as they are projected onto the world the person is then aware of your subconscious perceptions of them.

We wanted the ads to be accessible and commonplace, and thus created our designs akin to ones seen in subway stations or Reader’s Digest pages. Any of these could be found in either form and are thus effective means of advertisement in this world. The “Dream Catchers” ad was largely inspired by the Ghost Busters movies because their job is to go into dreams and tame the unconscious projections as they occur, similar to how the Ghost Busters go around “capturing” ghosts as they interfere with people’s daily lives. “Remeditol” was a creation inspired by common name-brand prescription ads as well as the common names for those drugs, which often have something to do with the intended function of the drug. In Remeditol’s case, the prefix “REM-” is dual purpose: REM for the dreaming stage of sleep, and re- to go with the suffix of -meditol. “-medit-” refers to meditation and cognition, so “Remedit-” is intended to reference the ability the drug has help people take control of their lives, to rethink their reality and ultimately make their own conscious decisions. As for the “Romantics Anonymous” ad, what world could possibly be complete without some sort of assisted dating service? At the same time, the service takes advantage of the more pleasant dreams people can have and seeks to help those dreams become lasting realities rather than fleeting days of holographic like projections. The name is perfect because it acknowledges the anonymity of a dreamt character while still representing hope for those with the dreams.

As we designed these ads and services, we did indeed experience the “purposeful reflection and consideration” Julian Bleeker discusses in her essay on Design Fiction. Not only did we reflect on our own experiences with dreaming, advertisements, and pop culture, but we considered how these would become relevant in the world we imagined. Such a process was engaging for us and we felt we could imagine some of the experiences people in this world might go through. At that level of thought, our work was more than simple creativity-- it was an attempt to understand the fiction populace of the sometimes beautiful, sometimes terrifying world where dreams become reality for 24 hours.

NUDE

 

Eyes

Eyes, Lips, Face

Lips & Eyes

A layer of "nude" liquid foundation covers the area of my face.

 

What I prefer to wear regularly: a layer of tinted sunscreen.

When I was 8 years old, a girl named Reilly H. told me I was "too brown" to play with her. From that moment on, I was hyperaware of my "brownness" and I would spend the next decade and a half attempting to make myself "white" enough. Over those next few years, I would do things to decrease my "brownness" so that I would no longer be shooed away for having the wrong amount of melanin in my body: I would wear SPF 70 and long sleeves; I straightened my naturally curly hair and plucked, waxed, trimmed any other hair that seemed out of place; my mother gave me papaya whitening soap and lemon-oil based toners; I pinched my nose and my cheeks and chin trying in vain to sharpen my naturally round face; and I would pose and compose photos of myself to hide those parts of myself that felt wrong in front of a lens.

Years later, a close friend of mine would become an incredible talented make-up artist. Watching her at work as she created her designs, and seeing her handiwork on the faces of men and women of all different skin tones, facial shapes, and personalities, this friend showed me how make-up as a medium could celebrate and enhance those features I had tried to hide. Around this time, I also became interested in the representations of people of color in film, television, advertisements, and in social media. The people of color in the media were beautiful in ways that didn’t reflect my experience because those images were constituted in an aesthetic culture in which white, European features were designated as default.

For people of color, the implications of the marketing of drugstore make-up allude to the implications of systemic prejudice. The reality is that for many people of color, "nude" and "neutral" make-up products are hardly even that. The ways in which we are photographed similarly reflect the complications of being “brown”, "yellow", “black” in a ideologically “white balanced” visual world.  

I imitated some of the procedures from my white roommates' daily make-up routines, respectively, and utilized the products that are part of that routine. The liquid foundations and BB creams that were borrowed from my roommates were marketed with names that included the words "nude" and "neutral": "light nude", "neutral beige", "porcelain nude", etc. The name of my preferred BB cream is "deep tint." A quick perusal of a drugstore make-up section will reveal names for darker toned skin products like: "espresso", "velvet", "caramel", "honey." Fairer skin-tones might include words such as "porcelain", "silk", "ivory" and "luminous.” The names subtly reflect the celebration of white skin and the objectification of non-white skin: while pale shades of make-up are named after precious materials, brown and black shades of make-up are commonly named after food, drink, and other commodified items..

I also chose to photograph of my face using a "color vibrant" pre-set filter available on a popular smartphone photography app to further interrogate the puzzling conundrum of the politicization of color. For four of the photos, I made .gifs alternating between a non-filtered picture and a 'vibrantly' filtered picture, to highlight the contrast between the different "neutral" tones. Notice which parts of my face are highlighted and emphasized in the various filtered shots, and take a moment to question what is pleasing to the eye and why that may be. On another popular photography app, the “beauty” filter sharpens the angles of my cheekbones, chin, and nose while widening my naturally almond shaped eyes. The pre-set software filters of popular smartphone apps imposed onto various shades of brown and black skin, and various brown and black facial features will often fail to capture a landscape of the face that is true to form. Consider how perhaps the white balance of the app filter is adjusted in relation to the color temperature of white skin. Striking the right color balance when taking “selfies” with my white friends is often difficult: one of us is washed out while the other is in shadow. This effect is more evident in photographs in which one subject is much darker than the other.

Lastly, a note on the cartoon-like drawings of tools used in the process to emphasize the artistic expression that can be exhibited through wearing, or not wearing, make up. This is part of the art piece is the most self-serving aspect: as someone who does not wear cosmetic make-up on a regular basis, I wanted to emphasize that make-up is a highly expressive tool for the discretion of the artist. The cartoon-like drawings  emphasize the isolated traits of my brown face that are the hardest for me to “hide”, so to speak. The ways in which I am visually designated Other reflects the exoticization of non-white bodies. The natural features of women of color are often appropriated in white beauty standards. My naturally thick eyebrows and my naturally thick lips have been the subject of teasing (thick eyebrows are easy targets for children to tease you), fetishization (I have been approached by a number of men with lewd comments regarding my lips that I will not repeat here), and various micro-aggressions (ranging from "I wish I looked as unique as you!” to the painfully common suggestion that I don’t look like a “real” Asian). These micro-aggressions regarding the noticeable parts of my face that I try to hide directly contrast the ways in which thick eyebrows and thick lips are “trends” among white cosmetic practices (an example would be the way in Cara Delevingne’s infamously dramatic brow lines, and Kylie Jenner’s recent controversial “lip challenge”).

By exploring the prominence of those features that make me feel most insecure, rather than hiding them, I have become more able to fully accept and embrace them.

For me, and many other women of color “nude” and “neutral” products are anything but.  "Nude" and "neutral" imply the lack of strongly marked or characteristics or features, a true shade, a Platonic ideal, or a median standard. To designate white skin as the median standard inherently implies that those with non-white skin are deviant to that standard, rather than recognizing the nuances of skin color and its politics. The multitudinous ways in which a woman of color can be beautiful require our respect and attention, and a mindful interrogation of American beauty standards. I am no less beautiful than a woman with whiter skin than mine, and I am no more beautiful than a woman with darker skin than mine.

I often try to spend as little time looking in the mirror as I can and, previously, I would choose to not take pictures of myself; I would often feel disappointed in the way my beauty feels deviant or divergent, and sometimes invalid. By taking the time to interrogate the cultural perceptions that made me feel this way through this creative treatment, I was able to reintroduce myself to the features and traits that make me who I am. In time, and through a combination of practices, I am coming to feel truly beautiful according to standards that are my own: skeptical of popular and social media representations of women in color in white America, and unmarred by the effects of drugstore make-up aisles and smartphone camera filters.

Process Piece: 

let's fall in luv

soundcloud.com/deidrene-crisanto/question27

While discussing our ideas for the assignment, we decided that the processes that most interested us were emotional or theoretical. We talked about recording the process of writing a song, scrolling through Netflix, driving to Salt Lake, but the one that we kept coming back to was the process of falling in love. While falling in love may not seem like the most easily trackable concept, we ultimately decided that in our current culture, the most cleanly delineated method of falling in love was Arthur Aron’s “36 Questions: How to Fall in Love.” Though this “process” has many variants and is structured differently for each person, there are common themes and motifs that allow individuals to be themselves wholly while being with each other.

In Commoner’s short film, “The Smokehouse,” Rohan Anderson discusses his noble reasoning for undertaking the daunting task of building his own smokehouse -- to be able to share an experience with his loved ones and feed them delicious, healthy food. As we see him labor towards his goal, we have a greater appreciation for its completion. Along this same vein, hearing the increasingly intense questions in our piece gives the listener an emotional investment in the piece, even if they are not hearing a response. Just imagining someone’s answer or thinking about their own can be enough to illicit a reaction from them. To love is to feel understood and to understand, and these questions allow each individual to spend a concerted effort and time listening and connecting.

To create this piece, we layered a reading of the first 26 questions over the song “Sway with Me” by local artist Batty Blue. As the refrain calls for the listener to “sway with me”- a physically involving act- the questions invite the listener into the process of introversion and reflection- a subjective psychical act. By stopping at the 26th question- the point at which we believed the questions to accelerate particularly in the direction toward romantic love- we highlight the ways in which one can also fall in love platonically, and the suspended process is an invitation for listeners to continue the process should they so choose and to allow for the subjective definition of “falling in love” to become an involved and malleable topic.

Who do you have in mind when you are listening?

27. If you were going to become a close friend with your partner, please share what would be important for him or her to know.

28. Tell your partner what you like about them; be very honest this time, saying things that you might not say to someone you’ve just met.

29. Share with your partner an embarrassing moment in your life.

30. When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself?

31. Tell your partner something that you like about them already.

32. What, if anything, is too serious to be joked about?

33. If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven’t you told them yet?

34. Your house, containing everything you own, catches fire. After saving your loved ones and pets, you have time to safely make a final dash to save any one item. What would it be? Why?

35. Of all the people in your family, whose death would you find most disturbing? Why?

36. Share a personal problem and ask your partner’s advice on how he or she might handle it. Also, ask your partner to reflect back to you how you seem to be feeling about the problem you have chosen.

To Fall In With Anyone, Do This.

Song Credit: "Sway with Me" - Batty Blue

Batty Blue Band: battyblue.bandcamp.com/

The 36 Questions: 36questionsinlove.com/

NY Times Article, "To Fall In Love With Anyone, Do This": www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/fashio…yone-do-this.html

Arthur Aron's Study & Findings: psp.sagepub.com/content/23/4/363.full.pdf+html