MMeO. radio.
At work, I listen to a lot of podcasts - seminars, education, and NPR.
This American Life is without a doubt my favorite show. I love its cadence. And since it's only on once a week, I end up listening to the best of the best multiple times. My favorite story is about a physicist who spends his entire life trying to figure out time travel so that he can protect his dad from an early death by heart attack.
I love the voices in that episode. The voices. They have this clarity - its the safe remove from the emotion of the actual events. It allows us to follow the story on our own path. We can connect to it through our own experiences. The story about the physicist usually makes me cry. And I'm always thinking about something in my own life.
I'm not sure, because I don't know much about story-telling or radio/voice art, but I wonder if it is because of the medium that I can connect on a personal level, just a bit more self-involved than with film.
I think I'll explore that next.
Labels: MMeO
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MMeo. thoughts.
Beauty norms
are rules of communication. But why is it useful to operate within them? When is it better to exacerbate them for social progress?
Take it back to the level of the individual. A girl does what other people do because then she fits in, she doesn't have to think so hard, and she has one step of interpersonal communication taken care of (in a way). More than doing as do others on a grand scale, she copies family and social environments in which she spends most of her time (these may just as likely be a real environments as imagined ones).
Then there are extremes. These stereotype people because we read extremes so heavily. And what about people who suffer from the confusion at this level of communication? What about the trends and revolutionary changes? How do they affect the individual?
It gives us something to use to communicate our agreement, our adherence to an idea, our commitment to a group. It helps us show that we are, for example, young, hip, new, fresh -- but do we always put these tools to use to communicate what they're meant to say?
What if the style or trend or dictates of the time, movement, or fad confuse the individual? Confuse her sense of self, her perception of self. Or do worse? Because a trend or movement will not be deep enough to encompass all of our idiosyncrasies or, more importantly, all of what each of us wants to say. What of times and places where added appearance is even less diverse in option? And what of the fact that ultimately we probably define our sense of self (or lack thereof) in the terms of current trends?
Is clothing an extension of our physical selves or are we an extension of our clothing?
Labels: MMeO
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MMeO. early tests.
Things to notice.. I tried wearing mascara. It ended up lopsided, which was readily apparent b/c I have pale lashes.
. I tried pulling my hair back in a stylish way. It was difficult to maintain throughout the day. I tried wearing my hair loose. It was difficult to see anything.
. well shit, that new shirt I bought (on sale!) is in the laundry b/c I used it for a performance last week. now what? how am I supposed to suddenly acquire a whole new wardrobe?
. I'm not quite there yet and have to set shit up later.
. Clothing is expensive, all I own are Tees!
. Drycleaning is also expensive, and having to get every new pair of pants altered b/c I'm only 5'4" sucks.
. I love turtlenecks. I look far sassier in the winter.
. not really.
Dudu's comment.The other day for work I made an effort to look more polished. I put on a little mascara (I think it went on ok) and wore a necklace. I chose a t-shirt with a little more shape. I tried to make my ponytail fall just so and look placed. Dudu, a colleague at work who takes no end of pleasure in teasing me for not being more "girly", told me I looked "very put together today. Is it intentional?".
I nearly fell over! And since no beauty is ever supposed to be artificial, I said "no."
Liz.Everytime she sees me with my hair down, she says "Oh! you look so pretty with your hair down!" How do I look with it up?
Making an effort.These were the days I felt good already. I had drive. I felt safe taking on a little something more. What about the days I feel like crap?
Labels: MMeO
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MMeO. en route to change.
Esther gets a makeover.
1. assess the "problems"
2. get friends + acquaintances (people I know well and not so well) to give their impressions of me now and 10 months from now.
3. seek advice from a consultant
4. put the advice into action
5. see what happens to me - will my perception of myself change? will other people's perceptions of me change?
Labels: MMeO
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MMeO. a description.
Make Me Over. MMeO.
There is a myth of transformation. A beautiful person is concealed under a confusing appearance - an appearance that doesn't use social codes to communicate. And if we would only translate that person's beauty into the standard language of social norms, their inner beauty would be revealed to all. The awkward person's problems of social ineptitude would be magically solved.
So goes the fairytale. And in the movies, it always works. The girl adapts seamlessly to her new environment of make up, big hair, and high heels. She gets the guy, the job, and all her dreams, present and future.
Today's codes are looser and broader than those we read about, but they remain in place nonetheless. Everyone can tell the difference between a carefully placed disheveled and truly unkempt - between the fashionably coded and the out of style.
I am fascinated by the way in which our appearance communicates us - and whether or not it can change us. Can these movie-style makeovers actually work as smoothly as portrayed?
I am starting a new project,
Make Me Over, to examine the question and the process. It will involve the men and women who peddle the put-on self: make-up artists, hair stylists, fashion designers and salespeople. I will try different shops and differnt solutions to try to "make me over", following advice and letting experts decide for me.
I hope to bring other women like me into this process. Women who make themselves pretty and women who don't, women who daily make a conscious effort and women who just grab their clothes and go. It will involve those who watch us make these choices - the men and women, the peers and supervisors, the mentors and protegees.
To be part of the project, send me your story: esthermpalmer [at] gmail.comLabels: MMeO
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dance dance dance
My break from electromagnetism has been too long, but there are fruits -- of a sort.
This past week I turned in a grant proposal to the
Queens Council on the Arts to help fund a new project. The decisions are announced in December, by which time I expect I'll have forgotten that I even applied --new to me as of last year, the holidays are not a time for making my own work. It has become a time for making creative holiday cards and pretty wrapping paper and figuring out how the hell I'm going to get gifts for so many people. sigh.
But as I was saying, the grant. I think what I turned in was clumsy - because they limit the CHARACTERS in which you can argue your claim to the funding! Word limits I can live with. Char limits are ridiculous. I was forever having to change around whole sentences because I was 2 bleeping chars over. But never mind that, keep your fingers crossed for me until December and clumsy may not matter.
Whether or not I receive the grant (fingers! cross 'em!), I will be able to go forward with the project, and a nice and simple one it is.
I am going create a group dance. Novel, I know. But really, I haven't made a piece that was much more than a solo since high school. Oh, no wait, there was that one really awful piece in college. That one was so bad, I don't think it counts. And there are many reasons why I haven't bothered to try since then (none of which is my aforementioned failure). They aren't really relevant, let's just say I've been dancing with architecture for the past five years and I want to dance with people again.
Now, don't get too excited. There will be no "phrase" making on my part. The dancers get to do all the movement generating. There will be improvisation, it might feel like comp class at first, and it will probably take a while to sort things out, but it will be wild and exciting. That is, I can't wait to work with bodies in the flesh instead of lines on paper.
When the dance is finished by next June, we're going to visit the parks and see if people will watch us rehearsing the finished dance -- see if we can entice some of them to learn some of it -- hear what they have to say and answer their curiosities and questions. It's going to be a blast.
p.s. If you want to be a part of the project (I need five dancers, a graphic designer, a costumer, and some volunteer publicity help), lemme know. The official search happens in January 2009.
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make me over
I am working on a new project idea. It might stay in the idea phase for a while, but sharing I am nonetheless.
make me overWe live in societies and we communicate through a myriad of different means - with words both spoken and written, using our bodies (willingly and not), and through our appearances and actions. (These are just some of the major ones that I think about on a regular basis.) We use these means to dissent and to follow (and other things, but again, this is supposed to be short). And I'm interested in why it is important - or not - for us to follow popular (i.e. widespread, functioning) communication methods.
The example that most irks me is appearance, particularly women's appearance (I focus on women b/c I know them better, sorry guys).
I am not a make-up wearer. Like most little girls, I did experiment with it some -- and for a stretch even worn minimal amounts. But I finally gave it up - mostly b/c it was easier to go without. A few years after that, I remember preparing for an interview and asking my friend (who does wear make-up) whether I should put on a little mascara or lipstick. "Well," she said "it shows effort." And like the big dope that I am, I thought that was logical and put on the mascara. What I forgot is that on me, makeup just looks foolish.
I remember another time I let a friend do my eyes. She dressed them up very dark and smokey. She loved it b/c it made me look sexy and mysterious. I HATED it b/c I couldn't recognize myself! I thought it looked false and fake.
I am a terrible liar. I wear every thought on my face and no amount of makeup will disguise that. Though I may be bewildering to people, I am not sexy and mysterious. At least not in the smokey eyes kinda way.
So here I am, hungry to know more - objectively and emotionally - about how we communicate what we want to be through such established methods as "dressing up" or "putting on our faces". There's a great deal more I need to explain here, but I'm running out of time, so I'll just finish by saying that the project is first and foremost a study. I'd love to make a performance piece out of it, but now is the time for research - and I'm the guinea pig.
Stay tuned to find out how...
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