It was even more exciting to hear Robin Lynch talk to us this time. She has harvested the fruits of her through investigation and begun considering what she wants to make. I was impressed with how deeply she has researched Uncle Tom’s cabin. She dove into it until she felt she fully understood it, or at least understood more than our cultural perception of it. She recommended that everyone actually read it, which I plan to do.

I think Lynch’s process of research is really interesting because it is so much more extensive than mine. She looked into exhibitions that were themed around Uncle Tom’s Cabin and read curators comments to gain their knowledge. She also read books that seemed less directly related but are still important to her goals, such as books about earlier graphic design and the Getty collection of posters advertising about Shakespeare. Lynch is trying to understand her subject from many different angles, from historical to visual.

Lynch found that the images which have been recreated most from Uncle Tom’s Cabin are of Topsy, Eliza running with her child across the ice, and of Uncle Tom and Eva. These depictions of characters are from neutral moments in the story, not ones that show the brutality of slavery that Lynch believes make the book so powerful, even to this day. The ubiquity of these images has led Lynch to many important questions. Of the whitewashed image of Eliza, she asked “do you have to look like that to get sympathy?” When examining the almost featureless or inhuman images of Topsy, Lynch is asking what it will take to undo the incredibly racist base of our culture. She is also thinking about the suggestive depictions of Uncle Tom and Eva’s relationship, and this is the part that intrigues me the most.  

As someone in an interracial relationship, I feel a lot of discomfort coming from the culture around me about what my relationship should and shouldn’t look like, in ways that feel just as indescribable as they are pressing. I asked Lynch how looking at these images made her feel and she said angry, but that the images are nowhere near as upsetting as the graphic nature of the brutality written about in the actual book. Then she asked me how the images made me feel and I said uncomfortable. The supposed child Eva, who has a pretty womanly figure, is shown in intimate poses with Uncle Tom, who in many of the images doesn’t look very old. You can do an easy google yourself, but this is a great example. Here is another. I don’t think the interpretation that these images are sexual in nature is at all off base. I wonder if our culture still views white women in love with black men as little girls playing with emasculated slaves. I just wonder why people created images of this sexual nature. What is it about the story and these characters that so entranced peoples romanticism? Why did people change so many key features of these characters to depict them this way? I am glad Lynch showed me these images because I think they will help me as I continue to consider my relationship’s place in our country today.

Lynch plans to create a visual collection of these images, in some type of book that subverts these images or makes them contemporary. She was also considering the format of an anti racism Alphabet book for children, or animation. First she has to create mind map so that she can see everything visually. I cannot wait to see what she makes, especially after I read Uncle Tom’s Cabin.  

My hair has been a huge part of my life and image since I dyed it blue in 2015. At the time, this transformation was an affirmation of my queer identity. As a 15-year-old, I wanted to stand out from the rest my peers who I found to be conventional and mostly boring at my North Carolinian high school. It was just me and my artistic, unusual, gay friends who had the audacity to look different from everyone else. At the time I relished the feeling of being unique, as identifying myself as an individual separate from my relatively White and monotonous environment.

For three years hair continued to give me some privileges I enjoyed. Aesthetically, it really was beautiful. It suited me well and was quite attractive. It helped me provide an entry point in getting to know people. They saw my hair as a sign of comfort and calm and intrigue and felt the urge, very naturally, to begin a conversation with me about it. It made me stand out in crowds and photos, it made people remember my name. But growing underneath these positives was a colony of negatives, and the hair became a crutch, stunting many aspects of my growth.  Now, as I have become more confident in my individuality, I feel like I do not need the blue to affirm my sense of self. I am trying to find this on the inside, not the outside.

Hair is so easy to change. I can always redye it if I decide that the blue did something more for me that I cannot now see. But in this moment I can only feel the negatives, which outweigh the positives by their depth and gravity. Recently, I haven’t been able to tell if I have kept the blue because I actually like it, or if I just feel compelled to continue because I have maintained this facade for so long.  

This removal of blue is not unplanned. This manifesto is a eulogy, this is a breakup text, this is my preparation for a transition. This is what I have to say to everyone who will ask me “why?”

WHY I CHANGED MY HAIR.

These are the negatives of the blue hair that have been rolling around in my mind like stones. They include:

1. For every positive interaction that I have had because a stranger was interested in talking to me about my hair, there are 10 people who talk to me who I wish would just leave me alone. “You have blue hair!” “Do you have to bleach it to get it like that?” “What type of dye do you use?” “My daughter had hair like that.” “I could never pull that color off.”  “What is your real hair color?” ”Blue is my favorite color.” I have been harassed by the same bothersome questions and comments thousands of times, in the form of anything from childlike wonder to a pickup line, from genuine admiration to ignorant demands. People have often yelled out their car windows about liking my hair, terrifying me. The repetition of it was exhausting.
2. Being stared at, a spectacle, is very unpleasant. Being in this woman body makes my life dangerous already, and when I go to Walmart or a gas station alone at night I feel like the hair is a beacon calling out to strangers that I want attention. Imagine knowing if someone is looking at you, they have something to say and will try to talk to you. Maybe I just want to buy some cold medicine. Maybe I have important things to do and don’t want to be interrupted. Maybe I just want to be alone.
3. I do admit I have used the hair to my own advantage. I marketed myself as something less than human in hopes that I could get people to buy into me. My image was just blue and had nothing to do with the person inside of me. My entire online presence, whether in dating or blogging, revolved around my hair. I wonder if that’s the only thing that generates my followers. I wonder why I care.
4. Imagine that your personality disappears and is replaced with a color. To most people who see me, I am not funny or caring or smart, I am just blue. Other people know me but only know some vague idea of me, my colorful ghost. Now I want to be a real person, more than a useless icon. A false goddess people worshiped, I don’t know what for.
5. I think white guilt has driven me in a number of ways to prove I am “not like every other white person” even though of course I am. Sometimes I felt myself using the blue to try to shove away my oppressive identity. I want to humble myself with this color change and continue to reflect on my privilege.
6. 4 bottles of dye = 24 dollars. Bleach and developer = 30 dollars. I repeated spending every other month. 325 a year, 975 for 3 years. And when I originally got it done I went to salons, so 200 dollars an appointment, 2 appointments. Total spending thus far = at least 1,500. Not including time opportunity costs.
7. I harassed my friends until they agreed to spend 5 hours doing my hair, every other month.
8. I ruined pillows and towels in hotels and other places I stayed all across the country. I stained bathtubs and sinks. There was a trace of me wherever I went.
9. I picked myself apart visually when my roots grew back, I become frustrated when my hair grew, trying to forget the inevitable process.
10. I couldn’t wear any color clothes or makeup that was not black, grey, blue or something similar. Some of my experimentation was stunted.
11. I want to give the part of myself who wants to be invisible sometimes some compassion. I think everyone has times they want to disappear, and I can’t.
12. Everyone I have met since coming to color has only one image of me, based in a superficial aspect of my appearance. I want people to know what I really look like.
13. I worry that if I do continue to build myself around the blue, then I leave college and for some reason have to change it, my sense of self will be very fragile and easily destroyed. I want to shoot first.
14. There isn’t anything wrong with my natural hair color. It is ok to want to fit in sometimes. I could be kind of normal for a little while, leave something to be desired. People would actually have to know me to think they knew me.
15. I have looked the same since 2015. Pictures of me for 3 years show someone frozen in time. I need to grow.

Here is a brief summary of the experience of cutting my hair and dying it brown. I think that the cut itself made the change more palatable for people, as it seemed like another big change that didn’t simply have to do with the color. I feel much better and more like myself with this hair, so I am very glad I had to cut it. I even deleted Instagram from my phone and I  feel great about that. An interesting note was I didn’t need this card for strangers, only people who somewhat know me.

I am glad I made the cards because although I only handed out around 20 of them, they served their purpose of saving me from having to explain my choices over and over. Here are some of the reactions I received

• I  showed the prototype card to a male acquaintance who mocked it. He was the only one who said something derogatory.
• The rest of the reactions were mostly positive and included people not knowing how to respond, and some gave me the card back.
• Some people thought the card was funny
• The best reaction was from one of my bosses who is in the same generation as my parents I think. She laughed and hugged me and asked to keep it which suprised me.

Who knows if people who received the card actually read the whole manifesto. I am just glad I had soemthig to do when people asked me “why.”

I was having trouble finding more sources in the same vein so I went to Mayra at the library. She was so helpful with my research, she already knew what I was looking for because I had talked to her about it previously. So we ignored all of the art therapy results and she showed me how to find and use specific words in Galileo. I found quite a few more interesting articles, some religious and some art based, that I am working on reading now.

After reading Sublime Hunger: A Consideration of Eating Disorders beyond Beauty, I decided that it was time for me to bring to life a project that had been percolating in my brain for a few months. I had Maya meet me on the third floor of the library where I asked her to pose in a square window-like space, asking her to model how her anxiety feels. She has a dance background thus was an incredible model and I loved the photos I was able to capture of her. I wish that we could have done this project nude, maybe next time. I put some of the photos into photoshop and I am very happy with the results I have achieved so far, but it also feels like just the beginning of this series. Photoshop is a good space for me to quickly get ideas together and experiment with no consequences, but I do miss painting. I think it was positive for me to take a break from consuming content for research, to research by creating content, as it gave me the time to consider some of my motivations.

I’m looking at eating disorders through both an in-depth anthropological and a personal lense. While researching this subject in this context, it has dawned on me that all of my art made recently (and possibly ever) had focused on my eating disorders in a subconscious way. I think it is time for me to acknowledge the hidden subject I have been working with, and I do truly feel like this research is the first step. I am fascinated by the religious and philosophical takes on eating disorders I have read so far and I think now is the time for me to absorb information to shape my understanding of my reality. Then I can keep making art, but better.

I wanted to know what art was out there about Eating Disorders to see what other people have done, to feel inspiration or catharsis. But everything I had found prior to this research was cliche and boring. I typed the phrase “eating disorder” into about every search engine that was suggested to our Methods class. There weren’t very many results, so I tried words like “fat” and “thin,” which also came up with limited results. So it was by way of a miracle that I decided to research Joel Peter Witkin for our art talks later in the Methods Class. Within the first page of the book Joel Peter Witkin by Eugenia Perry, there was a mention that he used anorexics as subjects and models in his art, along with other groups that are seen as deviant by society. The art he creates about the female body suggests disorder, drama, and mystery. His work is incredibly inspiring to me and will be in the back of my mind as I continue to create.

I would describe my research process as curious wandering. I let myself move in whatever direction that excites me, but I try to be very deliberate about what I can find at each step. When I am interested in something I become very motivated and that passion is very helpful when the things I am researching seem hard to uncover. I think I am good at asking for help with my research but in the same vein, I may need to be more self-reliant and try harder to internalize better research methodologies. I want to continue tracking my research habits to try to get a better understanding of them. At the end of the day, it is very reassuring to me that I can spend so much time researching art; I know it is the right life work for me.

This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password: