Reflection #14: White People Aren’t the Only Vegans

https://spoonuniversity.com/lifestyle/the-problem-with-veganism-and-racism-that-no-one-is-talking-about As a vegan myself, I can’t believe I had never noticed this before.  While I had always internalized the predominately white, youthful, and able-bodied representations of veganism that proliferated the media, I had never stopped to question their implications or their seeming infallibility.  Representation is like an echo chamber: when you see something depicted over…

Reflection #13: Flying Presidential Fluff

http://occupydemocrats.com/2017/03/07/twitter-loses-video-trumps-hair-trying-escape-head/ Ok, I hate Trump’s hair (and the entity that it’s attached to) just as much as the next person, but to devote an entire news article to it? Especially on a legitimate, political Facebook page– it seemed kind of petty to me.  (The video itself is a potentially hilarious gold mine for GIF conoisseur’s, though).…

Reflection #12: This Is Why I Didn’t Go to Chapman

http://www.thepantheronline.com/opinion/do-black-lives-matter-to-black-lives-matter I can’t with this article.  It is just so severely misinformed and idiotic to the point of being unfathomable.  My forehead is currently resting in my palms in disbelief. Of course black-on-black violence is an issue, but to discredit the Black Lives Matter movement for it is like yelling at someone for missing a…

Reflection #11: The Necessity of the N.E.A

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/22/opinion/why-art-matters-to-america.html?_r=0 I totally believe in what this article is implying about the importance of arts and how its preservation and promotion in the United States is in jeopardy.  While this article does a good job of outlining the various functions of the N.E.A. and finished with some inspiring statements about the importance of the arts,…

Reflection #10: Boobs + Emma Watson = Feminism

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/emma-watsons-boobs-prove-why-we-still-need-feminism_us_58b8bd55e4b02b8b584df9f4 What an attention-grabbing title.  I like it.  But, I will be frank about my indifference toward Emma Watson as a feminist icon.  The brand of feminism that she advocates is just so safe, so vanilla, so focused on traditional gender binaries and not inclusive enough of all the people who fall outside of the…

Reflection #9: On Capitol Hill

Wonder why they felt the need to specify that Ben Carson is a “neurosurgeon-turned-politician”, and why an administration official arriving to his office on horseback is newsworthy.  I feel like that second point is an urban newspaper’s jab at rural politicians, fueling the urban vs. countryside rift that is prevalent in the U.S. right now.…

Reflection #8: Piers Morgan (Ew).

http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/03/history-of-piers-morgans-terrible-opinions.html I don’t have much to say on this one, except that Piers Morgan is a fucking potato.

Reflection #7: Chicken & Mozz

https://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanschocket2/lets-get-one-thing-fucking-straight-mozzarella-sticks-are-be?utm_term=.cklOqOKgw#.eb7Z3ZLYP I like how this article didn’t completely give way to the polarity of binaries by conceding that “yes, chicken fingers are beautiful.”  It’s as if the author is willing to concede to the merits of both mozzarella sticks and chicken fingers, but simply likes one better.  I feel as though I have no right…

Reflection #6: UC Socially Defeated?

http://triton.news/2017/02/editorial-elevating-appearances-students/ This article reminded me of my disillusionment of protest culture within UCSD.  I’ve participated in numerous protests here, and while I genuinely believed in their causes and in the necessity for peaceful protest, I couldn’t help but feel that doing it in a school setting was even more depressing.  I couldn’t help but feel…

Reflection #5: The Weight of a Pronoun

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/why-im-nonbinary-but-dont-use-they-them_us_58ac875ee4b05e6b9b192c07 This article is so lit.  I love how the author talks about how gender is a performance, and how whiteness and thinness deprived her of claiming black womanhood as she experienced it.  I never thought of pronouns as also carrying traumas within them, and I was actually a fan of using “They/Them” in battling…