THE ELEPHANT IN MY CLOSET

Cause of ambivalence:
Cape Cod (Or more specifically the connection between money, clothing and power)

Note contents:
"Dear Cape Cod,
You were the perfect getaway, but the pairing of expensive accessories with cheap and tacky vacationwear was a reminder that while money may buy power it does not buy class. Ambivalently Yours❤"

Place left:
In a clothing donation bin, at the edge of Cape Cod.

PS:
I wrote this note last spring after dining at a Cape Cod seafood restaurant. As we were being ushered to the back of the restaurant to the bathroom-adjacent table, I realized that my partner and I did not quite fit into the scene we had just entered. The majority of the clientele in the restaurant, mostly retired wealthy women, were dressed in their Cape-Cod-casual best (colourful fleece sweaters with the names of their preferred Cape beach embroidered on the front paired with casual slacks) juxtaposed with very expensive handbags. Louis Vuitton, Burberry, Chanel, all the big names were proudly displayed on the tables amongst the lobster bibs and oyster crackers. I looked at my own nautical inspired striped canvas bag with fake leather trims and realized that even in a casual vacation setting, the lack of a proper couture label on the front of my purse was a huge social faux pas. This made me resent these rich ladies, their expensive purses and their ugly Cape Cod casual style. How dare they fashion shame me and make me sit by the bathrooms.

During this vacation I was reading a book called Should We Burn Babar?: Essays on Children's Literature and the Power of Stories by Herbert Kohl which included a critical analysis of the story of Babar the Elephant. This is the type of text that ruins everything you love about your childhood storybook heroes by making you realize that their stories glorify colonialism, capitalism and all the other bad “isms”. One of the points Kohl addresses in his essay is the shift of identity that happens to Babar when he goes to the city to live with the rich lady and starts wearing human clothes. According to Kohl, this sartorial transformation is a symbol of Babar’s assimilation into “civilized” (white) society. This shift becomes more significant when Babar returns to the jungle and keeps his city clothing, differentiating him from the other “nude” elephants and acting as a symbol of worldliness and superiority, which lead to him becoming king of the elephants.

Kohl’s analysis reminded me of my own interpretation of the rich Cape Cod ladies and their status symbol purses. I began thinking about the use of fashion as a a symbol of power and upper class domination and started to wonder if perhaps Kohl and I were oversimplifying a much more complex expression of personal identity.

Andrew Bolton, curator to the Met’s Costume institute, was quoted in the New Yorker saying that: “There’s nothing so immediate as fashion, in terms of an expression of one’s values and one’s state of mind. Even the negation of fashion is a statement.” Expanding on that thought, fashion can become a form of communication, an outwardly way of expressing something without words. The performance of one’s personal style can be a conscious act that represent ones inner self, associates one to different subcultures or create social cues about one’s status, education or ethnicity. As Kaja Silverman writes: “Clothing is a necessary condition of subjectivity - that in articulating the body, it simultaneously articulates the psyche.” More than just an expression of vanity, the act of putting on clothes becomes a complex expression of one’s relationship with one’s body and environment. With this in mind, it seems that because there is value in learning to use a language properly in order to ensure the clearest form of communication, it should be equally important to learn about the impact of dressing certain ways. Yet people who invest in their sartorial selves are often thought of as shallow individuals being duped by dominant social paradigms, instead of individuals who are concerned about what their sartorial self is saying to the world.

As a feminist who pursued her higher education while working in fashion, I’ve always felt a sort of push and pull between my desire to dress the part, and my inability to decide which part I actually wanted to play. I became aware that dressing like a fashionista and dressing like a feminist meant two different things and that my desire to be both at once was seen as a contradiction. In 1997, feminist literary critic and a professor emeritus at Princeton Elaine Showalter wrote an article for Vogue Magazine entitled The Professor Wore Prada in which she wrote: “If fashion is free speech, why do we feminists get stuck with a pitifully small vocabulary?" Ten years later, after receiving a great deal of backlash from the Vogue article she expanded on this thought in a New York Times article stating that in academia the complexities, social cues and joys of fashion are “very much denigrated. The academic uniform has some variation, but basically is intended to make you look like you’re not paying attention to fashion, and not vain, and not interested in it, God forbid.” 

Fashion has a dark past and a complicated future. I have written about my own conflicted relationship with fashion on this blog many times before and I wont deny that my relationship with clothing is full of ambivalent contradictions. However, I get frustrated when fashion is over-simplified. My own simplistic first impression of the Cape Cod ladies is a clear example of how it is an easy trap to fall into. Maybe these women weren’t only trying to showcase their financial power. Perhaps their purses were part of the uniform of their own rich lady subculture, a way to find other rich ladies to be friends with during their stay in Cape Cod. Maybe these fashion accessories acted as a type of safety blanket to help them feel connected to a home from which they were displaced. Maybe Babar just wanted to dress the part so it would be easier for him to fit in to his new urban life. Maybe the ladies and Babar just liked dressing up because its fun. In both circumstances, I would argue that it is possible that certain sartorial decisions are more motivated by personal desires than a result of political assimilation.

Fashion is just a language and like any language fashion can be misused. Just because some people don’t know how to speak properly, does not mean that the entire English language is without value. Sure, it has limitations and is prone to misinterpretation, but it is also a key element of communication. It is embedded in how we coexist, and it is something worth considering and questioning. I have concluded that fashion is perfect for the ambivalently inclined because loving and hating it in equal measures is the only way to understand the pain it inflicts without giving up the joy it can create.

Recommended reading:

Kaja Silverman, Fragments of a Fashionable Discourse 

Threadbared blog

Mad Style by TOM + LORENZO

Dis Magazine

Ambivalently Yours Ph.D.

Cause of ambivalence:
Academia (and the idea of apply for a Ph.D)

Note contents:
"Dear Academia,
I kind of feel like spending more time together, but I worry that if I’m with you too long our relationship will become paralyzing. - AY. ❤"

Place left:
In a couch, in a University conference room.

PS:
A few months ago, I was accepted to participate in a grad conference about resistance and I presented this project there. At the end of the conference, inspired and ambivalent from my weekend spent flirting with academia, I left this note between the cushions of one of the couches in the conference room.

I had paralyzing anxiety during my weeks of preparation prior to the conference, mainly due to the fact that I had no idea how my drawings and ambivalent convictions would be received in a group of non-artist academics.  I have always felt a little disconnected from Academia with a capital A, mainly because my seemingly low brow interests and undying affection for popular culture are often dismissed by the tweed clad, French-theorist-quoting types.  But when I finally got up to present my work, I became the calm and confident version of myself that often gets lost during first impressions, buried under layers of politeness and insecurity.  What I realized in that moment is that, as cheesy as it may sound, going to grad school helped me find my voice as an artist and also gave me the guts to talk a little louder than I used to.  Before I knew it, I was discussing ambivalence with everyone in the room and feeling totally accepted in this world I once feared.  As I became more and more intoxicated with the hopeful high induced by spending two days surrounded with like-minded peers with active social convictions, I was reminded of how much I miss school.  Soon enough, my ongoing debate of “real life” vs. academia started spinning in my head again, and I began to wonder if maybe I should stop flirting with school and finally go all the way… Ph.D.

As soon as I came down from my high however, my moment of ambivalence turned into a mess of questions:

Do I want to keep studying because I think it would be beneficial to my artistic practice, or am I just feeling discontent in my current professional life and looking for more mental stimulation?  Or do I just miss my art school friends? Am I being motivated by ambition or insecurity? At this point in my career, is it the education itself or the image of having an education that I am craving? Is the dismissal I often face in professional settings due to my appearance, gender, and inclination for teenage iconography and the colour pink feeding my need for more education? Or do I just want to add three letters at the end of my signature in hopes that people will be take me more seriously?  And even if I do have the fancy letters will people just react the same way they do when I tell them I have an MFA and tell me: “wow you must really love drawing”.  Should I have studied something more serious like marine biology or architecture?  Could prolonging my education become completely paralyzing?  Will I stop making and start over thinking everything?  Is there such a thing as too much critique and too much feedback?  Is there a point when it becomes impossible to decipher one’s own instincts and ideas from those of the people critiquing and advising?  Is it more important for artists to learn to trust their instincts, self-motivate their work and surround themselves with an artist community to help sustain their practice, rather than worry about the accolades of academia?  Do I need to learn to be more independent now, before I become completely reliant on academia?  But also, how much further could my work take me if I had an extra little push once in a while?  But is academia the right place to get the kind of push I need, or will it just cause me to become more competitive as I start fighting for grades and funding? What if I don’t get in?  What if I do get in? Am I just trying to fit in?  Feel included?  Feel smart? Get attention? Do I just feel like wearing more tweed?

In conclusion, I don’t know.  I’ve re-written this blog post a dozen times trying to be clever, trying to find a point, trying to write something mind-bogglingly insightful, but all I am left with is: I don’t know.  In school we learn to look for answers and out of school I’ve been spending more time with my questions.  Maybe that’s enough for now.

____
(Added on February  9, 2013)

I've been thinking more about my desire to go back to school for the right reasons, and I think that maybe I have been looking at this all wrong.  I am starting to wonder if maybe I wont ever reach a clean conclusion void of any of the gobbledygook left behind by my long lasting period of indecision.  Maybe final decisions are never clean cut, but always greyed by the unknown that will proceed them.  And if that is true, then so what if I want to go back to school because I want to push my work to the next level AND because I want people to think I am smart?  Does one reason necessarily cancel out the other, or can both co-exist comfortably?

SHARED: WOMEN'S BATHROOM

Cause of ambivalence:
Women's Bathroom

Note contents:
"Dear Women's Bathroom,
I used to hate you so much.  But ever since I became a boy, I really miss you.  The men's bathroom really smells and no one really talks to one another.  Take me back? - Ambivalently Yours. "

Place left:
In the women's bathroom

PS:
They say a big part of transitioning genders is "the washroom test".  And it is... for sure!! But once you've passed it (no pun intended), you're stuck there.  For good.  Now, I definitely wouldn't say I loved the woman's washroom.  In fact, my presence in there was often questioned and laughed at.  But I still had my share of fun.  I'd go in with friends, we'd talk, we'd slip unmentionables under doors, we'd giggle... wait... I don't think that last one's true.  But now I'm trapped in the boys' bathroom.  The room school girls look at with wonder (and I was one of them!).  But let me tell you, I've solved that mystery and it's nothing special.  It's a magicless place where fun and socializing go to *read in MAN voice* "take care of business".  Get in, get out.  No "how do you do"... nothing.  And it smells.  So now my transitioning milestone has been made.  I'm a guy.  And no one questions it.  Except why do I always feel a tug in my heart when my girlfriends and I always have to part ways at the washroom door?  Why can't I just go in with them?  And why are we still so attached to those signs on the door?  - Ambivalently Yours

FRIENDS WITHOUT BENEFITS

Cause of ambivalence:
My male BFF (aka the complications of boy-girl friendships)

Note contents:
"Dear friend,
Sometimes I wish you were a girl or were gay so this friendship would be less complicated.  Then again maybe it's the complexity that makes it so great... ❤"

Place left:
In a dorm room closet.

PS:
Six months ago, I wrote the first version of this note and left it in a dorm room closet. The note was written in such a moment of incoherent sleep deprived confusion that it actually made no sense and became impossible to ever break down into a blog post. Luckily, a few months ago, I found myself staying in the exact same room where I had originally left the note, and to my delight it was still there, untouched and unread. I decided that this was my chance to switch the note for something else, another ambivalent place, more evolved than where I was six months ago.

It’s funny, as I am writing this I can feel my instincts of self-censorship kicking in. I wonder (am terrified of) how people will interpret or misinterpret my words because of their own pre-made assumptions. I wonder what the people that know me, that know us (or that think they know but actually don’t) are already thinking. I am sure there have been a lot of assumptions about us, but for the record: we’re just friends.

I’ve debated this issue over and over with many different people, but I still haven’t found any real proof that men and woman can really be just friends. There are very few public role models that showcase a committed platonic male-female friendship. In every single movie in which a man and a woman are close friends, they always ALWAYS end up together in the end. The main characters always have this epiphany moment where they finally realize that the person they were meant to spend their lives with was right there the whole time, and when they finally get together the audience is thrilled. But what if two people work perfectly as friends and know for a fact that their synchronicity would be immediately ruined by the introduction of any type of romance? Can’t they just be friends?

Of course I know that men and women can be friends, it happens all the time, but what I am talking about here is the kind of friendship that does not only occur when one’s other half is present, or when both parties are single. You know, the kind of friendship that requires daily emails, phone calls and text messages, the sharing of previously untold secrets, the meeting of each other’s siblings and parents. What I am talking about here is not about a man and a woman being just friends, it is about a man and a woman being BFF.

I have such a friend and I have been fighting with him, others and myself to try to convince the world that a close co-ed friendship is possible, despite our culture’s insistence that it isn’t. It doesn’t help that there aren’t even any words in the English language to describe what I am talking about here, which in itself is a clear indication that devoted co-ed friendship is not common practice or at least openly discussed. My BFF and I have coined our devotion to each other a “friendationship” because friendship seems too casual and relationship has too many other implications that do not concern us. We are trying to create a new “friendship paradigm” (his words, I don’t use words like paradigm in casual conversation) despite the lack of proper vocabulary or pop culture examples. The results have been 70% really amazing (30% we still have to work on.) No matter how progressive we are, it is complicated. Generally, things that exist in the ambiguous in-between tend to make people uncomfortable, and even though I am ambivalently inclined, I am not immune to the discomfort the in-between can cause. When you are raised to believe a certain thing your whole life, it is not so simple to just completely forget about it and act differently. Gender roles aside, there is something both comforting and terrifying about becoming very close with someone. Being close requires a great deal of honesty, and that honesty can make people vulnerable and can make hurting one another extremely easy. It takes constant renegotiation and clear communication to make it work, which is a fancy way of saying that we fight all the time.

I have tried and failed many times to have close friendships with members of the opposite sex. Too often my enthusiasm and affectionate nature have led to some unfortunate misinterpretations of my intentions (aka they think I’m a cocktease.) I do wonder sometimes why I even bother trying, why it is so important for me to be close friends with men, especially since my friendships with women are usually much more simple. Maybe I need a male best friend to make up for a lifetime of patriarchy-loving male role models. I am aware that this puts a great deal of pressure on the men I befriend, which is one more thing that makes these friendships so hard (Hey Friend, I just need you to make up for centuries of sexism ok? No pressure!) Yet, it is often the difficult moments of life that end up being the most precious, and I think that there is value in working at things sometimes. Despite our fights and all the other crap we’ve had to figure out, my friend has always been there for me and I am extremely grateful to have someone so caring, loyal and honest as a BFF. I think the complexity of our friendationship has helped me let go of a lot of my own assumptions about relationships and has helped me love other people in a more honest way. To quote bell hooks, as I usually do when writing about matters of the heart “Learning to love in friendship empowers us in ways that enable us to bring this love to other interactions with family or with romantic bonds.”  In an odd sort of way, I think that learning how to love men as friends is also helping me love my husband and even my female friends more.

I really do hope that men and women really can be BFF, and that my friend and I are able to work through the process (again his words). The only role models we have at the moment are Carrie Brownstein (of Sleater Kinney, Wild Flag, Portlandia) and Fred Armisen (SNL, Portlandia) who according to the New Yorker have “an unusually devoted platonic relationship.”  If I meet either of them one day, I will be sure to ask them for advice.

PPS: I was just kidding, he doesn't really use words like 'paradigm' in casual conversation.

HERE COMES THE BRIDE

 

Cause of ambivalence:
Getting married.

Note contents:
"Dear marriage,
If there is one thing I have felt ambivalent about it's you. The whole business and show that goes along with you is so over the top that I decided that the best place to get married is somewhere equally nuts! VEGAS BABY! ❤"

Place left:
In a fake flower bed outside of a Vegas wedding chapel.

PS:
Since I was a little girl, I’ve always dreamed of getting married. As a child of divorce, I was determined to succeed where my parents had failed and prove to the world that people can fall in love and stay together forever. It wasn’t until I actually got engaged, that I realized how completely terrifying marriage is. While I loved my boyfriend and was devoted to him, the idea of being someone’s wife, along with the insanity of wedding preparations, became unexpectedly terrifying and absurd. Suddenly something I always thought I wanted was making me completely ambivalent.

It didn’t help that at the same time I was completing my MFA and reading about feminism which forced me to question everything I had always taken for granted, getting married being one of these things. In the 70s many feminist artists left their husband when they became truly devoted to feminism, because their newfound liberation and radical thinking made it impossible to be both a feminist and a wife. It made me wonder if I was being less of a feminist by getting married. One night I went to see feminist art icon Judy Chicago speak at a local museum. When I shyly asked her a question about art that related to my own work, she yelled at me to stop being so afraid and to do whatever the hell I want to do. An hour later, still in shock from having THE Judy Chicago yell at me, I was picking out bridesmaids dress patterns. It was such a huge shift, the back and forth between wedding stuff and feminism. Soon enough, I was completely dizzy and I couldn’t distinguish if I actually wanted to get married or if I just thought I was supposed to get married.

Another concern I had was how my new marital status would impact my professional status. I started to worry about the expectations and assumptions that would follow me once I put on that ring. Like it or not, in most workplaces, once a woman gets married people start expecting her to lose her professional drive and go baby crazy. In 2010, Sheryl Sandberg , COO of Facebook, gave a TED talk about how there are too few women leaders in the world, and offered her recommendations on how to fix the problem.  Her talk centered on her belief that women just don’t have as much confidence as men in the workplace, and her advice to women was to “sit at the table,” “make your partner a real partner” and “don’t leave before you leave”. What she was actually doing is telling women to act more like the boys if they want to be invited into the club.

But what if I don’t want to act like the boys? And what if I don’t want to be a pearl-clad Mad Men style housewife either? The truth is that it’s not actually true that women can have it all, no matter what “successful” people like Sheryl Sandberg say. When you try to have it all, there is always something or someone that gets neglected and usually it is the woman’s job to decide what that will be and feel guilty about it. And that is the problem: the idea that there is one choice to be made and that any perfect ambitious woman can make the right one. There actually isn’t one right choice. Life is a series of little choices and constant re-evaluation of these choices. Yet, for women trying to ‘have it all’ there is little room for error. Maybe if it were socially acceptable to make mistakes and change our minds, we wouldn’t have to act like boys to succeed.

I think the trick is not to try to live up to anyone’s expectations and just do whatever you want. That’s what Judy Chicago was trying to tell me really: to just be gutsy enough to do whatever I wanted to do. In the movie !Women Art Revolution, Judith Baca said of many feminist artists in the 70s that they were : “choosing to focus on their work. Choosing perhaps not to be wives in the traditional sense.” Maybe, in some cases, it’s just the traditions that need to be changed and not the idea of marriage. What I stopped seeing once my socially induced fears took over the sane part of my brain, was that the man I was about to marry was totally ready to break all the stupid male-centered traditions with me, which is why I had agreed to marry him in the first place.

My way of breaking tradition from the very start of my marriage was to have the most ridiculous wedding ceremony ever. I decided to leave everyone and their expectations behind and flew to Vegas where my husband and I exchanged vows in front of a fake Vegas Elvis in a 50s style diner. Rhinestones and chest hair aside, it was probably one of the weirdest and most romantic things I have ever done. Typically enough, when I finally stopped caring about what everyone had to say, I was able to have the most insanely amazing wedding day ever. And while my Vegas wedding is not going to stop people from assuming things about the married version of me and is not going to stop the post-wedding baby inquiries, it at least gave me the courage to finally say: Bring it on Bitches.

WHAT'S MY AGE AGAIN?

  

Cause of ambivalence:
Getting rid of a Micro mini yellow denim skirt (and dressing like a grown up)

Note contents:
"Dear Micro mini yellow denim skirt,
We had some fun nights together but I think I've reached an age where it has become a little tacky to wear you. So with a heavy heart I am giving you up. Ambivalently Yours❤"

Place left:
In the pocket of the skirt, before I gave it to charity.

PS:
I would say that about twice or maybe three times a year, I sit myself down and sternly try to convince myself that it’s time I start dressing like a grown up. This usually occurs after I’ve watched an episode of What Not to Wear in which the “age appropriate” outfit was forcefully promoted, or when a stranger gives me a “you must be a teen mom” look when they see I am wearing a wedding ring. In those moments, I decide that it’s time to start looking like a real grown up; it’s time I be taken seriously, and it’s time to stop being underestimated for seeming young. So I go out and buy a blazer and some beigy eye shadow, and try to transform myself into an Ah-dult look-alike. It never really works though. Grown up clothes are just so stiff, uncomfortable and high maintenance. They have to be pressed and dry cleaned and hung on fancy hangers, and it’s as though the wearer of theses clothes automatically becomes stiff, uncomfortable and totally beige.

Nonetheless, as the birthdays leave their mark on my elasticity depleting skin, I do become aware that some fashion choices are more suited for the younger, tighter, smoother generations. I know, I know, this is not very feministy of me to say. Every woman should be able to wear what she wants at any age, and there are some women who will be able to pull off tight yellow mini skirts into their golden years, but somehow I don’t feel I am one of them (or maybe I have just been socially trained too well by Clinton and Stacy). Which is why I ambivalently let go of my yellow mini, making sure to leave a note in the pocket before I stuffed it into a garbage bag and dropped it off at the donation centre. It has always been difficult for me to let go of my clothes because they become so laced with memories, and also because giving them up is a reminder that whether I like it or not, I am getting older. For some reason the idea of getting older completely terrifies me. I have this irrational fear that one day I will transform into an Ah-dult over night and care about nothing but collecting coupons, understanding mortgage rates, and spending my days worrying about oil changes, mini-vans, suburbia living, two and a half kids, sensible shoes, and a whole lot of beige. Grown up life seems beige to me, and beige is basically my worst fear. Maybe the way I dress is a resistance to beige or maybe it’s a way to remind myself that I don’t have to actually become all these stereotypical grown up things I fear.

Another thing I find weird about age is the competitive nature between people of different generations, and how acting young (and by young I don't mean immature) is portrayed as such a bad thing. I saw at TV commercial the other day where a teenage girl was talking about how she was worried that her parents were leading too much of an isolated life because they did not have many facebook friends. The commercial was meant to be funny, but clearly it was an attack on how teenagers now communicate so much through social media, which seems to frighten a lot of older generations, who I suspect don’t actually understand what they are negating. My aim here is not to debate the pros and cons of social media, but to propose that perhaps part of the reason that social media has such a bad reputation is precisely because it is so universally embraced by a younger generation.  What if teenagers hated facebook and twitter, and it were the adults who were tweeting their friends all day long (yes I know, many adults already do that), would the image of social media be different? Age doesn’t necessarily have to be hierarchal with the older people on top and the younger people on the bottom. By this, I mean why is it not more ok for adults to learn from younger generations? I am constantly in awe of the younger generations and learn from them all the time. I am often amazed by the level of daring introspection present on tumblr pages run by teenage girls. Let’s face it, teenagers dare, and they often have more guts than adults do. As I get older and start stressing out about being taken seriously, about dressing my age, and about being an artist who works with such an infantile colour palette, I worry that I am losing some of the courage I had as a teenager. In the book All About Love Bell Hooks wrote: “When writing poetry in my girlhood, I had felt the same confidence I would come to see in my adult life only in male writers.” (All About Love p.xxi) So it’s not just me, we do actually lose courage as we grow up. So why are women more afraid as adults? Is there really more to lose or are mistakes just more costly as we get older?

In the book Girldrive, Nona Willia Aronowitz and Emma Bee Bernstein interviewed Riot Grrrl icon Kathleen Hanna who said when speaking of her earlier years as a feminist punk musician: “It’s the arrogance of youth that made anything happen. I am glad I opened my mouth even though I didn’t fully know what I was saying.” (Girldrive p.148) The “arrogance of youth” can be off putting and naive, but it also allows for so much more bullshitless honesty. Some people may think it’s crazy, and even socially irresponsible, for bloggers like Tavi Gevinson to have such a huge audience at such a young age. However, if you actually read her blog Rookie Mag or listen to her speak, you might understand that a girl like her is exactly what this generation of young (and even older) women needs, because what she offers is not a rule book on being a girl or a woman like so many other things in pop culture, but instead she creates a space for questions. “The point is not to give girls the answers, and not even to give them permission to find the answers themselves, but hopefully inspire them to understand that they can give themselves that permission. They can ask their own questions and find their own answers.” (Tavi Gevinson at TEDxTEEN)

So I guess my question now is whether it really matters if I wear a yellow mini skirt as an adult? By getting rid of it am I allowing myself to grow or am I holding myself back by trying to become a grown up?

TO BITCH OR NOT TO BITCH

 
Cause of ambivalence:
A concert (more specifically, the lead singer of the band)

Note contents:
"Dear concert of one of my favorite bands,
I love your music but why is the lead singer such a bitch to other women?❤"

Place left:
In the venue's dingy bathrooms

PS:
I wrote this note a long time ago but I avoided it for a long time. To be honest, I’ve been really embarrassed about it, and considered just pretending it never happened. Then I remembered that the whole point of leaving these crazy notes all over the place was to confront my moments of ambivalence, even the embarrassing ones. So here it is: my moment of ambivalent bitchiness.

Years ago, I worked on a campaign catalogue that featured musicians instead of models. The girl mentioned in the note was the lead singer of the band that was selected for the photo shoot. I really liked her before we actually met, because her music, lyrics and stage persona were very relatable to me. While I didn’t expect us to become instant BFFs and immediately start talking in homemade acronyms, I figured that she and I would at least get along pretty well, because I thought to myself: “I totally get this girl!” But when we met in person, I was taken aback by how unnecessarily unpleasant she was with me, especially in comparison to her male bandmates who were really friendly. It was disappointing, to say the least.

Months later, in a moment of ambivalence, I left a note at one of her shows. Minutes after leaving the heart-marked envelope in the venue’s dingy bathrooms, I began to second guess what I wrote. While I was unimpressed with the girl I had met in person, I still admired the girl I saw on stage: a bluntly honest, unforgivingly emotional, beautifully imperfect, badass pop front woman. She embodied all the qualities I admire in a musical heroine, which I realized made up for our inability to communicate in a friendly way. The more I thought about it, the more I felt ashamed that I was reacting to this girl’s animosity towards me by leaving a somewhat mean message about her in the bathrooms (stereotypical girlfight behaviour really). Ten minutes after leaving the note, I went back to the bathroom to take it back, but to my despair, it was already gone. That’s when I really realized the impact of leaving a note in public: once I let it go, I can’t take it back, and I have no control over who will find it. The only thing left to do was to try to understand my reaction.

Looking back, I wonder if things would have been different had she and I met under different circumstances, instead of as two creative women trying to work together in a professional setting. It is a well documented fact that women tend to be very competitive with each other in the workplace. I’ll admit that I have felt jealous, resentful and weary of female co-workers at different times during my career, in a way that I never felt towards my male co-workers. I am also not proud to say that I have also felt that way about close female friends too. So why is it so easy to become competitive and bitchy with each other?

In her book Woman’s Inhumanity to Woman, Phyllis Chesler demonstrates, through the analysis of years of case studies and interviews, that women can be sexist and ‘inhumane’ to one another. Her research shows how, in a professional setting, women often see each other as opponents trying to fit into an already narrow window of opportunity. She also explains how women tend to expect too much from one another emotionally. It is a common assumption that all women are supposed to be warm and loving, simply because they are women, and when professional women do not live up to their gender roles they are criticized for being cold or too masculine. While Chesler raises some interesting points, the tone of her book troubled me. She began the introduction to the 2009 edition of the book by telling the story of how she was betrayed by a woman who was once close to her. This experience was obviously very upsetting to her, because it seemed to resonate throughout the book’s bitter tone. Chesler’s study left me with the impression that she was setting out to warn women against the dangers of other women, rather than educate them on how to stop competing with one another.

So how do we stop being bitches to each other? Should we just accept that all women are bitches and become bitter about it (thus perpetuating the bitchiness)? What should you do if another woman is being a bitch to you? Should you just turn the other cheek and take it? Is there ever value in fighting back? Or is there another way of dealing with the idea of girl fights all together, that doesn’t involve mud and bikinis, or any canine or feline-related adjectives and sounds.

In the book Girls to the Front, Sara Marcus tells many tales of disputes that occurred within the Riot Grrrl movement of the early 90’s, a movement whose main goal was to encourage the communication and acceptance of women. Reading this book helped me understand some of the complications of girl friendships. While we may all begin with noble ideas and good intentions, getting along is just not always that simple. There are always a million factors that stand in the way of genuine friendship (gender, race, status, education, language, romantic comedies, reality TV…). Yet, present in Marcus’s book but lacking in Chesler’s, was an optimistic stance on the possibility of genuine female friendships. Marcus’s book did not gloss over the bad parts, but also left room for the good ones. Every negative example of hateful behaviour was balanced out with numerous examples of how women can also be really amazing to each other, even in the most difficult situations.

Maybe being a pro-female-friend feminist does not necessarily imply that you have to be friends with all women, even the ones who share similar values. Maybe you don’t need to like someone on a personal level to appreciate and understand them on a more political level. There might actually be a middle ground somewhere between BFF and mortal enemy. Then again, maybe the more important question is who actually benefits from women being bitches to one another. It’s certainly not women. So why do we keep fighting? I recently read an article on the site socialjusticeleague.net where the author Rachael implored her readers to “Leave Kim Kardashian Alone.” She wrote: “If we want to criticize Kim Kardashian, we have plenty of legitimate concerns (and Quicktrim should be our leading issue in my opinion). But the vast majority of the complaints made against Kim are straight up sexist bullshit, and the rest use her as a scapegoat for institutional inequality. Kim Kardashian is hardly a feminist hero. But women don’t have to be feminist heroes before they deserve to be defended from sexism, slutshaming and hatred. All women should be defended against sexist attacks, not just the women we like. That’s kind of how feminism is supposed to work. Leave Kim Kardashian alone.” 

We all make mistakes, we all get caught up in the “sexist bullshit” we’ve been brought up in. Girl hating is expected and encouraged by our society, because if we’re fighting each other, we can’t fight together. Maybe it’s time we stop backstabbing one another and teach our inner bitches to fight the good fight.

TOO COOL FOR SCHOOL

Cause of ambivalence:
My MFA (also, Academia with a capital 'A', and Coolness)

Note contents:
"Dear MFA,
You were so hard!!! You made me question everything, all the time! It won't ever go back!
Thank You! AY❤" (yeah, my brain was pretty much fried when I wrote this!)

Place left:
In my dorm room closet.

PS:
On a weekly, nine-to-five basis, it is my job to pursue and interpret ‘coolness.’ When I present my work to my bosses, the same inevitable question always arises: “Is this cool enough?” which in reality is their way of asking: “Will this make us a lot of money?” While the pursuit of coolness does not always revolve around money, it does ultimately revolve around numbers. Basically, coolness equals power: the power of having a large audience, the power of being supported by this audience, the power of numbers.

After five years of trying to understand and reproduce coolness in my professional life, I began feeling progressively more ambivalent about the idea of striving for mass appeal. While it seemed logical that my company would want my designs to be popular and therefore make money, I began to wonder how, as an artist, I should view the idea of mass appeal in regard to my work (meaning the work that I was not paid to do and that did not necessarily have to bring in an income).

It was at this conflicted point in my career that I decided to pursue a visual art MFA at a small school in Vermont, where the dorm rooms were questionable but the pedagogy was radical. Part of the radicalism of this school was the low residency format that meant that as students we were only on campus during the bi-annual weeklong residencies and spent the rest of our time working from our own hometown studios. This allowed for the residencies to become a safe place where, displaced from our daily lives, students and faculty could openly express thoughts and concerns about any issue from the very personal to the extremely political (and often both). Being in this place of honest exchange gave me back my hope, the hope I used to wear proudly on my sleeve as a teenager, but tucked away in my closet once I put on my adult uniform. It gave me hope that perhaps those ugly, seemingly unchangeable truths that I was never encouraged to question, could actually be challenged and changed. In a nutshell, being a grad student made me brave enough to care.

That sounds silly right? Being brave enough to care. I mean of course I cared about things before school, but in a quieter, ‘cooler’ kind of way.  My style of pre-grad school caring was more aligned with this Kathleen Hanna quote I found online: “Being cool in our culture means being cold, stand-offish, uncaring (you're too cool to notice a lot of things) and self-absorbed. You are attractive in a normal white way but have a little dirt on your chin. You are mysterious and lacking in real friends cuz being cool means being vulnerable with no one. (this increases the value that others place on the rare memories of you sharing anything with them...cool)”  The caring my education inspired is the kind of caring that prompted me to speak up about my opinions and stand up for the things that I knew were important. You know, the kind of caring that causes outbursts of real human emotion in public, that embarrassing, messy type of human emotion that makes your face red and your eyes water. That brand of caring is not cool.

While Hanna describes the current state of coolness quite accurately, I now wonder if caring deeply about something necessarily cancels out all possibilities for coolness, and mass appeal? While I am now comfortable with being somewhat un-cool in my personal life, I am still unsure of the place for coolness in my artistic life. My desire to both reject and embrace the mainstream has ignited a line of questioning that will forever fuel my process. I wonder if coolness has to necessarily be short-lived, frivolous, and associated to consumerism? I wonder if there is value in seeking the power of numbers through art? If, as an artist, you have something important to say, don’t you want a lot of people to hear it? Can the power of numbers ever be used in a positive way? Is it possible to introduce a type of coolness that can withstand the fad phase and become a more positive and inclusive way of thinking, thus acting as an alternative to the patriarchal thinking so ingrained in our society?

My education helped me realize that my work, my ambivalence and my questions, need to coexist with the mainstream, because they are about the mainstream and for the mainstream. Coming from a design background, I know how to brand and package things well. I see these elements in my work as a language that can be grasped quickly and function in a world of media bombardment. Nonetheless, I am increasingly aware that the things that thrive in the mainstream are often judged harshly within academia. Coolness does not necessarily imply quality; however, the fact that a lot of people love something doesn’t necessarily make it bad either. What is bad is the overwhelming misuse of coolness in our society; the abuse of power and popularity, used to manipulate others for selfish personal gain. The backlash of this is that it has become safer for smart people to be skeptical of all things that are too generally embraced, often clouding their ability to see any value in them. It has also caused a false impression that the masses (especially the younger ones) are inherently dumb and should never be followed. Actively caring is a huge risk especially within mass culture, because the larger the audience, the larger the potential for public ridicule. While I strongly believe that there is a need for critical thinking and conscious questioning in our society, my personal irritation lies with the people who are just critical for the sake of being critical. In other words, the people who are just critical to be cool. As a recent MFA graduate, I have no desire to join the cynically paralyzed, but am instead open to the idea of attempting to promote the idea that communal caring can be the new cool. And yes my honesty and optimism might make me look dorky and naive from time to time, but so be it.

Returning to my own educational experience, I was fortunate that in its radical splendor my little Vermont school was staffed with faculty members open-minded enough to encourage me to explore and revel in my hating and loving of coolness. In all their generosity, the faculty and students I had the honour of working with over the last two years have helped me find answers and create new questions for myself, while still maintaining my love of all things pink. While academia with a capital ‘A’ may have its flaws, I am grateful for those very amazing people within it that have taught me that you can never be too cool for school. 

SHARED: MJ

Cause of ambivalence:
Michael Jackson

Note (email) contents:
"Today I want to talk about MJ. I loved MJ when I was a kid he was such a cross dressing hero of mine. I dressed up like him a lot and had themed parties. Thriller was the theme album of our childhood- everyone I knew was into Thriller-- I mean its fucking Thriller! As the shades of MJ got strikingly less cool and more mutated I started to question my love of Thriller and MJ. I was still obsessed with him, but I watched him turn from adorbale black boy, to freaky faced white woman. I wondered a lot about MJ and what affect popular cutlure had on him, I mean does everyone want so badly to conform even the person that created Thriller? How is that possible? I know he had a really shakey childhood, that his father was an unholy asshole, but I wonder how much MJ is really a reflection of us and how screwed up American Pop culture is. I hate MJ because I hate what we collectively did to that person. I hate MJ because I don't like the way I look sometimes and think about changing it, I hate MJ because as much as I pretend to not care I deeply do, mostly I hate MJ because like most good things he just didn't last. What does that say about us? I mean Thriller come on nothing trumps it but nothing trumps what a weird person Michael Jackson became, and what it says about our society. "

Place left:
"I did not download the template cause I hate dealing with that sort of thing- I am not ambivalent about that I just hate it."

PS:
I recently received this email submission of ambivalence about Michael Jackson, and it brought up a lot of childhood memories for me.  I was also a huge fan of MJ as a kid... I was one of those toddlers that wore a sparkly glove and moonwalked and of course I LOVED Thriller!!  It really was a generation's anthem.  I have also felt very ambivalent about the evolution of MJ's fame, more so following his death that became, once again, a shameless example of American mass media turning a tormented person's life into a nation's tragedy without accepting any of the responsibility for it.  The price of fame in North America seems so high, and it is heartbreaking to see what it can do to certain people.  The whole thing is bizarre, disturbing and very sad.

SHARED: AN AMBIVALENT AROMA

Cause of ambivalence:
Parfum

Note contents:
"Chère délicieuse effluve que je croise parfois sur mon chemin, tu m'enivres à chaque fois et me rappelles une radieuse après-midi de décembre à Tolède... Je déteste que tu ne sois qu'un parfum commercial et chimique."

Place left:
Sous l'assiette à pain de la table voisine dans un bistro gastronomique à Rimouski.

PS:
A French speaking friend sent me this little note this week and gave me full permission to translate it for the blog.  However, there are words such as "effluve" (which is a much more beautiful way of saying scent or smell) that just don't exist in the English language.  Therefore, I wont attempt to translate her words, but will instead paraphrase the ambivalent sentiment expressed.  This particular ambivalence was directed at a familiar scent that evoked sweet memories of a December afternoon in Toledo, yet the delight is somewhat tarnished by the fact that perfume in question is nothing more than a commercial chemical blend.  This moment is a reminder of the impact of popular media's use of romantic love as an aggressive advertizing tool, and the tense dissatisfaction that results from allowing oneself to be duped by these strategically manufactured fantasies.  In this particular case, the mere inclusion of a mass manufactured product in a genuine moment is almost retroactively spoiling  the memory of it.  I wonder how different love would smell if we weren't so constantly bombarded with commercially packaged romance?

TRAIN RIDES

Cause of ambivalence:
Train rides (reminiscent of my childhood back and forth)

Note contents:
"Dear train ride,
I love the soft rattle and the rumbly sounds.  I love that being here forces me to sit still with myself for a few hours.  But you also remind me of a painful part of my childhood that I hated.  I am ambivalently yours. ❤"

Place left:
In the basket in front of my seat.

PS:
My parents separated when I was five. Since then it was my mother vs. my father (who were complete opposites). They lived about three and a half hours apart and I spent many hours in the train, bus or car, going back and forth.  My upbringing wavered within this back and forth; between Quebec and Ontario, two provinces at the center of Canada’s ongoing cultural and language divide, two provinces at the center of my parental divide. From the age of five, every major decision that required the advice and guidance of a parent was put in front a panel of opposites. Choosing one meant the rejection of the other, so I always stood somewhere in the middle and gave myself permission to take what I needed from each side. I believe that this is where my rebellion against choosing began.

NYC

Cause of ambivalence:
NYC

Note contents:
"Dear NYC,
You are a treasure trove of great style and I am going home with some very exciting outfits.  But in the excitement I forgot that I can't really afford new clothes right now.  Shopping in NYC is the equivalent of shopping drunk!❤"

Place left:
In a rest stop gift shop, half way between NYC and MTL.

SKIRTS VS. PANTS

Cause of ambivalence: 
My floral skirt (and the pressures of dressing like a girl)

Note contents:
"Dear skirt,
You are very cute and I like you a lot, but I read this study that said it was better for my career if I chose you over pants, and that makes me resent you.❤"

Place left:
In the metro, on my way to work.

PS:
A recent article by the job research site Workopolis quoted a study done by the department of psychology at the University of Herfordshire, which determined that it was better for women to wear skirts rather than pants when going for a job interview.

This is what they found:
“The research, done at the department of psychology at the University of Herfordshire, also found that opinions are formed within seconds of first meeting. When 300 people were shown eight images of women in pants suits or skirts and asked to give their first impressions, they preferred the women in skirts. The women were rated on the following five criteria: success, trustworthiness, confidence, flexibility and salary. Looks were not part of the study as the faces were blanked and everyone wore navy."

When asked, Human Resources expert Sarah Paul said, "I tend to think that a woman who wears a skirt suit is capitalizing on an opportunity to differentiate herself, to stand out among her male counterparts. All men wear pants suits, most women opt for pants and the ones that wear skirts seem to stand out. This is what successful leaders do, they stand out and make you take notice. The fact that she is in a suit (hopefully a stylish one at that) speaks to her professionalism, ambition, power. But taking it one step further by wearing a skirt and dressing in an overtly feminine way elicits personality characteristics more often demonstrated by women... support, empathy, sensitivity... which are all desirable traits of a leader in today's workplace."

I feel uneasy about these types of studies because I feel like they subtlety try to convince and/or manipulate women into being more "feminine". Furthermore, I disagree that so-called “feminine traits” as described by Sarah Paul are necessarily “desirable traits of a leader in today's workplace.” The fact is, most of the leaders in the workplace are still men, and according to a study posted on catalyst.org called “THE MYTH OF THE IDEAL WORKER: Does Doing All The Right Things Really Get Women Ahead?” even when women are more confident when asking for raises and promotions, they still don’t benefit from as many career advancements as their male counterparts.

“We studied 3,345 high potentials in this report, each of whom stayed on a “traditional” career path following graduation from a full-time MBA program. (…) While conventional wisdom encourages women and men to be proactive to advance up the corporate ladder, we found that only men advanced further and faster when they did “all the right things.” For women, adopting the prescribed proactive strategies didn’t have the same payoff, although it was slightly better than not doing much at all.”

Therefore, can we not assume that feminine traits are not exactly an asset in the workplace?  Yet, not being feminine, isn't the solution either.  What is the study of the University of Herfordshire really representative of then? Do people really want their female bosses and co-workers to be more feminine, or are people just uncomfortable when women do not conform to their socially constructed gender roles?  While I don’t think that women should start acting and dressing like men to get ahead in their careers, I don’t believe that wearing a skirt will solve the problem either. I personally like dressing feminine from time to time, but I often resent the norms of femininity, especially when they are imposed on me.

SHARED: BACK AND FORTH

Cause of ambivalence:
Jess (or maybe love, relationships, and/or all those things that make staying together so difficult...)

Note contents:
“Dear Jess, I go back and forth about a million times per day whether or not to stick it out or give up. Blergh.  Ambivalently Yours. ❤”

Place left:
TBD

PS:
This heart-shaped note was sent to me by a lady who's tumblr I love to scroll through on a daily basis.  While I don't know the exact circumstances that caused this acknowledgement of ambivalence, I can certainly relate to the back and forth of it all.  Ambivalence can be a confusing and exhausting place.

What I have learned from my own ambivalence is that feelings are always in motion.  I have come to accept that the way I feel about people never stands still and that love doesn't necessarily have to be a static thing, it can be an on-going conversation, a constant back and forth.  Hollywood romantic comedies teach women to follow their hearts, but hearts can be fickle and easily blinded.  There is a great deal of value in using our heads too, and letting both heart and head duke it out from time to time.  I think the trick is to try to pay attention to the feelings that come up more often, the ones that stay around the longest, the ones that are based on real things rather than overactive imaginations or romantic fantasies.

AMBIVALENCE AND THE CITY

Cause of ambivalence:
The City (and being a woman who makes art in the city and on the city)

Note contents:
“Dear City, I love you and I hate you. Ambivalently Yours. ❤”

Place left:
On the streets of Montreal.

PS:
I grew up in a rural area, but I’ve always been more of a city girl at heart. One of the things I love the most about the city is when it is used as a canvas for art. The word ‘Graffiti’ is the plural form of the Italian word ‘graffito,’ which means image or text, scratched into a wall. The word was popularized in Pompeii in the late eighteenth century, when visitors started noticing scribbles on the ruin walls. Spray can Graffiti became popular in New York City in the seventies, when graffiti writers began ‘tagging’ their names all over the city. While some graffiti writers saw their practice as art, others saw it instead as a form of resistance and a way of declaring war against the city. For many poor, disenchanted youths, the concept of creating art was an activity reserved for the educated and the wealthy, but by working on the street they created their own gallery space where they had full creative control.

I love Graffiti and Street Art (a much broader movement that includes the use of different symbols, stencils and posters) but it’s always been a more of a boy’s game. Not only is it more dangerous for women to work late at night, but since the seventies and eighties, women graffiti writers have struggled to be taken seriously by their male counterparts. In the book Street Art: the Graffiti Revolution, by Cedar Lewisohn, street artist Lady Pink described her early years as a graffiti writer: “I had to work harder, just like women in the feminist movement. You have to prove yourself twice as hard to even be considered an equal.”[1] Many women in the Graffiti movement (and in the art world in general) react to this gender bias by creating gender-neutral work to avoid being unfairly judged or patronized. Others, like French artists Miss Van and Fafi, embrace their femininity by creating work that showcases stereotypical images of overtly sexualised women painted in bright feminine colors. As you may have already guessed, due to the color palette of this blog, I am one of those artists who believe in the power of pink. Clad in my signature bright pink hoodie (a symbol of masculine teenage rebellion with an ultra flashy feminine twist) I have decided to use the city as my canvas and pink it up.


[1] Lady Pink, Lewisohn, Cedar. Street Art: the Graffiti Revolution. (New York: Abrams, 2008.), p.46

I'VE LOST MY FIANCÉ THE POOR BABY

Cause of ambivalence:
My wedding (and the idea of being a bride-to-be)

Note contents:
"Dear upcoming wedding,
I love that you're the perfect excuse to by an amazing dress and have an amazing party with everyone I love, but I hate that the second I announced you, some people stopped seeing me, but could only see a bride-to-be. ❤
ps. I hate baby's breath!!!!"

Place left:
In a wedding book in the library.

PS:
When I decided to postpone my wedding to focus on school, my commitment to my partner was immediately questioned. I quickly realized that using the excuse that my fiancé was beginning his PHD was a more acceptable justification for prolonging our engagement. It seems that as a bride-to-be, my priority was to be my wedding above everything else. When I got engaged, no one asked me about my career or my studies anymore. It was as though I couldn’t be a student and a fiancé, it was either one or the other, and the latter was obviously more fun to talk about. This attitude began to make me resent the idea of getting married and made me want to rebel against all of the traditions and conventions I was expected to follow. Postponing my wedding to focus on my education became the biggest rebellion of all. This rebellion, in turn, allowed me to become excited about my wedding again.

SHARED: FROM A NEW MOM

Cause of ambivalence:
Sweatpants (and maybe, being a fashionable mother)

Note contents:
"Dear sweatpants,
I hate that you represent my complete abandon of all attempts at sartorial cool but darn if you aren't the best thing I can manage to pull on after a mere few hours of sleep.
xoxo New Mom
P.S. Sorry about the spit-up stains.
P.P.S. Thank you for your stretchy waistband"

Place left:
In the sweatpants

PS:
This note was forwarded to me by one of my co-workers and very dear friends, who is now on maternity leave from her job in the fashion industry. Since we are both ambitious women who also care a great deal about having a family, we have often discussed the pressures of trying to balance both. As women today, we are told that we can have it all, because apparently women and men have equal rights. Yet, while it is socially acceptable for men to have both a family and a career, the same combination is not as graciously offered to women. While no one wants to openly admit it, career women who decide to get married and/or have families are often written off as having lost their work ambition. If these women try to prove that their ambition is still intact, by excelling in their career despite their domestic life, they become thought of as bad wives or bad mothers. Meanwhile, women who choose to focus solely on their careers are seen as cold and empty individuals. The same goes for women who decide to focus solely on their families, which is seen as a complete lack of ambition all together. Therefore, women can’t really have both, yet having just one isn’t quite enough.

I believe that part of the struggle lies in how we dress; the uniforms we wear as women while we are trying to fit into these different roles. Being a closeted sweatpants enthusiast myself, I understand the constant push and pull between "sartorial cool" and ultimate comfort.  Yet as another friend (who is also a mother) recently mentioned to me, it is much more socially acceptable for a childless working girl such as myself to come home and slip into jogging pants than it is for a mom.  Something about the combination of being a mom and dressing comfortably seems to be the ultimate fashion faux pas.  All sartorial guilt aside though, jogging pants are pretty amazing.