Week 12: Highlights from the Highlight of My Week

It feels weird typing this, knowing that this will be my last weekly blog post. I unfortunately do not have anything incredibly creative, mind-boggling, or intellectual for this week. While brainstorming for a topic worthy of my last post, all I could come up with is sharing my highlights from this class. Maybe it is the two all-nighters I pulled this week or the allergies that have now turned my brain into snot, but this list is the best I could think of. This class, of course, deserves only the best (even if that is my drowsily decided-upon best), so I will go for it... 

1. Our Weekly In-Class (and Online) Discussions 

This aspect of our class was perhaps my favorite, because I loved getting to know all of you. I am going to inflate our egos for a bit and say that our discussions were bomb. You all brought your own smart, unique perspectives to the table, and I think it is safe to say that we all benefitted from each other greatly. We all learned about so much in the way of feminism, gender, and humor from just talking to each other. Of course, the readings and standup specials helped us learn as well, but I believe our discussions solidified everything and made it more relatable. In conclusion, thank you for sharing your wonderful viewpoints with me and the class. 

2. Our Blog Posts 

On a similar note, I thoroughly enjoyed reading about you all and what you find interesting. My world has opened up so much from the various things I have read on this blog. Additionally, the comments on these posts are such a lovely feature, and I appreciated getting to interact with you even further through the comments. These blog posts were another highlight of my week, the biggest one being the class in general, and I am so grateful to have read your amazing (and hilarious) writing! 

3. The Readings and Comedy Specials Themselves 

While I am discussing writing, I will go ahead and include our readings and specials in this list. These sources were the foundation upon which we all came up with our great discussions, so I cannot NOT talk about them (you feel?). On a more serious note, Phoebe Robinson's book we were asked to read, You Can't Touch My Hair, taught me so much about the unique and unfortunate situations that black women must face. Robinson very eloquently and also hilariously recounted stories and made important points about life as a black woman. Her use of pop-culture references, which we also saw in many of the standup specials, was just great, smart writing. I could go on and on about our readings this semester, but that was the one that stood out to me the most. 

4. A Safe Outlet for Expression 

This class, both in the discussions and blogs, provides a wonderful opportunity for us to share whatever we feel comfortable with, with each other. You are all so encouraging and kind, so I feel like I could tell you anything, really. I was able to open up a bit about my depression in the forums (and also my unhealthy obsession with Animal Crossing and Tom Nook hehe), and many others have shared personal stories and other things, like their sexuality, with the class. This speaks volumes about how safe and comforting this class' environment really is. 

5. The fact that I was able to write a blog post about Tom Nook and be taken seriously... 

This last point is kinda silly, but it is true! I never in a million years thought I could write something about Tom Nook for a class (with cuss words and memes in it!!!) and be taken seriously, like AT ALL. That is one of the aspects of this class that I enjoyed the most—the freedom to discuss whatever you would like as long as it relates to class discussion somehow (which my Nook post did loosely haha). There is true room for creativity in this class, something that is lacking in a lot of the other classes here at Shepherd. For example, someone else wrote about the Blue Wiggle dude, and another wrote about drag queens. The possibilities are ENDLESS (just like in Animal Crossing hehe)! I promise that was the last AC plug, well, because that was the end of my last post... 

Seriously though (and not Tom Nook-post seriously), thank you ALL for such a wonderful, encouraging, and helpful class!

Week 7: My Contribution to the Guilty Pleasure Posts

I’m jumping on the guilty pleasures bandwagon because I’ve enjoyed reading all of the other guilty pleasure posts.  As there have been several posts of this nature, I assume you know the drill: I don’t feel guilty for enjoying these things, but “guilty pleasures” is the most convenient phrase to use for those activities and pastimes that society as a whole may mock or look down upon. I think it’s fascinating that I’ve gotten to know some of my classmates better after reading about their guilty pleasures. Guilty pleasures seem to capture the intricacies and passions of a person in a way that few other things can. When I started thinking about what my guilty pleasures could be, I realized that the things I thought of revealed a lot about me. Here are three of my guilty pleasures:

1.      Memorizing Things: I love finding a new poem that I like and committing it to memory. I have ten stanzas of a very long poem called “The Lady of Shalott” by Alfred Tennyson memorized. I’ve memorized the entirety of “Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll, and “Stopping By Woods On a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost. For a lot of poems—“The Raven”, by Edgar Allen Poe, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot, “Tonight I Can Write” by Pablo Neruda, etc.—I only have a couple of stanzas memorized. I love reciting the poems I have memorized to myself and quoting them in daily conversation. In addition to poetry, I memorize movie dialogue and book passages. I can quote five minute movie scenes from memory, and recite whole paragraphs from books I’ve read.

2.      Rereading: I thought everyone read books over and over again just like me for a long time. Then, I had a conversation with someone who had never reread a book and I was mystified. Rereading books is my life! I’ve read the Harry Potter series so many times I’ve lost count. Literally. I have no idea how many times I’ve read those seven books, but the number has got to be in the double digits. There’s an element of comfort in rereading books. It’s like returning home, or visiting an old friend. I love discovering things in a book that I didn’t notice the first time I read it, and it’s so cool to see how all of the plot plays out when you already know how the book ends.

3.      Listening To Bootlegged Concerts: There are hundreds of audio recordings on YouTube of Queen concerts from the ‘70s and ‘80s, and I’ve listened to a lot of them. Eighty-six to be exact. I’m subscribed to three bootleg channels on YouTube, and I look forward to each new release. It’s so awesome to think that the recordings I listen to on YouTube today were recorded on a rudimentary tape recorder in the 20^th century. Despite their age, the majority of the recordings are in amazing quality. I feel as though I’m in the room with my favorite band. Bootlegs are technically illegal, but, because I didn’t do the recording, and these bootlegs are decades old, I don’t feel bad for enjoying each one. One of my guilty pleasures had to be about Queen because I have a frightening addiction to this band. I was torn between talking about my Queen record collection, my multiple Queen t-shirts, or my playlist of Queen songs that is seventeen hours long, but I think the bootlegs functioned the best as a guilty pleasure.

            I think this post was just an exercise in self-indulgence for me. I had a lot of fun thinking of which of my pastimes I could classify as a guilty pleasure, and I love the idea of sharing guilty pleasures with others so we can all feel more comfortable with our own interests. We are trained by society to feel ashamed of the things we are enthusiastic about, but after reading Phoebe Robinson’s chapter on guilty pleasures in You Can’t Touch My Hair, I’ve been rethinking my relationship with my guilty pleasures. Robinson wrote, “I’m not going to feel weird or embarrassed about [my guilty pleasures] and neither should you about the things you love” (77), allowing me to present my not-so-guilty pleasures for society’s inspection with confidence.

Respect is something you have to earn, and it is not guaranteed

The title of my blog post is probably confusing. Elana, this is a Gender and Humor class. We focus on women and those in marginalized communities who are funny-why are you talking about men? This entire blog post, believe or not, was inspired by a text from my dad.

My dad and I don’t see eye-to-eye on much. When I was much younger, we were a lot closer. We did everything together: weekend trips to Pittsburgh, watching live baseball games, making late-night runs to Waffle House on school nights, make vegetarian chili and scrambled eggs for breakfast, lunch and dinner. But something changed when I got to high school. My junior year was when I decided I couldn’t go to medical school-I was passionate about it, but I knew that my government was in dire need of assistance. Whenever I brought up politics, it was always the same thing: “You have to be careful, Elana. Politics will consume you. You’ll have to fight twice as hard as everyone else because of who you are and where you’re from.” Honestly, I just got sick of it. Why couldn’t he be happy for me? I figured out what I really wanted to do in life, but he couldn’t see past how difficult this was going to be for me. I knew it was going to be difficult-why wasn’t he just supportive?

When you’re furious at someone who you have trusted your whole life, what do you do? Do you yell at them? Do you say nothing? Do you tell someone else and pray they don’t say anything? Or do you say something so vile, so venomous, to their face, because you can’t take it anymore?

I’m not proud of it. But I had to do it. I don’t even remember what I said. All I know is that we haven’t been the same since.

The text I got from him recently probably won’t register as anything bad to anyone reading this, but for some reason, it rubbed me the wrong way.

Call me this weekend.

Why does this make me upset? It’s not anything threatening, there’s no malice or anger behind the words. So, what is it? When I read that text, I immediately thought that he believed he deserved more respect from me. He’s helping me pay for school-maybe I should call him more often.

But that message made me not want to call him. Why should he demand more respect from me when he can’t even respect my own life decisions?

When Phoebe talked about “man-bun dude” (MBD), she said he was basically cheating on his girlfriend with her, but he still tried to play it off like it was no big deal. He decided to complement her and praise her, hoping this would keep him in the clear. Yeah, hell no, buckaroo. Sit your ass down. She said the following:

“I know I’m all these things, which is why I’m out on these streets getting attention from dudes. You have a girlfriend. This was so disrespectful to pull some B.S. like this. We’re too old for this nonsense. You know better, and you ought to do better by her and by me. If you truly believe I’m all these dope things, then you wouldn’t have wasted my time. Don’t you try doing this raggedy-ass stuff like this again. Your girlfriend doesn’t deserve a guy going around getting random women’s numbers.” (2 Dope Queens, “Make Man Buns Great Again”, 10:10-11:05)

I realize that this isn’t what happened to me at all, but the same principle applies. She didn’t need MBD to tell her what her worth was, just like how I don’t need my dad telling me where my plans could go wrong. We both know our own worth, and we most certainly don’t need others to remind us of our struggles and our achievements.

So how does a man deserve respect? Can they not say nice things to you? Are they not allowed to criticize you? A man deserves respect when he doesn’t expect respect as an answer to their actions.

I’ve met plenty of men here who deserve respect. Chris, Conner, and Jim all tease me, but they have all told me that they are proud of me. I know my dad says he’s proud of me, but I know he’s expecting a “thanks” in return, like I needed him to say something positive about me to feel the same way. My male friends here don’t say nice things to me because I’m a woman, or because I’m Jewish, or because of anything else that makes up my background. It’s because they see me as a leader, a friend they can trust. I don’t get everything right, but they don’t care. When Jon Stewart told Jessica Williams how proud he was of her and how capable she is of achieving anything she wants, he never said anything about overcoming her background or any obstacles that are caused by being a woman of color in comedy. He instead praised her ability as someone of equal standing (28:00-29:15). I’m sure the two of them didn’t agree on everything when they both worked on The Daily Show, but that shouldn’t matter. I know for a fact that I don’t agree with my guy friends about everything, but they still want to be there for me.

When we talk about feminism, I just want us to remember what real feminism looks like. It’s people who acknowledge you’re a woman, but don’t assume being a woman is an obstacle or an improvement. It’s the people who see your personality and who you are on the inside, who know that you are capable of doing so much, not because you’re a woman or despite being a woman, but because you truly are capable.

As a wrote this, I burst into tears a few times. This was incredibly difficult for me to write, and this is one of the few posts that I will write that isn’t funny. But I know that not writing this would have been even harder on me.