The Women’s Center has officially kicked off our roundtable series for the fall semester! We call this series Our Bodies, Ourselves, specifically focusing on personal embodiment and the intersections of identity that come along with existing as a body. This event, specifically called Beauty Embodied, introduced the semester-long discussion of diverse embodied experiences.

our beautiful roundtable flyer

Beginning this ongoing series, The Women’s Center invited three panelists to open up the conversation of embodied beauty. Alumnus Crystal Ogar, Dr. Medulene Shomali of the Gender and Women’s Studies department, and our very own assistant director Megan Tagle Adams served as our panelists!

We spent the next hour complicating the notions of beauty, femininity and privileges associated with who gets to embrace ideals of beauty. All panelists spoke about the privilege and racialization of specific beauty standards and stereotypes. We discussed at great length who has access to conventional beauty. Women of color specifically have a lot of challenges associating with conventional beauty, as the hegemonic view of westernized beauty is white, thin and able-bodied. All panelists identified as women of color, and were able to draw upon their various identities to share their experiences with racially exclusionary beauty.

Crystal encouraged us to find the beauty within everyone, to notice the little things that make a person beautiful, and to complicate beauty further by understanding that looks are not the complete picture of a person, as there are so many factors that go into being a beautiful human outside of external appearance.

Our roundtable panelists, photo by jess Myers

Both Megan and Dr. Shomali allowed the group time to deconstruct our definitions of beauty. Beauty and femme identity isn’t inherently a feminist stance to take, and shaving your legs or putting on makeup in the morning doesn’t necessarily have to be a feminist act. No one is more or less of a feminist for the way that they present their bodies. Megan said it best- instead of the feminist manifesto being written in red lipstick, she suggested that it could be written while wearing red lipstick. The act of wearing lipstick is not what makes or breaks a feminist, and the most important thing is to allow personal expression to be encompassed in ideals of beauty.

Dr. Shomali took it even further, proposing the radical notion that beauty isn’t actually necessary. Instead of trying to broaden the term of “beauty” to include all walks of people, we could decide to throw out beauty as an important concept to begin with. Both Crystal and Dr. Shomali posed that ‘ugly’ should not equal “bad”, and that it is perfectly fine to not be beautiful- it does not take away of a person’s humanness to not have access to or even care about beauty.

Overall, Beauty Embodied was a great success, with lots of dynamic discussion from the panelists and the women’s center communities. We questioned and unpacked our notions of beauty and femininity, engaging with our own experiences of living in an aesthetic world.

Want to read more? Below are some links further discussing beauty through a feminist lens:

• What Is Feminism Without The Femme? On Why Are We Scared To Embrace Our Feminine Styles
• Living With Contradiction: Beauty Work and Feminism
• Pretty Unnecessary: Taking Beauty Out of Body Positivity (Bitch Media)

Don’t miss out! The Women’s Center’s next roundtable, Queer (De)Coded, on October 20th! 

Get ready for Critical Social Justice: Home with our “What You Need to Know” series, starting with this primer on our keynote speaker Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. Her lecture, titled “Body/ Land/ Home: Disability Justice, Healing Justice and Femme of Color Brilliance,” will be held on Tuesday, October 25th at 6PM in the University Center Ballroom (event details here). 

Based out of Toronto and Oakland, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a queer, disabled femme of color poet, performer, healer, and activist of Burgher/Tamil Sri Lankan and Irish/Roma ascent. Much of Leah’s work focuses on people and conversations that are often underrepresented, including disability justice, queer and trans people of color, and abuse survivors. In addition to her award-winning books of poetry, including Bodymap, Love Cake, and Consensual Genocide, she has also written a memoir titled Dirty River: A Queer Femme of Color Dreaming Her Way Home. 

“Stories create the world. Seeing stories that look like your own, that you’ve never read written down before, or that are stories you’ve never thought of before that change your whole idea of what is possible, are a big revolutionary deal.” †

art by Shira Devorah

Leah is also a co-founder and former director of Mangos With Chili, the longest-running performance art tour featuring queer and trans individuals in North America. She performs pieces with the disability justice collective Sins Invalid and is a co-director of the Toronto disability justice collective Performance/ Disability/Art.

…“[I]t was so inculcated in me that disability is this shameful story. And you know, if there’s not queer people of color space, queer people of color won’t perform. If there’s not disability space that centers queer and trans people of color, sex workers, poor people, all of the above, elders, young people, we won’t know that there’s similar stories.” †

For more on Leah, check out:

• Her blog, Brownstargirl
• This video of her performance in Sins Invalid
• Her interview with Bitch Magazine on disability, representation, and survivorhood

The Women’s Center at UMBC turns 25 this year! We’re excited to share our important milestone with UMBC’s 50th Anniversary and will be celebrating throughout the year with the rest of campus! We were inspired by Special Collections archival project Archives Gold: 50 Objects for UMBC’s 50th and decided to do our own digging into the Women’s Center archives. Over the course of the year, we’ll be sharing 25 “Then vs Now” archives to celebrate the origin and evolution of the Women’s Center at UMBC.

This week we’re featuring a sampling of the various events and programs hosted in the Women’s Center over the past 25 years. 

The very first Returning Women Students group took place in 1996. This group still is an critical part of the Women’s Center programming and has also morphed into a scholarship program.

The Clothesline Project is an artivism display the Women’s Center exhibits during Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Even in 2006, the Women’s Center was just as dedicated to telling the stories of survivors as they are today.

Before the era of Netflix and Youtube, the Women’s Center (in co-sponsorship with other departments) held film series which spotlighted women’s voices and experiences.

While our editing skills have definitely grown since 1991, we have remained dedicated to critical social justice and centering the voices of women. Be sure to join us for our Critical Social Justice Keynote speaker, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha.

What are the memories you have of the Women’s Center over the years that are meaningful to you? What does the Women’s Center mean to you today? Share your memories and pictures with us in the comment section below!

Stay up-to-date with our 25th anniversary on social media using #UMBCWC25. Share your Women’s Center experiences and memories with the UMBC community using #UMBCWC25 AND #UMBC50!

A weekly round-up curated by Women’s Center staff member, Michael Jalloh Jamboria

In the spirit of my friend, who gave us the glorious name ‘Slaying on the Weekly’, every week I will be bringing you some interesting, funny or thought-provoking content from the internet! Be sure to join us next week for more and continue to slay!

This week I watched Do I Sound Gay? on Netflix. It’s an interesting documentary which explores the origin of the ‘gay voice’. It’s also available on Youtube.

As we prepare for the October Roundtable, Queer (De)coded, some of the Women’s Center staff are re-reading Women’s Center staff member, Daniel Wiley’s post on ‘Gay Hair‘. Check it out!

Finally, in worldly news, President Obama shortened the sentences of 102 inmates who committed non-violent crimes. This makes 774 commuted sentences in the entirety of his presidency! We applaud Pres. Obama’s commitment to prison reform!

Continue to slay! See you next week!

A reflection by Women’s Center staff member Prachi Kochar on identity and “fitting in”. How do we navigate identities that can fit into multiple categories of nationality, ability, race, etc. at once? Or identities that do not perfectly fit into these categories, spilling out and crashing into each other? 

This summer, I went to India for my cousin’s wedding, and it was a long trip both physically (twenty-four hours of traveling, with a layover!) and mentally. Even though it has technically been over for months, it continues to affect the way that I think and view the world. It has deepened my understanding of how I navigate the world, both in terms of my physical location and in terms of social situations and relationships.

Before this trip, I had assumed that India was nothing more or less than a second home to my parents, that it was their equivalent of me coming home from school for winter or summer vacation. However, after an interaction with some distant relatives, my mother turned to me and shook her head, saying “They act like we’re not even Indian!” Her comment surprised me because my parents always had been the epitome of Indian to me. In their spare use of Gujarati and Marathi words, I had heard the voice of India, my motherland. Through their cooking, through the bhinda, rotis, and dal, I had tasted my heritage. And in their stories about their childhoods, about school, about their friends, everything, I had experienced life in India.

Mehndi ceremonies with family in India

Even though I had known they had lived in the United States for the majority of their lives, eventually becoming US citizens, I was still amazed. My mother explained to me, “We’re too American for the Indians, but then we go home and we’re too Indian for Americans.” At this point, it was difficult for me to not laugh and/or cry out loud, because I had said that same sentence nearly word-for-word in multiple contexts. Later, once we had gotten a break from the wedding chaos, I asked my parents about the exchange again. They both expressed similar feelings, even though they’d had very different experiences of growing up in India and even though my mother is technically South African. Not American enough, but also not Indian enough, they echoed. In the end, I was left with one question playing through my head over and over. What does “enough” mean?

For me, that question makes up the chorus of the soundtrack of my life. I am not Indian enough. I am not American enough. I am also not deaf enough. I am not “hearing” enough. I am not assertive enough. I am not quiet enough. And so on.

Let me back up here. Who or what am I not enough for? may be the question on your mind. And simply put, it is everyone and no one at the same time, including myself.

As a deaf Indian-American woman, I am often subjected to a set of expectations that vary based on context and location.

For example, Indian-Americans often make up the face of “model minorities”. They are expected to excel at math, sciences, and are seen as not facing discrimination in contrast to other minority groups. This “model minority” stereotype is used to perpetuate anti-Blackness among other things, while ignoring that Asian-Americans are not a monolithic group. At the same time, being a woman comes with its own set of expectations that often clash and interact with stereotypes of Indian-Americans. Indian-American girls are often viewed as constantly being oppressed by their vile misogynistic parents and threatened with arranged marriage. It is necessary to recognize that this is an issue that some Indian-American women do deal with, but presenting it universally affecting only one group trivializes the complexity of the problem and pretends that it does not exist in other communities.

My poster for the Telling Our Stories project.

Deaf and hard of hearing people also face their own set of stereotypes. For example, one of the most highly touted statistics about the woeful situation of d/Deaf people is that the average deaf high schooler has a fourth-grade reading level, never mind that the average American adult has an eighth grade reading level (in addition to several other issues with this statistic). In addition to being stereotyped as uneducated, d/Deaf people are imagined to be figuratively — if not literally — voiceless. Even though many d/Deaf people are not able to verbally speak, this does not mean that they cannot express themselves through American Sign Language, through writing, through a variety of other formats, just as eloquently as any hearing person can with their voice. Like many other minority groups, d/Deaf people are placed into rigid, narrow boxes that define who they should be, rather than definitions that stretch to accommodate the wholeness of who deaf people actually are.

I find it difficult enough to deal with one set of stereotypes by itself, and dealing with multiple collections of stereotypes presents a shifting set of expectations that feels like it is always changing to trap and trip me up. Navigating all of these stereotypes is something that I do every day, with a broken compass and inaccurate map. For example, when I am in class, I often hesitate to raise my hand and speak up because I worry that I may be monopolizing class time by speaking up too much. I also hesitate because I feel that I’m not “hearing” enough. More specifically, even though I am able to speak using my voice, I have a strong “deaf” accent (with an inability to discriminate between “l” and “n” or say words beginning with “st”), and I often worry that I am annoying others by making them work harder to understand me.

At the same time, I wonder if I should be less quiet, in order to not play into perceptions of Asian-American women as voiceless and invisible. I feel that I should speak freely in class, using American Sign Language and the interpreter to voice for me instead of using my own voice, fully embracing my Deaf identity even though it still feels itchy and uncomfortable to me. With all of these contradictions whirling around in my head, I often end up just doing the old half raise of my hand and hoping (or fearing) that the professor will call on me.

I am not alone in these conflicted feelings. Feeling trapped between two worlds is also an issue that affects many from immigrant families, especially people of color who are visibly marked and judged as an “other” in the United States. Consider Nina Davuluri who was crowned Miss America in 2013, becoming the first South Asian American to hold that title. Immediately after she was announced as the winner, she was the target of various racist attacks on social media, illustrating how many people of color are often not seen as fully American, despite being born and raised here. We are expected to assimilate, but even when we conform perfectly to standards of “Americanness”, we are still seen as outsiders, constantly receiving the “but where are you really from?” question. Being the “perfect” Indian-American is not enough in America, or India, as my parents’ experiences indicate. Similarly, being the “perfect” deaf person is not enough to smoothly navigate hearing spaces. In short, being the “perfect” model of a minority that fits into dominant norms is still not enough to gain total acceptance.

In 2013, Nina Davuluri became the first Miss America of South Asian origin

So, is there ever a way that we can become enough? While the acceptance of others may be beyond our control, I propose that it is possible for those of us who feel trapped by these paradoxes and stereotypes to become enough for ourselves. We must recognize that it is okay to feel conflicted and confused. We must practice self-care, giving ourselves an outlet to express ourselves and just be. For me, that takes the form of painting, working out at the gym, and playing Pokémon. For you, that might look like baking some cookies, watching Netflix, or blasting some Beyoncé in your bedroom. It is important to recognize that there is no one right way to take care of yourself – do what feels right for you at this point in time and recognize that it is okay if that changes. Navigating these challenges can seem insurmountable sometimes, but giving yourself permission to exist as you are can help you start taking those first steps of confidence forward.

Be like Aishwarya Rai and don’t hold any part of yourself back for anyone.

Resource Round-Up
UMBC Women’s Center Women of Color Coalition – We discuss various issues pertaining to self-identified women of color every other week. I am one of the peer facilitators, so come say hi and share your experiences!
Women of Color – Telling Our Stories
“Twice as Good” On Being a Woman of Color and Overcoming Imposter Syndrome and Perfectionism
Asian American Identities
The Truth about “The Asian Advantage” and “Model Minority Myth”
6 Reasons We Need to Dismantle the Model Minority Myth of Those ‘Hard-Working’ Asians
It’s Time to Talk: South Asian Women in the U.S. Have Some of the Highest Suicide Rates
Deaf/Hard of Hearing Identities
American Deaf Culture
Terminology

Get ready for Critical Social Justice: Home with our “What You Need to Know” series.

Last year’s Critical Social Justice: Baltimore 365 was dedicated to understanding the historic and current day complexities and realities of Baltimore City. In the wake of the Baltimore Uprising, the CSJ planning team felt (and still does feel) deeply committed to creating more opportunities for our campus community to connect with and understand Baltimore. This year’s CSJ theme of Home allows for the conversation and learning about Baltimore to continue.

How does a legacy of residential segregation impact the creation and/or destruction of “home” in Baltimore? 

What does it mean to “be home” for residents of Baltimore City? 

Which Baltimore neighborhoods are perceived as homes? And, which ones are perceived as less than? How does race, gender, and socioeconomic status show up in our responses? 

How does policing in Baltimore and the recent release of the Department of Justice report impact the reality of home? 

This year, all incoming first-year and transfer students were asked to read Not in My Neighborhood: How Bigotry Shaped a Great American City by Antero Pietila which tells the story of how racial segregation came to be and what its impact is through the story of Baltimore. Mr. Pietila will be visiting campus to explore some of the questions above (and more) at this year’s New Student Book Experience event on Thursday, October 13th. This is a great way to kick-off Critical Social Justice: Home and we hope to see many of you there!

For more details about the New Student Book Experience “Meet the Author” event, visit the event post on myUMBC. 

In Recognition of Relationship Violence Awareness Month, the Women's Center is hosting Clothesline Project t-shirt making throughout the month of October.

All survivors of domestic violence, dating violence, and sexual violence are invited to make a shirt that shares their experience, story, or healing journey to add to the UMBC Clothesline Project. All materials are provided in the Women's Center. 

For more information on the Clothesline Project click on the link below.

The next Clothesline Project will be on display in April.