Week 4

This week’s reading is Aristophanes’ Lysistrata. The text, in short, is about a woman, Lysistrata, was managed to get the city-states of Athens and Sparta to settle the Peloponnesian War. Basically, she starved the men of sex and they caved. I think that is very powerful and speaks to the role and leadership woman play in the life of a man. It may have taken some time but eventually the men gave up because of their intense desire for women. Lysistrata is a great leader for what she did . (09.13.20)

A time I tried to lead but was hindered was trying state my opinion to elders. I was hindered by the negative stereotype that “kids don’t know anything”. The notion that because I am of a younger age my opinions are invalidated is a determent to me because my voice isn’t heard often. It also causes a lot of people around me to continuously perpetuate ideas and cultural traditions that are out dated and frankly don’t work anymore. This is both a denial of agency and experience. Being treated as if you are incapable of carrying out an opinion and have real feelings about a topic is dehumanization in both forms. Most elders believe and push forward the idea that because “we”, individuals of my age group, “haven’t lived long enough” or “haven’t seen enough” we are incapable of adequately teaching them anything new. To rebut this, I began to write down what I feel and slowly introduce it to the elders around me that were opened enough to listen. This allowed me to make some progress with the elders around me. (09.15.20)

The negative stereotype of a black woman has hindered me when trying to lead. Although I attended a high school with a population of was majority African American and Hispanic cohorts, I still felt underrepresented. Attending an inner city school with low funding, most of teachers were either old and on the verge of retirement or young and still trying to get comfortable as a teacher; they were also, more often then not, white. Being that majority of my leaders were white, I often felt like I couldn’t connect with them on a deeper level because they wouldn’t understand me. This proved to be true, for example, in my US History course. It was Black History month and, as teachers at schools like mien always do year-in and year-out, my teacher began to tell us about Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, the Black Panther Party, etc. In his teachings, I realized that a lot of the things that my teachers would say about Malcolm X and the Black Panther Party were untrue, based upon my own knowledge of my culture. As a student who finds the understanding of her culture to be very important I insisted on respectfully informing my teacher of some the many things that he described were incorrect. In our discussion, I grew very passionate about our conversation and spoke in a very assertive tone. In my teachers eyes, I was being the typical rowdy black girl that always had to right and who was always angry. In this intense, my teacher dehumanized me by denying my experience. He disregarded my feelings and based them off as a just another girl being angry about nothing. To combat this, I started a group amongst my fellow classmates that served as a safe space for us to vent about what we felt and discuss our history amongst ourselves. This space allowed for us to feel like we had somewhere to be our authentic selves and speak out truths as we saw them. If anything else, I would have been less willing to back down and allow for my opinions and feeling brushed away.(09.15.20)

The final negative stereotype that hindered me when trying to lead was the stereotype that phat girls can’t dress or have ideas about fashion. An intense where this negative stereotype was pushed upon me was in a school fashion show. In this particular show, I was helping a fellow collaborative put together an outfit for one of the models and my idea was completely shut down because of my body image. This was a denial of agency because the person refused to allow to follow through with what I felt because of what they had perceived of me. In the fashion industry, most models are typically very slender and lengthy. The girls are thought to only salads and drink green beverages to keep their figures in line. The idealistic girl is usually very tall and about a size two. That is considered fashion. In my life I have never been a size two kid, but I have always loved fashion. It always a passion and interest of mine to be able to put pieces of clothing together like art and create a beautiful ensemble but because of my size my opinion wasn’t always considered. Most forms of high in fashion, included pieces are alluded to being uncomfortable and formfitting. As a plus size female, the idea is that you only want to be comfortable and everything must fit loose, the total opposite of what most of fashion is about. To counter, this negative stereotype, ironically I did nothing. I simply allowed my partner to present his piece in comparison to mine. In the end, I was the winner and my partner had no choice but to face that fact that body type doesn’t determine capability. (09.15.20).