When texts become...well. this.

I cannot streamline anything. 

Alone. 

Down here again. 

I don't know how to quit the things 

I've tried so hard to 

stop. 

It's not like our new bubble, 

it won't deflate or pop. 

Instead it's like a message that I've tattooed to my 

mind. 

Afraid to be alone 

with only just one pair of eyes. 

It's not okay to feel this way. 

I know it has to change. 

The other eyes are slighted, decomposed and rearranged .

And though I feel the poison in his overdosed, 

cramped hover. 

He's like a button contract. 

"Give your eyes now, to another."

But if in fact, I do it,

cut them out without a plan. 

I''ll wind up like the pixied lost

in "other mother" land

It's crystal clear when 

we deft the 

nag of obligation

until i finally catch the cold of crystal 

separation. 

The clarity of see-through glass without 

your heart to lead it...

It lends itself to fogging up 

and though I do still feel it

The parallels and hues inside the 

safety of your form

Get lost as I get mixed up past the calm eye of 

your storm. 

I don't want to desert you. 

I only wish to give you more. 

For hidden underneath you is the

love i've waited for. 

We painted it all backwards. 

And it hurts. 

But do the math....

We've found the destination, 

But we haven't any path. 

I promise to 

discover, dig and 

carve up every land...

If you can walk us through 

the broken tracks. 

and hold my hand. 

And perhaps during moments when the 

pressure sparks it hotter. 

The burn will 

melt my 

guilded wings. 

So I can be your water. 

Small.

Unleashed in thought-
We have not gone
The ones we walk and stand 
Among. 
Diminished lovers of the colors of the world.
We cannot be ourselves,
Can we?
We were bought by
Society.

How Magic Goes

The first day since I have been here that I felt seemingly incapable of stopping.
It's almost 2 am and I can't feel anything.


I wouldn't feel the sun if it was warm upon my face.
I wouldn't see the moon
if it eclipsed for me  in lace.
I wouldn't hear the voice of singing angels in
a chorus.
I wouldn't know our fortune
if a psychic read palms for us.
I cannot feel the winter, or the autumn or the spring.
I cannot see the thunder.
I cannot feel most anything.
I don't know if it's better if I go or stay this way.
But this moment I'm the fallen
To  addiction
I was prey.
Come sun I'll try to fix it.
Come sun I'll try to rise.
With newfound rested thoughts
and painted lips,
and dewy eyes.
But tonight I lurk in shadow.
Hidden under mickey's nose
We are the slaves under the magic.
But that is just how magic goes.

Wandering

"All learning has an emotional base."
                                 -Plato
I feel very restless today.
Like a wind up clock without hands.
Like a time frame with no event.

I'm a lost planner of sorts, having fully engaged in
embracing negativity for certain notions that I once held to be valid and true.

I feel strange and yet,
oddly aware.

I don't know how to be the "to-do"
list anymore .

But I miss even that.

At least then I had a definition.


-Lys

Transience

Among other things, this past week has been run over by a number of strange circumstances. I didn't want my word of the day to be what is in the forefront of my mind right now, but it feels like something that I  must unwillingly admit to, if only because I have chosen this adjective as the singular and most ironic constant in my  life. 

Transient. 

I don't know why the font of it was green. 

The word just  was. 

Transient= an inability to remain steady. 

An inability to remain still. 

I have desired transience in many aspects of my life.

Namely within my personal relationships. 

I never thought it was out of fear ,but rather, out of an understanding that tying myself to a  tree stump over and over again would eventually lend itself to a 

dull pair of scissors. 

And something that I've tied myself to voluntarily would become my

 ineffectual existence. 

As a part of something living, yes. 

But not as a part of something moving. 

It's almost a desire to remain in movement with water. 

I cannot be like Earth. 

In this way, I can ebb and flow in whatever direction life takes me. .....

And then I read the physical definition of transient..

:: Decaying with time.

Can transience actually be displayed as a function of something 

rotting?

The very thing that has lifted me to the height of disconnected flight is the 

same thing that has the ability to decay away any 

welcome mats

I may have placed in random places 

when I've cut the string too many times

from what I thought were

dying tree stumps. 

Maybe, without knowing it, 

it is I who never followed a path  long enough 

to decode the encrypted enigma within it.

Maybe, in actuality, we are chained by our drive for perfection.

Perhaps the decaying tree doesn't have grounded roots. 

Perhaps it is grounded in my transient nature;

spindly tentacles wrapped around my pulsing, 

warm-winded heart. 

What starts as life, as green comes to an end in this, 

that my flight, my pressure filled storm, 

has been fighting against an enemy 

that I've long considered my friend. 

Can you give something enough water to bring it back to life, 

when the summer has has already begun 

Internal Autumn?

Oh, how  beautiful , how colorful

the leaves change in the fall. 

Before the cold of winter frosts 

dark death 

over us all .

-Lys

Broken Stringed Words

I sat with my lukewarm
  Cinnamon Sugar
Enhanced coffee
 in
           its
              Sunflower
 Cup
                     This morning.
 The cookies were only mixed together.
 We are alive but one second of the
 Earth's time.
 Bound by impermance, but also freed by it.
 In this actualization there is internal vigor :
created by tragic inevitablility of our
 shadowed journey.
 Where we all will go.
at the end of all of this.

Everything that's anything. (clipped to polyvore.com)

Lizards

We Lizards run across the street

As we do walk in morning heat

before the humid sun has fallen 

we become its prey.

In lace and magic do I walk 

among the others, in their smocks

of patterns like the countries 

Of diminished , cultured pride. 

Walk alongside 

the beauty of vacation city

 travel in our painted, pretty

 Characters and laughs, the witty

 Of  Walt’s hidden sand. 

I know that it's here somewhere.

But we all are stuck on land. 

Like lizards all across the street. 

We scatter when we hear the feet

of those who up above could give 

 A 

Step and 

Crunch !

Our fire dims

And turned

Off is our light

To  shadow- dreams. 

Bereft, it seems, with that 

I give. 

I struggle to decide to live

in dischord with my passion

As passioned magic breeds disdain. 

My vocal chords 

They said enough. 

And now they are but silent, 

Tough, and glued together 

in the rough, the muttled lost of all of us 

The Silent Voices of 

the labor of

Your Dream Come True. 

We live in you. 

We give to you

 A lasting, hopeful piece of us 

With  smiles and 

With  pixie dust

and when the dusk 

finds solace in 

Our Tourist- Trap

Demand, 

 Oh, Scramble do the lot of us 

as lizards do 

To crowded, hot

And empty, gated

 placid homes

We try to press "renew."

It isn't through,

It isn’t just .

We’re now

Defective in our lust

 for Stars

Cuz we once had enough.

Belief and faith in wishing.

We give to you 

what once was ours

That magic. 

Oh, cut one more scar

and maybe, if you wish real hard

We’ll bleed for you some magic car.

We only need 

A little bit.

 Of what we gave.

 delighted bliss.

A wish perhaps

If blown a kiss

Our wounds would heal 

If with that wish 

Return the dreams 

We started with. 

Like lizards,

Stuck inside a ditch.

We hardly dare to move an inch.

Don’t challenge it.

Keep whole the lie.

We aren't seen. 

Until we die. 

It has been a long time. Way too long.

I haven't written in ages. About much of anything. Sure, there have been basic here and there journal entries, but essentially, my mind has been a  blank, wandering canvas of..what? I'm not even entirely certain.
Update on my life?
I don't really know how to do it, considering I haven't been consistently updating and I also don't have a camera or a camera phone anymore.
But it's okay!
I am bound and determined that this week is going to be different.
I am determined to write my life down every day. I need to chronicle this portion of my experience with Disney.
Eventually, I will make it through the muck of details that I have seemingly forgotten.
Until then, I at least have a Rough Draft.
I need to sleep.
Someone force me to ...
because a cranky fairy godmother..
equals an unhappy princess.

In love and pixie dust,
lys

Hungry Girls

Hello Everyone!
As the time for Miss Ohio draws near, I also find myself on the edge of yet another time consuming set of activities on the agenda...
Finals.
Anyway, I wrote a research paper for my Anthropology class, women's studies. I learned a lot, liked the way it turned out.
Thought I would give you all a change to read.
Enjoy!
-Lys

Hungry Girls: Re-defining the Feminine Ideal in Modern Society

                              

           

The women of the western world are hungry. Defined by the complex structure of post-modern society, women seek to achieve levels of inundated proportions while sifting through the compost of mediated definitions of beauty, success, power, and the multifaceted gender role that both liberates and constrains.  Although seemingly psychological in nature, the developmental tendencies of the female to acquire eating disordered behaviors and /or clinically diagnosable eating disorders are more intricately correlated with various socio-cultural factors than previously thought, and this concept allows for a better understanding of the western media’s role in the female concept of identity, her internal awareness of such, and the patterns that lead to the crippling expectations of the feminine ideal.  The socio-cultural definition of femininity, along with body and self image analysis in the western world are “spring board” concepts that reveal the gender-controlled society of patriarchal capitalism that still inadvertently seeks to oppress women through body obsession.

            According to the Eating Disorders Coalition, those affected with eating disorders suffer the highest mortality rate of any mental disorder.  Around 20 % of anorexics die within 10 years of contracting the disease.  The prevalence of eating disorders and disordered eating in women themselves has grown in the last decade, and is reaching a younger female demographic than ever before.  In addition, binge eating disorder has recently become a huge contributing factor to the declining health and increased weight gain of the Americans; an estimated 65% of adults and 30 % of children are overweight, and 15% of those individuals are collectively obese.  Twenty five years ago, models were, on average, 8% thinner than the average woman.  Today, models are 23% thinner than the typical American female, a staggering increase that has led to more than 40% of nine-year old girls having admitted to dieting. (Dereine, Jennifer).  The epidemic of disordered eating among western societies has only recently begun to expand into a full-fledged research ideology, and as a result, many psychologists have determined that a number of factors additionally add to the rise in its prevalence.  The socio-cultural influences of western thought, when paired with the correlating media exposure of such a technologically absorbent and capitalist society, weave together to connectively produce a “feeding ground” for the ineffectual concept of female identity.  This in itself has contributed to an increase in eating disorders, poor self image, and a loss of self, as women seek to “seem” rather than to “be.”  (Beck, Anne.)

            Research has shown that “consumer culture and media imagery have a pervasive and powerful influence on girls at a critical age developmental stage.” (So, Nehrissa, 2006). Within this context, identity is utilized not on an individualistic basis, created and understood by ideas of a natural mental ability and coupled with environmental factors, but instead as a product of a media saturated adolescent experience, where young girls are leeched into a “co-constructed” culture identity by their local social world, as well as drawing upon “cultural resources and symbols to construct, understand, and represent who they are.” (Beck, Anne, 1998).

            In a Fijian Case study conducted to determine the amount of impact that western media exposure had on an indigenous society, the concept of the “emerging female identity” revealed the source of the American female adolescent’s understanding of identity: visual symbols, perpetuated both by consumerism and targeting , clash to create an internal stress environment, as a young girl is forced to “maintain  a trajectory of achievement” that correlates with her presumed obligations as a female.  The intense pressure can easily unravel into an eating disorder as the additional notion of “the body’s plasticity” comes into play within the images presented to her volatile, vulnerable mind. (Beck, Anne,2006) (pg.3).

            Sharlene Hesse-Biber argues that young women literally must learn to “be a body.”, and that this type of “reflective appraisal” suggests that a woman’s measure of worth lies, first, and foremost, in the mirror.  Within the umbrella of this thought process is further evidence of the media’s role in the concept of femininity through research that suggests a mind/ body dichotomy that is not easily separated within western society.  Women, now fully aware of the success and “desirability factor” that arises out of achieving a status that is deemed culturally thin and relevantly beautiful, (and are also aware of potential implications for being overweight and deemed unattractive), place huge value on attaining culturally perpetuated “ideal thinness; “ exerting opinions that place a strong parallel between weight loss with a  sense of power in  the context of the social world. (Hess-Biber, 2006).

This correlation suggests that since social status is determined largely by socio-economic and career–based factors, that maintaining a high level of desirability is crucial when walking alongside the opposite sex.  While striving to create equality between genders,  the seemingly  progressive Western society still has not yet been able to break through the thickly–lined glass ceiling of male  attainability in terms of sustaining prestige in the business world.  The understanding that attractiveness is crucial to have a “leg up” within a fiscally and capitalistically male dominated society then clashes when “A woman with a successful and lucrative career may fear that her success comes at the expense of her femininity.”  (Hess-Biber 2006).

            A woman’s femininity, then, contradicts itself everywhere she turns as she struggles to find the balance between valued career-woman, sexual goddess, and soft, maternal housekeeper.  Modern society, in its vast attempts to  re-define traditional gender definitions, has additionally created a level of internal confliction within the American female that inadvertently promotes a  fundamental (though subconscious) need for women to  regain control in a society that objectifies their bodies, and endorses “capitalist interests” and “patriarchal perspectives.”  The manifestations of these socio-cultural ideals are within “self- imposed” controls. (i.e., dieting, restricting, fasting, over exercising,  )and feeding into the consumerism that, as Becker argues, invariably  exposes a “problem” and then provides the solution under the surmise of products that promise perfection, but consistently fail to live up to the societal ideal associated with it. (Hess-Biber 2006).  The effect of this cycle creates a volatile social environment where paths of psychological interests, environmental experience, media exposure, and a consistently gender-biased society produce diminishing self worth, confidence, internal acuity, and satisfaction in the women of America. Essentially, our society breeds eating disorders.

            Although the blame is clearly placed on the media alone, but on a combination of factors that contribute collectively, case studies have been conducted to test the relevance of how strongly the media can perpetuate an idea in a society with little to no outside exposure, namely the indigenous population of the Fijian people.  Conducted in 1998, the natives had had no previous interaction with western media until 1995, when advancements in technology lent itself to their region.  Suddenly “Xena: Warrior Princess” and “90210” created  conceptualizations concerning the feminine ideal that entirely contrasted the “robust desirability” of women in Pacific Islands, as well as the notion that a healthy appetite in a woman meant that her husband was a good provider. (Beck, 1998).

            Similar findings resulted from another study conducted in 2001 that evaluated Chinese high school girls versus Australian girls to determine differences in positive body image, self worth, frequency of dieting, and importance of peer groups in the development of eating disorders.  Results concluded that Westernized high school students were far more likely to have dieted.  The Chinese girls, in fact, seemed happier with their bodies, and were more likely to diet not as a result of media exposure, but in correspondence to friendship and parental pressure to do so. (Soh, Nerissa, 2006).

            The findings of this study contradict the interpretation of conventional research that individuals who remain saturated in the context of their cultural environment are essentially “protected” from developing disordered eating behaviors.  The prevalence of eating disorders are no longer dismissed as “the white girls disease” (Daniels, Jennifer, 2001), but instead are being evaluated in ways that are “no longer confined to a particular class or ethnic group.” (Beck, Anne, 1998).

            An opposing approach continues to perpetuate the opposite of these findings, undermining the idea that socio-cultural explanations interpret both the inner workings of eating disorders and marginalize the gendered confusion surrounding femininity.  A case study conducted comparing Iranian women living in their homeland versus acculturated Iranian –American women concluded that those living in Iran are more likely to over-exercise and desire the “feeling of an empty stomach” than Iranian-Americans, even though Western media has been banned in that region since 1978.  In addition, a case study evaluating similar characteristics in Thai women revealed that, despite having a strong cultural connection that stemmed outside of Westernized concepts, native Thai women reflected a stronger sense of body image dissatisfaction than those living in America.  These studies suggest that the emphasis, as well as the blame, should not be placed entirely on the Western ideal or media exposure from one region to the next, but that it is instead more relative and individualistic pertaining to culture.  Still, the findings concerning the Fijian people are difficult to ignore, and the rise of eating disorders in the west stimulate the notion that fundamental research may not be the only missing link needed to redraw the lines of the feminine ideal. (Abdollai, Panteha, 2001).

            The dimensions of female identity have long since been evaluated, evolved, surrounded with controversy, injected with sexuality, suppressed, and dejected.  Re-drawing the blurred lines of this complex concept must start with the age of adolescence, when young girls and their vulnerable thought processes are bombarded with a thinness ideal lending to poor self esteem later in life.  Evidence of this is found in a study conducted in 2001 that empirically investigated the linkage of feminine figures with thin women, as well as perceiving heavier women to be “less feminine.”  The emphasis placed on the femininity/ thinness correlation is the place to begin- and in order to reshape the female construction and identification of societal expectations, as well as internal awareness, social action in opposition to subordination via the male perspective is what will begin to unravel the unrealistic standards of beauty, femininity, and objectification that continue to plague western society. (Hesse-Biber, Sharlene 2006).  Barbara Sictermen comments “As women and men take a more active role in running their own lives and in political decision-making and as they communicate socially in a wider variety of fields, so private consumption will become less important.  For private consumption is secretly a malignant consumer democracy and involves the consumption of illusions of attractiveness” ( Sichtermann, 1986, p. 53).

This interpretation values the power of individuality and identity in a society that largely smudges the outline of the developing adolescent female. In her attempts to construct a sense of self worth that is intrinsically preserving she attempts to express her vast ability to contribute to a falsely cathartic culture ; wrapped in a deceptive cohesion of trust by  both treasuring her femininity as a phenomenon and as a jewel, while similarly introducing  her to the  contradicting components of the western feminine idea. And until an active coalition of change is determined and brought to fruition, she and the rest of the western world will remain hungry girls; forced to sit on a shelf of invariable plastic Barbie dolls; Resorted to nothing more than an untapped crystal, submerged in the muddy definitions of society…

Contained with our secrets, we are Les Cours de La Mer, sunk in the unattainable, collecting century’s worth of patriarchal dust.

References

Abdollahi, Panteha and Traci Mann

21 May 2001 Eating Disorder Symptoms and Body Image Concerns in Iran:

Comparisons between Iranian Women in Iran and in America

Department of Psychology, UCLA, Los Angeles, California

Psychology of Women Quarterly, 30 (2006), 258–266.

Blackwell Publishing, Inc.

Altabe, Madeline

 Ethnicity and body image: Quantitative and qualitative analysis

University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida

Becker, Anne

1998 Television, Disordered Eating, and Young Women in Fiji:

Negotiating Body Image and Identity During Rapid Social Change.

Daniels, Jennifer

The diagnosis of eating disorders in women of color

Derenne, Jennifer L.  M.D., Eugene Beresein, M.D.

            Body Image, Media, and Eating Disorders

Engeln-Maddox, Renee

Buying a Beauty Standard or Dreaming of a New Life? Expectations Associated with        Media Ideals Northwestern University.

Grogan, Sarah and Nicola Wainwright

Growing up in the Culture of Slenderness: Girls’ Experiences of Body Dissatisfaction

Gunewardene Anoushka, with  Gail F. Huon and Richang Zheng

2006 Exposure to westernization and dieting: a cross-cultural study

            Beijing Normal University, Dujing China.

           

Hesse-Biber Sharlene,with Patricia Leavy, Courtney E. Quinn,  and Julia Zoino 

1998 The mass marketing of disordered eating and Eating Disorders: The social psychology of women, thinness and culture. International Journal of Eating Disorders, Volume 23, issue 2 

Soh, Nerissa L, with  Stephen W. Touyz, and Lois J. Surgenor

2006 Eating and Body Image disturbances Across Cultures: A European Eating

Disorders Review 14, 54-65 (2006).

NEDA Walk

The NEDA Walk was a huge success and I felt so privileged to be a part of it!
Through out efforts, we were able to raise a whopping $7,000 for Eating Disorder treatment to those in need.
Here are a few pictures from the walk last Saturday:

What a great time! Thanks for reading :)