Rizzo in Real Life

They say sometimes you need to write a lot until you finally figure out what you want to say. Out of the 1800 words from my second essay, I found one paragraph that intrigued me enough to abandon my original idea and go off in an entirely different direction.

I have always been fascinated with characters, whether they be in literature or real life. I love to explore why people do the things they do, why they are the way they are. A big reason is because I'm so unsure of who I am. By examining the motives and backgrounds of others, I gain a broader sense of the world around me

Over the summer, I came into acquaintance with a girl who reminded me of Rizzo from the award-winning musical, Grease. Coincidentally, I had just been cast as Rizzo in my school's upcoming fall production of Grease, and as someone who loves character development, I found myself paying keen attention to her and her actions to try and understand Rizzo's character. From what I understood from this girl and Rizzo, they pretend to be someone they're not. My question is: why? Why did they pretend to be someone they're not? And why do I sometimes pretend to be someone I'm not? And then, who was I to tell this girl, who I barely knew, who she was?

For my next essay, I'm thinking of writing about this idea of identity. I'm not really sure where it will lead, but sometimes you just have to keep walking along the path until you stumble upon an ending.

Essay #2: Reading & Writing

I was away at writing camp when I thought my laptop was going to die. As I sat underneath the oak tree and typed away about theatre and the stage romance justification, my cursor began to "spaz out" across the screen––at least I thought it was my cursor. Upon closer inspection, I realized it was a baby black ant. I watched as it crawled linearly down the edge of the screen, then zig-zagged and crawled over the edge so I could no longer see it.

"How cool it must be," I thought, "to crawl across words." He is only the size of a capital “I,” a lowercase “L.” How cool it must be to crawl and read. How frustrating, too. To be spoon-fed the letters and have to remember which one came before, and which one came before that. It was like the game my brother and I used to play, tracing letters on each other’s back to spell a word. I was never very good at it unless I had a pen and paper, but he said that was cheating.

Then I got to thinking: That must be like how it is learning to read, although of course I wouldn’t remember because it was so long ago. Children have to crawl over the letters with their eyes. When I have a child, I will make giant Scrabble tiles, and my baby will crawl over the letters, feel them with her feet and hands, until they are imprinted in her body, not just her brain. And when she gets to the end of the word, she will be tired. But she will remember it because of the hard work it took to get there. She will not be able to skim, like so many people have become accustomed to. She will know the language, feel the language. She will curve with the C’s, the D’s, the G’s, the J’s, the O’s, the P’s, the R’s, the S’s. She will raise her arms to the sky like the Y. She will open her legs wide and touch the floor with her hands, her tiny bum the top of the A. When she sits with her legs straight out in front, she will be the L’s.

For my second essay, I'm thinking about writing about how children learn to read and write. I was flipping through my kindergarten journal the other day, and I was appalled by the spelling. I also found the spelling rather priceless, though. It was fascinating to read the progression of the entries, as they advanced from one sentence entries that took up the whole page, to longer and more detailed entries with neater handwriting and better sentence structure. For my essay, I plan to analyze my own journal, as well as research the minds of children to learn about how and when reading and writing clicks for them. Additionally, I think it might be interesting to investigate the difference between children learning to read with electronic books versus physical books . Are there positive and/or negative consequences to learning to read with electronic books?

What I need to do is develop a unique question that makes my essay different from the countless articles and books there are out there about language, reading, and writing. Although I expect it will be a research-driven essay, I want to make sure it is not just a research paper. I need to bring myself into the essay. 

If you have any prompting suggestions, I would love to hear them.

Barbie Research

I am still looking to possibly incorporate some feedback I get about readers' personal experience with dolls. Based on the research I did online, here are some of the research components I added to my essay:

          Stephanie Hoskins, a contributor of Divine Caroline, strongly asserts that Barbies lead women to developing a dysmorphic disorder. A dysmorphic disorder is a disease where one fixates on a perceived “flaw” in their bodies. This, she continues, can lead women to surgically alter their bodies to match the Barbie image (“The Negative Effects…”). While there are some women who spend millions of dollars to get their “perfect body,” I don’t believe Barbie has gotten the credit she deserves (“The Barbie Effect”). 

          Before Barbie (B.B.), the only kind of doll was the baby doll. “Khabibo,” owner of the blog “Ms.Goodie2shoes,” may argue that the baby doll stereotyped women into becoming mothers. After all, that was historically what the majority of women went on to become. The invention of the Barbie doll, however, gave children the opportunity to role play and picture themselves as adult women with careers (“A Barbie World”). (Google “Barbie professions” and you will find hundreds of links with hundreds of different jobs.) Khabibo, an African-American, references the day her grandmother bought her an African-American Barbie doll as the day she finally believed she could do anything. “Growing up, listening to Barbie's fairy tale, she had it all. The dream house, the dream car, as many careers as you could imagine, and the dream boyfriend. But for me, it seemed like only a Caucasian girls lifestyle...But that day my grandmother put that African-American Barbie in my hand, I knew that I could really accomplish it.” While it may be plausible to argue that Barbie has restricted a girl’s image, she certainly did not limit a girl’s identity––she has broadened a girl’s identity. 

          At age five, I was too young to think about “identity” and “body image.” Sure, I liked the “pretty” dolls and the ones that could sing, but I played with Barbies because it was fun. We played "House," sometimes, but it never entertained us for as long as "Barbies" did. By voicing the dolls, we ourselves did not have to be a part of the game, so we could explore those things and say those things that made us uneasy in real life. It wasn't really us saying it, after all. Looking back, I realize that I played Barbies to try and make sense of the world around me. There were so many questions I had about the world that I was not yet old enough to explore myself.

Survey

For my Barbie essay, I'm hoping to possibly include some research components. In my last post, I started writing about how playing Barbies perhaps had some psychological benefits, in terms of helping me deal with my fears and exploring the world around me at a time when I was too young to explore it myself. In the sidebar of my blog, I posted a survey asking if you played with dolls when you were younger (Barbies, action figures, baby dolls, etc.). The survey itself is completely anonymous. For those of you who are willing, I was wondering if you could also answer any of these questions for me:

1. How old were you when you started playing with dolls? Why did you start?
2. How old were you when you stopped playing with dolls? Why did you stop? 
3. Why did you play with dolls? (Maybe it's just because it was fun, but maybe looking back, you find some underlying meaning as to why you played with them.)
4. Some sources say that playing with dolls is beneficial to a child's childhood. It allows them to role play and experiment with what it feels like to be an adult. Others say that dolls–Barbies specifically–make children believe they need to look a certain way to achieve the "perfect image." Where do you stand? 
5. Is there a difference between the psychological effects of playing with Barbies compared to baby dolls? (When playing with Barbies, usually the child is just making them talk. When playing with baby dolls, the child is more directly involved in the game, because he/she is having to act and be in the make-believe world.) 

I would love to hear your responses. For anyone who would rather post "Anonymously," just set your profile as "Anonymous."

Thank you!

Essay #1

My first essay is inspired by Question #6: What do you remember most keenly about your childhood? When I was answering this question the other day, I realized I have a lot to say about it. Barbies were a big part of my childhood. One of my friends and I used to have the most elaborate games. As I was thinking about it, though, I realized that playing Barbies wasn't just something I did because it was fun. It allowed me to explore the world and the questions I had at an age when I was to young to explore them myself. 

Below is a start to my essay. I have a general sense of the structure I want to follow for my essay. I still have a lot more to fill in and the middle is scattered. I was just trying to get ideas out. I'm not going to say anything more, though, because I want to get an objective opinion without too much of my backstory. Please let me know if you have any comments or suggestions.

***

"Mom, can I say 'shit' when I'm playing with my Barbies?" I asked. I was five-years-old, and experimenting with the use of language. All kinds of language. I experimented with saying "I love you" to a boy other than my dad, "I hate you," to my brother. I soon learned that these simply were all words, without the emotion behind them. I was too young to know the power of "I love you." I hope I'm always too young to hate anyone. "Shit," I learned, along with other curse words, weren't as exciting as they sounded when the adults said them.

There were so many questions I had about the world that I was not yet old enough to figure out for myself. I used to have a lot of fears: war, someone peeking into my window, death. That is why I played Barbies. Sometimes I played alone, but usually I played with my friend. We played "House," sometimes, but it never entertained us for as long as "Barbies" did. By voicing the dolls, we ourselves did not have to be a part of the game, so we could explore those things and say those things that made us uneasy in real life. It wasn't really us saying it, after all.

Through Barbies, my friend and I explored our fears in ways that didn't make them seem so scary. I remember the doll-sized wooden barn my friend's grandfather built her for all her plastic horses. While all the Barbies were "sleeping" in the barn–which we converted to a loft room–we had one of the Ken dolls peak into the window before sneaking in to steal the snap-on boots and the laptop. I remember feeling slightly nervous during that moment, even though I was the one controlling the Ken doll and I knew it was just a game.

Although we both had extravagant wooden Barbie houses, sometimes we got bored and decided to change the scenery. One time we decided to play “poor Barbie,” and we built a house out of tissue boxes and dish cloths. My friend's mom said our Barbies were the richest poor Barbies she had ever seen. We liked the "Cheaper by the Dozen" movies for awhile. During that phase we made 20-person families and took them on "road trips." Connecting every princess carriage and empty plastic bin we could find–it was a large family–to the pink Barbie RV, we made a car that stretched the length of my friend's bedroom. Of course, the car was too long to ever actually move, so we narrated the scenery as they drove across the country, and sometimes sprayed the RV windows with water if we wanted a change of weather. 

When we got older, our games "matured" into Barbie Natural Disaster. Somehow whenever the earthquakes came, the mothers always had time to make a child sling out of a bandana. They somehow managed to carry three to four Kelly dolls at once, but they always say that in times of danger, it's amazing what adrenaline enables the body to do. The most popular disaster was the tsunami. We laid the Barbies on the bed and shook the blue comforter, shouting, "Tsunami!" Following the disaster would, of course, be Barbie Hospital. 

Most memorably, however, I remember the day I sat down with my Barbies and could no longer make them speak.

Welcome!

First off, I would like to say that I am in the process of thinking of a more creative blog title than, "Art of the Essay." Nothing was striking me at first, though, so I figured that instead of forcing something, I should at least create the blog and start posting––I also have to have it done for class on Tuesday.

I am very excited to be working with all of you on this collaborative writing journey. Thank you in advance for your feedback. Whatever suggestions, comments, or ideas you have, I am anxious to hear them. The more critique I get, the better I know my writing will be.