Where Are the Adults?

My second week of university, I was hospitalized for long-term complications of necrotizing enterocolitis. The experience ended up being so traumatic, I nearly dropped out. Years later, I finally put this haunting to rest by writing about it.

Only two weeks into university and your new computer has stopped working. The guy at tech support frowns.

“How much time do you have?”                                                

“I have a Broadway show at two.” A faint discomfort nudges your stomach. You scan the glossy storefronts lining the second tier of Columbus Circle. Would it hurt any of them to carry water?

Tech guy smiles up from testing the keys. “Oh, neat! You know I like seeing those plays and stuff but I’d go more if I could find people to go with, you know? I mean, could you imagine going by yourself?” He shakes his head. “Wouldn’t be caught dead doing that!”

You titter politely and wonder if you really are supposed to feel pathetic for, indeed, going to the theatre alone. You had turned 18 exactly a month ago, meaning you’re more 17 than 18, meaning you hardly count as an adult and can therefore not be expected to know these things. An hour later, you find yourself lodged between two middle-aged couples. It’s quite obvious you’re alone, but you are merely a backdrop in other people’s shared experience. The smell of burgers invades from the right, creeping and potent. The source is in fact not a greasy bag from Junior’s but your neighbor’s body. The house dims, and the smell gets louder, festering into something resembling the byproduct of an extended belch. Tides of nausea threaten your stomach. The dull pain begins to sharpen, deepen, just below your navel. The spectacle can only do so much to help you escape.

By intermission, the knife has fallen into a pattern, working its way back and forth through your abdomen as if it was carving a roasted Christmas pig. Pain is tossed between your abdomen and your throat like a ball game. You find a chair outside the ladies’ room and catch your breath. The idea of abandoning a Broadway musical is blasphemous—if not because of the exorbitant price, then because of the stubbornness to remain in the cradle of delightful theatre. Never one for acting solely on your own judgement, you turn on your phone and call home. Your mother picks up. She thinks you should leave, lie down.

The knife slides in further. Helplessness slowly sets in and the world expands. You can’t swim in it. You can barely float. Help, a voice gasps. Help, help, now. Help. Can the ushers get you an ambulance? Surely it hasn’t come to that. You approach one, but the most you can say is that you need to go home.

“But I would really like to see the rest of the show—I really don’t want to leave—”

They must wonder how crazy this child can be to consider putting off seeking medical attention to see act two of a musical comedy that parodies Shakespeare and boasts 16^th century kick lines. Their supervisor gives you their card and begs you to take care of yourself.

You burst through the doors and into Times Square. It’s too bright; it’s too much; you can’t swim.

“Don’t hang up,” your mother instructs.

As you head for 42^nd street station, you consider approaching one of the police officers for help. Is that all you’d say? “Help,” and then everything would be taken care of? Then you consider their bulletproof vests; their helmets with clear shields over their faces; the machine guns held at the ready. Their gear has intensified since ISIS released a video threatening to attack New York. What if you startle them? Approach them in the wrong way? You’d seen too many shootings of unarmed Black people that summer.

Times Square begins to tilt. You head underground.

The phone call drops. The subway car is packed with passengers immersed in self-induced aloofness. Sit down. Sit down. A sliver of exposed metal between two women. You wobble towards it, but a man pushes past you and dives for the seat. People glance at you, registering that something isn’t quite right. But it’s filed away as quotidian New York strangeness and they “un-notice” the girl crumbling within herself, swaying from the pole. You wonder if anyone will offer you a seat or ask if you need anything, but the city wills you to be invisible.

Union Square. As you struggle above ground, you redial your mother.

“I don’t think I can make it.”

“Where are you now?”

“I’m in front of Whole Foods.”

“Okay. You’re almost there.”

How long will it be before you collapse in the middle of 14^th street? You try to gauge how bad it will be when your head hits the asphalt. “I can’t do it. I can’t do it.”

“Yes you can. Keep walking.”

Somehow, you’re stumbling forward while drowning.

“I can’t make it, Mom. I can’t make it.”

“You’re so close.”

Miraculously, you reach the revolving glass door of the freshman hall on 12^th street. Your hand shakes over the keypad.

As soon as you enter the room, you dive for the bathroom. Vomit for a while.

 You’re in your pajamas and under the covers when your roommate enters. You warn that you’re not feeling too well. You don’t want her to feel uncomfortable or alarmed.

She shrugs. “Okay.” And turns her back to you and sits at her desk.

“Dad’s just called up to the school. An RA is going to come check on you. Don’t hang up.”

You don’t think that’s necessary, but the Resident Assistant on duty arrives anyway. She looks annoyed, but she asks what’s wrong. It’s got to be one of three things: alcohol, overdose, or pregnancy. You’re a sheltered Southern prude, but she only half-believes your story.

“So before I can call 911, I’ve gotta get clearance from the nurse and security downstairs. I’m gonna put you on the phone with the Health Center. Hold on.”

She hands you her phone. The nurse sounds just as annoyed as the RA looks. She repeats the questions over and over, as if, the fifth time around, you’d say, “You know actually, now that I think about it, I did do drugs today.”

Half an hour has passed and you wonder if it would have been wiser to have simply called 911. The pain escalates. You can no longer maintain the decorum necessary to swallow your incomprehensible vocalizations of agony. Your teeth chatter; your body shakes with mounting violence. Control slips.

Your roommate twists around in her chair and watches you in horror. Great, you think, she thinks she’ll be living with a freak the rest of the year. The RA suddenly realizes she’s working with something serious. Her irritation is redirected from you to the nurse. She snatches the phone and demands to know what’s taking so long.

“Look. All we need is for you to say we can go ahead and call an ambulance.” The RA’s eyes flicker with something livid. “I have a student here who is literally shaking in her bed!” she yells, gesticulating in your direction. “Since you’ve been on the phone, I’ve been watching her get worse! We really don’t have time for this. We just need your permission.” She spends the next several minutes arguing with the nurse, who refuses to comply until she has confirmed which poor life choice you made to land yourself in this position. At this point, you can barely talk, but you manage to latch onto a few waves connecting your thoughts to your voice, and you scream your answers at the phone.

An hour has passed. The nurse finally relents and the RA calls the security guard in the lobby.

“No—listen, I don’t have time for these questions. That’s none of your business. All you need to know is that we have EMTs on the way. That’s all you need to know. Okay?”

When she gets off the phone with the dispatcher, she crumples into her hands. She carries enough anger and frustration for the both of you, so you can keep sobbing and shaking in peace until help arrives.

At some point, the EMTs enter.

“What’s the matter here?”

The only sound you can manage is a breathy, “Huhuhuh. Huhuhuhuh.”

“Hello? What’s going on?”

Can’t they see you writhing about like a dying insect? Does it look like you can carry a conversation?

“Ma’am? Ma’am, we need you to cooperate here,” their voices grow hostile. “You need to answer us.”

You respond by looking them in the eye and vomiting.

---

When you are experiencing such a degree of pain, all the straight lines that make us civilized human beings are stripped back until we are left with a raw, writhing animal. Nothing matters when your vision is narrowed to the immediate tip of the now; the mind has been switched into a primitive survival mode. And as your brain bursts into flame, the world grows increasingly distant and pointless. Half of the present has lost connection; it’s merely a static black screen, but a mile away you hear yourself begging for more morphine. The nurse says, “No, unfortunately we can’t do that,” and the blackness ignites to red as desperation gnaws ragged holes through your nerves. The animal’s eyes flash through your own. “I need it,” it hisses.

The pain flashes so loudly through your body that the red cools to black and drags you into its gravity. You harden to plastic. One too many wires makes one feel synthetic. Passive.

Miss America is being crowned. It’s September. Surely the pageant isn’t in September. Surely the reality of occurrence has been disjointed from the reality of time. Black. The RA is asked if she’d like something to eat. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich?

“No thank you.” She hunches over a textbook. The nurse insists. You hear yourself slur a plea for the RA to go home. It’s late; she doesn’t have to stay the whole time.

“Actually, I have to. That’s part of my job.”

You decide you don’t want to be an RA after all. The crinkling of plastic wrap. Black.

 A large cup is in front of your face. It’s filled with contrast. You’re instructed to drink all of it.

You’ve done this about four times in the past two years. It tasted fine at first, like Gatorade. But once you’d finished, they returned with another cup. Another. Another. Your stomach can only withstand portions suited for a child. The liquid gathered into a boulder inside of you. It sent a throbbing signal from your abdomen to your throat.

“You need to drink it, honey. Every last drop.”

The cup rattled in your hand. Your mouth refused to accept it.

“Drink!”

As you were wheeled out of the room, you began to vomit blue.

---

The nurse tells you they’ll bring a second cup in a bit; get started with this one. You stare at its contents. Brown this time. Not blue. You drink.

---

The CAT scan itself is easy. They’ll huddle over the images to study what is going on inside of you, but you already know. It is the same story every time. Scar tissue. Inflamed intestines. Probably some kind of obstruction. Then they’ll prepare for an emergency operation and change their mind at the last minute. You’ll be told no, it has nothing to do with necrotizing enterocolitis. That only pertains to babies. They never know what’s wrong with you, but they always know what isn’t. “Honey, I don’t know what to say. You seriously need to be taking better care of yourself. Watch your diet. Not so many burgers and fries, okay?” You haven’t touched either in years.

---

The curtains part. You brace yourself for another lecture.

“Okay, so we’re gonna do another scan, so we’re gonna start again with the contrast, okay?”

You’ll later discover your images were incomprehensible and induced a bit of fear, warranting the back-to-back CAT scans. Even further down the line, someone will tell you you’ve been exposed to a dangerous amount of radiation for someone so young. You’ll find that retroactive warning utterly useless.

After the results of your second scan are reviewed, you’re loaded into an ambulance and transported to a hospital on the Upper East Side. Black.

---

A blur of light. Robotic beeping somewhere in the background. You lift your arm. It’s held back by a multitude of tubes. The resistance stings gently. Heavy. This certainly isn’t your dorm. This isn’t the emergency room. How did you end up here?

“You’re finally awake.”

The room comes into focus. Your bed is surrounded by young people. A collective lightbulb goes off in their heads—about what, you haven’t a clue—as you blink at their faces. They’ve got that glint in their eyes, that grave thrill of discovery you experienced after watching your fourth-grade teacher drop Mentos in a bottle of Coke. But in this case, the chemical reaction is you.

Your audience scribbles something down into their notes. For the first time since yesterday at 2pm, you give a damn about your appearance. What kind of mess has your hair contorted itself into? Are your eyes puffy with sleep? This is invasive. You need a mirror.

One of the clipboard-wielders is wearing a white coat and carries a distinct air of authority. A surgeon. He shakes your hand with enthusiasm.

“Wow. Can I just say we are so excited to be working with you!”

Why is he excited? He’s grinning like a child presented with a new toy. Are you missing something?

He herds his students out of the room, saying they’ll give you a chance to rest.

A nurse walks you through the inorganic matter. Your vitals. The tube through which you’re being fed. Your initiation into thinghood is complete. The nutrients trickle in through your arm as if you’re a watered plant. Your mouth is a desert. It stings. You ask for something to drink, but nothing can be taken orally—including water. Your colon is inflamed and it isn’t letting anything through.

You flip back through your history of hospital visits and search for patterns. This doesn’t match anything. Not this particular brand of pain. Not the observers. Not the tube feeding.

The nurse leaves you alone with your new mechanical friends. What day is it? You were at a Sunday matinee yesterday—though now it feels like ages ago—which means— Find your phone. Where’s your phone? You spot your purse on the plush green chair beside you. If your parents were here with you, they’d be taking turns sitting in it, trying to latch onto snatches of sleep. You test the limits of the tubes and manage to grab the bag without falling out of bed. You pull out your phone and begin to compose apology emails to your professors. Will they forgive you for being in the hospital for one, two, three days? The program’s policy allows for only two missed seminars, even if you have a legitimate excuse such as illness.

---

The next couple of days pass in a blur. There is something about utter boredom combined with illness that drains you. Your grandmother comes to visit with her sister one afternoon. For a few moments, you relax into a child again. Real adults to protect you; to ask the right questions. As they leave, your aunt arrives. She’s brought some crossword puzzles, sudoku (which, after ten years, you still don’t know how to approach), and the past few issues of Reader’s Digest (your mom must have told her about your obsession with the magazine). And then you’re alone again. You sleep.

---

You might have to undergo surgery, but a gastroenterologist (GI) is going to examine you just to make sure. He comes. Examines. Declares an operation unnecessary. As he opens the door to exit, you see the surgeon, his students, and a gurney waiting for you. He turns them away. Your brain kicks up into a storm. Safe on the path you may be, you cannot help but think about the other part of the fork. In the alternate reality in which the GI says yes, they will need to slice into you, you would have been whisked into the hall right then and there, without a chance to gather your thoughts or call someone you love. An adult NEC survivor: a rare specimen indeed, freshly plucked from the formaldehyde.

Exciting. 

“You should feel lucky,” a nurse comments that evening. “You would’ve ended up with a nasty scar going all the way across your stomach. Imagine going to the beach like that.” He shudders.

The back of your neck bristles. “You mean like the one I already have?”

Attending the theatre alone is “supposed” to be pathetic. The scar that underscores your navel is “supposed” to be hideous. You used to wear bikinis for the express purpose of rendering it visible. You wanted people to notice. You co-opted the fandom of Harry Potter (though you’d never read any of the books) and marketed it as social currency. To have a scar meant you were the Chosen One. It was evidence that you’d struggled through something fierce. It meant strength. If your skin was smooth and unscathed, you hadn’t truly lived.

But now, as you half-watch yet another episode of Master Chef, you wonder if, all this time, you were supposed to have been ashamed of your body.

---

It’s 2 pm. The hospital is quiet. A nurse asks if you’d like to try walking. She’s a kind, middle-aged Blatina. There’s something maternal about her that makes you feel safe. Slowly, she helps you out of the bed. Your legs nearly give way. Since when were you not able to walk? You cling to the pole with your nutrient-bag for support and shuffle into the hallway.

The hospital may be on the Upper East Side, but it is a drab relic from the early 90s, from the manilla and pastel color scheme to the understated paintings of flowers that constitute art. The nurse guides you to the closer end of the hallway and introduces you to a cluster of her colleagues. When they see you, their faces crumple.

“Oh, baby!” they cry.

 Is that how bad you look?

Your hair must still be some sort of nest. Your face hasn’t been washed in who knows how long. Here you are, like a temporal orphan with no one to claim you, hardly able to walk, clutching onto a pole for dear life. The nurses don’t treat you as an everyday sight because you aren’t. You look like you belong in the pediatric ward.

As much as you enjoy the company of these self-appointed mothers and aunties, you quickly become exhausted after a few minuscule laps. The nurses shake their heads.

“Look at you! There is no way. You’re not going anywhere for at least a few more days. Just look at you.”

---

That evening, you’re allowed to eat dinner. Unseasoned chicken had never tasted so heavenly. Divine mediocrity.

The thing about being fed through a tube is, despite what they say about you getting “everything you need” through your arm, your mouth, throat, and brain don’t seem to get the memo. You’re parched, you’re craving something vicious, and it drives you crazy. What you wouldn’t give to bite into something; to chew; to taste.

It’s approaching midnight. Comfort is found in half-sleep and the reassurance that at least another day will pass before you’ll be released into a city that runs at the speed of light when you can only creep.

An outstretched hand is in your face. The surgeon.

“I just had to catch you before you left and personally say goodbye.” You reciprocate and let him pump your arm elatedly, but what on Earth is he talking about?

“Goodbye?”

“And I just wanted to say how much of an honor it was to work with a patient like you. Really, your case—just fascinating.” Then he does something that tips you into the well of the absurd. He expresses how disappointed he is that he didn’t get to take a closer look at you with that operation. And you thank the stars he didn’t. You become a thing once more. A missed opportunity; a discarded lesson plan.

As he gushes, a nurse enters. She’s about business. Hands you the discharge papers and orders you to sign them.

“Wh—I’m leaving now?”

You mention you were told it would be days before you’d be well enough. The nurse grows impatient. The surgeon is amused. Time to go now.

“May I at least wait till morning so someone can come pick me up?”

Your closest relatives are in Harlem, but you don’t have their number. The next would be Long Island. You couldn’t rouse your grandmother to drive 45 minutes to the city in the middle of the night.

“No. You’ve gotta go now. Call a cab.”

“I can’t walk!” What could happen alone, at midnight, in the backseat of a strange man’s car, too weak to look out for yourself? How would you make it from the car to your building? You start shaking, but this time, it’s not from the knife in your stomach.

The surgeon laughs. Folds his arms. “You know, most people wouldn’t want to stay in the hospital.”

And just like that, you go from a curiosity to a child playing sick at the school nurse’s office. A lozenge for a bit of theatre. You are no longer useful and thus the screaming swollen abdomen, the weakness, the spaghetti legs, are rendered invisible. It’s all in your head.

A blurry memory glimmers. In the ambulance, or perhaps the ER, the RA had mentioned a number on the back of your student ID. The Wellness Center. Call them when you’re ready to come back.

Your hand is quivering so much, you can barely dial.

“Hello?”

You tell them you’re ready to be picked up.

“I’m sorry, sweetie, but that’s not our job here.”

You ask if there’s another number you were supposed to use. The woman on the other end says no. Well damn.

The woman, who says she’s a counselor, notes the panic in your voice. You explain the situation, and her tone hardens into something intense.

“I can advocate for you. Where did you say you were?”

As she calls the hospital, you call your parents. They, too, are horrified. They, too, call the hospital.

Your evictors march into the room. The nurse, furious, demands to know why you have some lady from NYU harassing her on the phone; why your parents are calling from Georgia. The counselor, bless her, is unrelenting, which buys you some time. Your parents call your aunt in Rockland to see if she can pick you up. Rockland County may as well be in another state. To get there, one must drive through New Jersey.

You tell the nurse a relative is on their way. It isn’t good enough. When she isn’t yelling at one of your defenders on the phone, she is standing before your bed, harassing you. The surgeon implies you are treating the place like a hotel.

“I see you enjoyed that lemon bar, didn’t you?”

The panic is surrounded by the fog of the surreal. You’ve made the mistake of being too alert, too stimulated during a nightmare. What is going to happen to you? Where are your parents? Where are the adults?

By the time your aunt arrives, you’re a mess of tears and nerves. She’s incensed. Why are they making her niece leave at one in the morning? In the presence of a true adult, the nurse softens into a sympathetic human being.

“Oh, trust me—I completely understand! I have a daughter in college, too. You know, we really worry about them, don’t we?”

Gratifyingly, your aunt doesn’t buy it. You’re dumped into a wheelchair and taken out into the rain. Your uncle leans out the window of their Land Cruiser.

“Are you kidding me?” There is nothing like an angry New Yorker. He thrusts a hand in your direction. “Look at this! Look at this! She can’t even walk!”

You feel like an immobile shrimp in wet pajamas and three-day-old hair. Remains of bodily betrayal.

You’re folded into the backseat; your mind has been refashioned by Dalí. In the morning, your grandmother will call your room and panic when an older woman picks up. When she rings your cellphone, you will hear her curse for the first time.

The car pulls away. Your limited sense of place expands. A stilled portrait of glowing shop windows with expensive dresses and handbags, awnings and moldings and swirling balconies delicately brushed by light. The selective play of the revealed and the veiled, accompanied with the unnatural stillness of a pristine, orderly, and empty New York, is like a fantasy frozen in time. It doesn’t belong. You make a mental note to return and stay with it someday, but part of you knows it is a temporal, intangible swatch of what may or may not be life, rather like a childhood memory stored in technicolor. Questionable.

As if it had never happened.

The Bricklayer’s Gospel

My great-grandfather Luke Holsey was one of the founders of the black enclave of Lynwood Park, GA. A mason, he literally built the town, along with surrounding white neighborhoods, with his hands. These art songs tell his story from Lynwood’s hope-filled conception to its ultimate unraveling inflicted by gentrification.

Plantation Vacation, Part II

The following excerpt was published by Confluence Magazine. To view the original, click here. 

In 2018, Confluence published excerpts of Plantation Vacation, an oral history project that scrutinizes plantation resorts and weddings. I decided to continue my research for my senior project in the spring of 2019, venturing beyond my home state of Georgia and visiting six additional plantations in South Carolina and Louisiana.

As a black person, being in such environments can often trigger inherited trauma. Many of the plantations I visited were presented as romantic—guests were often encouraged to use their imaginations to bring the past to life. Though this Gone With The Wind fantasy varied on a spectrum, the storytellers’ and visitors’ oblivion or minimization of the brutal realities of plantation life made the experience increasingly difficult. I began to realize that, generations later, black Americans are expected to maintain our patience and composure as we enter the very spaces where our ancestors suffered. We are expected to suppress our grief and rage as the oaks upon which our forefathers were lynched are adorned with Instagramable fairy lights; when the sheds where our great-great grandmothers were assaulted have been replaced by tennis courts and luxury spas. We are expected to smile and nod as we are regaled with tales about a plantation’s incarnation of Scarlett O’Hara.

By the end of this project, I found the emotional labor to be too big of an ask. What was once curiosity had boiled over into a mess of nerves, frustration, helplessness, exhaustion . . . far too many sentiments to articulate. Plantation resorts often treated big houses as the protagonists of their histories, as though the mansions were the living, breathing characters. Only once did I encounter a plantation dedicated to the enslaved: the Whitney Plantation Museum in Louisiana—the only one of its kind. The Whitney offers a narrative that swims upstream amidst  flurries of hoopskirts and mansions presented as tragic heroes, the museum serves as a lone voice that reminds me of how these spaces can be preserved to respect and honor the humanity and endurance of people whose lives were devalued for the benefit of our country’s economy.

During my tour at Whitney, in which my mother and I were the only guests of color, others asked, “Where’s the fun at?” As Auntie Chae, our guide, discussed a memorial dedicated to the children who died under the conditions of slavery, some visitors shouted, “Hey—look, everybody! A snake!” They later declared said snake was “the most interesting part of the tour.” And once the tour had ended, despite Auntie Chae’s having cited every data point and anecdote, one woman muttered, “I’ll have to think about what parts I want to believe. It was all just so doom and gloom, you know?”

It was after that visit that I realized my question had evolved: Why do so many Americans have such a strong need to legitimize the “plantation myth” over evidence produced by academics and first-hand accounts? One thing was certain: I couldn’t stomach visiting another plantation.

Plantation Vacation is an attempt to catalyze the discourse that isn’t being broadly held: The desperate selective memory with which we capture the Civil War; how we go about preserving remnants of the Antebellum era; and what it means to both recognize the atrocities of slavery while engaging with the environments in which it occurred as spaces of leisure and romance. Such a conversation may involve challenging fundamental pillars of American culture and beliefs.

In the following excerpts, you will meet three tour guides: Ted, from South Carolina’s Boone Hall (immortalized as the controversial destination of Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively’s wedding); Julie and Donovan of Nottoway Plantation Resort, a sprawling estate on Louisiana’s storied River Road; and, lastly, you will meet Aunty Chae herself as she discusses Whitney Plantation Museum in all of its complexity.

Ted, Boone Hall Tour Guide

I’ve always been a little bit of a historian. Always done a lot of reading and all, and I was familiar with the plantation and with agriculture somewhat. So it came pretty easily for me. I’ve done everything out here—at one time I’ve done the house tours, Slave Street and everything.

It’s amazing what people don’t know. You know, everyone slept during history class, right? The entire slavery issue people don’t realize, and I do that maybe one day a week. And I don’t sugar coat it. I blast people out of the water. I really do. I even jump all over the Second Amendment people. And the thing that they don’t realize is that almost everybody that came to this country came because they wanted to—they were lookin’ for a better job, freedom of religion, or whatever it may be. The exception? Africans that came in chains against their will to work a short, brutal life. And people need to wrap their head around that. People don’t realize the way slavery influenced the way this country operates to this day. Like the electoral college. Slave states couldn’t count the slaves as population so they had to make sure they had the same representation. Second Amendment, they weren’t scared of England startin’ the war, comin’ back across the ocean. They kept the guns and militias because they were scared to death of revolts. I jump the Second Amendment people and I never have anybody back-talk me after that, sayin’ “but but but but…” You know, two hundred years ago, our forefathers weren’t sittin’ around in a room sayin’, “You know, we might wanna go bear huntin’ with our automatic weapons.”

You can burn the house down, I don’t think anybody would care. Stop doin’ the wagon rides, you get complaints! They’ll do a wagon ride, you know, look around at horses and all that…I don’t think they come out here for a dose of history. Once they show up, they get a good bit of it. They get a fair amount of history in the house, Slave Street has some bits of history. We try to make it as educational as possible, but I think it depends on the season. Wintertime, people come, you know, they’re really interested in the history. You don’t get a whole lot of visitors. Summertime, kids are out of school, packed, all they wanna do is take the wagon ride and then get ice cream. They’re not interested in education—you know, we can turn that backfield into a water park and they’d be thrilled to death. But then in the fall, fall is the crowd I like the most. We figure the kids are back in school, it’s safe to travel. We get a lot of bus tours, a lot of tour boats…and they’re more interested in history.

The biggest single event on the plantation was—a couple of weeks and the last Sunday of December, the Charleston Restaurant Association has a big charity of oysters out here. There were about 11,000 people out here. And a couple others: They do a Taste of Charleston out here, they do a Highlands Scottish Games…so a lot of variation of stuff out here. We probably do about sixty or seventy actual wedding ceremonies, but we’ll do well over a hundred receptions out here every year. The receptions are usually out at the Cotton Dock. And weddings are down outdoors on the front lawn or back lawn. We get very little. Most of the money goes to the vendors. You just charge to use the dirt and you have to bring in everything else: tables, chairs, music, food…we don’t do any of that. Oh, we’ve got some of the best weekends booked two years out!

Charleston’s a big wedding destination. People really have no connection here, they just wanna get married on the plantations or the historic churches or on the beach. And Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively had their wedding here. They told everybody that was supposed to work that day not to come in. It was a secret. Nobody knew about it except their wedding planner and our wedding coordinator. Everybody got called at nine o’clock in the morning not to come in—the plantation’s closed. Oh, we found out later in the day. Saw all the pictures afterwards. But probably the biggest wedding we had out here—I’ll put it like this: the final tab for the father of the bride: $1.5 million. Of that, Boone Hall got $4,500. That was the base charge. Everything else—that whole back field was covered in tents with wood floors and a sit-down dinner for 1,500 people. Started with champagne in the garden, worked your way back, they had a parquet dance floor about as big as that parking lot area back here. Had a dance band, Josh Turner, Sister Hazel…Trisha Yearwood was a guest at the wedding, had her sing a couple of numbers before it was all over with. 1.5 million. It was one of the tobacco lawyers. Worth a whole lotta money. Daddy’s got enough money, he owns his own golf course.

We have amazing records that we keep over the years. So people don’t forget it! You have to stay abreast of it, and you know, we don’t need another subdivision and golf course over here. That’s why this is plantation—fortunately it’s historical and agricultural both, so hopefully it’s gonna stay like this.

Julie and Donovan, Nottoway Plantation Resort Tour Guides

Julie: There’s no fake news on the tour.

I don’t make up anything. We talk about the history here, it’s a difficult history.

We’re the largest antebellum home that still remains in the entire South. That’s our draw mainly. The mansion itself that you see here in front of you is the only structure that’s left from the time that this was a sugar plantation in 1859. The structure of the house is all intact. In 1980 it became a bed and breakfast and the tours began. There’s about ten tour guides. Two of us work on any given day. We have a lot of European guests, mainly French, because this was a French territory. And we do have a lot of locals, but we have people from all over the United States as well. Australia, also.

We’re a wedding destination, so we have a lot of wedding guests, bridal portraits…We also have conventions here, several bridal salons, forty hotel rooms, lounge and fitness center, tennis courts…There’s three places—no, four, actually—that you can have a banquet or rehearsal dinners: One is the White Ball Room inside the mansion. One thing that makes us different is you can actually hold events and stay overnight in the mansion. Most plantation homes have become museums, and that’s just not possible. Three of the beds in some of the hotel rooms in the mansion are original to the Randolph’s. That’s very unusual.

Tactile memory: What does it feel like—even the handrails, some of the items of the house, the low-set doorknobs, the low-set banisters–people were smaller back then–you can run your hands along there. I think it adds a tremendous amount, rather than just looking at something from a distance. Also bein’ a hotel, there’s this accessibility thing that I think some people enjoy. We do have some concerns about [the antique furniture], but the Australian owner, not being from Louisiana, said, “Don’t let the house turn into a museum.” Even though we’re a Historic Home of America and on the National Historic Register, he did want people to be able to touch and sit on some of the antiques. The fragile ones are protected. They are roped off and have “do not touch” signs. But if they’re not fragile…we have a big maintenance department. People do lament the fact that everybody is touching things…but it has to earn its keep. This mansion is 56,000 square feet, it’s larger than the White House. And it takes a huge amount of maintenance and housekeeping to clean it. So it does have to generate an income. It’s never been owned by the state.

You wanna step on in the mansion with me?

This is Donovan. He’s one of our tour guides.

Donovan: How are y’all?

Julie: After hours, [the guests] can [wander around], but the night watchman comes through every few hours and makes sure everything’s cool. Some areas are locked up at night. Like the dining room has a lot of things that could wind up in a purse. But for the most part, our overnight guests here are very considerate of the fact that they are able to do this. Now will that change in the future? Maybe. I think they encourage children to be on the back of the property in the more modern hotel rooms, because you just can’t watch everything.

People can ask any questions they want, there is nothing off the table here. We do talk about slavery here, Civil War…Some of the plantation tours do not allow you to ask questions. I think political correctness is killing some of the questions.

Donovan: A lot of people struggle with explaining and dealing with that history, especially in the current climate.

Julie: Yeah, there’s somethin’ about the Civil War or slavery in the news almost every day. This was 160 years ago. We have to talk about that every day, because it’s the truth. If you try to hide it, you’re just doomed to repeat it or sweep it under the rug. But the people that were enslaved here, they were real people. They had these experiences. And why wouldn’t you talk about that?

Donovan: Because this is a hotel, we get the opportunity to speak to people who otherwise would not have taken the initiative to go on a tour. Because they feel like it’s a discount to get a breakfast and a tour ticket, they’ll come through, and they’ll be incredibly surprised that we were able to deftly present the information as it’s supposed to be presented. It’s a good opportunity to humanize history.

People don’t like to be preached at. You know? People don’t like to be told what to do, people don’t like to be told what to think, so what we do is just provide the information, really. It creates a learning opportunity that’s disguised as a field trip, a vacation.

Julie: We try to be very, very open. The most popular questions we get are: “How do you go to the bathroom in a hoopskirt?” Yes. That’s what everybody wants to know. And, “Was John a nice slave owner?” I mean you probably don’t get the hoopskirt question!

Donovan: No.

Julie: What would you say are the most common you get?

Donovan: I mean the whole idea of, “was he a really nice slave owner,” that one was always like a dog biting at the heels.

Julie: Everybody’s relieved—I say, “Was John a good slave owner? I’m so glad you asked me that!” Because they all wanna ask it. But they’re afraid to ask. And the easy answer is “no.” Because that would explain how slavery was. But he had a reputation as a nice slave owner because he used some modern business practices to keep the slaves complacent and avoided runaways and other things that would disrupt the money making—this was a business. Every plantation is gonna be different depending on what the beliefs of the owners were. So he had this reputation—they had Sundays off here for religious services, you got married couples together with their children. But not because he was a nice guy. On the old tour in 1980, they probably said, “Oh sure, he was a nice guy!”

Auntie Chae, Whitney Plantation Museum Tour Guide

“They were treated well, they were given the best foods, and they were clothed and housed well.”

That’s not true. That’s what they wanna hear.

A lot of people choose this museum and then they get upset when they get here. It’s not my intention to upset you. You’re discontent, you’re discontent. But this is the truth, and it’s based on research. A lot of people—especially if they come from the other museums, like Oak Alley—a lot of them are based on the lives of the enslaver. So that’s really what they think happened! And because Franklin Roosevelt actually put his stamp of approval on the Federal Writer’s Project, this is not made up. Stories would’ve been lost had he not had the sense and the wherewithal to actually have those people interviewed—many of them were over a hundred years old. And they told what they experienced—you don’t have to make the stuff up. Those are some of the same stories, because all of those plantations were pretty much the same.

Now yeah, you did have some slave owners who were nicer. Some slave owners who fed their slaves better. Gave them better clothing, better housing, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter.

You still own the person.

Which we say is the oldest and the worst crime against nature. And that’s where people get a little more understanding.

Our groups are usually 90-100% Caucasian. When the museum first opened, our tours were mostly people from Australia and New Zealand. American whites came afterwards, and people from the UK, and then about a year and a half ago—we’ve been open four years—African American people started coming from across the country.

Empathy: That is the key. It’s something that everybody does not have while storytelling. If you’re gonna tell a specific story, you’re gonna have to know the community that story comes out of. And that’s where a lot of people make their mistakes. We have a lot of Caucasian tour guides. They do tell the story, but it’s a little bit different from the ways my story might go. And sometimes, my story is—I’m not gonna say negative—it’s a little bit more connected to what people have gone through.

Our museum is not run by African American people. The person who purchased it is a Caucasian male, 82 years old.

He had the money. He had the money. It’s about business. It’s about makin’ money. The same thing back in the time of slavery.

No disrespect to him, because I really like him. But he tells us all the time that he’s a “recovering racist.” And that kind of stumps me sometimes—kinda like, oogh! But I have to keep those two separate. Because the person he is now and the way he treats us—he’s very hands-on, a very kind person, but he’s also a businessman. I normally tell this story, because the white folks love it!

His intention was to restore everything to its former splendor and beyond. Paid eight million dollars for it. It was going to be a little home away from home where he was gonna have the golf course, swimming pool . . . In the purchase, he inherited research information. The information included a lot of those enslaved people who lived on that plantation and came back to tell their story. And because he is an attorney, he recognized a lot of those last names based on his current work. Even though their stories were profound, he initially didn’t want to use their stories, because a lot of the people in the community are related to those people. He decided to choose the other stories from people in Louisiana, but not necessarily on that plantation. All of those stories he had were very disturbing. He was upset for about a week or two, but he called a meeting with his children. They didn’t want anything to do with it, so they decided to encourage him to do a museum so that everybody would be able to come and learn. It’s transitioned to nonprofit, so it’s no longer his responsibility financially. I know about five families that live in this small community that could’ve afforded to buy this plantation and turn it into anything they wanted. They did not.

There are groups that don’t really want that museum there. Some live up right here in this community. African American people. They feel like the story’s not being told the way they learned it growing up here in Plantation Alley. People are gonna be upset on all sides of the spectrum—you’re gonna have African American people who are upset, because they want it told one way, and then you have the Caucasian people who want it told the other way, like all of the other plantation museums.

Because people get so upset, a lot of things have been removed. A few months ago we had a meeting. We can’t say “rape” anymore. Oh yeah. Really. So all I say is “sexual abuse.” Or “sexual assault”! If you’re gonna see all these light-skinned people runnin’ around on these plantations, where did they come from? You cannot put icing on it. You can’t! Even some white people feel that this thing is watered down! I’ve had people tell me, “It’s too nice! You know, you gotta tell it like it really is!”

And you know how it goes—normally, the stories are written by the victor. Not the victims. See, our people, we get angry. Really really fast. And so when we’re trying to tell the story, it comes out wrong. It’s a struggle to stay calm. It’s important, because when you start to argue with them? They argue back! They throw out things that’s untrue. It makes them feel better. It makes them feel more comfortable.

Now, the young white girl who’s running it, of course her main goal is to get to the top as quick as she can! She’s already the executive director, and she’s only about maybe 35 years old. Every time a white person gets upset about somethin’, they email us, they put it on Facebook, TripAdvisor and all those places. And then they change things up. Now they’ve started to have a training class so people can use the right words, just like politics. And then they rush you to get back in an hour and a half. I’ve had some issues with white coworkers who felt like I was going too slow. And I got hysterical, I said, “If you wanna go around, go around, but you will not push me!” Even at one point they tried to have a contest! I was like, “What are y’all sayin’ out there?” They’re not sayin’ nothin’! I say, “Kudos to you, you do what you gotta do, you make your money.” I’m gonna do my tour—they paid for it! If they ask a question, wouldn’t I be wrong to not answer? They don’t want to upset the people that have the money. And we know who has the money, right?

I don’t wanna come to work in the morning and the gates are all tied up and we can’t get in because somebody who has power was offended. That has happened many times over. So of course they’re gonna be very careful. Some people ask a lot of questions I’m not allowed to answer. Normally, if there’s some things I’m not allowed to talk about, I’ll just say, “Well you know? That’s possible, but this tour would be five hours long if we were to go into that direction.” You have to stay neutral to some degree. You have to keep it as it is meant to be: information. It’s just like the Bible. You can discuss it, interpret it how you want it . . . it just depends on what you are willing to accept.

A lot of times, they’re not engaging. I had a group of women who just kind of kept talkin’. And that’s why I kept talkin’ louder. Even though I’m the leader here, they would walk in front of me! I had to correct that as time went on. Being human myself, I get a little agitated, but I had to suppress it and be more professional. Because they will try you. All the time. I’ve had many arguments. A lot of them had to do with Irish slavery. They really believe that the Irish people were slaves, and I know it comes from Facebook. I said, “That’s propaganda.” And I don’t like bullshit. I don’t care about tips. So when they talk about Irish slavery, I just go equally hard, I’ll be like, “Oh no. Where’d you get that craziness from?” “Well yeah, they had Irish slaves, and I know!” I said, “You don’t know. There were no Irish slaves here on American soil. There were slaves in Ireland that came here as indentured servants. And they could’ve left anytime they wanted to because they were free. They were not slaves.” Sometimes, I can get very comical at times and say, “Well you know sir? It could be true. But this museum here is about the African American and the African experience. Not about the Irish. So you’re gonna have to talk about that somewhere else.”

They say when people pay their money to come in, they expect to be given a certain amount of your time. And they don’t really think about what you might be going through on a personal level. Not just the guests, but the administration. It can get emotional, physical . . . people expect you to go an extra mile. So you have to really be your own cheerleader. Some days, I just wanna go home, and I wanna just . . . be alone. Because you have to think on what you’re doing, on what you’re giving, because you are giving almost a hundred percent of yourself. But then, you have to muster up the energy to deal with the people you live with. I mean I live with my mom. My mom is almost ninety. So you have to suck it all the way an dust your shoulders off. And just keep moving. You just have to. Because other than that, you won’t be able to do it. For somebody like myself, I grew up in the neighborhood, I’m 62, I’ll be 63 in May. I’ve worked 41 years outside of the home. For me, this is my last go-round. And I have to enjoy it. So I have to take care of me. I don’t expect anybody else to do that.

Most of the people who work with me are younger. And so they are willing to conform. I remember going to a department store—I went through a “colored” door. I sat at a lunch counter. I was one of those people carrying a sign. When we were coming up, everybody’s dad worked all day long, worked hard jobs, because there were no really good jobs for African American men. They wanted you to be working in the farms, working in somebody’s bathroom, kitchen, whatever. They worked hard enough to do what they could feed their children and keep a roof over their heads. People now, they can build their half-a-million-dollar houses. They have their degrees, they have the positions. And so their children really don’t know what is known as struggle. They don’t know what it’s like to be judged just because you’re African American and you’re the smartest person in the room! When you’ve experienced those things, it’s a little bit different when you tell that story, because it gives you power. The job gives you power to make it your platform. I do go off the grid. Often. And I know they know. If they would come to me one day and say, “You have not been compliant, so we’re gonna have to let you go,” I don’t believe I would lose any sleep.

You have to be able to feel it and look at the faces of your guests. Sometimes my Caucasian guests put their heads down. I’ve had some mixed couples that come. They’re like “Whaaat?” You can see them lookin’ at each other like, “Your family, your people did this to my people.” And they pull apart! School groups—these children have gone to school since kindergarten together. Black and white. But then they look at each other like, “How come I never knew this?” That’s that disconnect that people experience. But we already know most of these people are gonna go back to that same life that they left when they decided to come to the museum. We maybe change one or two.

This thing with slavery. It’s in everything you see. I would like for somebody to explain where the hatred comes from. It’s something that’s passed on from one generation to the other because of slavery. You can flip it, you can tell it all kinds of ways, but you still have to tell it properly. Through the eyes of the enslaved people. Because they’re the ones that built the country. When we were younger, we used to watch the Tarzan movies. We never understood, because nobody ever taught us—but we would be clappin’ for the white people fighting the Africans in Africa! Then you’d see the Africans in chains. We didn’t understand that was all about slavery! And they were bringing those people here! We weren’t taught that in school. They taught you very, very little. And now they’re teaching you even less. We have to be responsible for our own history. We have to be.

The Color of Home

Two stories of home—one from the North, one from the South—follow four people as they come to terms with how space and identity collide. Though geographically different, their experiences are joined by the racialization of real estate, the erasure of communities, and the part of home that is carried into the present.

This audio portrait was published by Confluence Magazine. You can access it here.

Of Sluts and Locker-Room Talk: When the Fear of Womanhood Becomes Theatrical

This is a piece published by Confluence Magazine. You can find the original here.

In light of recent events, particularly in the realm of politics, it appears that “good ol’ boy” culture is out in full force. In order to maintain their gendered membership card, men continue to be pressured to showcase their sexuality through appearance and deed, lest they risk being associated with the opposite sex. The Kavanaughs, the Trumps, and the Brock Turners of society are indeed lauded for imposing their (unsolicited) sexual desires on women, who in turn must bear responsibility for these men’s actions. Frustrating as this logic is, perhaps it speaks to not only the strength of the patriarchy but the predatorial power of femininity’s shadow. Throughout history, womanliness seemed to be so potent and omnipresent that females struggled to suppress it, while males had to do everything in their power to avoid it and outrun its grasp. Social and mass media may be common arenas of gender dynamics, but the history of gender performance transcends the digital age. Renaissance society was consumed with the need to construct an image to project to the world: In a paradoxical performance, men felt obligated to prove their identity through sexual amplification, while women were expected to prove their virtue through sexual repression. Both tendencies, displayed through fashion and behavior, were ultimately designed to protect the allegedly dominant sex’s power from being supplanted by its “weaker” counterpart.

Regulated sexual expression did not simply appear from thin air–as Margaret King and Albert Rabil point out in “The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe,” it is deeply rooted in centuries of patriarchal ideology and an overall fear and criminalization of the “lure” of women. From literally the first of their kind on, females were bound up in lust and temptation—hence, “moralists and preachers for centuries conveyed to women the guilt that they bore for original sin…[which] was inextricably linked with the sexual act.”¹. Apparently, women only had one shot at innocence and overall agency, and Eve had already thrown it away. But if one looks at the arguments rooted in ancient Greece, it appears that, original sin or not, females were already disadvantaged by the fact that their vices were directly attributed to their genitalia. Incomplete and deformed in her lack of testicles and psychologically programmed by her uterus, the female “craved sexual fulfillment in intercourse with a male . . . [who] was intellectual, active, and in control of his passions.”² And if feminine wiles were strong enough to compromise the “superior sex,” there was great power to be found in sensuality. It is because of this that “the last bastion of masculine supremacy [was] centered on the . . . requirement of female chastity”³ In this notion lies the legacy of women having to disprove the hypersexuality projected upon them, and of men striving to prove their sexual and social dominance and identity.

The emergence of fashion as a concept turned out to be an ideal medium through which the aforementioned ideologies could be expressed, as male clothing began to possess an exhibitionist nature while female attire increasingly hid women’s bodies in shame. As Giovanni Boccaccio notes in Michelle Laughran and Andrea Vianello’s “Grandissima Gratia,” the length of men’s clothing was reduced to the point in which, “when ‘looking at their lower parts . . . it [was] easily understandable that they [were] male.’”⁴ Not only did this change in fashion associate the public display of intimates with masculinity—it added expository style to the criteria of the gendered smell test. If one truly was a man, he had to parade his sex—figuratively and literally—for all to see. One could argue that nothing quite embodies the concept of “male genitalia [as] the ultimate fashion statement” as much as the codpiece.⁵ In “‘Had it a codpiece, ’twere a man indeed,” Will Fisher details the significance of the piece of fabric (often padded) that men of the Renaissance attached to their trousers. Though the garment’s intended function was to serve as a pocket and conceal the phallus (as the doublet failed to do so), the codpiece became a stamp of authenticity, of masculinity. Yes, showcasing the penis signified manhood, but to parade and celebrate a seemingly “permanent erection . . . was therefore a ‘token of [sexual] prowess.’”⁶

Women, conversely, shirked feminine sexuality by displaying a sort of androgynous invisibility. In “Busks, Bodices, and Bodies,” Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass illustrate the use of the busk as a tool to conceal the curves that are unique to the female sex. Like a container that neutralizes a dangerous gas, “the busk keeps the female body ‘in compass’ [and] stabilizes it,” protecting both sexes from vice.⁷. The temptation of the female form was further diluted when one regards what was considered to be appropriate outerwear, as discussed in The Treasure of the City of Ladies, a guide to proper conduct written in 1405 by Christine de Pizan (France’s first professional female author): In addition to a flattened form, ladies were advised to deviate from “any immodesty in the matter of plunging necklines or other excesses,” lest they draw the wrong kind of attention.[8.Christine De Pizan De Pizan, The Treasure of the City of Ladies (New York: Penguin Classics, 2004), 52.] Note that if there is lust between two people, it is a result of the woman’s neckline or natural shape; not the man’s flaunting of “three phalluses” simulated by an erect codpiece and footwear.⁸ We continue to see the practice of regulating the female body through concealing fashion in phenomena such as school dress codes, which almost solely focus on diminishing girls’ apparent sexuality while ironically projecting it onto them by doing so. If a male acts or feels sensual attraction towards his female counterpart, the question of “what was she wearing?” never fails to crop up—in both the past and present, “women’s clothing provokes men to lasciviousness.”[10.Laughran and Vianello, “Grandissima Gratia,” 267.]

To take matters a step further, habits and behavior could be used to broadcast one’s sexual activity. Although the busk was intended to conceal the female body, men appropriated the agents of discretion “as public badges . . . signaling affection,” going so far as to publicly flaunt the points of the accessory in their hats—apparently, only women were severely beholden to a required reputation of chastity.⁹ The treatment of male desire in the realms of etiquette, literature, and fashion make it evident that, under the “regime of the penis,” sexuality on the public stage was a virtue, as it asserted one’s dominance.¹⁰ In the case of the showcased busk point, this was seen as the conquering, possession, and control of the female body, in addition to the timelessly celebrated boast of “getting laid.” Such indiscretion was part of a larger context of the emergence of performative masculinity in the presiding culture where male displays of “emphasized sexuality, and especially phallic penetration,” somehow managed to coincide with polite society.”¹¹ Odd, yes, but then again, it was all under patriarchal regulation: the very power structure that enables the coexistence of an attack on Title IX and a proclamation of “family values.”

A culture, today or otherwise, that equates sexual performance with masculinity consequentially relieves the male sex of moral reprehension on the grounds of what is “customary” and “natural.” The end result is that this social policy indiscriminately burdens women with all of the responsibility.  Female-oriented guidebooks written by the likes of De Pizan take the route of W.E.B. Du Bois by arming women with performative methods of fending off the stereotypes that ate away at their reputation, but the proto-feminist author appears guilty of naturalizing male predatory habits by prefacing them with a diminishing line such as: “according to the custom of men.”¹² It was held that “women should restrain themselves” whenever in the presence of men, in not only choices in fashion but in all other forms of public presentation: Ladies were expected to keep exclusively chaste company, play “decent” games that wouldn’t provoke men’s mockery, “speak demurely and sweetly and, whether in dances or other amusements, divert and enjoy themselves decorously and without wantonness.”¹³ This greatly contrasts the sexual expression encouraged in men, but it is necessary to remember what these minor behaviors meant in this context. To be “frolicsome, forward, or boisterous in speech, expression, bearing or laughter” wasn’t simply a matter of acting in a polished manner; it called a woman’s chastity and respectability into question.¹⁴ It is worth noting that, as mentioned previously, the dominant understanding of women was highly essentialist, with the qualities she was meant to suppress intrinsic to her anatomy; the very boldness and sensuality distained in women was fixed in their uteruses, their cold and damp elemental makeup. Therefore, in order to display an image of chastity and virtue, a woman was expected to become something unnatural. A man, conversely, was expected to showcase what, depending on one’s perspective, pushed the concept of the natural to the brink of its limits. Their acceptable mannerisms and appearance claimed sexual aggression as an embodiment of allegedly organic masculinity, but unlike with women, male virtue remained not only unharmed, but elevated. In our society, men are expected to be able to wear their lust outwardly; it’s boys being boys. It is up to women to accept this and deal with it themselves. What would it have done for De Pizan’s cause if she (or a contemporary) had pointed out that men had been conditioned to believe that dressing and behaving with the phallus was the one guarantee that their identity and social position wouldn’t be snatched by the wind?

Taking the conduct of gendered sexual performance from the Renaissance and applying it to our current state of society, from victim blaming to policy making, reveals that, beyond being an oppressive paradox, public habits of the past—and the ideologies that powered them—are reveling in a seemingly ineffaceable legacy. No matter what custom is used to assert one’s identity, power, or virtue, the end result of doing so within this antiquated framework is that women are ultimately silenced and conquered, be it physically or metaphorically, in the name of preserving a stabilized, i.e. patriarchal, order. And if the male establishment of the Renaissance and of 2019 are so afraid of the impact of unbridled womanhood—if it truly can influence men’s thoughts, actions, and sense of self—femininity must be pretty darn powerful.

1. Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil. “The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: Introduction to the Series,” in The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 1996) xxii, xxiii
2. King and Rabil, “The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe,” ix.
3. King and Rabil, “The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe,” xxvi.
4. Michelle Laughran and Andrea Vianello, “Grandissima Gratia: The Power of Italian Renaissance Shoes as Intimate Wear,” in Ornamentalism: The Art of Renaissance Accessories, edited by Bella Mirabella (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2016), 258.
5. Laughran and Vianello, “Grandissima Gratia,” 258.
6. Will Fisher, “‘Had it a codpiece, ‘twere a man indeed’: The Codpiece as Constitutive Accessory in Early Modern English Culture,” in Ornamentalism: The Art of Renaissance Accessories, edited by Bella Mirabella (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2016),108.
7. Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass, “Busks, Bodices, and Bodies,” in Ornamentalism: The Art of Renaissance Accessories, edited by Bella Mirabella (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2016), 90.
8. Laughran and Vianello, “Grandissima Gratia,” 259.
9. Jones and Stallybrass, “Busks, Bodices, and Bodies,” 94.
10. Will Fisher, “‘Had it a codpiece, ‘twere a man indeed,’ 110.
11. Fisher, “‘Had it a codpiece, ‘twere a man indeed,’ 110.
12. De Pizan, The Treasure of the City of Ladies, 70.
13. De Pizan, The Treasure of the City of Ladies, 51.
14. De Pizan, The Treasure of the City of Ladies, 51.

The Image Bureau

I thought I’d share a recent project of mine with you. The Image Bureau is an experimental story inspired by parents who turn their children into digital public figures. Of course, this tale takes things to the next level.

Here’s how it works: I’m going to share a few excerpts with you for the sake of context. Let’s just say the story lives beyond the page. It is simply waiting to be found.

Here’s the story!

Check out this component when you’ve finished the excerpts.

…And if you’d like to see a fancied-up presentation of the story I’ve been playing around with, click here.

 

From Surviving NEC to Studying at NYU

NEC Society

Written by Linseigh Green, NEC Survivor 
Why couldn’t I have been born with a more romantic disease? Not that diseases are romantic, but of all the medical conditions, particularly those with long term effects, why was I stuck with the one that affected my digestive system? The one whose symptoms can only be described with euphemisms in polite company? I am a survivor of Necrotizing Enterocolitis (NEC).

On August 13, 1997, my parents’ newborn wasn’t placed in their arms with a congratulatory flourish. Instead, they received news that I couldn’t hold enough glucose. Then, they were told that I was showing signs of cardiovascular complications. After that, my parents were hit with one problem after the other, until days later I was diagnosed with NEC.

My parents had no idea what they were dealing with, and educating themselves about this terrifying, fatal disease was a difficult task when they were…

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The Americanizing Magic of Blackface in Early 20th Century Film

Blackface has played a powerful and potent role in America’s history of cinema. What began as a minstrel show of live performance evolved into characters that served as narrative devices in motion pictures, thus sustaining the legacy of age-old tropes such as the coon, the brute, the Mammy, and the pickaninny. There is no doubt that blackface was degrading and dehumanizing for the African American community, but to say that the sole purpose of the tradition was to engage in racist mockery is to be overly simplistic. Rather, blackface, particularly in the age of early film, was a way to engage in Americanism by distancing oneself from the Negro and joining a generic cluster of whiteness.

According to Stuart Hall, author of The Fateful Triangle, “the ‘mark’ and the ‘badge’ are all important because they signify, because they carry a certain meaning, because they are…signifiers of difference” (Hall 39). The mask of cork is in itself a text: on a surface level, it signifies blackness itself (and, consequentially, what it means to be white), but the meanings go even deeper. Blackface symbolizes American identity and nostalgia, particularly its “vulgar,” less-refined beginnings. When looking at the phenomenon of blackface, analysts often use the work “marking”—the mask is a marker of difference, of nonwhiteness.

This analysis will be executed with the following questions in mind: Why was blackface so embedded in the American identity? And why did it appeal to immigrants who were not present during the time of slavery? How did it become associated with nostalgic tradition? Why was it used in films in the first place? This essay aims to focus on the intentions of those who were involved in perpetuating the 19^th century tradition of minstrelsy in the medium of the motion picture in order to get a better idea of why such a practice mattered—and, more plainly, why it was used in a society in which actual black people were available to play themselves.

Considering the context of a revised Civil War narrative will help pinpoint the causes behind the determining factors of racial imagery in films, and looking at the ways in which miscegenation in its literal and figurative forms will be used to further analyze the unification of black and white as a means of unifying immigrant and “native” whites under a single American umbrella. The use of the nostalgic storytelling medium of blackface in cinema will foster a sense of white Americanness at the expense of African Americans, providing an ironic parallel to the history of race relations in the country off of the screen. To further analyze the Americanizing magic of blackface, this essay will look at live-action films such as The Birth of a Nation, The Jazz Singer, and Babes in Arms.

Michael Rogin, a professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley, argues in “Making America Home: Racial Masquerade and Ethnic Assimilation in the Transition to Talking Pictures” that blackface was used by immigrants as a way to gain acceptance into their new home by presenting Americanization as an ethnical, not nativist, affiliation. He claims that blackface’s prominence in early Hollywood was due to the fact that American cinema is essentially rooted in race. Racial mimesis was a method of utilizing the signifiers of blackness to ultimately liberate the said immigrant from his roots through the accentuation of his whiteness. More simply put, blackface was an exclusion and expropriation of black culture. Rogin asks, “Do cross-dressing immigrants buy freedom at the expense of the imprisonment of peoples of color?” (Rogin 1057).

In ‘‘‘An Octoroon in the Kindling’: American Vernacular & Blackface Minstrelsy in 1930s Hollywood,” Peter Stanfield, a film professor at the University of Kent, agrees with Rogin’s claim that American cinema’s foundation is one of racial obsession, but he believes that there is more complexity to the situation: “blackface in Hollywood is positioned as a symbol of America’s theatrical and musical past and as a key element in the representation of an American vernacular tradition” (Stanfield 408). Blackface’s Americanizing magic goes beyond the assimilation of immigrants into whiteness—rather, it serves as a nostalgic cultural centerpiece that is framed around a fantasy world of blackness that can be accessed through the assumption of racialized markers. The Negro signifies America’s indelicate history, and it is only through transforming oneself into this distant race that one can return to and connect with that past.

Morgan State University Professor Thomas Cripps, author of Slow Fade to Black: The Negro in American Film, 1900-1942, asserts that “the worst problem for blacks remained exclusion from the seats of power” (Cripps13). He agrees with the idea that blackface in film is intertwined with the American genesis, but points out that such a fantasy comes from an exclusively white perspective, because white filmmakers were the ones who had control over the racial narrative. As a result of this power dynamic, the demeaning image of blacks in cinema ultimately emerged as a byproduct of Southern lore and the nostalgia and romanticism of the Civil War, which only heightened upon the Golden Anniversary of the Civil War, narratives that were very much embraced by the white American public. Through all of this, “as producers became more alert to the opinions of their white audience…Afro-Americans remained powerless” (Cripps 25).

Under the supervision of Richard Dyer, then-PhD candidate (and current Liverpool John Moores professor) Corin Charles Willis, writer of “The Signifier Returns to Haunt the Referent: Blackface and the Stereotyping of African-Americans in Hollywood Early Sound Film,” focuses on the textuality of blackface, and the complexity of its racialized lexicon. In his analysis of the medium’s multi-layered ambiguity, he utilizes the term “co-presence…to capture the deep and abiding historical interrelationship between blackface and the portrayal and perception of actual African-Americans in American popular culture” (Willis 27). Looking at co-presence can help to answer the question as to why blackface was used in the place of actual black people, as it involves casts that consist of both black people and their imitators, demanding of the audience a form of double-consciousness that recognizes the latter set of characters as whites with masks, while accepting them as black in the context of the film. Analyzing such relativity is crucial, as, according to Willis, “so central was the function of racialising African-Americans to the minstrel trope and so immense were its historical consequences for African-Americans, that blackface can only be fully understood when read in relation to the dominant cultural portrayal and perception of actual African-Americans” (Willis 93). Beyond the realm of co-presence, Willis also delves into the details of specific choices that were made in movies that signified blackness (or, as she calls them, markers), such as costumes, technology, and casting.

Blackface, in the form that is relevant to the tradition of minstrelsy, emerged in the early 19^th century. The act of darkening one’s skin for performance was not new—for instance, in plays such as Shakespeare’s Othello, actors would alter their complexion to play Moors. It is worth noting, however, that the blackface of Antebellum America involved not only a darkened skin tone, but a package of behavioral and societal markers, as well. Its purpose was to define blackness and therefore distinguish it from whiteness. The blackface that this essay is concerned with was originated by T.D. Rice, who had decided to imitate a black man who was performing outside of his hotel in Pittsburgh. Upon the stage, Rice assumed the Negro’s identity by wearing his clothes, blackening his face, and copying his behavior—the audience was captivated. Those who helped to develop the craft did not have a preexisting canon to glean from; rather, “each artist t[ook] the raw material that it was their fortune to encounter and turn[ed] it into a performance that simultaneously signifie[d] and distance[d] itself from its site of origination” (Stanfield 427). This race-bending process of appropriation marked the birth of minstrelsy.

With the dawn of cinema nearly a century later, blackface did not simply appear on its own, independent of any contemporaneous events. It is worth noting that, post-Reconstruction, there was a general assumption that the potential of racial progress could be on the rise. Curiously, however, “between 1910 and 1915 the drift toward older black stereotypes proceeded apace” in moving pictures (Cripps 24). To make sense of such retrogression, one must consider the American social climate at the time: As previously stated, racial progression seemed to be on an upward trajectory, particularly with the emerging black bourgeoisie, the growth of the black press, and the optimistic Great Migration to Northern cities. Such advancements were met reactionary efforts to suppress this potential shift in society: The Great Migration was countered by urban race riots, the South adopted Mississippi’s strategies of preventing poor, rural blacks from voting, and night riding and terrorism were responsible for atrocities such as rape and the burning wealthy black farmers’ crops.

Such tension provided fertile ground for the reintroduction of degrading black imagery with the Golden Anniversary of the Civil War—the celebration ultimately “revived old white prejudices, and blacks were seen once more as slaves” (Cripps 26). A not-so-distant history was suddenly revised—the Old South was viewed through an amnesiac’s frame as a lost land of pastoral purity, bygone grace and chivalry, tragically defeated by the industrialism of the North. With such an ahistorical, romantic revision dominating the mid-19^th century narrative, “recently urbanized Americans celebrated the war through a nostalgic haze that allowed them to believe it had been fought for the abstract principles of union and states’ rights rather than for the emotional and moral issue of slavery” (Cripps 26). And if the victimhood shifted from the slave to the South, what did that mean for the image of the latter? In order to support this new narrative, the Negro (or, at least, the good Negro) had to be remembered as loyal to his master, curiously opposed to the idea of liberation and the “blue-bellies” who promised it. Blacks of the 21^st century would call this figure an “Uncle Tom.” Whites of the early nineteen-teens, however, would identify this figure as the difference between a Negro and a “nigger.”

The Golden Anniversary ultimately dictated the content produced in the film industry, which “restored Southern lore to the screen[,]…taught a new urban generation a false nostalgia,” and damned the Negro image to dehumanizing stereotypes or omitted it altogether (Cripps 30). Restoring the shackles of slavery in the cinematic parallel universe was psychologically reassuring to a (white) American public resistant to the idea of black ascension in society that would alter the dynamics of the power structure. While white actors portrayed blacks in early American cinema, one cannot simplify the situation as mere replacement—looking at co-presence helps to clarify this notion. If, in some films, “blacks [we]re allowed to represent blacks only in their most marginal roles, as elements of a crowd or background,” there must be a particular reason why featured black characters were white actors with masks of cork (Willis 1-2). Blackface in film served the following functions: control of the black image, an attempt of using the symbolic miscegenation of stepping into a black host to highlight the distance between whiteness and blackness, and preventing signs of actual miscegenation between black and white actors from appearing on the screen. All of this was wrapped in the package of a revived minstrel legacy.

As a medium in which the Negro image is driven by a white actor, blackface suggests “that blackness may be so monstrous it can only be signified but not directly represented” (Willis 7-8).  The Negro as a proper caricature according to the white American narrative could only be executed from behind a mask of cork. The device’s “function was to veil the humanity of Negroes thus reduced to a sign,” and was presented in two varieties: realistic, which was used to represent an “authentic” (stereotyped) black individual, and minstrel, whose exaggerated white mouth revealed the coexistence of blackness and whiteness in a singular being (qtd. in Willis 25). Both forms of the mask were used to signify a sort of uncivilized, irrational childishness. This “reversion to primitivism fashioned American identity,” as memory could be tapped through mimesis (Rogin 1052).

Blackface as a form of nostalgia became clearer with the invention of the talkie, as debuted by The Jazz Singer in 1927. With sound, it became more difficult to realistically imitate the Negro (unless an actor was gifted with “an authentically Negro voice”). As a consequence, the minstrel mask came to monopolize the black image on the screen—Whiteness had to be brought out further to coexist with blackness. By giving it the sole purpose of signifying nostalgia, Hollywood “made blackface an essential element in the evocation of an American vernacular, a cultural miscegenation at once recognized and denied” (Stanfield 438). Curiously, those who took advantage of this miscegenation were immigrants, who had been absent during the period of slavery that so heavily defined their performance, but nonetheless made up the majority of film moguls in a time in which it was still viewed as a less-than-desirable industry. To be clear, the interracial relationship in question was not literal, although it is worth noting that the casting of white actors in blackface allowed for the avoidance of contact between white actresses and black actors (to put things into perspective, half a century later, Emmett Till was lynched after a white woman accused him of looking at her and whistling). Interestingly, while used to avoid miscegenation, blackface was also used to achieve said miscegenation: “racial cross-dressing facilitate[d] intermarriage, not between whites and people of color, but between whites divided by ethnic lines” (Rogin 1061).

By wearing a burnt cork mask, one was able to mark one’s true distance from blackness. And through the act of creating a distinct, stigmatized image of the Negro, the immigrant could expand the definition of whiteness to the point in which he could slide into a pocket of inclusion. “The trajectory of minstrelsy was to create an[d] erase whiteness and then to succumb to a mere emphasis on the vulgarity, grotesqueness and stupidity of the black characters it created,” ultimately marking the African wildness and subhuman slavery of blackness as the antithesis of Americanism (Stanfield 411). If one must wear a disguise to appear un-American, there must be Americanness (whiteness) underneath. One ethnic signifier was used to free the Irishman, the Jew, the Italian, the Pole, of his own ethnic markers, like a unifying right of passage—a privileged ambiguity that only Europeans could have. With all of this considered, it should not be too surprising that the first talkie, The Jazz Singer, plays upon the struggle between an immigrant’s past identity and the erasure thereof through minstrelsy. Simply put, in a nativist America, immigrant filmmakers exploited the black identity to create a universalizing erasure of the boundaries of ethnic history—”the technique that helped destroy black figures on the screen served to preach the ethic of the melting pot and a mutual respect for group differences” (Cripps 38).

Considering the significance of the fiftieth anniversary of the Civil War’s connection to the inflammation of harmful stereotypes of black Americans through a nostalgic frame of Southern lore, there is perhaps no better film to begin a blackface analysis with than D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation. Claiming to be a historical account of the Reconstruction era, the 1915 film depicts a dystopian America in which emancipated slaves, with the help of abolitionist Austin Stoneman (Ralph Lewis), essentially reverse the racial positions in society by taking power, implementing black rights (“Forty acres and a mule for every colored citizen;” “Equal Rights, Equal Politics, Equal Marriage”), and disenfranchising whites of their own liberties. To legitimize its authenticity, the picture has been sprinkled with “historical facsimiles,” designed to be direct windows to the past, but one must have one’s doubts when one of the said reproductions involves a Congressional meeting rife with blacks throwing down on watermelon and fried chicken legs, and swilling bottles of booze with their bare feet propped on their desks. In short, The Birth of a Nation is an accumulation of constructed justifications for the “heroism” of the Ku Klux Klan, (“the organization that saved the South from the anarchy of black rule”) and, in a greater sense, the Lost Cause of the Old South (Dixon).

The film claims that its mission is to shed a light of truth upon “the agony which the South endured that a nation might be born” (Dixon). It depicts the South as a martyr, a victim of sorts. To turn his use of Southern lore into Southern truth, Griffith incorporates excerpts from Woodrow Wilson’s “History of the American People”:

…Adventurers swarmed out of the North, as much the enemies of the one race of the other, to cozen, beguile, and use the negroes…In the villages the negroes were the office holders, men who knew none of the uses of authority, except its insolences…The policy of the congressional leaders wrought…a veritable overthrown of civilization in the South…in their determination to ‘put the white South under the heel of the black South. The white men were roused by a mere instinct of self-preservation…until at last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the Southern country (qtd. in Dixon)

Not only do such excerpts help The Birth of a Nation stake its claim as the true American backstory—they also point out blacks as the “other,” the inherent “anti”-figures in the roots of the American identity whose inclusion in the said identity would be detrimental to the nation. Blackface, therefore, signifies both the control of white bodies over both the presentation of history and the image of blacks as a way of asserting and maintaining power. Although Griffith uses copresence for purposes of “authenticity,” it is important to observe the matter in which the casting choice was executed. While actual black people are plentiful in the background (causing a more socially-aware audience to wonder how they agreed to participate in a film that glorifies the terrorist group that wants them dead), every black character with agency, authority, significant action, or direct interaction with a white character is played by a white person. Not only does the blackface emphasize the paradox between the two races in question—it could potentially symbolize the dangerous notion of a black person’s attempt to internalize the white position and mentality (one-person miscegenation) in this narrative of reversal.

On the other hand, the blackface actors were used to prevent miscegenation, or even the thought of it occurring. This is particularly important in a film in which the greatest possible evil is interracial marriage (and, therefore, sex). After all, it is Flora Cameron’s (Mae Marsh) spilled blood, thanks to Gus’s attempt at miscegenation, that literally ignites the birthing flame of the KKK—the Confederate flag, gifted by her brother, Ben (Henry Walthall), “bears the red stain of the life of a Southern woman, a priceless sacrifice on the altar of an outraged civilization” is tied to “the ancient symbol of an unconquered race of men, the fiery cross of old Scotland’s hills” (Dixon). The martyrdom of white American innocence distinguishes blacks and whites as separate species, whose unification would equate to bestiality. Considering the aforementioned case of Till, a black actor explicitly portraying a sexual predator of a white actress four decades earlier would have been unfathomable—the film would be practicing the very crime that it preaches against. Cork, a wig, and primitive behavior are enough to signify blackness to the audience while avoiding the scandal of intimacy between a white woman and a black man.

Even in a film that claims to use “realistic blackface,” the controlling power of cork leads not only to fundamental stereotypes of black people, but those that fit the minstrel image as well. Piedmont, “where life runs in a quaintly way that is to be no more,” is depicted as a sort of fairyland, with chivalrous Southern gentlemen, “daughter[s] of the South, trained in the manners of the old school,” and, of course, happy slaves (Dixon). Both in the town center and the village-like slave quarters of the Cameron household, black characters (“authentic” and otherwise) dance with protruding buttocks and laze the day away idly. When their master’s family visits them, the slaves try to follow them as the former party departs, and Ben decides to humor them in a paternal fashion. The cotton fields have been romanticized as “Love Valley,” in which we see slaves toiling with smiles on their faces. And in the Cameron’s home, we see a carefree pickaninny speeding past the ever-faithful Mammy, whom we can identify just by taking in her maternalistic demeanor, her quick temper, and her blackened hands glued to her ample hips, which are perpetually thrust forward with attitude.

The minstrel image can even be extended to the characters that embody the “bad Negro.” Childlike, maybe even animalistic, in their mannerisms and rationale, the black characters who corrupt the South spend three hours and fifteen minutes exhibiting their incapacity to handle their newfound equality. For instance, when the freedmen are enrolled to vote, one blackface voter comments, “Ef I doan’ get ‘nuf franchise to fill mah bucket, I doan’ want it nohow,” demonstrating the infiltration of incompetence into the mythological pillar of American democracy (Dixon). What is even more dangerous than a “bad negro,” however, is a mulatto. Silas Lynch (George Siegmann), who becomes the Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina and the leader of the blacks, as well as Stoneman’s housekeeper, Lydia (Mary Alden), are just as devious as they are hypersexual—the result of the fatal fusion of white intelligence with black immorality, and an omen for what a future of legalized miscegenation could hold. Lydia shamelessly flirts with every white man within a ten-foot radius. Though the mulatto characters are not as exaggerated as their black counterparts, they are still heavily stereotyped: Lydia may remind one of a snake, her unblinking eyes bucked and conniving, her tongue greedily licking her lips. The prospect of evil never fails to give her an orgasm. Silas, empowered by Stoneman’s doctrine, weaponizes his white cleverness and his black predatoriness to entrap the abolitionist’s daughter, Elsie, in his office, while the latter quivers under a black veil that reminds one of the Virgin Mary (in case the audience did not pick up on her threatened white virginal purity). Interestingly, the designation of mulattos as a crossbred species teeters upon the horizon of the domination of hypodescent.

According to Griffith, “the bringing of the African to America planted the first seed of disunion” (Dixon). Thanks to the incorporation of blacks into American society “the former enemies of North and South are united again in common defense of their Aryan birthright” (Dixon). Whites, regardless of heritage and ethnic identity, band together under one Union of universal American whiteness. And with every mile that a mask of cork places between whites and blacks, two miles are removed between whites of different geographical backgrounds. With this unifying device in mind, it may clarify the significance of blackface to the “ethnic” protagonist of The Jazz Singer.

When one considers its themes, the fact that The Jazz Singer (1927) was the first “talking picture” is symbolic in itself—the film that debuted the modern presentation of its medium just happened to tell the “all American” story of the duality of New and Old World homelands, histories, and identities; a film in which the use of blackface serves as just as much as a key pivotal device as the technological innovation of synchronized sound itself. The film opens upon the bustling New York ghetto, where Cantor Rabinowitz (Warner Oland) a man who is “stubbornly held to the ancient traditions of his race,” resides with his wife, Sarah (Eugenie Besserer) and Jakie, who is played by Al Jolson (Raphaelson). From the outset, we see that, despite the fact that the Rabinowitz’s have been Cantors for five generations, thirteen-year-old Jakie (Robert Gordon) skips out on his chanting duties at temple to sing jazz at a music venue. And when the deviant bursts into “My Gal Sal,” the world hears voice in a motion picture for the first time—the voice of one who betrays his ethnic identity for a more universal (white) American one.

After bearing the brunt of his father’s whip as punishment for abandoning his duties and his ethnic identity, Jakie runs away, disowned by his “Papa” and thus by his Jewish heritage. The next time we see him, “Jakie Rabinowitz ha[s] become Jack Robin—the Cantor’s son, a jazz singer” (Raphaelson). As Jakie ascends in his career and falls for a gentile, we see that he has spatially and temporally left behind tradition to embrace American modernity and assimilation—he is not of the fifth generation of Cantors, but of the first generation of jazz singers, of Americans. What is significant is the alternation between sound and silence throughout the film: the only moments in which we taste this innovation is when Jakie is performing as an innovation himself, a product of the New World.

When the jazz singer finally gets his break on Broadway, he must choose between performing on opening night and singing “Kol Nidre” on the Day of Atonement to be redeemed in the eyes of his dying father (i.e. his faith). Jakie claims show business itself as a religion. The next time we see him, he is blackening up in his dressing room. As soon as he puts on his “nappy” wig, his unblinking eyes widen to the breadth of his affected smile, and the music amplifies into a grand climactic chord—he has become a minstrel, and thus a new man. Even so, Jakie’s Jewish identity struggles to resurface, like a second soul within one host, which is visualized when his corked face peers into the mirror to find the reflection of a cantor. Americanness and Jewishness are, therefore, established as mutually exclusive identities. The blackface has rendered him unrecognizable to the point in which his perplexed mother, upon glimpsing his darkened, vacant grin, reacts, “Jakie–this ain’t you?” (Raphaelson). And as Jakie gleans an overflowing potency of life from his black mask, his father’s life wanes within his pale body.

Traditionally, a blackface minstrel is a little too jolly, a little too loose, a step or four below human, but Jackie’s blackface performances are almost plaintive. In both “Mother, I Still Have You” and “Mammy,” he sings of his mother, his past, his origins—himself. He emphasizes the movements of his white mouth as he sings, for the black mask enables his inner voice, his subtext, to come into the open. Jakie does not use blackface so much as a form of mimesis than an actual identity—his songs are of mourning and nostalgia for a lost homeland, the Old World, paralleling with the nostalgia that a mask of cork signifies for the Old South, as he swaps an ethnic heritage for a white American one. As a “melting pot,” whiteness cannot be contained by differentiating signifiers of black skin and white teeth, of prayer shawls and beards. By taking on blacks as the other, as an alter ego, a disguise, a simultaneous rejection and purging of the self, Jakie engages in the group difference of whiteness through the act of negation. In The Jazz Singer, blackness is used as an object, a device, commodified to suit the needs of helping a member of a white ethnic community deal with his own identity crisis. The racially fluid Jakie co-opts and labels himself using the first American musical genre at the expense of the very people who created it, and we never see him remove his mask again—he has signed a binding Faustian contract of complicity with racial stratification to ultimately become one with his country.

Unlike its predecessors, Babes in Arms (1939), a tribute to the very medium that it itself has ironically replaced, uses blackface purely for its surface-level purpose of capturing the bygone era of a quainter, simpler, happier America. The film stakes its claim in nostalgia only a minute and twenty seconds in—it is 1921, “during that happy yesterday of entertainment which was called vaudeville” (McGowan). As the camera pans the lobby of the Palace Theatre, the first face we see in the midst of the crowd is a mask of cork: a portrait of a bespectacled Joe Moran in a hat and suit with a stringy Southern tie. His white mouth spreads across his caricature-like face, and his arms and white gloved hands are spread outward. The camera pans to another portrait, also of Moran, but strikingly different: while he wears the same hat, he is not in a disguise; rather, he gives off a pensive, multilayered persona. Moran the performer, like Jakie, must rest within this blackface figure, but the former uses the mask to reclaim a past America, while the latter uses it to convert to a modern America.

What is interesting is that the innovation that allows Jolson’s character to realize his American Dream is the very thing that undoes the lives of Moran, his wife, Florrie, and the other members of the vaudeville community. Years later, the retired performers band together in a final attempt to revive their lost profession with a road show comeback. Now, however, they must contend with their children (all of whom have inherited their parents’ talents), who demand to be included in the scheme, but the older acts claim that they have a bigger selling point—once again, there is a generational struggle between the old and the new. However, after their “One Day More”-esque revolutionary anthem of “Babes in Arms, we realize that, instead of embracing the newer forms of performance, the youths’ idea of rebellion is to pay tribute to tradition. To avoid being forced into school to pursue trades and to ultimately save vaudeville, the new generation, led by the Moran’s son, Mickey (Mickey Rooney) and his sweetheart, Patsy Barton (Judy Garland), uses a minstrel show as their ultimate solution.

The show, held in an outdoor stage similar to the setting of 19^th century performances, opens with Patsy, who sings a reminiscent tune (“My Daddy Was a Minstrel Man”) about her desire to walk down “memory lane” and resurrect minstrel shows. Suddenly, a parade of minstrels come marching in barefooted, swollen with hyperbolic enthusiasm and happy-go-lucky energy as they sing the traditional minstrel tune of “Camptown Races.” Signs proclaiming “Dixie Minstrels” and “The Pride of the Southland” wave above their straw hats. When they reach the stage, a tap dancing pickaninny emerges, flanked by haphazardly overalled boys and banjo players in suits and top hats. She, along with her fellow minstrels, wears a white outfit that contrasts with her black skin and medusa-like braids.

The curtains then open onto a scene of the “Big House”: suited men dance with tambourines and a group of chorus girls clad in puffy white dresses and miniature hats resembling the original Minnie Mouse sing “Alabamy Bound.” The only one who is not in blackface is the master, who, dressed in all white, perches on a throne, his arms spread out in a paternalistic fashion, to whom his devoted slaves stand at attention. Calm and mature, the master converses with Mickey and Patsy, referring to them as Mr. Bones and Mr. Tambo, a pair of characters who served as clown-like devices in traditional minstrel shows. The young duo sport matching lopsided top hats, broad white mouths surrounded by pitch black skin, and white gloves. Like Jakie, they, along with the minstrel chorus, choose movements that emphasize their white details, from their gleaming white teeth to their white attire. As they laugh a hyena’s laugh, their faces scrunch up into their unblinking, bugged eyes, which roll every which way. And, unlike Jakie, their voices don’t expose the people beneath the disguise—rather, their shrieking, counterfeit Ebonics operate as direct mimesis. The cork does not signify an alter ego, but a pure engagement of the nostalgic by way of the other. All the while, the master just looks down on his slaves with folded arms, humoring them with a smirking face as they scream about their minimal intelligence and sexual promiscuity. Ultimately, this parent-child relationship between the master and slave secures the romantic image of a happy plantation in the Old South—one that bares an odd resemblance to the Cameron’s home.

And, as with Birth of a Nation, the “babes’” show includes a hypersexual mulatto. Patty reenters with lightened skin and bouncing Victorian curls, exhibiting what some might call “realistic” blackface. But, as she is still a minstrel, one may observe that the signifiers have been relocated from her face to her…rear. On Patty’s black French maid-like costume (that barely covers her thighs), layers white fabric have been gathered in a heap right around her posterior. In case the audience is not already looking at Patty’s backside, she thrusts her buttocks outward as she dances about and flirts. Twirling her parasol, Patty joins Mickey to sing, “I’m Just Wild About Harry,” ironically appropriated from Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake’s Shuffle Along (1927), the first Broadway musical that was created and performed by black people without degrading them. Once again, as with The Jazz Singer, music intended for racial uplift becomes a mimetic, distancing device.

Although the performance is ruined by the rain, immediately washing away the cork, it ultimately gets the youths discovered by Harry Maddox, a Broadway producer. Maddox tells Mickey that their performance is a sign of the American Dream, and the latter concurs: “It’s more than just a show; say, it’s everybody in the country” (McGowan). In other words, the minstrel show and the narrative of the American identity must be codependent. How curious it is, then, that what signifies foundational Americanism cannot be executed without binding blackness to slavery. Beyond its surface-level function of representing the black American, blackface serves to signify and perpetuate the Southern lore of innocence that vindicates America from its realistically inhumane past while continuing to embrace racial stratification.

Blackface works because it fixes the “truth of racial difference in its bodily inscription, and this makes of the black body itself, and its physiological characteristics, the terminal point of the will to truth or regime of truth regarding race” (Hall 62). In early American cinema, it has been used as a cut-and-paste function to conveniently alter the American memory and identity through signification. The appropriation (and exclusion) of black bodies endows a white individual with the narrative authority to justify racial hierarchies by naturalizing racial characteristics, while dissolving ethnic boundaries by broadening the melting pot of white Americanism. A little bit of transformative cork is all that is needed to help white America remember its identity by way of negation. The legacy of blackface—be it for purposes of nostalgia, assimilation, or realism—is that its efforts to signify blackness has turned the characteristics (albeit hyperbolized) of the “anti-American” “into the objects of psychic fantasy in our subjective lives as in our institutional lives and everyday social practices” (Hall 70).

 

Works Cited

Cripps, Thomas. Slow Fade to Black: the Negro in American Film, 1900-1942. Oxford University Press,

       1993.

Dixon, Thomas. The Birth of a Nation. Performance by Lillian Gish, et al., David W. Griffith Corp.,

     1915.

Hall, Stuart. “Race: The Sliding Signifier.” The Fateful Triangle: Race, Ethnicity, Nation. Ed. Kobena

     Mercer. Harvard UP, 2017. Print.

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     to Talking Pictures.” The Journal of American History, vol. 79, no. 3, 1992, pp. 1050, ProQuest        

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Think Pink: Barbie and the American Female Identity

For the past 57 years, Barbie has served as a standard of sorts, a model female, just as there was already an established model family at the time. And just as families would do with shows such as Leave it to Beaver or even Keeping up with the Kardashians, many individuals, whether they like her or not, cannot help but compare themselves to Barbie, often instilling a desire to change themselves in her image, or change her in theirs. Out of such comparisons has arisen what is perhaps the most ambiguous piece of plastic, attracting ample amounts of admiration and criticism. Although she is still admittedly a work in progress, Barbie has the potential to inspire motivation in children, and her progression is a reflection of our own improvements over time as a society.

Since her conception in 1959, the Barbie doll has reigned “the icon of female beauty and the American dream” (Kuther 39). The brainchild of Ruth Handler and named after her daughter, Barbara, Barbie stems from a less child-friendly background. Ironically, the innocent and exemplary girl-next-door was modeled after Bild Lilli, a shamelessly racy German pinup cartoon whose (adult-catered) doll incarnation, as Ann Ruth Turkel puts it in her article “All about Barbie: Distortions of a Transitional Object,” served as “a blond, pixie-nosed specimen of an Aryan ideal”(Turkel 170). Given her saucier roots, it is no surprise that, upon the doll’s debut at the New York Toy Fair, the swimsuit-clad teen model with a mature face and side-glancing eyes would become a target of scrutiny. In “Pretty, Plastic Barbie: Forever What We Make Her,” an interview conducted by NPR’s Kim Masters, Barbie specialist and collectible-doll dealer Joe Blitman states that “parents did respond so negatively [to Barbie’s breasts] that Sears, the key retailer of the day initially refused to sell the doll” (Blitman). Thus marked the beginnings of a fashion doll that has gone on to be more “analyzed, politicized and demonized” than just about any other plaything (Blitman).

Since the 19^th century, “doll play was used in…America to teach girls important social rituals, information about fashion and clothing, appropriate feminine submissiveness, and maternal devotion”—Barbie served as a break from this trend, presenting child consumers with more role-playing options than a toy such as a baby doll (Turkel 167). Mattel’s leading lady was a unique figure who encouraged girls to imagine a future beyond domesticity, a new role model of plastic. This is where the line between detriment and benefit is chalked in. In “Early Adolescents’ Experiences With, and Views Of, Barbie,” Tara L. Kuther and Erin McDonald conducted a study in which focus groups of adolescent boys and girls shared their insights on the doll. Most of the participants were white and came from middle class suburbia. The first focus group was comprised of early adolescent females who described “experiences [that] support the notion that play with Barbie dolls entails enacting adult social scripts, and perhaps shaping girls’ developing self-concept through the internalization of stereotyped feminine scripts…[in other words,] play with Barbie dolls may influence gender role development” (Kuther 50, 44).

Barbie’s impact on girls’ self-identification has generated concern throughout the decades, especially because of the proximity to which she mirrors the gender-based issues that our culture has long been trying to grapple with. As Mary F. Rogers, describes in her book, Barbie Culture, some believe that Barbie promotes “the idea of women as decorative, mindless, overly fashion conscious, and rather ridiculous” (Rogers 18). Elements of the toy’s presentation have been ridiculed for promoting female stereotypes, even after the age of mid-20^th century’s stringent gender roles. Neda Ulaby offers a few examples of surprisingly retrogressive messages marketed through some of Barbie’s sportier, more recent products in her NPR report, “From Dream Bride To Doll For Boys: The Evolution Of The Barbie Ad.” An ad from the early 1980s depicts two girls engaged in a “doll fight” between Ken and Barbie over the latter’s hairstyle, and “when Barbie wins the fight — about how to wear her own hair — they decide she needs to fix Ken a sandwich.” Later, in 1992, Teen Talk Barbies were released, complete with phrases such as “I love to shop, don’t you?” “Meet me at the mall” “Do you have a crush on anyone?” and the one that pulled the biggest trigger: “Math is tough” (Ulaby). The fact that, decades after one of America’s most extreme eras of gender-related stereotypes, a doll made to influence girls literally delivers messages that help to keep such stereotypes alive is worrisome. When a child sees her older role model confine herself within the generalizations of the female sex, she runs the risk of internalizing the prioritization of vanity, possibly leaving her other potential attributes (such as math) untapped.

One of the doll’s biggest curiosities is that she embodies a multifaceted take on gender—she “represents a society that values females, especially teens and young women, as ornaments, yet simultaneously offers tentative encouragement to explore non-traditional roles,” as seen in her gargantuan resumé and satisfaction with her relationship status (Rogers 109). It must be remembered that Barbie is a figure who, introduced at a time when the female’s sole job was to season casseroles and pies with wedding-banded fingers, trip over a vacuum chord in pumps, and birth-and-manage tykes in an effort to further please a dominant husband was at its peak, shamelessly enjoys her role as a perpetually happy, unmarried young woman who never has to put her dreams on hold for anyone, and serves as the only one who dictates her life. Breaking from the feminine mystique that dominated the era of her conception, Barbie “partakes of the male privilege to be an individual unto one’s self and to forswear self-sacrifice in favor of self-actualization” (Rogers 39). While many ambitious women are labeled as “bitches,” the doll dodges such scorn by maintaining her extreme sense of femininity.

Touting what is perhaps the most impressive LinkedIn profile, Barbie has taken on the roles of pilot, astronaut, CEO, Olympian, Marine Corps sergeant, computer engineer, architect—the list is endless (Careers). But no matter how gritty the task may sound, Barbie always manages to squeeze in pink, glitter, and glamorous accessories with every career, thus shifting the focus from her intelligent surgery skills to her luxurious hair. Even Police Officer Barbie finds a way to work ample femininity (and even maternity) into law enforcement, her gun and handcuffs replaced by a supplemented “‘glittery evening dress’ to wear to the awards dance where she will get the “Best Police Officer Award for her courageous acts in the community,” all contained in a box that advertises her affinity for “teach[ing] safety tips to children” (Rogers 14). The fact that beauty is what ultimately takes center stage is a cause of concern for many, for it “implies that women can exhibit all the signs of traditional femininity, including the demeanor of niceness, and smoothly succeed in male-dominated professions” (Rogers 17). But does this need to feminize the workforce not deliver a message that confirms the idea that professions are truly inherently masculine? Such an implication could also be interpreted by girls as an encouragement to focus more on vanity than more substantial attributes when aiming for success. In addition, Barbie’s apparent effort to simultaneously embrace and break away from traditional gender roles while serving as a model for the ideal woman can potentially impact youth’s views on their own gender identity. Some believe that “girls may torture Barbie because they’re ambivalent about the feminine ideals that she embodies…[and the] devaluation of Barbie dolls may symbolize girls’ loss of voice and self, or their ‘silencing’” (Blitman, Kuther 50).

Barbie’s one-foot-in-one-foot-out approach to gender roles is reflected in the ambivalent sentiments she inspires in her consumers. Perhaps society would not be so concerned with a toy’s every move if Mattel didn’t encourage young children to “be like Barbie.” If a child molds her own goals after a doll’s, then it is important that the said doll is a beneficial influence. There is a divide between whether or not the public believes that Barbie has properly fulfilled her duties. An effort to follow Barbie’s example cannot be achieved until she reflects us as a people, at some degree. This is where even more complications come into play: Barbie is privileged; in every case except for her gender, “she belongs to those groupings that have the upper hand or at least command respect in modern society,” and she dwells in a “self-centered, superficial world where femininity constrains and restricts, where white people prevail, where heterosexuality gets served up as the ideal sexual orientation, and middle-class lifestyles are celebrated time and again” (Rogers 37, 150-1). Immediately, a good portion of our nation’s denizens are excluded from the club in which children can credibly dream to become her.  Barbie’s “appeal may thus lie in the assertions of privilege she represents”—just as the model family was an intangible goal for a large number of Americans in the past, only a select few can make it past the limits of being Barbie’s best friend to embody the icon herself (Rogers 37).

“Our unconscious and conscious fantasies are shaped by our culture,” where race, gender, and socio-economic status continue to dictate the levels of dignity and respect one can expect to enjoy in our contemporary American society (Turkel 165). When Barbie first appeared on the shelves, the only diversity she exhibited was a choice between blonde and brunette hair color. Reflecting an era in which society was moving toward racial inclusion, the Civil Rights movement saw an introduction of Christie, a rather unattractive and unrealistic African American doll, in the late 1960s. She never made it into the commercials, even when ads began to feature minority children in the 1970s (Ulaby). Two decades after Christie’s debut came Teresa, Barbie’s Latina friend, who was criticized for her limited depictions as “sex object, athlete, shopper, and Barbie wannabe” instead of a wholesome girl with a career (Rogers 51).

Despite Mattel’s efforts to shift towards ethnic inclusion, many consumers feel that it is not enough. There is still an ethnic imbalance when it comes to the availability of dolls on the shelves, especially when it comes to higher end, limited edition collectibles. Universally, children (and adults) continue to view blonde Barbie as the authentic, most beautiful one; all of her “ethnic” incarnations have been perpetually sentenced as “others.” In the franchise’s books, films, and even live character appearances, Barbie is exclusively blonde. Eliana Dockterman is the writer of “Barbie’s Got a New Body,” a Time cover story that describes the journalist’s visits with Mattel’s mother-daughter focus groups. After being presented with an array of different dolls, when asked which one “is Barbie, the girls invariably point[ed] to a blonde” (Dockterman). Consequentially, this trend both contributes to and “reflects the racial and ethnic hierarchies where ‘white’ prevails as clean, respectable, successful, and morally upright; healthy and attractive, too” (Rogers 50). Blonde Barbie’s continual dominance of the female posterchild’s availability and representation in the midst of emerging multicultural counterparts exists alongside a similar dominance in films, magazines, and even daily commodities, such as beauty products, “flesh” Crayola’s, and “nude”-colored clothing. It follows that “people’s commonplace preferences for white Barbie may thus reflect racialized notions at work in white-dominated societies” (Rogers 50).

As previously mentioned, beyond race, Barbie also embodies the American ideal of class: she may be the “girl-next-door,” but Barbie indulges in the epitome of comfort. Each year, the doll purchases a new pink Dream House, enjoys an expansive amount of vehicles (including a private jet), possibly owns the world’s largest and most glamorous wardrobe, and has an undying infatuation with shopping for even more things. It is true that Barbie’s extreme consumerism is supported by an “endless cash flow,” earned in her curious method of “having occupations and even vacations without having visible work” (Rogers 88-9). Barbie has the unique ability to simultaneously represent both the attainable and the impossible. She broadcasts a belief that anyone can easily achieve success in all aspects of life, without having to sacrifice one’s amusement, or, frankly, free-time. Barbie’s luxurious lifestyle is curiously marketed as tangible, even though it serves as a stark contrast to reality—in this way, the toy is carrying on the baton of the American Dream (junior), backing the idea of infinite possibility without obstacles, so long as one continues to “dream.” A number of the participants in Kuther and McDonald’s test “reported that Barbie dolls offer positive role models because they allow girls to imagine a variety of careers and practice female adult roles,” but some still explained that “the sheer number of careers and her physique make the doll appear phony” (Kuther 48-9).

It cannot be denied that “over the years, Mattel’s tried to make Barbie into a positive role model, using a “language of infinite possibility” as its primary rhetorical device—it bedazzles its advertisements, entertainment media, and merchandise with the idea that “Girls Can Do Anything; Barbie Can Go Anywhere and Be Anything…messages [that] mock the realities that flesh-and-blood girls and women come up against” (Blitman, Rogers 150). The brand discredits the realities of limitations faced by women, even in the 21^st century. One could view such a mentality as hope and defiance, or as willful ignorance of the truth. If Barbie really does have the power to influence girls to reach higher in a male’s world, her fans will still be faced with the fine print: the general fact that women must still fight to be valued as equally as their male counterparts in the workforce. But perhaps the fine print is not Mattel’s concern; perhaps, given its innocent target audience, the manufacturer prefers to “narrate not the truth of people’s lives but the stuff of their fantasies” (Rogers 150). The catering of an idealistic lifestyle to a given audience is not new; Barbie is simply yet another model added to a long history of sitcoms, advertisements, and other forms of media used to depict a utopia slathered in labels that claim normalcy and attainability. While it is true that the public has the ability to discern between fact and fiction, the number of consumers who accept optimal fantasies is so great that the said ideals have become a prominent part of the American culture. One may hesitate to spoil a child’s innocence with unattractive realities, but delivering a myth of hyperbolized opportunity and equality could potentially create a harder fall when the child grows up to discover that life does not always satisfy what is desired. Still, one could argue that the innocence of Barbie’s target audience is precisely why she does not embody reality, satisfying the primary factor of child’s play: imagination. Perhaps it is when the worlds of imagination and reality blur together that there will be cause for concern in the future.

In general, Barbie’s lack of realistic attributes makes her a problematic role model for girls who wish to view her as an ideal human being. An early adolescent female in Kuther and McDonald’s study reported, “I always thought Barbie was so cool; [as] I got older, I learned that it’s impossible to be Barbie. She’s been everywhere, [even] in outer space. She’s the perfect blonde. She has the perfect blue eyes. She’s like everything!” (Kuther 43). There lies one of Barbie’s greatest faults: she is too perfect. It is one thing that perfection is purely subjective; it’s another thing for it to be a standard that is literally unattainable. Young girls, and even adults, view “Barbie as the image of perfection, and perhaps too perfect, yet she defines physical beauty”—why do we appoint someone (or in this case, something) to the role of standard-setter when she presents us with an ideal that is impossible for a human to meet (Kuther 43)?

Numerous participants in Kuther and McDonald’s study reported that Barbie was a negative influence on girls, for reasons related to health, “beauty, body image, and self-concept” (Kuther 48). Consumers have complained that Barbie and her accessories have contributed to girls’ concerns about their physique. For example, “Babysitter Barbie” comes with a book called “How to Lose Weight,” with the advice, “Don’t eat” on the back cover. In 1965, a slumber party version of Barbie included “a bathroom scale permanently set at 110 pounds…[while] Ken[’s] pajama set included a glass of milk and a pastry” (Turkel 171). In a society dominated by an obsession with the everlasting road to thinness, it is a given that young females, particularly around the age of adolescents, are often faced with an onslaught of eating disorders and a low sense of physical self-esteem. A life-sized Barbie would have a 39″-21 “-33” figure (Turkel 171). This fact has put her at the top of the suspect list of poor-body-image perpetrators.

But we must ask ourselves: Can we blame a doll for societal body image issues? We cannot pretend as though beauty standards were born at the time of Barbie’s conception. For centuries before even plastic was invented, females have been challenged with meeting the contemporaneous beauty ideal. And at the same time that Barbie was introduced, mass media was still taking flight, as the television and technicolor began to appear in an increasing amount of households. As Dr. Reka Kassay, an educator at Babes-Bolyai University, states in her essay, “Barbie Tales in the Lives of Primary School-Aged Children,” “the implicit question is whether these popular characters embody the prevalent values of a society or if they offer a model to follow” (Kassay 264). In other words, perhaps Barbie just happens to fit an image that society promotes instead of dictating what should be promoted. That being said, when searching for the root of the problem, perhaps we need to look in the mirror instead of a piece of plastic.

A boy in Kuther and McDonald’s study argued, “I blame Barbie for the Britney Spears and Jennifer Lopez craze. I also blame Barbie for the craze in implants and liposuction to become good looking. I also think that Barbie has made a demand . . . for beauty salons and operations to become beautiful” (Kuther 48). Although there are many individuals who would agree with the adolescent, as stated previously, it is important to shift our focus to human beings and the culture that we generate as a community. “Advertising with real human beings,” movie stars praised and sexualized for their trim figures, airbrushed fashion photography, and the like “[propagate] the beauty myth more effectively than any doll.” (Rogers 18). Physical insecurities can also stem from the household, for “mothers [can] consciously and unconsciously project and inject their fears, anxieties, and loathing of their bodies onto their daughters” (Turkel 194).  We are the ones who are responsible for the negative stereotypes and body image issues that permeate America, and Barbie is simply a reflection of us and our ideas. Barbie doesn’t set the standards; we set them first, and it is up to us how seriously we are willing to take them. The fact that so many of us are concerned enough about our self-image to allow a child’s toy to make us insecure is a problem in itself. Mothers may feel that Barbie afflicts one’s self-image, yet they are the ones who choose “to transmit Barbie to the next generation” (Pollitt). How curious it is that many of the people who antagonize Barbie are the very ones who are directly funding her lifespan.

Taking matters even further, blaming Barbie for the position of females in society is every bit a misguided action as blaming her for America’s prevalent obsession with vanity. In schools, “curricula continue to marginalize girls and women, and cheer leading remains a socially approved activity for young women, even while their athletic programs get shortchanged,” yet parents and educators alike choose to use Barbie as a scapegoat for any resulting conflicts with gender limitations, rather than actively making changes themselves (Rogers 151).  Religious institutions, career outlooks and opportunities, public policies, athletic culture (particularly football), and government representation are also guilty of tightening gender boundaries. “Most of us find it far easier to criticize cultural icons like Barbie than to tackle the institutionalized unfairness that makes the sexes ‘opposites’ of one another” than to take ownership of our own faults (Rogers 152). As of the pre-2016 election period in which this essay is written, America has never seen a Madame President, and females are barred from ordination—is a doll to take the blame? Living beings have the ability to mend the flaws that we struggle with in society; a doll cannot.

In the midst of the endless criticism she faces, Barbie unfalteringly exhibits one of her strongest characteristics: perseverance. The brand is undoubtedly not without its mistakes, but it continuously evolves to address and move beyond its faults, something that America’s society can most certainly learn from. Currently, Mattel is navigating the path of promoting Barbie as a commodity to be enjoyed by both genders. Although many of them confessed to torturing a female relative’s Barbie, the boys tested by Kuther and McDonald “often simultaneously professed indifference and curiosity about the doll…[due to the fact that] they were ‘not allowed’ to play with the dolls because they were not gender appropriate” (Kuther 47). In the classroom, children are more often presented with films and stories with a male protagonist than a female one, because the former is viewed as “gender-neutral.” When it comes to such tales, “it is quite typical for children that girls do have male favourites…but it is quite embarrassing for boys to like female characters.” However, in a study she conducted, Kassay discovered that several (although still a minority of) little boys from a nearby urban neighborhood “admitted” that in fact they liked Barbie tales (Kassay 277). On a similar note, a few of the boys from Kuther and McDonald’s focus group exhibited a desire to play with the dolls. A boy from a family of all male children shared, “I would have played with [Barbie] by like having the guy go to work and the mom staying home and taking care of the kids and the house. I would have got a big house too” (Kuther 47).

This past November, Mattel made a move that America did not have on its radar: the casting of a little boy in a Moschino Barbie commercial. The ad is the brainchild of fashion designer Jeremy Scott, whom the boy represents. While imagining the commercial, Scott “felt it was natural to have a little boy representing for all the little boys like [him]self who played with Barbies growing up” (Sherter). Michelle Chidoni, an employee of Mattel’s communications department, confirmed that the company did not face any internal controversy over the casting decision, because “Barbie is a brand that’s all about imagination and storytelling, whether you’re a boy or a girl. We believe that play pattern is relevant to both genders.”” (qtd in Ulaby). If that has always been the case, then it is curious that it took 57 years for Mattel to incorporate the opposite sex in any of its marketing. But if Chidoni’s words are true, then perhaps we can expect more gender-inclusive advertising in the future. If or when Barbie is viewed as a toy for both sexes, how will the expanded target audience affect the way that we view the dolls as gender-role models for the child consumer? Since the doll was originally created with a young girl in mind, the future may bring changes and new messages that respond to our culture and society’s evolution of the roles of both genders, and even the increasing acceptance and normalization of various sexual orientations. The observation of Barbie’s hobbies and career possibilities by both sexes could promote “the ideology of flexible and converging sex roles,” for both boys and girls would be able to find inspiration in a Barbie who cooks, or plays a sport, blending the pink and blue (Pollitt). And, perhaps, Mattel’s goal may shift from catering Barbie as the model of an ideal American beauty to that of an ideal person, complete with an integral and ethical agenda as opposed to one in tickle-me-pink.

It is not just marketing that is undergoing change in Barbie World—on January 28th, in what was perhaps their most daring move to date, Mattel revolutionized Barbie physically. As opposed to generating yet another career for Barbie, the manufacturer responded to the continual calls for female empowerment with a Barbie that comes in three new molds: petite, tall, and curvy. Code-named as Project Dawn “so that even [the designers’] spouses wouldn’t be tipped off to her existence,” the creation of the new body types, “along with the new skin tones and hair textures introduced last year, will more closely reflect [the] young [doll] owners’ world” (Dockterman). This new line of Barbies could potentially attract a heightened influx of 1consumers, particularly mothers who are concerned about exposing their daughters to products that could potentially induce body image issues. While this diverse set of body types is still in its infancy, it will be interesting to see if Barbie becomes less of a societal target, and if the change truly will impact both our ideals of beauty and childhood development. Still, one could argue that it is a shift in American culture that ultimately brought about Barbie’s physical evolution, as “the curvaceous bodies of Kim Kardashian West [and] Beyoncé…have become iconic, while millennial feminist leaders like Lena Dunham are deliberately baring their un-Barbie-like figures onscreen, fueling a movement that promotes body acceptance” (Dockterman).

In the midst of the politics and changes, when all is said and done, Barbie is just a toy. In the midst of deciding how she makes children feel, we forget that the doll is for them, not us. Michelle Chidoni of Mattel reminds us that “it’s important to remember that children do not see Barbie the way grown-ups do…[and] ‘when a girl sees Barbie, she sees adventure and stories’” (qtd. in Ulaby).

When Barbie was first introduced at the Toy Fair in 1959, “her demeanor resonated with cultural undercurrents and emergent trends as much as it reflected cultural and social realities of the day” (Rogers 144). From the outset, the doll has represented a complex icon of both controversy and progression, something that is arguably inevitable when one takes on the pressure of becoming an example for a nation, particularly if the said model is made of plastic. Through all of the praise and ridicule, Barbie has prevailed for nearly six decades, and she owes her survival to her consistent…inconsistence. Perhaps the doll’s secret is this: “Always moving forward and upward in step with the latest expressions of what passes for progress, Barbie is thoroughly modern”” (Rogers 144)

 

 

 

Works Cited

Blitman, Joe and Peggy Orenstein. “Pretty, Plastic Barbie: Forever What We Make Her.”
Interview by Kim Masters. NPR. NPR. 9 Mar. 2008. Radio. Transcript.

“Careers.” Barbie. Mattel, 2016. Web. 11 May 2016.

Dockterman, Eliana. “Barbie’s Got a New Body.” Time. Time, 2016. Web. 29 Apr. 2016.

Kassay, Reka. “Barbie Tales in the Lives of Primary School-Aged Children.” Studia
Universitatis Babes-Bolyai 58.2 (2013): 263-83. ProQuest. Web. 30 Apr. 2016.

Kuther, Tara L., and Erin McDonald. “Early Adolescents’ Experiences With, and Views Of,
Barbie.” Adolescence 39.153 (2004): 39-51. ProQuest. Web. 30 Apr. 2016.

Pollitt, Katha. “Why Boys Don’t Play With Dolls.” The New York Times. The New York
Times, 07 Oct. 1995. Web. 11 May 2016.

Rogers, Mary F. Barbie Culture. London: SAGE Publications, 1999. Print.

Sherter, Alain. “Mattel’s Fab Barbie Ad Breaks Gender Stereotypes.” CBSNews. CBS
Interactive, 17 Nov. 2015. Web. 29 Apr. 2016.

Turkel, Ann Ruth. “All about Barbie: Distortions of a Transitional Object.” Journal of the
American Academy of Psychoanalysis 26.1 (1998): 165-77. ProQuest. Web. 30 Apr.
2016.

Ulaby, Neda. “From Dream Bride To Doll For Boys: The Evolution Of The Barbie Ad.” NPR.
NPR, 27 Nov. 2015. Web. 29 Apr. 2016.

 

A Visitor for Alice

The identical houses in the cul-de-sac of Birchtree Lane awaken to an unripened Wednesday. One of these houses barely makes it into the round, sitting at an odd, non-committing angle. The opposite side of a windowless wall brightens as a peachy sun grazes over an untouched lavender field. Disembodied birds assemble for their ritual operetta. The prima donna, a lyric soprano nightingale, pirouettes into view. As her voice swells, she stirs the body of a woman who refuses to depart from the bed that is propped against the adjacent wall.

The opera chorus crescendos, summoning the woman from her sheets. She floats into the bathroom and retrieves an oral hygienic strip from a cabinet.

“Good morning, Alice. Would you like breakfast in the garden today?” Pleasant and neutral, the voice rises from the floor, spills through the wall, and drips from the ceiling.

“Yes.”

Alice pads down the hallway as classical music floods through the house. She gathers her inky ringlets into a bun as she enters a large room beside the kitchen. The glassy black walls illuminate with vibrant orchids and sunflowers, and persimmons and strawberries ready to be plucked. As Alice crosses to a leaf-embossed stone bench, her feet are tickled by the simulated green floor. She sits, and a perfect breeze sprinkles water from the tiny concrete fountain across the bridge of her nose.

“Would you like to smell your lavender?”

“Yes.”

A soft, lacy scent gently swirls around the room. A few tiles give way before Alice’s feet, and a table ascends, bearing a covered dish, a cup, and a coffeepot. Alice lifts the stainless steel dome to reveal a bowl of sliced synthetic apricots and clementines, garnished with vitamin mousse.

As Alice stirs the mousse into her fruit, she wonders if her garden is close enough to the one she grew up with, or if it would be upgraded in an upcoming General Update.

While Alice scoops up the last segment of clementine, her garden blurs, and blue dots begin to bounce along all four walls. She puts the coffeepot on reheat mode before replenishing her tepid cup.

“Update complete. Your house has a new feature. Would you like to learn more?”

“Yes.”

The north-facing wall is replaced with a video. It shows Alice sitting on her bench in her pajamas. Her house narrates: “Do you crave more authentic conversation in your life? Introducing the new Companion Feature, an innovative method of verbal communication!” A jingle plays as the video shows a lively Alice, animated in conversation. “When messaging isn’t enough, this program takes a rare way to connect and makes it accessible for people like you! Would you like to try it?”

Alice tilts her coffeepot, but only drops of liquid coat the bottom of her cup. “Yes.”

“Activating Companion Feature.”

The words “Companion Feature, Beta” appear on the wall before dissolving into the azure sky.

“Hello?”

Alice knocks her coffeepot onto the floor. She’s frozen on her bench and her back won’t bend over for her to retrieve it.

“Hello?”

A shock calibrates Alice’s spine. Her pulse screams in her ears.

“Is everything okay? I thought I heard a crash.”

Alice closes her eyes as her nerves leak from her body.

“Hello? Are you there?”

Dark liquid begins to bleed from the coffeepot. After a few seconds, the floor drinks it in.

An orchestra of pressure augments in Alice’s head. The room is silent.

“Call Ended. Would you like to rate this feature?”

Alice doesn’t move. Water slides out from under closed eyelids.

Fireflies dot the garden, emitting the scent of lanterns in the stillness of summer.   They move in synchronized choreography to the background of Cricket Song #6. The last curl of heat is repossessed from the bowl of protein balls waiting patiently on the table for their consumption. A breeze kicks the coffeepot, propelling it into Alice’s foot and vehemently snatching her from her dream, where she is sitting on a bistro’s patio. She blinks, scrunching her face as she takes in her surroundings. Alice bends over and picks up the coffeepot, then slides the bowl to the edge of the table before offering the vacant spot to the item in her hands. The table sinks into the floor.

Dim lights trail above Alice’s head as she steps down the hallway. Her bedroom washes her in new air infused with sea salt.

“Would you like to print fresh pajamas?”

“No.” Alice’s voice scrapes her soft palette.

A wave’s shadow shushes her. Obediently, she burrows herself up to her chin in covers and closes her eyes once more.

Alice’s fingers tangle and untangle over white and black rectangles. Her index finger greedily presses two neighboring rectangles simultaneously, and Alice pauses to recoil from the unsavory sound it produces. Her wrists hover above the panel. She resolves to tap the blue “Finish” button in the upper left corner. Applause roars through the room, and bouquets spring and disappear from the opposite wall before reappearing and landing on the black glass beneath her house shoes. Alice peers at the wall. An intense body of light bursting through stubborn darkness. She remembers her senior recital, the last time she played before a group of people. But the walls still cheer.

“Would you like a different activity?”

“Yes.”

The red curtains fade, replaced by a skyline. As the bouquets disappear, a concrete rooftop materializes on the ground. Sounds from the urban jungle sweep through the room before softening into placid music. Alice removes her house shoes and places the panel on the floor, then angles her body into a downward dog. She evens out into a plank pose and turns onto her right side, stacking her legs. She collapses. Alice lies on her side, a mess of limbs.

“Would you like to activate InstructorPro?”

“No.”

Alice sits upright, drawing her legs into her body. She exhales.

“Activ–”

She pauses to consider.

“Activate Companion Feature.”

“Activating Companion Feature.”

The cityscape blurs. Alice hugs herself in the midst of her oncoming cold, but carefully, in fear of fracturing the moment.

“Hello?”

Alice shivers. She feels her body trying to concave, but she resists.

“Hello?”

Forcing her swarming thoughts to the rear of her mind, Alice timidly opens her mouth. A word, or perhaps just a sound bravely leaps from her diaphragm. It perishes in her throat. She tries again. It’s muted.

“Is anybody there?”

Alice fervently nods, frustration arising from within her, pushing at and stretching the undersides of her skin. A heavy sound erupts from within her but dissolves upon hitting the air.

“Call ended.”

Breath reunites with Alice’s throat, and she heaves as if she had just surfaced from the water.

“Would you like to have lunch?”

“No.”

Alice brings herself to her feet and retreats into her bedroom. She pulls the drawer open from the nightstand table tucked in the corner beside her bed, and wraps her fingers around an object, lifting it into the larger space. A trio of figures clad in autumnal colors smile up at her from their place in her cradling palm. Alice runs her thumb across their faces, trying to absorb their smiles. It doesn’t work.

It is one of the rare afternoons in which the sky is not a cheap, powdered white, but an organic blue. The breeze is vivacious, yet it isn’t cold. It weaves its way through the July air, dodging passing laughter and the clinking of silverware.

The bird enters on an inconvenient cue.

Alice begins her track through the motions. Hygiene. Bun. Breakfast.

She scrapes the last bit of cream at the bottom of the bowl with the edge of her spoon. After draining a third cup of coffee, she clears her throat.

“Hello.”

She reaches further into her chest. “Hello. Hi.”

Another cup of coffee. She tries a smile.

“Activate Companion Feature.”

Alice is ready.

“Hello?”

A violent shiver storms down Alice’s arms, and she knocks the coffeepot to the floor.

“Is somebody here?”

Between quick gasps, Alice makes eye contact with a persimmon and whispers, “Yes.”

“Did something just fall?”

“Yes.”

“Can you only say ‘yes’?”

“Yes. I mean—no?”

“Is something wrong? You just sound sort of strange.”

“No?”

“You sure? Because if you’re uncomfortable, I can come back later.”

“No!” Alice thrusts her arms out to the persimmon.

“…Okay then.”

Pause.

“Well, what do you want to talk about?”

Alice stares blankly at the persimmon, her mind wanting to charge forward and retract at once.

“You still there? Can you talk?”

“Yes.”

“Hey, you know what, I think maybe we should pick this back up later. You sound pretty bothered. Try it again some other time?”

Alice opens her mouth to protest.

“Yes.”

This morning, Alice printed a dress. Her dark curls are neatly tamed into a braid. The coffeepot has safely been removed from the table in the garden.

“Hello?”

Alice’s heart races as she grapples for a decent response.

“Uh…hey. Hi.”

She stares unblinkingly at the persimmon, as if the small progression will disappear.

“So is today better?”

“Yes.”

“Are you only gonna say ‘yes’ today?”

Alice gives a feeble smile. “No.”

“Because my job is to have a conversation with you. And that can’t get very far with ‘yesses’ and ‘no’s.’”

Heat burns along Alice’s cheeks. “Sorry.” She considers pushing herself a little further. “Sorry. I’m just not used to this…talking and all.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing.” Alice tugs at the hem of her dress. “Can we talk about something else?”

“Yeah, sure, I guess. What do you want to talk about?”

Alice shrugs. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Okay…Do you want to talk about your family or friends or something like that?”

The sensation of a needle digs through Alice’s chest. “No.”

“Alright, that’s fine. What about places you like to go to?”

“No, something else.”

“Well I’m trying to help out, but you don’t like any of the things I’m coming up with.”

“Just try something else.” Alice inhales softly at the sound of her animated voice.

“Fine. Let’s see…What about your interests? Like music, or…”

“I play the piano.”

“You do?”

“I started when I was five, and I never really had much of a say in it. But I guess it just stuck, and it’s become a part of me.”

“I’m not very musical, but I wish I was. I wasn’t built for playing instruments or anything like that.”

“Well, I don’t think it requires a certain build per-se, I wouldn’t call it that. It’s more about the work ethic. Like practicing.”

“So you like playing the piano. Do you do anything else that’s musical?”

“I like to sing.”

“Can you sing something right now?”

“No!”

Alice loses track of her body. In her glass cell, she could almost be free.

“Still or sparkling water?”

“Still, please.”

The waiter walks away with the silver pitcher, and Alice furrows her brow.

“Alice,” Celia spreads her hands for emphasis, “you were supposed to say tap water. Now he’s gone off to get one of those fancy ten dollar bottles.”

“What? That doesn’t make any sense. He brought over the pitcher of water, and I asked for still.”

“Here he comes. Watch.”

The waiter returns with a tall bottle of deep blue glass and performs a ritual of placing it on the table and removing the irreplaceable cap. The other girls at the table simultaneously raise their brows at Alice.

Her mouth briefly expands into a horizontal line. “Sorry.”

Raquel shakes her head. “Don’t apologize to us. It’s going on your bill.”

A glass basket is placed in the center of the table. Before the waiter removes his grip from the rim, Celia dives in and removes the cloth, exposing a steaming baguette.

“Ugh, I just love the bread here!”

Nodding, Alice tears a piece from the loaf and places a dab of butter on the edge of her saucer. “I love everything here. That’s why I always say it’s the perfect place.” She breaks a bite-size bit off of her bread and adds a thin layer of butter to it. “You can never go wrong here.”

“Well…”

Alice pops the buttered piece of bread into her mouth. “What?”

Raquel tilts her head from side to side. “I wouldn’t call it perfect. I keep saying we need to try that other place down the road, Viande-something, you know, French.”

Alice’s neck prickles. “What’s wrong with this one? We always come here.”

Raquel rips a handful of bread from the basket and bites into it. “I don’t know,” she shrugs, “it’s antiquated.”

“Antiquated?”

Celia reaches across the table and seizes the glass water bottle from its resting place in the puddle of condensation. “I get what she’s talking about. It’s kind of behind. But my sister knows somebody who works here on weekends, and apparently, they’re going to start hiring Bionic Americans soon.”

Alice’s body grows numb. The patio focuses in and out.

“Really? Well it’s about time!”

“Alice? Are you okay?”

She nods her head, and its weight almost pulls it to the ground. She reaches for her glass and tilts it into her mouth. It’s empty.

“Alice.”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m fine.” Raquel and Celia exchange raised eyebrows before returning to their bread. Alice straightens her back and pushes an upward curve on her lips. “So. You said they’re going to start having…” She swallows and takes a stabilizing breath. “…robots here?”

“Bionic Americans.”

“Yeah.” Alice tries to maintain a natural tone, but her voice begins to climb its way up her breath. “Do you know…why?”

Raquel frowns. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Alice, discrimination is wrong. I know you weren’t too crazy about the A.I. Act, but come on.”

Alice lifts her glass and buries her vision in its moist funnel. “It’s not like that. I just don’t…” Her voice tapers into a whisper. Suddenly, the breeze touches her skin as if her body is exposed.

“Seriously?” Raquel lets her bread fall to her plate. “They are people, just like us. I don’t see how you could be so artificist.” She lifts her palms to either side of her head. “You of all people have no right to be so unaccepting, you’re—”

“Chard salad?”

A flash of white.

Alice blinks her eyes. They burn. She presses the back of her head into her damp pillow, staring at the ceiling.

“I’m awake,” she whispers.

The birds continue to sing.

Alice climbs out from under the sheets. She walks past the bathroom and down the hallway until she reaches the end. A panel of white frosted glass stands before her. Alice stares at the knob. She reaches her hand out. The closer it gets to the glass sphere, the more violently her hand begins to shake. It stops. Alice commands it forward. It ignores her. She wills her feet forward. They don’t listen.

“Good morning, Alice. Would you like breakfast in the garden today?”

“Yes.”

“Hey, can I ask you something?”

“Sure, I guess.”

“Promise you won’t get offended or anything?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what the question is.”

“Do you…how do I put this…do you ever go out and stuff?”

Alice shivers. “What?”

“No, no, I just…forget it. It’s just that you don’t ever want to talk about things outside. You make it sound like you’re always at home.”

Alice gives a defensive shrug. “So?”

“Well…do you?”

“‘Do I’ what?”

“Go out?”

Alice opens her mouth. She walks into the hallway and watches the door.

“Hello? You still there?”

“No.”

“Why not? Doesn’t that drive you mad—just staying in your house all day, every day?”

Alice turns away from the door and returns to the garden. “Why are you asking me this? Why are we talking about this?”

“Sorry. I was just wondering if something was wrong, but you’re right. It’s none of my business.”

“It’s okay.”

Alice walks up to the persimmon and extends her fingers. They brush upon the glass surface. “Are you in there? Are you…real?”

“Yeah. What kind of question is that?”

“What’s your name, then?”

“‘What’s my’—you know my name by now.”

“No, I don’t.”

“But we talk all the time.”

“Do you know my name?”

“Well yeah, it’s…” Alice lifts a smug brow at the persimmon. “…My name is Robert.”

“Alice.”

A few minutes pass by in silence. Alice closes her eyes and breathes.

“I don’t go out because I’m afraid.”

“Look, Alice, we don’t have to talk about this.”

“It’s fine.” Alice nods to herself. She feels like the first member of a group to wade into a foreign body of water.

“Okay then. So are you one of those people who don’t like open spaces?”

“No, it’s…” Alice lowers her voice and leans into the wall confidentially. Her voice grows mute.

“Sorry, I don’t mean to dig for answers or anything like that.”

“No, no, I have to—want to talk.”

“Only if you want, though.”

Alice’s arms press into her sides. “Are you looking at me?”

“No.”

“Okay. Good. Don’t look at me.” Her thoughts begin to kick up in her mind, but she suppresses them and pushes herself forward. “When I was a little kid, I had this…thing. I wouldn’t go on half the rides at Disney World, because every time I tried to go on, say, It’s a Small World, my brain would just go on lockdown, as if it sensed a threat.” She narrows her eyes. “Are you looking at me?”

“No.”

Alice closes her eyes and resumes. “Um, and when I was about twelve, I saw one of the animatronics outside of the theme park for the first time. It was in my world. It wasn’t nearly as advanced as they are today, but, you know, it was there. Checking out groceries at the store. I stopped going to the supermarket with my dad after that. And then as time went on, I started going to less and less places. I didn’t know exactly what was going on with me, or why, but it started to become too inconvenient. I kept thinking I’d grow out of it, that’s what my dad told me, but I never did. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t seem to shake it I would just lose control.”

“And you still feel that way?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know why that happens to you?”

“No. There’s no reason behind it, the panic just swallows me, and I don’t know why.” She frowns. “Well, actually I do, but I don’t understand why it happens to me, and why it has to make things so hard.”

“What is it?”

Alice ponders. She’s already waded too far into the foreign waters, up to her chin. “It’s an irrational fear. Automatonophobia. I looked it up when I was in high school. I showed it to my mom, and that’s when she told me about this strange thing that happened when I was a baby. My parents had taken me to the Rainforest Café. I don’t know if those are around anymore, but they had these…‘animals’ that made me burst into tears as soon as I saw them. My parents were confused, but as I grew older, they picked up on this pattern where I’d start to show this odd behavior.”

“But what about your house? It’s not real. So why doesn’t it bother you?”

“It’s different. My house is just a program. It wasn’t made to emulate an organic person. It doesn’t have a personality or a face. It doesn’t try to be real.” Alice searches for words. “I don’t know if that makes any sense. But the thing I have comes in different forms. Some people cannot even face a statue, so I guess it could be worse.”

“So what brought you up to now? I mean—do you really need to close yourself up like this?”

Alice exhales, festered emotion emptying out with her breath. “If I continue, will you promise not to think I’m strange?”

“Why would I?”

“I don’t know. Everyone else thought I was; they couldn’t understand.”

“I won’t think you’re strange.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

“Okay.” Alice examines the fragile streams of blue in her palms. “When the government passed the Artificial Intelligence Act twelve years ago, I panicked. They had been around for a while, but as soon as they were granted citizenship, Bionic Americans were appearing even more frequently: in my stores, at the hospital, in the homes of my friends. They were being pumped out in droves, and at one point, I realized they were just going to be everywhere, and nothing was going to change. And something inside of me cracked. One day, I opened the door, and it was as if my entire body stopped working. I tried to push myself under the threshold, and I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t.”

“And you’ve been here ever since?”

Alice looks apprehensively at the cirrus clouds on the ceiling, anticipating ridicule. “Yes?”

“And the hospital—what happens if you need medical attention? Have you just stayed perfectly healthy over all these years?”

“Yes.” Alice’s hand absentmindedly grazes a lump in her breast.

“You know, they won’t hurt you or anything. All that stuff in those movies and books, that’s all fiction.”

“I know,” Alice breathes, “but they just frighten me. It’s not that I think they’re bad, I just can’t handle them, and I can’t get anyone to understand that. As soon as the A.I. Act was passed, my cousin proposed to his girlfriend. She was one of them. I tried to explain why I couldn’t come to the wedding, but my friends and family called me prejudiced.”

“I understand.”

Alice lowers to the floor. Her eyes gloss over. “You do?”

“Where’s your family now?”

Silence.

“Alice? Where are your parents?”

“They died. Five years ago.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

The gloss overflows Alice’s eyes. “My house had to tell me. They died in a bullet train crash and there was going to be a funeral and I tried to go outside, I really did, but my body wouldn’t let me, it wouldn’t move out the door, it just wouldn’t…” Alice tries to continue, but each word is impeded by a choke. She crumples on the green glass, and the room fills with the scent of lemon balm.

“Hey, I’m really sorry. I’ll talk to you later.”

Alice’s head shoots up. “No! Don’t go! Just—just hold on a second.” She swipes at her damp cheeks and disappears into her bedroom before returning with her tiny figurine. “This is a portrait my parents and I took two years before…you know. I was annoyed that day because it was ninety bucks to print, but now, I wouldn’t trade it for the world.” She pensively turns it over in her hands, running a forefinger over every detail. “Can you see it?”

“No. Alice, I can’t see you. The Companion Feature is audio-based.”

“Oh.”

Silence.

Alice tilts her head. “Robert, we’re friends. Right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“But it’s so strange. Because how can you be friends if…” Her will wings. “Robert, I want to see you in person.”

“I don’t—”

“Please, Robert. I have nobody. And it didn’t really hit me until now, but I’m lonely. I’m so lonely.”

“Um, Alice, I’ve gotta go. We’ll talk later, okay?”

“Okay?”

“Call ended.”

A cloud of energy is suspended in the air before Alice’s nose. There’s no place to put it down. She moves from the garden and into the activity room.

“What would you like to do?”

“Read.”

“Contemporary or archaic?”

“Archaic.”

The wall closest to her slides away, revealing a collection of antique novels. Her friends had always teased her for her affinity for paper, but it felt concrete and gave the words substance. Alice lifts her left hand and lets her fingers glide along the spines, bumping up and down. They pause on an ochre paperback. 2 A.M. at the Cat’s Pajamas. She pulls it off of the shelf and settles onto the floor. Gingerly, Alice opens the book to the first chapter. A creamy piece of paper falls out. She picks it up and turns it over.

The pleasure of your company is requested at the marriage uniting

Eve V.27

and

Doctor Patrick Seale

Saturday, the thirteenth of August

two thousand ninety-seven

at half past six o’clock in the evening

Mica Plaza

857  Volt Street

Muttontown, New York

 The letters bleed in an onslaught of tears. The cloud of thoughts is summoned once again. Shame. Shame. Shame.

Alice tries to climb into herself, but she cannot disappear. The paper crumbles in her grip as she empties herself onto the floor.

Between chokes, she tries to speak. After ten minutes of attempts, her house recognizes the command.

“Hello?”

“Robert?” Her voice comes out in a thin whimper.

“Yeah?”

“Is this death?”

“What? Are you okay, Alice? Why would you ask that?”

“I’ve been in this box for twelve years. I haven’t seen anyone but my own reflection in the mirror. This isn’t living.”

“…Is there something I can do?”

Alice palms the tears from her face. “Yes. Talk to me. To my face.”

“Alice…”

“Please. I need it. I need a reminder that I’m still alive.”

Silence. Alice’s temple pulses.

“…Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. Please.” Alice pleads to the glass sky. “Robert?”

“Now?”

“Now.”

“Alright. I have your address right here in the system. I’ll be there soon.”

A laugh of delight sheds cobwebs as it soars up Alice’s throat, breaking through her tears. A real person! That you can talk to, touch, feel for… Alice asks the house to prepare snacks for her guest and to print a sundress in her closet.

There is a knock on the door. Alice trips over herself as she sprints to answer it. Her fingers meet the knob.

The oddly-angled house in the cul-de-sac of Birchtree Lane has a visitor. As the door is about to open, he programs his setting to happiness.