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A collage of random items that resemble Frida Kahlo 

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A collage of random items that resemble Frida Kahlo 

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Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) was a Mexican painter whose life and art have significantly influenced feminism. Kahlo proudly embraced her Mexican and Indigenous culture, was very open about her sexuality, and became an icon for the LGBTQIA+ community. Frida Kahlo's life and art correlate with themes in Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha's "Care Webs" and Judith Lorber's "The Social Construction of Gender", especially regarding disability, care, and gender expectations.

When she was 18, Kahlo endured a traumatic accident that left her with a disability and reliant on others for care. Her art exemplifies "self-preservation" and "political work" through her body and experiences. Her open portrayal of suffering challenged societal pressures for disabled people to be silent.

Kahlo defied traditional gender norms through her fashion, like wearing suits, which illustrates Lorber's idea that "gender boundaries are breachable" and not solely biological. Her pride in her disabled body that was "unideal" in societal standards challenged beauty standards and the social construction of gender.

I have always loved art, and the older I get, I have come to appreciate the artist and her work of Frida Kahlo more. In this class, we focus so much on appreciating culture and how women are held to certain standards. As a woman, I respect her unapologetic nature to be her truest self, and in my eyes, she is a self-empowering feminist.

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My mother is the strongest figure in my life and my ultimate role model. As an immigrant woman, she exemplifies hard work, beauty, and immense strength. She dedicated her life to ensuring her children received a good education and a good living. Her career in healthcare showcases her exceptional leadership, kindness, and empathy, qualities not always understood outside the field.

Her own life story is one of incredible resilience. Despite a difficult childhood marked by abuse and mistreatment, she never let her pain define her. She remained true to herself and her faith, always seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and never backing down. I've always admired her unwavering strength and how she maintains her loving, understanding, and even silly personality despite past traumas. She truly embodies women's empowerment, embracing her experiences to become the remarkable person she is today. Her ambition continues to inspire my own.

As an immigrant Filipina nurse, she highlights how colonialism, racism, and gender intersect. As Trask argues in "The Color of Violence," the U.S. was built on "genocide and colonialism", creating a racial hierarchy where "white over brown" exists. Filipina immigrants live in a system shaped by colonialism.

Lorber's "The Social Construction of Gender" explains how nursing is deeply feminized and often undervalued as "women's work". My mother's role reflects this, as societies assign roles based on "gender, race, ethnicity". This draws upon skilled women from former colonial nations, with an ongoing "racial division of reproductive labor" where women of color perform essential, often "unvalued, invisibilized, and feminized" care work.

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Beabadoobee: Filipino Representation in Media

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Beabadoobee: Filipino Representation in Media

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I chose Beabadoobee because she is a Filipina musician and one of my favorite artists. I appreciate her for being a vital representation of Filipino culture in media. She is incredibly proud of her heritage, which I admire, especially in a society where Asian culture has often been trend-driven rather than genuinely appreciated. Through her music and art, she authentically portrays the trials and tribulations young women face in relationships, friendships, and life in general. Beabadoobee, as a Filipina-British singer-songwriter, connects with feminist themes from Judith Lorber's "The Social Construction of Gender" and Haunani Kay Trask's "The Color of Violence".

Her success challenges Trask's "color of violence", which describes a "white over... brown" racial hierarchy stemming from colonialism. As an artist of Filipina heritage thriving in a white-dominated industry, she defies the historical subjugation and marginalization of non-white individuals and the normalcy of white dominance.

Beabadoobee's role as a self-made female artist also correlates with Lorber's concept of gender as a social construct. Her music exemplifies how individuals can challenge and shift "gendered patterns of interaction". She refuses to conform to pre-prescribed notions of femininity in a music industry that has historically objectified women artists.

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Myself: A Journey of Growth and Empowerment

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Myself: A Journey of Growth and Empowerment

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I am including a photo of myself because it represents a significant personal achievement. I recently presented at a psychology conference at UCR, an experience that greatly boosted my confidence. For a long time, I felt uncertain about my future and worried about disappointing loved ones by not having a clear path. This conference changed that. It was incredibly empowering to see my hard work, which had been culminating for many months, recognized and valued for the first time. My experience as an immigrant Filipina woman presenting at a psychology conference is correlated to Carrie N. Baker's "Why GWSS Still Matters". Baker argues for the crucial role of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies (GWSS) in fighting against "rollbacks in women's rights and the erosion of the US civil rights infrastructure". Also, Judith Lorber's "The Social Construction of Gender" as I dive in academia.

Baker emphasizes that GWSS students learn about "interconnected systems of oppression based on gender, race, class, sexuality, nationality, and disability" and how these "negatively impact people marginalized by these systems". As an immigrant Filipina woman, I intersect in several of these categories. By presenting at a psychology conference, I demonstrate the need to understand these interconnected oppressions within academia. My hard work contributes to the "pathways to empowerment" that GWSS seeks to provide by engaging with "histories of feminist movement organizing". I am an example of how "informed feminists" are produced to "fight for women's rights".

Lorber asserts that "gender is constantly created and re-created out of human interaction" and that individuals are "born sexed but not gendered". Academia has historically been gendered, often favoring masculine traits and excluding women.

I believe my hard work and ambition stem from the way my mom paved for me. I have held up a standard to myself to strive for more and never settle for less than what I know I am able to handle. Hard work to me is non-gendered, and the efforts made by me are never up to a man, woman, or anyone else to decide.

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This photo displays me walking to an isolated box with the statue of Apollo and Cupid behind pillars. I found this photo ironic and felt it tied into my message. It is ironic that the man is being watched and perceived as "behind bars" as a woman of color approaches from the outside. In society, women are always watched. In the way we dress, work, and overall live, we are perceived. Even though I outlive these figures, their history lingers, and I realize that I am a woman of color still, after thousands of years, affected by a Eurocentric society.

Although they are male statues, the statue of Apollo and Cupid in the photograph can be connected to feminist themes from Judith Lorber's "The Social Construction of Gender" and Haunani Kay Trask's "The Color of Violence," depicting idealized male forms and narratives, and societal gender roles and power dynamics.

The statue of Apollo is a male deity of beauty, reason, and artistic pursuits, and Cupid, representing desire, serves as a visual representation of ideals of masculinity and heteronormative relationships. With Judith Lorber's "The Social Construction of Gender", Lorber argues that "gender is constantly created and re-created out of human interaction" and that societies produce "strongly gendered norms and expectations" for individuals. This statue represents Western mythological tradition and contributes to an idealized male-dominated society. Feminist critiques point out how these representations contribute to a limited and often oppressive understanding of "masculinity" and "feminity".

The presence of classical European statuary can be seen as "color of violence" and cultural colonialism, found in Haunani Kay Trask's "The Color of Violence. Trask asserts that the U.S. was "created out of genocide and colonialism" and defines "the color of violence" as "white over black, white over brown, white over red, white over yellow". She argues that this violence is enacted through "historical dispossession, of racial, cultural, and economic subjugation and stigmatization". The placement of European classical art, like the Apollo and Cupid statue, can be interpreted as part of the "dominant culture". This view overshadows Indigenous art forms and narratives, contributing to the "psychology of subjugation" that Trask describes, where non-Euro-American cultures are implicitly deemed "inferior".

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Throughout this class, I have reflected on my perspectives on feminism and held space for underepresented communities. I have come to realize so many of my attributes revolve around the women I look up to. As each one of these women is unique in their strengths, they all have one common denominator. They are all women of color.

Being a woman of color holds power in itself. It is an everyday job that calls for defying societal, political, and cultural expectations in a white, male-dominated America. However, being a woman of color in America does not apply to all women of color because of intersectionality. The term "intersectionality" will be a central theme of this essay, as it takes separate factors (e.g., race, gender, sexuality, education, etc.) that combine and form unique experiences of oppression. My experience as a Filipina in America cannot be compared to the experience of a Chicana living in America. More importantly, I am a proud Filipina woman who is actively trying to defy all stereotypes and assumptions that generalize women of color into a box.

The two readings I have selected that support my photo essay are Judith Lorber's "The Social Construction of Gender" and Haunani Kay Trask's "The Color of Violence." In their own nature, both of these works display themes of social constructionism, power and hierarchy, and intersectionality that I will integrate in my photo essay.