Forming on a Style

Recently my fashion style has been silenced. I gained a lot weight and just don’t quite feel as though I fit into what I like. It’s really sad. SO I am going to write on how a dressed a mere six months ago.

I like colors. I love bright, bold, beautiful colors. With my style I want to portray myself as energetic, friendly and joyful. I love skirts and ruffles and flowers. Not in the preppy- girlie way (which I am not insulting) but in a resort wear kind of way. I also like a lot of embroidery and linens that give my style an ethnic feel. At least this is my daytime look. I like to dress as if I could go for a stroll on a tropical beach.

At night, however, I like my *bling* *bling*, glitter sparkles all that. It could be a way to call attention to myself. I used to go clubbing a lot, since I was 14. My friends and I would always be in competition to get the most attention. While I don’t consciously do this anymore, I feel it might be an explanation to why I feel tempted to pour a can of glitter all over myself. I won’t do it but it seems appealing.

Day or night I used to love to show off my feminine figure. My clothing in the day was a little more flow-y than my skin-tight club dresses but I still played up my curves. This communicated the confidence I once possessed.

Even though I am no longer wearing the clothes that I once used to I think I still offer a glimpse of the fun loving, outgoing girl I think I am.

Intepreting Technologies

The DVR has changed my life! It is because of this that I watch TV. I hated watching any show because I would always miss episodes and get off track. So I would buy the DVD’s but as we all know that is very expensive. And times are tough so it was no longer an option. So when I got cable for the second time it came with the DVR. I now watch so many shows even ones that com on at the same time. It is amazing I feel like I run the television. I feel empowered when I can fast forward through the commercials or rewind the slap.

You can tell a lot about a person by the shows they have saved. I was watching a show on MTV called Room Raiders where people raid each others rooms for a potential date. On this particular episode the boy looked to see what the room’s owner had TiVo’d and he noticed she was watching shows about UFO’s he considered that a turn off because he assumed that she was into Science fiction and aliens, which was true. If you looked at my recordings there are a lot of reality shows mostly modeling type programs and glimpses into the good life (Kimora Lee Simons: life in the fab lane, The fabulous life of______, insane listings etc.). You will also find a lot of comedy films. I’m not exactly sure what that says about me but I’m sure someone could make a judgment.

When I read that we could speak of any place my mind went crazy. I have been to so many places that are just filled emotions and bring back vivid memories. I went through a list: the market place in Morocco, the palace in Granada, Club space in Miami, the amazing plaza in the art district in France, My father’s house in Fehmarn, Germany, the pink lake in Senegal – best “poulet yassa” ever, the place we stop and get Bachalaito near my aunt’s in Puerto Rico, so many places but one stood out to me Santa Maria beach just outside Havana, Cuba.

When I lived in Cuba we had a lot of restriction and we could only travel a radius of around 55 kilometer. Playa Santa Maria was as far as we could away from the city. It wasn’t exactly secluded; it was a in little town but during the 25 minute drive around 3 of them were just green, no buildings. All of the houses on the hill on the way down to the beach were relatively small and made out of concrete it was a known fact that some of the more privileged Cubans had little vacation homes down here somewhere exclusive and some were sort of a time share. The water was the most beautiful turquoise and the sand just the right shade of beige. This beach is not an enclosed area reserved for tourist or featured in a magazine, but everyone was there; the tourist, the privileged, the white, the black the mixed, the young and the old. There is a bit of leftover racism in many Hispanic Caribbean countries but when you’re at the beach it is almost nonexistent.

This beach is not comparable to the St Augustine beach. Santa Maria was a place to really enjoy your day. Families would cook delicious pork on the accessible bbq pits; there would be music everywhere from the boom boxes and cars and of course a lot of rum. It was a party of all ages, where people could laugh, dance and swim under the bright sun forgetting their family, work and political problems. No one could forget that we were in a socialist country however with the guards monitoring the beach and water. They were there for the general safety as well as to make sure no one was making a raft out of blow up mattresses.
This beach was welcoming and exiting sending the message of freedom. This was a s free as you could be in Havana.

Connecting with celebrities

So I have never been one of people who is obsessed with a celebrity or band or book series. I never had 7 posters of Backstreet Boys on my ceiling or the entire collection by Stephen King. I am finding this topic particularly difficult. When I think of celebrities I admire it is more of a wanting to be them as supposed to wanting to meet them. I will look at the girl from the Pussycat Dolls and think “oh I wish I had her body or Kim Kardashian – “I wish I had her life” or Britney
Spears – “I wish I had that much money”. None of those are going to happen in the near future but at least I can get taken off to dream land whenever I watch E!.

If I had to choose one celebrity that I have followed throughout the years it would have to be shakira. I enjoy her music and I have been to her concert. I also like that she is respectable, not always in the tabloids for not wearing underwear (gross) or something of the sort. Her dancing is admirable and inspiring she embraces her Arab roots and her Colombian upbringing. She also crossed over to English music to impress the American market.

Another reason I like Shakira is because I have seen her transform. She was one of the first musical artists I was exposed to. She was popular when I lived in Chile( 1st to 3rd grade). The first music video that I remember ever watching was hers. She had black hair was heavier and her music was either very Arab or social conscious ballads. I remember I could barley understand what she said but I always tried to sing along the words making up the ones I didn’t know.

She is one of the few connections I have had from country to country she was popular in all of them. I watched her go from chubby social fighter to bleach blonde sex bomb to organic beauty. . I have only been to three concerts in my life one of them was hers. Her music goes hand in hands with many of my memories.

Identifying with music

Music for me is something that goes hand in hand with happiness. I am not saying music equals happiness but rather that when I am in a good mood I like to surround myself with it. Occasionally I use it to help get me in a great mood. Also it helps makes something that suck, like cleaning up the house, not so bad.

I used to really be intertwined with the music I like. It helped me connect with my surroundings, brought me together with a culture that wasn’t my own. When I was living in Cuba it was my love for similar music and dancing that brought me close to my local friends. I would go dancing a lot, about three times a weekend. It was all Salsa/Casino and reggaeton and that was the music I really liked. Music was the base for every social situation, it brought people together. I loved this atmosphere; it was as if the whole country was dancing through the hard times. It was something that I grew accustomed to and loved.

Coming here all of that was taken away. There was no more dancing and the new concept of noise complaints was introduced. Also in this particular area, no one shares my love for salsa, meregue, reggaeton or even techno. So the joy of music has kind of faded but the memories of a whole community coming together through song and dance remains. Music is very powerful, it can express emotions perfectly.

Even though music isn’t as much a part of my life I think it is still part of who I am. It doesn’t define my clothing any further than “can I dance in these heels?”. It doesn’t really affect the way I talk. If I think about really intently though it might be the rhythm I follow when I walk and my outlook on romance.

keeping in touch

To stay in touch I definitely depend on media. I never write I letter and I rarely get my news through word of mouth. I am very interested in celebrity news which pops up everywhere over the internet and magazines. I get my normal news usually when I look it up online after seeing a teaser clip.

I think this generation is very instant gratification oriented. I look for something when I want it, I’m not going to wait for a newspaper or look through it to find what I want. Nope, that is what Google is for.

I touched on this in my last blog. Without media I am lost. For Introduction to Mass Media we did an assignment where we were not to use media for 24 hours. It was horrible

Escaping

Escaping, relieving stress, relaxing, is all so much easier to me with music. A lot of people like to let loose in their mind when they exercise. I’m sure you can tell, I hate exercising but I was learning to enjoy it when I got my first IPod. Suddenly being on the elliptical machine was an experience. This experience could be switched from relaxing to motivating with a swish of my thumb. Sadly one day after a party it disappeared - and that truly sucked. It wasn’t just exercise that suffered. Without this musical world that was so personal to me riding my bike to school was long and noisy, walking to my classroom felt awkward and car rides with the family were so boring.

A while after that my boyfriend lent me his IPod for the summer and with some help from my ADD medication I was back on track with my exercise routine, I was running and walking all four dogs one at a time every day. I was able to handle living with my mom again. Whenever she started nagging me about how messy the room was (I had to share a room with her and I had one drawer) I would just escape by putting my headphones on.

That IPod was lost along with several cell phones when we were in the keys and our boat sunk (everyone was alright apart from the phone not a horrible experience). So now I suffer without my music, I cannot exercises or ride my bike to school with a smile on my face. When I want to escape from it all I can either dance around my room to super loud music or mindlessly watch trash TV. I like the TV option because I seem to forget all my problems. I think about if RayJ will find love or if he is bound to liking the stripper type girls and if those tools will ever become men. I think that is a great escape.

Oh and I have not mentioned books yet, I have been so busy lately but that is a true escaping being engulfed in a good book. If I had all the money in the world I would just jet off to some lightly populated island and swim with the fishes every time I feel stressed, but I don so I will have to rely on media, which seems to do the job.

My day mediawise

Without media I would be way out of touch and probably really bored. When I wake up the first thing I do is turn on my computer to check my e-mails, MySpaces and facebook. I have more than one e-mail account and more than one MySpace. One is my personal one and the other promoting myself and the online radio station I work for. I usually play music as I get ready to go to school but I have to be at school at 9 am everyday now so I usually, after spending too much time reading junk mail, have to hurry it up. However as soon as my boyfriend drives me to school I turn on the radio to Rumba 100.3 (when the station is coming in clear) and salsa my way to school.
During school hours I depend on my cell phone. I have to stay in contact with the rest of the world. Mostly my mother and my boyfriend or I feel out of touch and confused, especially now that I never wear a watch. My phone has a clock, pretty cool eh? When the day is over I get home and turn on the television so I can bask in the glory of watching reality tv filled with slutty girls that make me feel so much better about myself. Sure they are skinny and can do very impressive hair do’s , sometimes, but they fail to realize that size DD boobs and overly injected lips are so not hot anymore. There is also Ruby the fat lady that just warms your heart up with her southern charm and intense struggle, I feel ya girl, and gossip girl – so juicy. I watch the news too sometimes but I miss the 6 o clock all the time and so I have to depend on CNN. Don’t get me wrong I love CNN but it’s just so depressing I can’t watch anymore about the Middle East and the whole rockets in Palestine.
I’m sure there are many other ways I incoperate media but those are the main ones. It has become so natural and embedded into my and pretty much everyone’s lives that it goes unnoticed.

to Mr. Wysocki

This is my blog for writing media and film critique