The Women’s Center has officially kicked off our roundtable series for the fall semester! We call this series Our Bodies, Ourselves, specifically focusing on personal embodiment and the intersections of identity that come along with existing as a body. This event, specifically called Beauty Embodied, introduced the semester-long discussion of diverse embodied experiences.

our beautiful roundtable flyer

Beginning this ongoing series, The Women’s Center invited three panelists to open up the conversation of embodied beauty. Alumnus Crystal Ogar, Dr. Medulene Shomali of the Gender and Women’s Studies department, and our very own assistant director Megan Tagle Adams served as our panelists!

We spent the next hour complicating the notions of beauty, femininity and privileges associated with who gets to embrace ideals of beauty. All panelists spoke about the privilege and racialization of specific beauty standards and stereotypes. We discussed at great length who has access to conventional beauty. Women of color specifically have a lot of challenges associating with conventional beauty, as the hegemonic view of westernized beauty is white, thin and able-bodied. All panelists identified as women of color, and were able to draw upon their various identities to share their experiences with racially exclusionary beauty.

Crystal encouraged us to find the beauty within everyone, to notice the little things that make a person beautiful, and to complicate beauty further by understanding that looks are not the complete picture of a person, as there are so many factors that go into being a beautiful human outside of external appearance.

Our roundtable panelists, photo by jess Myers

Both Megan and Dr. Shomali allowed the group time to deconstruct our definitions of beauty. Beauty and femme identity isn’t inherently a feminist stance to take, and shaving your legs or putting on makeup in the morning doesn’t necessarily have to be a feminist act. No one is more or less of a feminist for the way that they present their bodies. Megan said it best- instead of the feminist manifesto being written in red lipstick, she suggested that it could be written while wearing red lipstick. The act of wearing lipstick is not what makes or breaks a feminist, and the most important thing is to allow personal expression to be encompassed in ideals of beauty.

Dr. Shomali took it even further, proposing the radical notion that beauty isn’t actually necessary. Instead of trying to broaden the term of “beauty” to include all walks of people, we could decide to throw out beauty as an important concept to begin with. Both Crystal and Dr. Shomali posed that ‘ugly’ should not equal “bad”, and that it is perfectly fine to not be beautiful- it does not take away of a person’s humanness to not have access to or even care about beauty.

Overall, Beauty Embodied was a great success, with lots of dynamic discussion from the panelists and the women’s center communities. We questioned and unpacked our notions of beauty and femininity, engaging with our own experiences of living in an aesthetic world.

Want to read more? Below are some links further discussing beauty through a feminist lens:

• What Is Feminism Without The Femme? On Why Are We Scared To Embrace Our Feminine Styles
• Living With Contradiction: Beauty Work and Feminism
• Pretty Unnecessary: Taking Beauty Out of Body Positivity (Bitch Media)

Don’t miss out! The Women’s Center’s next roundtable, Queer (De)Coded, on October 20th! 

Meet Himadri,

She is a double major (Biological Sciences & Interdisciplinary Studies) and an URA Scholar. She is also a Teaching Assistant for the Chemistry Discovery Center and a Tutor for the Learning Resources Center. If research is in your future, Himadri recommends getting started in the process early on so that you have enough time to get involved in a lab, learn and discover if research is your passion. Her future plans are to pursue a career as a physician, possibly specializing in the field of Neurology.

Her research involves in examining stress-induced analgesia (SIA), the phenomenon in which exposure to intense stress suppresses the perception of pain. From an evolutionary perspective, SIA is part of the adaptive fight-or-flight response mediated by the sympathetic nervous system that enhances an individual’s ability to survive a crisis situation; pain suppression is a critical component of this response as it enables individuals to escape a threat even if they have sustained an injury.

Read more about her research here…

Get ready for Critical Social Justice: Home with our “What You Need to Know” series, starting with this primer on our keynote speaker Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. Her lecture, titled “Body/ Land/ Home: Disability Justice, Healing Justice and Femme of Color Brilliance,” will be held on Tuesday, October 25th at 6PM in the University Center Ballroom (event details here). 

Based out of Toronto and Oakland, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a queer, disabled femme of color poet, performer, healer, and activist of Burgher/Tamil Sri Lankan and Irish/Roma ascent. Much of Leah’s work focuses on people and conversations that are often underrepresented, including disability justice, queer and trans people of color, and abuse survivors. In addition to her award-winning books of poetry, including Bodymap, Love Cake, and Consensual Genocide, she has also written a memoir titled Dirty River: A Queer Femme of Color Dreaming Her Way Home. 

“Stories create the world. Seeing stories that look like your own, that you’ve never read written down before, or that are stories you’ve never thought of before that change your whole idea of what is possible, are a big revolutionary deal.” †

art by Shira Devorah

Leah is also a co-founder and former director of Mangos With Chili, the longest-running performance art tour featuring queer and trans individuals in North America. She performs pieces with the disability justice collective Sins Invalid and is a co-director of the Toronto disability justice collective Performance/ Disability/Art.

…“[I]t was so inculcated in me that disability is this shameful story. And you know, if there’s not queer people of color space, queer people of color won’t perform. If there’s not disability space that centers queer and trans people of color, sex workers, poor people, all of the above, elders, young people, we won’t know that there’s similar stories.” †

For more on Leah, check out:

• Her blog, Brownstargirl
• This video of her performance in Sins Invalid
• Her interview with Bitch Magazine on disability, representation, and survivorhood

Activities:

Tell us a little about yourself

Hi, I am Da’Kuawn Johnson. I am from Baltimore City and a senior studying Biochemistry & Molecular Biology and Spanish. Besides my studies, I spend the bulk of my time tutoring, doing research, and playing music.

Tell us about how you are involved on campus.

I enjoy helping people in whatever way possible. I am an undergraduate teaching assistant for BIOL 141. I am also a member of both the Meyerhoff Scholars Program and the Honors College. I help out a lot with trying to recruit students. Both programs also promotes giving back to the community. During certain parts of the semester, I will work with other scholars get involved with a community service event. My favorite community service activity that I look forward to every year is working with my fellow scholars and being a special topic judge for Prince George’s Area Science Fair for high school students. I love seeing students excited about science and trying to keep that passion alive.

How and why did you get involved in being a tutor?

I began tutoring for the Learning Resource Center (LRC) and Math my sophomore year. I have been tutoring one-on-one through high school and my freshman year. I started tutoring for the LRC because I loved math and I wanted to help more students do well in these classes like mathematics. After speaking with my MATH 151 professor, she suggested that I should apply to be a Math Lab tutor.

What is your favorite thing about being a tutor?

My favorite thing about tutoring is the amount that I learn as a tutor. A given class that I tutor is never exactly the same every semester. Some professors teach concepts differently, the classes move at different paces from semester to semester, and sometimes the professors choose to cover new topics. In addition to variations of classes, students tend to ask interesting and sometimes complex questions I never would have thought about. The exposure to these variations of classes and thoughts about the material makes me a better tutor and greatly increases my knowledge about the subject material. I think it is cool that you can teach and learn at the same time!

Why should students utilize the tutoring?

Everyone needs help at some point in their educational career. I always tell students that people who seek tutoring are smart. People who need help and do not seek help aren’t as bright as they think they are. Plus, you already PAID for the service, so take advantage of it!

What advice would you give students about how to prepare for a tutoring session?

I believe students should come prepared to work and be involved with their education. Don’t expect the tutor to lecture at them. They should expect the tutor to work WITH them through the material. The goal as a tutor is help the student realize that they can be self-sufficient learners.

When and where can someone work with you through the Learning Resources Center?

You can find me in the Math Lab on the first floor of the library behind the resources desk. I work on Mondays 9am – 11am and 5pm -6pm. I also work 9-11am Tuesday through Thursday.

The Women’s Center at UMBC turns 25 this year! We’re excited to share our important milestone with UMBC’s 50th Anniversary and will be celebrating throughout the year with the rest of campus! We were inspired by Special Collections archival project Archives Gold: 50 Objects for UMBC’s 50th and decided to do our own digging into the Women’s Center archives. Over the course of the year, we’ll be sharing 25 “Then vs Now” archives to celebrate the origin and evolution of the Women’s Center at UMBC.

This week we’re featuring a sampling of the various events and programs hosted in the Women’s Center over the past 25 years. 

The very first Returning Women Students group took place in 1996. This group still is an critical part of the Women’s Center programming and has also morphed into a scholarship program.

The Clothesline Project is an artivism display the Women’s Center exhibits during Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Even in 2006, the Women’s Center was just as dedicated to telling the stories of survivors as they are today.

Before the era of Netflix and Youtube, the Women’s Center (in co-sponsorship with other departments) held film series which spotlighted women’s voices and experiences.

While our editing skills have definitely grown since 1991, we have remained dedicated to critical social justice and centering the voices of women. Be sure to join us for our Critical Social Justice Keynote speaker, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha.

What are the memories you have of the Women’s Center over the years that are meaningful to you? What does the Women’s Center mean to you today? Share your memories and pictures with us in the comment section below!

Stay up-to-date with our 25th anniversary on social media using #UMBCWC25. Share your Women’s Center experiences and memories with the UMBC community using #UMBCWC25 AND #UMBC50!

A weekly round-up curated by Women’s Center staff member, Michael Jalloh Jamboria

In the spirit of my friend, who gave us the glorious name ‘Slaying on the Weekly’, every week I will be bringing you some interesting, funny or thought-provoking content from the internet! Be sure to join us next week for more and continue to slay!

This week I watched Do I Sound Gay? on Netflix. It’s an interesting documentary which explores the origin of the ‘gay voice’. It’s also available on Youtube.

As we prepare for the October Roundtable, Queer (De)coded, some of the Women’s Center staff are re-reading Women’s Center staff member, Daniel Wiley’s post on ‘Gay Hair‘. Check it out!

Finally, in worldly news, President Obama shortened the sentences of 102 inmates who committed non-violent crimes. This makes 774 commuted sentences in the entirety of his presidency! We applaud Pres. Obama’s commitment to prison reform!

Continue to slay! See you next week!

Name: Jaydeep Dhanak

Internship, Co-op or Research Site: The Living Legacy Foundation

Position Title: IT Intern

Major(s)/Minor(s): Information Systems

Expected Graduation Year: May 2017

Briefly describe your internship, co-op,  or research opportunity, including your day-to-day tasks, responsibilities, and assignments.

At the Living Legacy Foundation I’ve been working on various projects with the IT department such as helping with the new iPhone’s being issued, inventory on computers & printers, setting up new workstations for new people, configuring hardware/software issues for laptops, desktops, and printers, and handling network issues that occur from time to time

Describe the process of obtaining your internship, research, or co-op opportunity.

I obtained my internship earlier in the year. I went to the UMBCworks page and applied to internship opportunities I was interested in. From there I followed up on my applications by contacting the companies and asking them if they had gotten a chance to review my resume and cover letter. After that I did get the opportunity to interview for a few companies. From the group of companies I had to decide which company would be most beneficial for me and so I chose The Living Legacy Foundation. I went through about 3 interviews and then finally got the chance to be an Intern for them and it's been great.

What have you enjoyed the most about your position or organization/company?

The most interesting thing I have enjoyed about my position at the Living Legacy Foundation is that there is something to learn everyday. Whether it be something technical or health related. Ever since I started working here I have definitely learned and have gotten experience in technical and software concepts but I have also learned a lot of health/donor concepts since the Living Legacy Foundation is an Organ Procurement Organization.

How do you believe you have made an impact through your work?

Through my work here at the Living Legacy Foundation, I have made an impact by helping create a new network environment as we upgraded the systems. We also adopted a new phone system and it has been great so far because the phone systems can do much more than the old ones. I am in the process of also coming up with a plan of action to replace all the old printers in this company with new updated ones which should help out the company a lot.

What advice would you give to another student who is seeking an internship or similar experience?

Some advice I would give to another student is that just stay positive during the process of finding an internship and even after getting one. Know that you're there to help the company out but you're also there to help yourself out by gaining as much experience and knowledge as you can. Communication is also key because if you communicate with your peers, you might get to learn something new or learn how to do something in a simpler way. Communication also gives you a chance to gain new connections not just in your field but connections all around.

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Want to be the next Intern of the Week? Make sure to fill out this form and stay tuned. New interns are announced every Friday!