On Knowing Without Being Jaded
I've been a buzzkill, even to myself.
My phone knows I care about women’s stories, so it feeds me women’s pain. Story time: I found out my husband was cheating. Story time: My family chose my abuser. Story time, story time, story time, until the stories blur into a static of cruelty I didn’t ask for but can’t look away from.
Whenever I interview and chat with academics and scholars who research topics like gender, sexuality, race, capitalism, etc., I ask the same question: “How do you get so close to the subject matter without being jaded?” It’s a question to get them to open up about their work, but secretly, the question is for me. I want to know how to know, without falling into cynicism. I want to be aware without being jaded. I want to digest, without losing my whimsy, and I want to know if that is possible.
It is possible, that is the feeling that I get from my guests. None of them are really heavy and dark. All of them have families. Their children seem happy and light. Their partners are joyous too. They tell me that knowing is being empowered because you aren’t confused by what you are experiencing or seeing. Am I confused?
There’s a stereotype or trope that all feminists are angry, and to an extent, it’s true, not in the dehumanizing, sexist way, but in the empathetic and frustrating way. The type of anger that hears another story of another woman who has been killed or brutalized yet again, and responds.
What do you do with information like that? What do you do when you’ve become the stat, the one in four, one in six, one in three? Or you walk around, looking over your shoulder for fear of becoming the stat, because you know it can always happen to you, that you didn’t outsmart it, that you were just lucky in a perverse sense of the word, and yet I am trying to do something with it.
I am trying to find, curate, and immerse myself in beauty, story, warmth, and lightness. I want to know in an empowering way, not in an apathetic, fatalistic way. The best trait about me is that no matter what, I always have
hope. I can always find light, the silver lining, the moment where life is still worth it, and that is what I will do here.
This will be different. I will be different. This brand will be different, but the essence will remain the same. So, here are some things that have been making me happy.
This TikTok video of a couple experiencing joy
The creator Corporatecrybaby and her approach to fashion and aesthetic choices
The Criterion Channel collection Black Debutantes features films by Black women and their debuts.
An indie song that gives me a certain feeling that I can’t quite describe. It just moves me.
