So Apparently I Have Trypophobia...

      Around Christmastime last year, I experienced a very strange feeling while baking. I was folding powdered sugar into a large bowl of batter. The powdered sugar gathered into small clumps as I stirred, forming tiny depressions in the surface of the mixture. For some reason, as I viewed these tiny holes with tiny powdered sugar balls nestled inside them, I was filled with an unreasonable feeling of dread and anxiety. It wasn't a serious or debilitating fear, and I continued the process to completion, but I was very confused as to why the sight of these tiny holes should cause me such discomfort. I supposed that I was just tired, and paid the experience very little mind.
        In January, I experienced a similar feeling while walking outside in the snow. The salt crystals sprinkled on the sidewalk caused small depressions in the snow similar to the holes in the batter. I felt the same unnamed sense of anxiety. I didn't like looking at these tiny holes, and at the same time, they fascinated me in a grotesque way. I was unsure of what to do with this feeling, and I was very confused as to why I should feel this way at all.
        Today, I was watching a video by Toxic Tears, a youtuber that I recently discovered and have been enjoying, and she mentioned that one of her phobias is tyrpophobia, the fear of small holes. When I looked up the term, the first thing that appeared on my screen was a string of pictures of tiny holes clustered together, some on plants and some photoshopped onto human skin. I was immediately filled with the same anxiety I had felt about the batter and the snow.
        Apparently trypophobia is extremely common. It has yet to be recorded in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V), but research on this topic has been taken seriously. The fear is a biological impulse; our brains often associate patterns of tiny holes with danger, because of the harmful things that occur in nature sporting a pitted surface; for example, certain venomous creatures such as the blue ringed octopus, tiny holes bored by insects, or certain skin diseases. For people with trypophobia, it does not matter if the cluster of holes they are looking at actually present a threat; either way, their first reaction is fear or disgust. For some people, the sight of tiny holes can actually cause panic attacks or physical responses such as sweating.
        If you think you may have trypophobia, please be cautious in your research. The internet pulls up a lot of images which, for someone who experiences this fear, could be really, really disturbing.
        
I got my information here.Warning: there are pictures.
http://www.medicaldaily.com/fear-holes-trypophobia-most-common-phobia-youve-never-heard-researcher-says-255357
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trypophobia
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/understanding-trypophobia-why-some-people-fear-holes/

Belated Comments on the Marilyn Monroe Superbowl Ad

     It may be a bit late in the game to comment on Superbowl advertisements, but there is one in particular that still bothers me. It was the Snickers advertisement featuring William Dafoe as Marilyn Monroe when she's "not herself" because she is hungry. It's ironic, because this commercial makes me as cranky as the people in Snickers ads, and the logical answer should be for me to eat a Snickers bar, but now I don't want to because it's Snickers that is making me cranky... 

Anyway, here is the advertisement:

 

     This advertisement annoys me for many reasons. First and foremost, I find it very insensitive to the memory of Marilyn. I don't think it's funny to make light of the amount of trauma that shooting this iconic scene caused the actress. It had to be done twice. The first time was on Lexington Avenue in New York, as a publicity stunt, amid hooting and harassment from male onlookers. Her husband, Joe DiMaggio, was extremely upset, and after the shooting was finished, the couple had one of their biggest fights. They divorced soon after. The footage collected was unusable, and had to be redone in a studio.

     I also dislike the way that Marilyn Monroe is portrayed in this ad. When Marilyn is hungry and “not herself,” she actually calls out the director for the stupidity of this scene, which is basically nothing more than an opportunity to show off Marilyn's body to ogling men. When Marilyn is given the Snickers bar and returns to her normal self, she becomes more than happy to pose suggestively for the shot. She no longer complains, either because she is enjoying herself or because she is no longer thinking for herself. This reinforces the idea of Marilyn Monroe as nothing but a brainless sexual object. That wasn't Marilyn at all. She was a complex, intelligent, and very troubled person. That side of her, unfortunately, wouldn't sell as well as her beautiful body and photogenic face. She was always forced to play the role of the “dumb blonde,” and this sent her into depression. While it was amusing to see William Dafoe in Marilyn's white dress, I think that on the whole the joke was in poor taste.

      If you want to read deeply into this ad, which I do, the wider rhetoric is that when women object to displaying their bodies for male pleasure, they are “cranky” and “not themselves,” and that the proper response to the objectification of their bodies is complacency and passivity.

I might be taking this ad a bit too seriously. I'm sure that no offense was intended by its creators. I just think it was careless, and I am disappointed.
 
     (Here are links, if you want to know a couple of places I got information about Marilyn, and especially this scene:
-http://thoughtcatalog.com/m-j-pack/2015/05/6-tragic-things-you-didnt-know-about-marilyn-monroe/3/
-https://setouq.com/marilyn-monroe-quotes/)

     (Also, just to clarify, I'm not actually intending to boycott Snickers, and I'm not saying that anyone should boycott Snickers. Obviously they aren't the first or last company to air an insensitive ad.)

To the Lighthouse and Down the Rabbit Hole

   "Women can't write, women can't paint."

    This is what Charles Tansley says in Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, and it is a phrase that  haunts Lily Briscoe as she attempts to paint the landscape she sees in her mind. At times she doubts her abilities and despairs of creating anything worthwhile. Her vision contradicts the popular ideas about what paintings should be, just as her actions contradict the popular ideas about what a woman's life should be. In the end, it is her decision to finish the painting that matters, not the painting itself, because in that moment she decides who she is.

    I have been away from blogging for some time. In fact, I have been away from any serious writing in general. The last semester has been a struggle for me, and this present one even worse. I posted some time ago that I was experiencing anxiety about not being smart or creative enough. Since then, I've been up and down. I've been taking incredibly exciting classes and getting to know incredibly exciting people-- but I have also found myself severely limited by my own absurd expectations. I put a great deal of weight on my ability to read and write, and couldn't bring myself to do either except under the "right" conditions. If I was going to read something, my head had to be clear and I had to remember everything and interact with the content on a deep level. If I was going to write, it would have to be as genius and revolutionary as Joyce.

    It didn't help that someone whose judgement I respect told me that my poetry was a bit unoriginal. At the time, it felt like a challenge to do better. As I went along, however, the words began to weigh on me, the way Lily Briscoe felt the weight of "women can't write, women can't paint."

    Things have gotten better. I've begun to realize my errors, and slowly I think I may begin to be able to crawl out of the rabbit hole I seem to have fallen into. For now, I'm going to try to read and write more liberally, and see where that takes me. After all, my obligation is not to the task to perform it perfectly, but to myself to shape myself through these tasks.