PINK BOW

When you first glance at this picture, you might first see a pink silk bow. Or maybe just the color pink. Then you see a girl with black hair, pale skin, and dark blue ocean eyes. When I saw this picture, I immediately remembered another photo we looked at and discussed in class. The photo was of a man with his mouth stitched shut. Of course, this photo has a whole new different meaning, in my opinion. At first I thought that this girl in the picture probably just took this picture for no reason. Maybe she took the picture because she thought she looked pretty and never really thought “Hey, I’m going to take a picture with a pink silk bow over my mouth to mean this.” Then I thought that maybe this photo means that she’s keeping secret(s), and they’re “girl” secrets. What I mean by girl secrets is by her beauty secrets or secrets girls would only tell other girl friends. After I thought this picture could probably mean this, I thought about the movie Mean Girls with Lindsay Lohan. In the movie, one of the girls points out that one of the “mean” girl’s hair was so big because it was full of “secrets”.
This picture seemed feminine to me at first because of the pink bow and also the pink t-shirt. When you examine her hair cut/style, it doesn’t look the most feminine. She’s also not looking straight at the camera. I do think it is her taking the picture. Her head is facing off to the right, but her eyes are looking straight, but I can’t tell if it’s at the camera or above it. Her left eye is one of the center points of the picture. It’s there in the light. Her right eye is in the dark, shadowed by her hair. Going back to her hair, it seems unnaturally dark for her skin tone. Maybe she colored it a few shades darker. Also, when you go down the picture, her hair looks a little untouched.
When you think of a pink bow, you could think of being a little girl, or even the breast cancer awareness symbol. This picture could have something to do with knowing a person who has survived or died due to breast cancer.

Assimilation

Page 453 Seeing 2 – Blog 6
Page 261-3; 446-53

Amy Tan is considered to be a Chinese American in her interview in 1995 (Page 263). As I finished reading this essay I could relate it to Stanley Crouch’s Goose-loose Blues for the Melting Pot because of the way he talks about being American, and the whole “melting pot” metaphor. In Tan’s essay, Fish Cheeks, she talks about a time when she’s fourteen, having a crush on the minister’s “all-American” son (blond hair, blue eyes, ETC.). “The different groups that make up the nation need and attract and influence each other…” (Crouch Page 447) “For Christmas I prayed for this blond-haired boy, Robert, and a slim new American nose.” (Tan Page 261)
Tan tells the story of a girl being embarrassed about her parents inviting him and his family over for Christmas dinner. She doesn’t think her Chinese Christmas dinner will impress these “all-Americans.” She goes on about how her family embarrasses her by following their Chinese traditions. Though at the end, her mother surprises her by giving her what she considered an “American-style skirt”, and telling her not to be ashamed of her heritage. “You only shame is be ashame.” (Page 262) This goes back to Crouch’s piece where he’s talking about being a true American. “Assimilation is not the destruction of one’s true identity.” “…we can see that what it means to be American has never been fixed…we are continually creating and re-creating our traditions.” (Page 446)
There is so much Crouch talks about in his piece. Crouch talks about American culture and how is has changed so much over time from different cultures assimilating together, from immigration leading to cultural changes, all the way back to when the 3/5’s Compromise existed and there were slaves seen as less-than human, then going up to the 1960s. Both of their assimilations are similar in a way of different cultures coming together. Crouch's peice is more about the overall view of being a "True" American. Crouch talks about more historical content to prove his point of how being "American" has changed over time, where Tan focuses more on experience of being Chinese American.