Lehigh University Women's Center
Yesterday, I attended the LiNK video hosted by the Asian Cultural Society called The Faces of North Korea. My friend is on the executive committee for ACS and my friends and I went to support her. I also thought it was a good idea to go to learn more about North Korea because my uncle actually escaped from North Korea when he was 18 years old. When I was younger, I remember listening to his story about his escape. He lived near the coast but his family was so poor and they had no food, that he eventually made the decision to try escape by boat. He took off on his small little boat in the middle of the night, not even waking up his parents and three younger brothers. He ran into a Chinese fishing boat and somehow convinced them to let him on. This was extremely lucky of him. The Chinese and North Korean government share an alliance, and in order to keep this alliance, the Chinese government does not recognize North Korean escapees as refugees and instead, ships them back to North Korea to face extreme punishment: torture, political labor camps that are basically concentration camps, or even death. My uncle was fortunate enough to meet a group of Chinese men who were willing to look over this detail and they helped him instead of turning him over to authorities. He agreed to work for very little pay on the boat for 2 years, and in return, they agreed to take him to South Korea after the two years of labor. He successfully assimilated into the South Korean society and eventually moved to the United States where he today, owns a small construction company in Virginia.
The video was much more interesting than I had planned, and I actually really enjoyed watching it. I didn’t know just how hard it was to hide in China, though I did know everything else about the labor camps and the demilitarized zone separating North and South Korea; I actually visited the DMV once when I visited Korea, and it really is not a happy place to visit. There was footage of life in North Korea, which was so weird to look at because it is so different from the southern peninsula, and it’s hard to accept that the two countries are so different from each other.
Sylvia Lee
Over the summer, I read the book A Stolen Life, a memoir by Jaycee Lee Dugard who was kidnapped for eighteen years before finally being reunited with her family. Jaycee Lee Dugard lived with her mother, baby sister, and her stepfather in South Lake Tahoe, California at the time of the kidnapping, and she was an eleven-year-old fifth grader. On June 10, 1991, Dugard walked up the hill to catch the school bus just like any other day. However, as she approached the bus stop, a car stopped and a couple abducted her by paralyzing her with a stun gun. Following this incident, Jaycee was brought to Antioch, California, three hours from her home, and was forced to live with the kidnapper, Phillip Garrido, and his wife, Nancy. For eighteen years, Jaycee lived in captivity. She was forced to stay in a tiny room, and the only human contact she had was with Phillip Garrido. Garrido only brought her food and sometimes, different forms of entertainment such as children’s books. Throughout the eighteen years, Phillip Garrido raped her multiple times. He claimed that his actions were justified because “demon angels” let him to take her, and her having sex with him would prevent him to look for other girls. According to Phillip, Jaycee was protecting and helping other girls because he wouldn’t go looking for other girls since he had her.
On April 3, 1994, the Garridos informed Jaycee that she was pregnant, and at that time, Jaycee was only thirteen. Her first daughter was born on August 18,1994. Three years later, her second daughter was born. Although Jaycee took care of her daughters most of time, her daughters were forced to call Jaycee their sister, and were forced to believe Nancy as their mother. As the girls got older, Jaycee was given more freedom. She began to work at Garrido’s printing shop, but she never told anybody about her true identity because of her daughters and because she had no where else to go. In 2009, when Garrido and Dugard visited UC Berkeley to promote his “God Desire” program, the UC Berkeley special event coordinator noticed Garrido’s odd behavior and immediately notified the campus police. From there, the police discovered his daughters and the true identity of Jaycee.
The book was very eye-opening because in the memoir, Dugard captures her eighteen years living in captivity from the day she enters the Garrido’s house to the time she reappeared in the public. Some of the details in the book are very hard to read through because they are very shocking and unbelievable. It is very difficult to imagine what Jaycee had to go through. For eighteen years, Jaycee always wanted to see her mother, whom she was very close to prior to the abduction. On the other hand, her mother never gave up looking for Jaycee. Although it took them eighteen years to reunite, Jaycee is more fortunate compared to other children who were kidnapped and never got the chance to see their family again. Jaycee’s experience is inspirational, and it makes me appreciate my family and my friends who are always there for me.
Olivia Yang
My friends and I are obsessed with a show called Dance Moms. Set it Pittsburgh, PA, the show circles around the young, female dancers who attend Abby Lee’s Dance Studio and their mothers who accompany them. The show is actually really entertaining; the girls, who span from ages 7 to 14, are amazing little dancers with a lot of talent so their dances are fun to watch, and their moms create constant drama between themselves and Abby, the dance coordinator, that glue you to the television.
One constant argument that happens on the show is about the girls’ costumes. One in particular was when the girls’ dance was a feather fan dance, and they dressed as showgirls. The big thing that made the moms uncomfortable was that the girls had to wear nude bras that would give off the sense that the girls were naked, and although Abby said that the bras would be dazzled out with a million rhinestones and they had huge feather fans that would hide their entire bodies, the mothers were extremely uncomfortable with this week’s costumes.
I feel that this is a big area for hypocrisy in today’s society. While I agree with the mothers in that twelve-year-old girls should not be dancing around stage in nothing but a nude bra and a bright feather fan portraying a Vegas showgirl, I thought it was a little hypocritical of them. In many of the other episodes, the girls’ costumes are nothing but some sort of bikini top and skimpy booty shorts that covered less than the nude bra. The only difference was that one was called a “bra,” and the other was called a “bikini.” When the girls would wear tiny bikini outfits, the moms called them cute, but as soon as they wore bras, it was outrageous and inappropriate for a young girl to wear them during a dance. This shows that though they’re the exact same thing, in today’s society, bra and bikini top have two completely different connotations.
Sylvia Lee
When I was little, I loved watching the television show, Berenstain Bears. I didn’t find out that they were actually books until I was older, so I didn’t get a chance to read all of them, though I did read most of them. My favorite character was obviously Sister Bear; my favorite color became pink because it’s all she wore. While I thought I was mindlessly watching cartoons, the show taught me, like all kids everywhere, important morals and values; important lessons that children seem to learn better from tv shows and books more than their own parents. Sadly, the co-author of the Berenstain Bears series, Jan Berenstain, passed away at the age of 88 on Friday, February 24, 2012. Together with her husband, Jan wrote over 300 books about the popular family of bears everyone knew and loved.
The month of March is Women’s History Month, so it’s all about women, though not necessarily just on women’s rights. While Jan didn’t particularly make a difference in women’s rights, she and her husband certainly made a difference in the minds of children and future generations. Though their books were made into a television series, it was the importance of reading that was emphasized. The pair wrote over 300 books encouraging children to read and advance through reading and comprehension skills in order to have a strong base for future education. With today’s society being so focused on technology and success, the importance of family ties continues to lessen. Therefore, the books focus on various family issues that all children can go through, and how having strong family bonds makes it much easier to go through all the inevitable hardships and obstacles. While its unclear if Jan Berenstain was a strong feminist, we celebrate her life not because what she has done for her fellow females, but for what she has done to strengthen the minds of the future generations.
When I was in high school, my U.S. history teacher liked to pace back and forth when lecturing about former presidents. So when he decided to lecture about former President Thomas Jefferson, I became more mesmerized with whether or not he was going to run into the wall rather than about the Louisiana Purchase. I can’t tell you the details of my class that day, but what I do remember was Mr. Fry stopping his lecture and casually mentioned, “Did you know Thomas Jefferson had six illegitimate children with one of his slaves?”
That was it. He then continued to drone on about Mr. Jefferson, but I wasn’t paying attention to his dates on the board or his speech. I was interested in who this woman was. What was she like, what were her kids like? Were her children forced into slavery even though they were the kin of the U.S. president? My questions were left unanswered until I found myself in American Film 187 a year ago in Spring 2011. One of the films assigned was Sally Hemings: An American Scandal. A short PBS film series about the controversial 38-year relationship between Thomas Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemings, the film left all my questions from four years ago answered. The film documented Sally Hemings from her young age of 14 and first meeting Jefferson in Paris, all the way through the six children she had with him and until his death when she was serving, still as a slave to him, in his household in Virginia. It took me four years and a college course to figure out who Sally Hemings was. It is sad that our history books do not include this brave women and many women like her who suffered through slavery as well as being a sexual partner of their master. I constantly ask, where are the books, the movies and the lectures on these stories? It is Black History Month, and in honor of this month I wanted to write about Sally Hemings, the woman who bore six children of a U.S. President only to have her rights as a woman and slave held against her, her whole life.
Adrianna Abreu
Who would have thought that Girl Scout Cookies would spark a national debate? Although they have been discouraged, despite their deliciousness, due to the amount of trans fat and high fructose corn syrup in the cookies, I did not expect to hear news of a nationwide boycott on the cookies; not because of the high amount of sugar and fat, but because of a seven year old.
Bobby Montoya is a 7-year-old transgender girl who had high hopes of joining the Girl Scouts troops in her hometown, but was heartbroken when she was denied membership because she was told, “it doesn’t matter how he looks, he has boy parts, he can’t be in Girl Scouts.” Since then, however, the organization admitted to the mistake and allowed Bobby to join. However, this was not without consequences. A member from the group called HonestGirlScouts.com posted an eight minute video on Youtube expressing her and her group’s disapproval for the admission of Bobby into Girl Scouts because it “goes against scout values,” and calls for a boycott on the purchase and consumption of the Girl Scout Cookies.
I was thankful enough to go to a high school where stereotypes existed to a point, but didn’t really matter. Not that I went to a perfect high school, because people tend to stick to others who are similar to them, so cliches are bound to form, but it was nothing like Mean Girls. I had friends in every so-called cliche, and so did everyone else. No one chose their friends on what they wore, what classes they took, what gender identity they were. Honestly, it was more, “I’ve known you since the second grade so we’re going to stay friends forever.” Because of this no-judge policy, there were many openly gay, lesbian, and transgender students just in my graduating class. I had a number of friends who openly gay, and they always said that school was a safe haven for them because there was a zero tolerance for bullying, and they honestly had not met anyone at school who harrassed them on their sexual orientation. When I heard about the boycott on Girl Scout Cookies because of the controversy on whether or not to accept a transgender girl, it was kind of a shock to me. To hear that a 7-year-old was denied from a group that is supposed to foster a sense of belonging and closeness broke my heart because I could only imagine how much it broke hers. No 7-year-old should have to go through something like that.
If I could, I would buy thousands of girl scout cookies to show my support for Bobby Montoya, but let’s be honest: I’m a poor college student, and I don’t have that kind of money. But I strongly encourage everyone else to buy the cookies (ignore the amount of fat and sugar just this once) and support Bobby Montoya and the many others who face discrimination because of their gender identity.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/26/bobby-montoya-girl-scouts_n_1033308.html
http://articles.cnn.com/2012-01-13/living/living_girl-scout-boycott_1_gsusa-cookie-boycott-troop-leader?_s=PM:LIVIN
Sylvia Lee
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