Title: The Invisible Syndrome

Creator: Rose Mina

Category: Body

Creator Commentary:

This piece depicts what it is like to feel like your physical self is controversial, undesired and unacceptable. It explores the feelings of having your gender identity questioned because of your innate anatomy. It explains what sort of pressure society puts on us to have the ideal body and what it’s like to be a woman unable to fulfill traditional social ideals of womanhood (getting a period and having a child). This piece explores the role of sex in society and how we focus more on a woman’s childbearing nature than her intellect when defining feminine purpose. Finally, the piece tackles how to accept physical difference and the psychological repercussions that come with deviating from the expected human experience. These ideas tie to the subcategory of body because they analyze how we ascribe meaning to the body’s abilities, how society defines gender, and what is “the norm” as perpetuated by the media or spoken about in daily life. The piece then exposes how we all inflict unattainable goals upon one another and reject our own beings when they don’t “fit” within the established norms. The piece illustrates what it’s like to be born different and that coming to accept that can seem like a form of rebellion in itself because you have to destroy narratives dispensed upon us since childhood. However, in finding acceptance in our own reality we in turn create space for others to do the same. Upon reading this piece, the audience should find validity in their own experiences, their own bodies, and should understand how acceptance of difference is important not only to end internal turmoil but also to allow others to stop resisting their own realities as well.

Submission:

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Creator Bio:

Rose Mina is an aspiring actress from Boulder, Colorado. She is a Sophomore double majoring in Public Relations and Advertising and Sociology and a new member of Honors. She is co-founder/director of Chapman’s chapter of Camp Kesem, a free summer camp for children who have been touched by a parent’s cancer. She has a brother, Quinton (18). She has done a lot of solo traveling, and in her free time enjoys running, hiking, yoga, discovering local coffee shops as well as reading about Buddhism.