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Hello and welcome back to my BCM206 blog series. This week I've spoken to the ever-impressive Miss Taylor Housman (@Taylorlani2 on Twitter). I managed to get a reasonable quality recording of our conversation, so this time I've made a podcast instead of a transcript.

You might be familiar with Taylor's incredible art, or more recently, the exquisite music-based blog posts she's graced us with over on her WordPress. I've had the pleasure of calling Taylor a friend for over a year now, so this interview flowed so naturally and lasted far longer than I expected. I've edited it down so that you can sit in on our conversation and have time left in your day.

We talked about making friends outside of school, making your degree serve your interests, music, art, astrology, supporting each other, pop-punk, 5SOS, Tumblr and have a lot of laughs in between. Enjoy!

“Cough, Cough”

TaylorLani's music and astrology, a unique blend of sounds and stars, creating connections through shared interests and cosmic vibes.

An open letter to Year 12 me, reflections on growing up and navigating the future.

I want to start this article off with a disclaimer. I'm about to do a bunch of generalising. Logically, I cannot speak to the experience of ALL women, nor of ALL men. I am not making these generalisations with the intention of stereotyping anyone. I am simplifying through the use of generalisation, to point out gender-related phenomena that I have noticed, and discuss possible causes and effects.

Now that that's out of the way - I have a question for you.

"Kindness is weakness" - we've heard it all before. But is it true? More importantly, is it true for everyone, in every scenario?

I'm going to try to answer these questions in two parts. Firstly, how do we define weakness through masculinity? And secondly, how do we define kindness in masculinity?

Part One: Weakness in Masculitnity

I'd argue that kindness isn't weakness unless the kindness is damaging for the person giving it. Kindness is, on a basic level, putting someone else's feelings above your own, and making your decisions based on how they feel. Weakness therefore can be seen in the disconnect between how someone feels and how someone acts. If you look at it this way, you aren't weak for expressing your emotions (or, indeed, not expressing your emotions); but weakness comes from a shortage of internal understanding of your feelings.

The problem is, men are socialised to feel uncomfortable discussing their emotions, even on a casual level. From a young age, they're told to 'toughen up' in response to tantrums. They're not told 'calm down and explain what's wrong'. As a result, they miss out on developing the skills to identify, articulate, and express their inner emotions, and they become accustomed to 'bottling it up', and 'getting on with it'.

The stoic, strong, Aussie-battler expectation of men, is one that harms everyone. According to a report carried out by the Australian Institute of Professional Councillors, patterns of emotional repression result in bigger emotional outbursts in men, that contribute directly to domestic violence.

Also, poor mental health directly correlates with physical illness. Consider how many men aren't comfortable going to the doctor when they're sick, because of social expectations around unrealistic 'strength', exemplified through phenomena like 'the man flu'. The higher rates of early death among men likely result from this harmful 'stoic' stereotype.

According to Lifeline, an average of 9 Australians die of suicide per day. 75% of these are men. Throughout the drought, depression and suicide rates amongst men between 40-85 in rural Australia were recorded at an all-time high.

The social systems, expectations and stereotypes that cause this harm are difficult to break free of. On paper, it seems as though sharing your feelings is an easy step to make. But men who choose to step outside of toxic masculinity and share their feelings openly are actively destroying the pillars and structures by which they understand their reality. It runs so deep, on a personal and a societal level, that doing something as simple as crying in front of a friend, as a man, is a radical step, with many possible repercussions.

I won't pretend to know the answer or solution for this problem, but I think it's important to be aware of the way that men and women are socialised to experience personal reality in vastly different ways.

Part Two: Kindness in Masculinity

We somewhat unknowingly draw a link between what is 'right' and what is 'kind' - and they're not always the same thing. The reason for this comes back to kindness defined as putting someone else before yourself. Sometimes, it is morally correct to put yourself first. You can't pour from an empty cup.

Morality is not the same as kindness. Problems such as the phenomena of the 'nice guy' emerge when we confuse the two. Men are championed for displaying any sense of morality (in theory, kindness), and scrutinised when showing emotion (weakness). As I said before

I love coming of age stories. I think most people do. Here's why; there comes a point in your youth where you are confronted with the challenge of aligning the two levels at which you exist. That is, within a society, and as yourself, individually. This concept permeates every part of our personal lives and, at large, global events as a whole. The relationship between the self and the society is a complicated one, and at the same time, it's straightforward.

We each are affected by our cultural and experiential background, and in turn, our cultural and experiential backgrounds are affected by us. We all come to a situation with our own ethical baggage… what's right and what's wrong differs from person to person and from culture to culture. The spaces in which these ethical standards clash is where we get conflict or turmoil of any sort.

The resolution should be simple - we should all agree that respecting each other is right, and not doing so is wrong. The thing that stands in the way of this simplicity is the concept and workings of 'power'. When one person is assigned more worth than another (that be monetary worth or otherwise), the system based on mutual respect becomes unimaginable.

We want to believe that we individually have substantial personal power, but that's not true unless you're obscenely wealthy or in a position of ultimate political power. We can pretend that you and your friends using paper straws will fix the climate crisis, but it won't. It places the responsibility on powerless individuals to feel they have control over a situation that starts and ends with mass corporations and those with substantial power.

The idea of individualism is this saving grace we are gifted through the suffocating midst of capitalist control. We want to believe that we have power, but we also want to think that we are in some way unique and different from everyone else. This duality clashes when you consider that if small individuals ever do have significant power, it's only through unanimous cooperation.

Outside of completely dismantling the idea of power, the only chance we have is standing by each other. So, in issues of more considerable concern, the common good can only be achieved by sacrificing our egotistical attachment to the idea of individualism.

On the one hand, it's okay to be different, and most of us naturally are different to others. It's only harmful when you want to be different so much that it affects other people's lives. It's okay if you genuinely enjoy metal music… it's not okay if you're racist. See the difference?

The problem is, I'm convinced that many people say and do some really outlandish things, not because they genuinely believe in it, but just to have their metaphorical "I'm not like other girls" moment in the sun. For example, the Sydney lockdown protests a few weeks ago… I hope that I don't know anyone involved in that, but I'd have some questions if I did. Did you really think that that was going to get us out of lockdown? Did you really think that your personal 'right to freedom' is more important than everyone else's health and wellbeing? Did you skip the lesson in kindergarten where they tell you that all rights come with responsibilities?

Granted, the concept of 'the common good' isn't homogenous from person to person. Our perspectives on what is right and what is wrong are shaped by our own experiences and background. Different people are going to perceive a universal ethical standard and common knowledge base to include different concepts. But, in circumstances such as… oh, I don't know… A GLOBAL PANDEMIC… I feel that the prioritisation of the community over one's self is a pretty basic concept to grasp. Right now, 'the common good' refers to getting out of this massive, all-encompassing health risk.

On the 19th of August, I will be getting my first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine. I hate needles like nothing else, I'm scared shitless, and I'm pretty sure that

As we collectively stumble out of our lockdown daze and return (in a mix of reluctance and excitement) to the realm of communications and media studies, we're faced with a challenge. For this subject (BCM241 Media Ethnographies), we must choose a media niche to immerse ourselves within, for research and analysis.

Those of you who follow my Instagram or Twitter will know that I've been interested in photography for quite a while now. In fact, if you had followed this blog as little as a year ago, it would have still been called "Neesh Photography". I rather recently decided to separate the two passions of mine - photography & writing - into separate entities. I've been quite dedicated to creating writing content on this site for the last few months, but still haven't done much serious work in the photography sphere.

The relevance of photography outside of the niche community is undoubtable, the media that we access on a daily basis is saturated with images in one sense or another. As they say, a picture paints a thousand words, so of course, images have a strong impact on the way that we perceive and understand our world, our lives and the media we consume. Photography, more than anything, serves to shape and communicate perspective.

Photography today lends itself readily to a discussion around social constructionism. The primary function of photography is to represent and communicate some form of reality or truth visually, and the idea of 'truth' as something that "is different based on who you ask" is central to the social constructionism paradigm. (DeCarlo, Mattew, 2018).

Pair this with the paradigm shift present in the way we are coming to re-examine the value of news & legacy media, and it's evident that photography, as a representation of reality conveyed to a viewer, is undergoing a coinciding paradigm shift as well.

"Photography has been adopted for every kind of human viciousness, but it also is a boon for human understanding and solidarity...Photography is in a state of flux, and thinking about photography is moving into a new attention space and conceptual vocabulary."Robert Hariman, 'Rethinking photography, spectatorship, and the public image', 2016

The problem is, in an age where every person has a phone camera strapped to their hip 24/7, what defines a photographer and distinguishes them from someone with a camera? It's not a niche if everyone is interested and involved in it. The answer is this;

A good photographer is able to consistently produce work that has some sort of effect on other people. And they're consistently able to make something in a style that's specific to themselves.

That's why public persona is important in the careers of photographers. It contributes to their brand and sets them and their style apart. A lot of more well-known photographers utilise persona through a YouTube channel, however, a number of platforms are useful for the photography community. Instagram is an obvious one. Although, it's garnered a lot of critique due to its algorithmic lack of support for photography work. Platforms such as Pinterest, Flikr, 500px, Behance, Twitter and TikTok are home to niche photography communities.

I'd love to use this subject and the corresponding DA to delve deeper into the online media community of photographers & photography. Because, regardless of how good you are handling a camera, a successful photographer draws on public persona, platform usage skills and user interaction. So far, my grasp on those tools are underdeveloped, and this subject will give me a great incentive to focus on developing them.

“Thanks, bye”

If you've spoken to me for even two seconds this year, I'm sure that I've mentioned that I got hit by a truck in February. If, by some miracle, I did not bring it up, I did write a post soon afterwards, telling the story of that day, with no details about the aftermath.

Well, it's been six months since then. I bought and broke a whole new car, I learned how to drive manual, I've even come around to keeping random items in said car. The insurance companies have come to their conclusions, and I've learnt to manage my anxieties.

Shortly after the crash, the police and ambulance rocked up. Everyone involved in the collision was told to swap details. They insisted that I go in the ambulance to the hospital to check everything was fine. So, the towing man helped me grab all the essential things from my car while I filled out some paperwork. Luckily, I was headed home for a few days, so I had an overnight bag packed, ready to grab.

I don't like to carry a handbag, and my phone tap to pay didn't work back then, so at that point, I used to keep my EFTPOS card in the back of my phone case. I took my phone case off when I put my phone in the holder for the trip home, and long story short, I lost my EFTPOS card. It would have expired 10 days later, but my mum had it cancelled just in case. It takes time for a new card to get processed. So for a week or so, I lived off of some cash, like a caveman. Regardless, the EFTPOS card was the last thing on my mind.

Luckily, and unluckily, my fears faced me, through the driver's side window of a little blue Peugeot 206. R.I.P Chelsea.

Truthfully, at that point, there wasn't much on my mind at all. It didn't feel real. I didn't even really cry that day or the day following. I teared up here and there, but it was honestly a blur of sorting things out and re-telling the event to everyone who asked. I went to sleep that night expecting to wake up and find it was just a vivid dream.

I've experienced a lot of dissociation in my time. To some people, 'dissociation' is just a mental health buzzword thrown around online. In my case, it's a state that my mind goes into when something happens that I can't emotionally handle. It is safe mode. It is survival mode. But when it wears off, I have to feel everything that was blocked. So, naturally, the few months following the accident were filled with jitters, upset stomachs, tears and brain-scrambling anxiety.

My Dad's best friend lives in Sydney and was pretty close, so she came to meet me at the hospital and took me back to her place afterwards. They did the basic checks on me while I was in the hallway because the hospital was overcrowded. I opted out of seeing a doctor because honestly, being in a crowded hospital in the middle of a pandemic waiting around only to inevitably be told that I'm fine didn't sound too fun for me. I just wanted to go home. Meanwhile, Dad spent his day driving to Sydney.

About a week later, I took the train after work to meet Dad and my brother, Dylan in Cronulla, to pick up a new car. I've talked about it in a past post, but my phone and laptop went flat on the way there, so it was just me and my camera and a place I'd never been for the few hours before dad and Dylan arrived. The car is a manual, so I couldn't drive it back to Wollongong myself. Dad taught me the basics of how to drive it in a day. It was very stressful.

After that, it was just practice. Unfortunately, I managed to break an engine mount at some point, so the engine was left swinging back and forth every time I touched the pedals. Trying to drive with that engine mount was like trying to learn to walk with a broken knee. So, after the ever allusive Peugeot spare part was found, the car got fixed. Then began the several month-long journey of learning to drive again. Both in terms of mastering the mechanics of driving a manual - and combatting my own anxieties.

So for a week or so, I lived off of some cash, like a caveman.

Okay, I'm not going to dance around this. I'm really sick of the fact that 99% of the encouragement, compliments, feedback or recognition I receive from friends/peers is based on my appearance.

Obviously, It's nice to get a compliment here and there. It's less about the compliments I do get and more about the one's that I don't. I noticed this weird little discrepancy a while ago, and it's been bugging me.

Why is my appearance treated as my most important trait? Why do my peers comment on it as if it's important? Is it important? Is it more important than my other traits? Why do they care enough about my ego to tell me that I look pretty but not enough to say that my photos are good or that my writing is interesting?

I'm not necessarily angry at anyone in particular because I don't even think it's a conscious thing. I just want to know why it is the case. Obviously, we live in a world that prioritises physical appearance over depth of character, which is why I feel the need to point it out. Maybe it is just an issue of awareness.

I think the best way to tackle this quandary is through a theoretical frame. If you don't know what 'pretty privilege is - the name makes it pretty obvious. It's a social concept that theorises that conventionally attractive people have some advantage in life that those who are not conventionally attractive do not receive.

It definitely exists, but as with most things, there's a positive side and a negative one. I've not been subject to any severe experiences of fatphobia, racism, homophobia or classism. I'll probably never be turned down at a job interview because of my appearance. Service staff and strangers are very rarely rude or discriminatory towards me. I acknowledge that as a privilege that not everyone has. But that privilege causes a lot more barriers than not.

Pretty privilege only exists because we, as individuals, buy into the idea that physically attractive people are more valuable than other people. The problem is that equating value to beauty removes value in everything else. And that's what's getting on my nerves.

Several issues of perspective and self-esteem arise when you place beauty on that pedestal.

Often when I hear pretty privilege talked about, they talk about girls getting into clubs and not having to buy themselves drinks. It's about getting attention, and attention being wrongly equated to respect. You don't get free drinks just because you're pretty. We all know there's more subtext than that. If people are doing nice things or being friendly, and it's because they find you attractive... those are not altruistic random acts of kindness. All assumptions come with expectation, and here's the thing;

I gain nothing by knowing that you find me attractive.

People assume you're arrogant. People assume you're unintelligent or unapproachable. If you're pretty, often, people think that's all you are. People seem surprised when they discover that I am quite intelligent. When I have daft moments, the phrase 'You're lucky that you're pretty' gets thrown around. It can be hard to make friends, hard to see yourself as worthy or interesting, hard to feel understood, respected or heard. That's really strange to experience when I'm 100% sure that I am more interesting, funny, intelligent, hardworking and creative than I am pretty. I hold value for those traits in myself and others, so it confuses and upsets me when others don't.

I saw a chain of TikToks that explain this concept pretty well. The explanation given at 2.50 is what I'm getting at.

We've been placed in this society that sets the beauty standard as the most important thing. The age of social media has catapulted the attention economy. Pretty privilege does exist. But it's rooted in sexism, the attention economy, and how capitalism builds on desirability politics. In this light, pretty people don't usually receive actual privilege past 'being treated nicer' unless their line of work is one t

I speak from a position of privilege when I say that my parents genuinely do not care about the gender of the person I bring home. Growing up, I didn't feel the need to label and disclose my sexuality to those close to me. Heck, I didn't even feel the need to label and disclose my sexuality to myself. I didn't worry. I wasn't scared or insecure about being attracted to more than one gender... honestly, I thought that everyone was. So, before I get into this article, I want to acknowledge that not everyone has that privilege.

For some people, coming out and asking for acceptance ran the risk of exile. Some people have to sacrifice everything to be with the person they love.

This might seem really obvious - but they shouldn't have to.

It does strike me as a little strange that someone who's not involved in the relationship would genuinely become upset about someone else's sexual and romantic preferences. However, I understand that in the past, back before women had rights, someone's romantic partner was integral to the survival of the family, and a marriage that wouldn't produce children was almost entirely pointless. The customs changed, but the judgement remained.

It's something that's talked about all the time, but the world operates from the perspective of a middle class, heterosexual white man. Anyone who falls outside of that exact criteria is perceived according to how closely they align to it. Traits such as someone's gender, race, age, weight and sexuality impact how a person is treated, almost automatically.

You are not a suspicious-looking jar of mayonnaise in the back of a fridge. You don't need a label.

Consciously or not, we assume that if someone is feminine-presenting, they are less intelligent and less aggressive than someone masculine-presenting. We assume that someone with dark skin is less well-behaved than a white person. If someone is attracted to someone of the same gender, it is assumed that they are in some way weird or indecent as compared to that straight white man archetype. We understand the world through that comparison.

I think we can all agree that it's not accurate to make those assumptions, but that we've been brought up in a world that teaches us to make those mental associations, often without realising. These associations are all collateral damage from outdated ways of thinking.

Often when people talk about issues of race, people take the position of 'not seeing colour'. The same sort of thing can be said in terms of gender and sexuality. This way of thinking is undoubtedly well-intentioned, but it's not helpful. You can't dismantle those automatic associations without being educated about why they exist. Without that education factor, you might not let those assumptions impact your actions, but they're still there, even if you're ignoring them.

The best way to create a world wherein our differences don't breed hatred and inequality is to behave like they don't. Acknowledge the past, and work towards changing the standard. For example, someone's sexuality shouldn't matter, so without invalidating anyone, act like you would if it didn't.

I have never once 'come out' to anyone. My sexuality isn't a secret, if it's brought up, I'll talk quite openly about it, but it's just not anyone else's business. Your sexuality is no more integral to your personality than, say, your favourite colour or hobby. At no point did I feel the need to sit my parents down, after months/years of internal battles and fear and confusion, just to tell them that my favourite colour is blue.

The best way to create a world wherein our differences don't breed hatred and inequality is to behave like they don't.

Sexuality is fluid, so is gender. You honestly don't know who you might be attracted to in the future. What's the point in labelling your attraction if you're potentially limiting your possibilities. Blue might be my favourite colour, but I'm not going to ONLY buy blue clothes

Did you hate school? Well, you’re not alone! Most of us did at some point or another.

Follow up question: Does that not seem strange to you?

Most of us spend over a decade in the education system and graduate year twelve with nothing but a bruised self-image and a very shaky understanding of trigonometry. But we’ve all heard the ‘I don’t know how to do my taxes’ narrative. That’s not what I’m getting at.

The high school education system churns out oily 18-year-olds who don’t know how to manage their money, communicate effectively, or care for themselves on the most basic level. The high school education system does not cater to the needs of the student. The kids that do well in school are the ones who learnt to comply with the demands of the system, which should be serving the students.

Knowledge is freedom, simply put. By year 12, we’ve had a hundred tonnes of mindless nonsense shoved down our throats about the HSC and ATAR. It’s implied that if we do poorly in those last set of exams, we may as well give up on life. All that stands between you and lifelong unemployment is this multiple choice question about mitochondria. It’s ridiculous. And we all know it. But we trap ourselves in the illusion because it’s hard not to believe a lie that’s fed to you five days a week for six years.

The well-known ineffectiveness of the standardised test is only one part of it. To do well in school, you need one skill and one skill only. You need to have a good memory. I didn’t hate exams because I was good at remembering what they told me. That didn’t mean I was any more intelligent than anyone else, but the system would have you believe otherwise.

We all know that the standardised test system doesn’t work for most people’s benefit, so why are schools still following that same structure?

We are not taught the right things, and we are not taught them in the right way.

Capitalism profits off of insecurity. How many people waste thousands of dollars in university just because high school made them think it was the only way to succeed? Of course, we’re put in a system that pits us against each other and teaches us to fear ‘failure’ like nothing else. It doesn’t prepare you for the real world, in any sense. In the real world, you need to know how to communicate and collaborate with coworkers. In the real world, you fail over and over and over before you pass. The high school system sets you up to fail but doesn’t teach you how to deal with it. Those who did well academically probably struggled socially and vice versa.

The system limits the information we are taught, the pace at which we learn and the method in which we learn. It teaches us that failure to comply with authoritative structures and systems means failure in general. It doesn’t. Freedom in education leads to freedom in general. It is the systems’ responsibility to meet the individuals’ needs, not the other way around. I remember hearing a phrase during my trial exams:

“Did you fail school, or did school fail you?”

I went to a catholic high school. There were a few more restrictions on what we were allowed to learn. For example, they weren’t really supposed to teach us about contraception. I’m pretty sure we were supposed to be abstinence educated. Luckily, I had a good teacher who found ways to give us a little more information than I think she was allowed to. That said, I was never taught about same-sex relationships, I was never taught about conflict management, we definitely weren’t given an in-depth understanding of consent. At some stage, I should have had to sit in a class and learn coping mechanisms for anxiety and depression.

You might think, “parents should teach that stuff “…, but not everyone’s parents know those things - they went through the same system. Also, in some cases (such as sexual education), parents assume that schools teach things, and the schools assume that parents teach them. The result is neither. The kids learn from the