If you look at the many Jesus-y paintings from the Medieval or Renaissance eras, for instance the Annunciation paintings, you will see the Virgin Mary usually wears blue and Jesus or the angel Gabriel usually wears a dark pink or red.

Annunciation, Fra Angelico, c. 1437-1446

Yes, that is a male angel in pink, he’s just pretty.

Leonardo Da Vinci, Virgin on the Rocks, c. 1480

Again, the boy angel Gabriel in pink.

Carracci, Pieta, c. 1560-1609

Blue was considered a virginal and feminine color and pink was considered a strong, manly color representing the passion or blood of Christ. Whether she is getting knocked up, giving birth, or grieving, Mary is rockin’ blue. Many times the Virgin Mary will wear both colors, representing the impending, well you know, Jesus killing.

A 1918 article from Earnshaw’s Infants’ Department wrote, “The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.”

Interestingly, nobody knows for sure why the switch happened. They do know when though, sometime during WWII.

One theory is that since Hitler used a pink triangle to identify homosexuals, pink became regarded as an effeminate color. Yes, it wasn’t just a star for Jews, every color meant something different. A stripe about the triangle meant repeat offenders.

German Concentration Camp Badge Colors

Maybe a bit of a stretch, but it sounds like a plausible theory. Now obviously, the homosexual community has embraced the pink triangle as a symbol of pride.

I’m not sure why I am so angered by the color pink forced upon my gender. Maybe it is because I hate that whenever anything is that certain baby pink, it is considered a woman’s issue. Like the pink breast cancer ribbon. Really, that’s the best you came up with? Pink? Dressing babies in an excess of pink or blue is like already deciding for them what their favorite color is. Can’t you just let them decide?

This Smithsonian article cites our 1950′s obsession with consumerism for deepening this pink/blue split. Making parents buy a whole new set of clothing meant doubling their profits. It was fairly common back in the day for both little boys and girls to wear dresses. They usually wore white or pastel colors. Children wearing gender-neutral clothing meant you could pass down your daughter’s clothing to your son. It was simply more economical.

Speaking of cross-dressing children, this great NY Times article discusses “gender fluid” children, or more specifically, “pink boys.” Basically, boys that like to wear dresses. In an attempt to be more understanding in our slightly more homosexual-accepted society, self-proclaimed liberal parents are trying to figure out how to raise a gender-fluid child. We as a society like defining: male, female, gay, lesbian, transgender. But what if your child doesn’t fall into any of those categories? In the article, Alex wants to sometimes wear boy clothes, sometimes wear girl clothes, but still identifies as a boy. He hasn’t gone through puberty yet so who knows if he will be gay or straight? And is that even important?

A line that really stung my feminist core was, “Of course, had Alex been a girl who sometimes dressed or played in boyish ways, no e-mail to parents would have been necessary; no one would raise an eyebrow at a girl who likes throwing a football or wearing a Spider-Man T-shirt.”

It made me stop and think, it’s so true that tomboys are generally culturally accepted. It’s okay to act like a boy but God forbid your son wants to dress like a girl. It goes on to say:

These days, flouting gender conventions extends even to baby naming: first names that were once unambiguously masculine are now given to girls. The shift, however, almost never goes the other way. That’s because girls gain status by moving into “boy” space, while boys are tainted by the slightest whiff of femininity. “There’s a lot more privilege to being a man in our society,” says Diane Ehrensaft, a psychologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who supports allowing children to be what she calls gender creative. “When a boy wants to act like a girl, it subconsciously shakes our foundation, because why would someone want to be the lesser gender?” Boys are up to seven times as likely as girls to be referred to gender clinics for psychological evaluations. Sometimes the boys’ violation is as mild as wanting a Barbie for Christmas. By comparison, most girls referred to gender clinics are far more extreme in their atypicality: they want boy names, boy pronouns and, sometimes, boy bodies.

In the comments section (many I have to skip because they will make my blood boil), a reader eloquently states, “It is, to me, very sad on many levels that boys who want to dress in dresses [and] skirts are vulnerable to bullying and judgement. The whole problems with gender identity issues lies pretty much in the reality that society denigrates women. Period.”

What is so shameful about being a woman?

I suppose my point is why force a color or a way of dress on a child? I do not believe that gender only a societal construct, but I do not see a need to push the genders further apart.

I’m a terrible hostess. I hardly invite friends over to my place. When I do I get so distracted by their presence that I’m barely able to ask how their grandma’s been doing lately and pour a beer at the same time. My meals are haphazard and I never have the right condiments. I invited my cousins over for a BBQ last year, declaring that I would have hotdogs and hamburgers, but then forgot that I don’t own ketchup (I don’t eat it, so I don’t buy it), much to the surprise of my guests. You don’t have ketchup?!

Despite being hopeless when it comes to entertaining and feeding others, I have learned that I do enjoy rules for feeding guests. And I enjoy being fairly certain of what to expect when eating in someone’s home. I have written about the differences in eating with my French relatives compared to eating with my Assyrian relatives. But they do have something in common, there are clear rules to feeding others, and guests know what to expect.

Every single time I’ve eaten at a French person’s home, they offer an aperitif. This is a little alcohol to stimulate the appetite and it is usually served with some nibbles. Sure, the quality of what is served varies a lot based on how old the host is, his taste, how much money he likes to spend on such things, etc. It could be malibu rum and lays potato chips or it could be champagne and home-baked bread with Sicilian olives and lardons. The point is, you know that upon arrival you’ll get to nibble and chit chat in the living room. Then you move to a table where you get entrees, then there’s the main dish, followed by cheese, dessert and a digestif. As a guest, you can bring a bottle of something or offer to bring a dessert, but rest assured you will leave satisfied.

At an Assyrian (or we’ll more broadly call this Iranian) household, it’s the same thing. You can bring a bottle, dessert, or flowers as a guest, but no worry, you will leave with a full belly, leftovers in hand, and probably a little tipsy…or a lot tipsy. The rules are different, however, than the French rules, but in both cases as a guest, you pretty much just show up. As a kid at my aunt’s house, I’d be offered, or rather told to have some “pepsi mepsi” and munch on “chipseh mipseh.” Almost scolded, as if my refusing to eat and drink is a criticism that I don’t think their food and drink is good enough. Now as an adult, I get booze and the same appetizers. There are tons of dishes to snack on, and it’s easy to get full on this. Pace yourself! After a couple hours of grazing, comes dinner, which is always family or buffet style, including giant pots of stew, rice, salads, mounds and mounds of food for days. Same with desserts, there’s often more than two kinds to choose from, and you’ll be offered tea with your dessert.

At a “my great-great grandfather is German, his wife was Italian, my family’s been here for many generations” European mutt white-American house, there are no rules. It’s very inconsistent. You never know what you’re going to get or not get, and I’ve left more than one American party hungry. Hungry! The shame! I went to one party recently where we were instructed to not bring anything but booze. So that’s what everyone did. All liquored up, we realized, oh, there’s no real dinner. There were probably 20 adults and 10 kids at this thing, and enough food for half of us. I perched in the kitchen area and managed to grab 1/3 of an ear of corn and some chips but completely missed any salads and BBQ. The plates emptied before they hit the table. We were starving. “Aren’t they ashamed?” I asked my guy, horrified that the hosts would not have enough food to feed their guests. But I don’t think they knew that they should be embarrassed. Also, the parents at the party had no shame in grabbing food, “it’s for the kids,” they smiled sheepishly, sneaking bites into their own mouths. I know I’m whining, but I was stunned, and starving. I whispered to my man friend, “can we please go get some dinner and come back?”

All this to say, I like going to someone’s house and knowing I won’t go hungry.

“It’s so stressful,” my cousin said to me once, “going to a white person’s house, it’s all potluck, byob, you have to buy and prep stuff ahead of time. With Persians, it’s so easy, you go and you know you’ll be taken care of.”

So, come on my white folk, let’s pull ourselves together and buy too much food, or at least enough food. And I’ll promise to buy some ketchup.

As a graphic designer, it is exciting to see websites condense their information to images. This means they are conveying information in a more efficient and visually appealing way. Designers should be asking themselves everyday–how can we make this information more clear? The more words, the less likely someone will read it and the less likely you will get your point across.

But what is this image overload doing to us? Well I can tell you I haven’t finished a novel in years. Starting them yes. Finishing, no. I have a sneaking suspicion that my patience is being depleted.

So one day, I was at a friend’s house. Actually, it was Sunshine’s, from my previous post about communes. She was working on an amazing quilt made of Crown Royal bags for her brother.

If you are an alcoholic craft-person, this is the project for you

I wanted to start a quilt but the idea of starting a full size quilt was daunting. So Sunshine showed me some quilting books and I decided to do some throw pillow covers. I have had a bunch of squares of different colored pieces of silk that my mom had given me from 30 years ago! At the time, she was a fashion designer working for someone who was into tie-dyeing. So I decided since I already have the material, it will be cheaper and more special than buying throw pillows. Usually my rule is that I only make something if it is cheaper than buying it and/or what you want doesn’t exist. I am totally in support of making things but if I decided to make everything, nothing would get made–so I get a bit picky.

So I got sewing, got greedy, and rushed. Many hours later I ended up with something that looked like it was made by a drunk child.

See?

I ended up seam ripping the whole thing and quilting it by hand. I found something very meditative about doing this hand embroidery. Even the seam ripping wasn’t too terrible. I could carry on a conversation, half watch tv, or just listen to music while doing it. It was a relaxation I have not felt for a while.

The end result. Was this post a thinly veiled attempt to brag? Possible…

But I sort of realized how ridiculous making these pillows were. After buying extra fabric for the back of the pillows, the pillow forms themselves, a quilter’s pizza cutter thing, and thread and needles, I had spent $80! The money plus the approximately 40 hours I had spent on them made me think, why didn’t I just get this shit at IKEA? At this, my man-friend got a bit defensive. He is into woodworking and if he had his way, would make everything. Tables, kitchen islands, sofas, you name it. (I must say he has already made us a beautiful kitchen island). I usually have to talk him down from the ledge. I reason that it would take way more time and money to make a sofa then to buy one. Like I said, I am totally in support of hand-making as much as you can, but at what point is it too much? Now if you want something very special or custom then it’s totally worth the extra time and money. Or sometimes you can really make it for less than what you could buy it for.

Anyways, I guess the point is maybe I was wrong. If you make something, even if you could buy it for way cheaper, you are putting pride into something that will be in your home. So at the end of the day, it is worth it. Maybe knitting next?

Anyway, what was I saying?

I stumbled into design from an already frustrated place. The year is 2007. I had a BA in Fine Arts that was a blast to obtain. I love art, galleries, museums. But had little job prospects outside of secretarial work in galleries and museums. Not that there’s anything wrong with secretarial work. I’m just bad at it. Had I gone to secretary school for 4 months I could have done my job better. So I run back to the university to do a master’s program. In applied anthropology. Using anthropology to solve problems. The trick with applied anthro, is that you have to find something to apply the anthropology to. I went around looking for problems to solve.

And you know who loves solving problems? Yup. Designers.

My prof, who had worked with the chair of industrial design for several years, hooked me up with a design project, working with design students. Which led to another design project. Then another. Pretty soon, I was in the design trenches, brainstorming, post-iting, concepting, ideating (psst, those are really all the same activity).

What’s frustrating about design, where is the rub against anthropology? In broad strokes, Designers tend to

1. jump to solutions.
2. make assumptions about who they are designing for and what they do or want.
3. care more about how a presentation looks than making sure all the words in it are spelled correctly.
4. be hyper-aware of what’s cool or not, and put effort into making sure that they are on the cooler side.

But, what I (especially at first) found frustrating about design, is now why I continue to seek out design work and design partners. Solutions are a way to test theory. Get the idea out in the world and see what happens to it. We can research forever, and not know how to move forward. Gotta jump at some point. Making a presentation look awesome, makes people want to engage with it. If I work with a cool designer, someone who is on the forefront of trends, then I don’t have to look cool all the time.

This is part of the reason why I was interested in co-creating Design School Cheats. Because I am frustrated by design and like to poke fun at designers and design process (like when we say “designers don’t read” – cheat #24). But I tease from a loving place, and I have done a lot of interesting work only because designers make work interesting.

Now, I’m in a haze, not a pure anthropologist, not a designer, but a curious admirer and connector of things and ideas.

If you want to learn more about design, or maybe you are designer that needs a little laugh, check out our fabu app: Design School Cheats. Did I mention it’s free? Also, don’t be startled by the 17+ rating. We mention drinking and smoking and sometimes say “shit” and this makes us debauched.

I watched a tiny piece of Christian Marclay’s The Clock at SF MoMA last week. From 4:37 – 5:05 pm or so. If you’re like me and had not heard of the work before, he (and most likely an army of unpaid interns) stitched together thousands of movie clips that reference time and matched each clip up to the actual time, minute for minute, for 24 hours. I thought it’d be a crazy hodge podgery, but the scenes, despite being from completely different movies, flow into each other quite well and create a unique narrative. It also makes for a great game, who can spot the clock reference first.

What I liked most about it, was thinking about what specific activities are time-bound. Around 5pm I saw:

sitting in an office eying the clock

working in factories

punching time cards

leaving train stations

meeting people

talking on the phone…

This made me think about our synchronous activities. If I’m eating breakfast at 7:30am, how many 1000s of other people are doing the exact same thing at this moment? Doesn’t it remind you of that scene from Amelie? The part where she wonders how many people are having an orgasm at this precise moment. And there’s something very comforting about this normalcy. I find comfort in the communal nature of every task, even if I’m doing it by myself.

What most commonly happens at 12 midnight in movies? New year’s or turning back into a pumpkin. What about 3am? Something dark, dangerous, or naughty?

What else is going on at this precise moment in time?

I just took these, but you get the idea. They’d be even better with a slutty top and tons of makeup. The dead give- away that it’s a selfie is the disappearing (usually right) hand and foreshortened arm.

We have a love-hate relationship with these kinds of photos. We take them, yet they make us cringe. But in fact, there are many kinds of selfies. And what if we knew the stories behind these different types? Would that make them more endearing?

To start, there’s the selfie that a colleague or employer asks you to take. They probably actually mean for you to send them a real professional pic, but I’m too cheap for that. I took this photo one morning for the website of a conference I help organize.

“Professional” Selfie

Not too embarrassing, yeah? I had taken a million the night before, but once you try too hard to look natural + professional + fun, but in a serious way, your face starts to hurt. For this, I was up against the deadline. I just woke up, got dressed, and snapped.

Still serious, but also self-aware of the silliness of the exercise, is what I usually put on my social media pages.

Social Media Portrait Selfie

This was early last year. I was so sick that day. But I was also sick of being in my apartment. So I crawled to the Cantor Arts Center and into this Richard Serra. I like that I look grumpy. I like that I’m listening to headphones for some reason. I really like that I’m standing in a Richard Serra piece, but you probably wouldn’t know it if I didn’t tell you.

Sticking to the serious theme for a minute, I’ve tried the “thinky” selfie. I took this one night probably watching some shitty tv show.

The “Thinker”

We can do the thinker of another flavor too. Trying harder to be arty perhaps.

The Thinker, All Thought Out

So far, we’ve been professional and arty. When I say arty, I only mean that the photographs are not the most flattering, but I’m still somehow proud to show them to the world.

Now, this is where we start sliding back into asshole territory. The “I’m in a cool place and want to show the world.”

“Proof I Was Here” Selfie

This type can coexist with other categories. Here we have, I’m in a cool place and a “reflection” selfie in the Seoul metro.

Window Reflection Selfie

Mirror Reflection Selfie

(This type also commonly occurs in bathrooms). This photo is in fact a threefer, “I’m in a cool place” (Shanghai flea market), mirror reflection, and a little bit of a “where’s waldo” selfie (other examples  of this occur on cups, cutlery, faucets, anything where your reflection is hard to find or not immediately obvious.)

Faux-accidental selfie

I took this in Seoul at the Leeum Museum of Art. Ahem, that’s a cool place right? The only redeeming quality is perhaps the angle. I could title this “chin, nose, and sideburn.”

Finally, here’s a rarity for you. A truly, honest-to-god, accidental selfie.

Truly Accidental

I was taking photos out the window and took this, I guess, bringing my hand back down to my lap. Funnily, this could be in a series with the faux-accidental, entitled “chin and nose.”

There are lots, lots more types, but I think I’ll stop before we hurl, yes?

So, did the stories help? Or do we still love-hate the selfie? In any case, I got to show mine off to you. So thanks!

- – - – - – - -

For more on the social-psychology of selfies, read this Mashable article.

MEN

Often, these men were in motion…

Most of the time they don’t notice me. But sometimes they stare back.

Sometimes they were from a distance.

I noticed that I took more photographs of women in the subway.

WOMEN

Sometimes they were asleep.

Often, I was trying to keep up…

Sometimes, I felt overdressed…or underdressed?

On a recent karaoke night, when drunkenness is mandatory, I was waiting in line to tinkle. When it was my turn, a very drunk woman said “Can I come pee with you? There are two toilets in there.”

By two toilets, she meant this:

Two for Pee?

Though I knew of this unusual urination situation before she proposed a dual pee, against my better judgement I said, “Sure . . . why not?” Pulling my pants down in front of a stranger was sobering. Sure, I’ve had my fair share of drunk squats in parking lots, driveways, porta-potties in driveways, but usually in the cover of night. Peeing in a well lit, very nicely remodeled bathroom made me realize the folly of my decision. I was trying to be forward thinking and sympathetic. She really did have to pee, as most drunk girls do, and there were two toilets in there. Besides, guys pee in front of themselves all the time in urinals, right?

I’ve been known to try to reclaim actions usually reserved for men. Chest bumps, for one. But we do have boobs and we don’t have penises. There have been female urinals and FUDs, or female urination devices, around for almost a hundred years (according to the most reliable source ever, Wikipedia). But you probably haven’t heard of them, right? And no, I don’t think it’s because women are more modest (see above, drunk squats). Our parts are just made differently. That’s why something like this probably would never work:

Female Urinal

You have to totally take off your pants so your buttocks are exposed to the world. Who wants to do that?

So, for now I will have to face the fact that men get to easily pee next to strangers and I don’t. Damn you glass ceiling! In the meantime, I find myself thinking of my pee buddy and wondering if she ever thinks of me. Or does she even remember me? Has she peed with other people since? Well pee pal, I hope you have a long future of successful urinations in front of you.

The most bizarre work environment that I have experienced was a hybrid of the two. It was a new innovation group within a huge corporation. They hired designers and set up a few tables with macs, and we all worked together openly. But everyone else in the office worked in cubicles. It was the strangest sight to wander through cubicle-land then to arrive at a tiny oasis of openness, nicer looking technology, toys, etc.

Feel free to add to my list, I’m sure there are many more differences:

After all that, I have maybe 30 hours of video, or 100s of pages of transcripts and notes. Here, we sprinkle some magic dust, say a few magic words, and poof, INSIGHTS appear. But this can only occur after weeks of wading through the research, scanning for patterns, diving deep in particular aspects of the research.

where’s the insight? peek-a-boo!

Both these ideas – that Insights are mystical and that Insights take a long time to develop – are lies. I was chatting with a colleague the other day about our project time line. She was explaining to me how we should have a workshop to share Insights with the client immediately after collecting data.  The purpose of the meeting is so that everyone (clients and researchers) can share their ideas about the research and have a voice in the process. Getting “buy in” you might call it. She says to me, “we kind of know what we want to say right away, even before the research is done.” Having an Insights meeting sooner is ideal because the time consuming part is editing video clips and creating presentations, not the analysis.

So why can’t Insights happen sooner? Clients usually like to believe in the mystical powers needed to “discover” Insights. They are paying good money for these Insights. It should be a hunt. A challenge. Not for the average lay person. With this in mind, we push back our Insights meeting a couple weeks, so that it appears that we’re searching, sniffing them out, hot on the trail, but never quite there.

hmm, what can it mean?

I used to think this way, too. That the Insights should be a struggle. They should be reworked and torn apart, put back together again in new ways. You gotta earn it! That’s where our bread and butter is. Discovering something shocking in the research. Something that only we, trained professionals, can see.

research is messy!

However, ethnographic findings are rarely shocking, or even novel. I’m not going to do a photography project and find that most people actually take photographs with their feet. We’ve been designing the camera all wrong this entire time!!

Not mystical, not shocking. But insights can be exciting, when you turn them into usable tools. Most designers and engineers I know don’t want to wade through piles of research. They also don’t want a boring descriptive account of what occurred. They also don’t necessarily want to be shocked by the research.

oooh, that’s how it’s done, huh?

Designers have specific questions that you can answer based on what people are doing. What are the main points? And what’s the point of what you’re telling me? They want direction. But mostly, they want to be excited to create and build. What this means for ethnographers, is that we can be a lot more creative on our end. Yes, we share the findings in an objective and fair (not boring) way. But we get that part done with quickly. Then we move onto the inspiring part. What do photographs mean and how can we help people achieve their goals? How might people want to do this in the future? We can motivate teams of designers and engineers to create something interesting and usable through playful activities, workshops, and tools that are something between research and design. And we get to participate in answering those questions. We, too, are creative. The Insights process might not be so mystical but that’s OK with me.