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Personal Essays and Non-fiction

The Secular Case For Modesty

I’ll start by saying that I grew up protestant but that I currently identify as agnostic. That’s the framework I’m coming at this from, a completely secular one. I think the contemporary christian concept of modest dress makes no sense. I think covering skin has nothing to do with one’s virtue and I think how that concept gets applied to women is hypocritical and sexist. Women get blamed for sexual assault against them for what they were wearing, and I find that appalling. Men are responsible for what they do, and women are not at fault for supposedly enticing men to commit violence against them.

That being said, I dress modestly most of the time. I like to cover my thighs and my midriff. I have very little breast to cover, although I do prefer necklines to not go much below the collarbone. My shorts and skirts go to the knee or longer. I don’t own a two-piece swimsuit. I own exactly one crop top and I wear it with high waisted pants so I never show my belly button. It isn’t insecurity with my body. I think my body looks fine. I see some women scared to wear certain items of clothing because they think it makes them look ugly or they think they have to be thinner to wear them. I don’t subscribe to that. I think people should be able to wear what they want and not worry that it doesn’t flatter their body type. I may like my body, but I don’t want everybody else to like my body. I don’t want strangers to be looking at it. There are certain parts of my body that I consider intimate and that I only show in vulnerable positions to loved ones. I would consider it a violation of my trust for a stranger to be privy to them. No, I don’t believe women are “asking for it” when they wear revealing clothing, but I do want to personally minimize the chance of ever being ogled in public.

I used to be naive, I used to think that men were civilized creatures who followed social etiquette and didn’t stare. Then I started going braless some days because my underwire bras were too uncomfortable and I had sensory issues with them. I thought people wouldn’t notice. Literal teenage boys on the bus started pointing and laughing to their friends. I don’t want to know what they were saying to each other. The vast majority of men are upstanding citizens, but creeps are out there, and they take advantage of young women like us who see the best in people. So yes, I dress modestly so as not to be ogled. Nowadays I got past the sensory issues by not owning underwire bras and only wearing sports bras and bralettes.

I do think there is some unearned paranoia around this issue. You listen to one true crime podcast and suddenly you’re convinced every man is out to rape and murder you and the only thing you can do to avoid a psycho’s attention in the first place is to wear a burka. Don’t be naive, but don’t be paranoid either.

Also, this is going to sound dumb, but I think modest dress is a bit subversive, especially where I live. I know this sounds like when people say that some socially accepted and normalized thing is actually totally punk and not normal at all, but I really do think this. This is different in societies like, say, Japan, where the norm is conservative clothing in neutral colors, but I live in Brazil. I get stares for wearing a one-piece swimsuit to the beach instead of a bikini. I sometimes think about gyaru fashion, how it’s subversive for showing skin and having statement patterns like leopard print and using heavy makeup when the norm in japan is natural-looking makeup. Alot of normal women in Brazil are accidental gyarus because the mainstream fashion here is crop-tops with short shorts, long hair and heavy eyelashes. Therefore, the weirdest fashion choice here is to cover up.

There is a large movement of neo pentecostal evangelism in Brazil, and the women who subscribe to these particular sects have their own uniform. Long denim skirts and button-up blouses, very very long hair to the butt, left loose or tied up. Some more fashionable women might even wear – *gasp* – floral print. They’re “in the world but not of the world” by rejecting mainstream fashion. They believe the accidental-gyaru fashions I mentioned earlier are demonic. Again, I’m coming at this from a secular perspective. I don’t believe what they believe, and I would hate to be associated with them. I have, on occasion, given the impression that I was evangelical, and people would either treat me well or poorly depending on if they were evangelical too or not. I try to avoid this by wearing weird combinations that out me as a fashionista and not a religious person. I wear funky prints like paisley and check. I wear multiple clashing florals at the same time. I wear handmade quirky crochet accessories that are bespoke to me. I wear diy and vintage clothes that are clearly badly handsewn or old and faded.

You see, part of religious modesty is not just covering skin, that’s only part of it, the most important part of religious modesty is to dress humble, not ostentatious. That’s what the word modest means, it means simple and humble. I don’t wear expensive clothing, so I do somewhat fit into that, but my clothes are attention-drawing and sometimes flashy, so in a different sense I don’t fit in. I would in fact be reprimanded at an evangelical church should I wear one of my fun outfits for wearing too much cheap jewelry.

So, those are the reasons I dress modestly, and the reasons why actually I don’t dress modestly at all, I just wear longer skirts, but people see that as modesty, when actually I’m being quite vain. And this is why I think other secular women should consider covering up as well. Everybody has different boundaries on who should be able to see what parts of their body. I just hope people enforce those boundaries instead of capitulating to the latest fashions when they’re a little more revealing than their personal level of comfort. Dress how you want, but actually dress how you want and not whatever your society deems normal.

What Even Is Library Science?

I hate when people ask me what I’m studying in school and I tell them that I’m getting a bachelor’s in Library Science. It sometimes prompts the question: “So you like reading, then?” Yes, I happen to like reading on occasion, but library science has nothing to do with the books themselves or reading itself. If you do love books and reading, consider getting a degree in literature in whatever language you prefer. Library science is for people who love to categorize and taxonomize things, not people who love reading. Library science is all about the organization of information and NOT the format in which that information is conveyed.

Actually, I’m lying. When I tell people that I study library science, they usually don’t tell me that I must love reading, if they do they’re already a step above the rest. The usual response is “What is that?” What do you mean, what is that? It has the word library in the term. It’s the study of libraries and how to run them.

Then comes the question, regardless of whether they asked if I liked reading or if they asked what my degree even is: “You need a degree for that?” Occasionally, they’ll assume you did need a degree to run a library, but that it was a different degree, either literature like I mentioned earlier, or teaching. More often, they think anybody can work in a library. No, it’s a regulated profession that requires a higher education degree and membership in the regulatory body just like doctors and lawyers do. The fact that people assume it requires no education just shows how little they think of libraries. And to think it’s related to pedagogy just likens libraries to teaching, and to children, and libraries are much more than that. To think it’s related to literature is to reduce all library collections to fiction and poetry.

So what is library science, anyway? It’s the study of cataloging, indexing, etc. It’s about the organization of human knowledge. It’s about the human and administrative elements of running a library. It’s not about the books themselves. Nowadays, it’s closer to information technology and data science and computer-y things much more than it is about the actual physical space of a library. I’m not too fond of this fact, seeing as I’m pretty old-fashioned and like analog things, but it’s the reality of the state of the art of the profession. Next time somebody asks me what I’m studying, I might lie and say Portuguese Literature, because it invites less stupid questions. Actually, I’m not sure, they might ask me if I intend to teach high school.

My Failed History of Musicianship

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a singer. I had a good memory for memorizing lyrics as a child. I of course had all the nursery rhymes memorized, but I also memorized some of the songs on the radio. Because of my talent of just absorbing all the lyrics on first listen, I was convinced that that would be enough to be a good singer. I would put on “shows” for my parents singing all the songs I liked. I have memories of this from when I was about six, but there are pictures of me playing with a toy microphone from when I was three, so this must’ve been a mainstay for my childhood play.

When I was eight or nine, I was obsessed with the disney channel sitcom Hannah Montana. For those unaware, Hannah Montana was a show about a teenage girl who was secretly a popstar while also going to normal high school. It was very aspirational for me. I wanted to be a popstar just like Miley. I was a kid just like she was a teen, so that made me believe being a child star was within reach.

I was very dedicated to this fantasy of me as a popstar. I had a Hannah Montana branded notebook where I would write “lyrics” (just little poems) that I would sing. I asked Santa for a guitar on Christmas of 2009. Miley always wrote her songs on an acoustic guitar, so I wanted to write songs with a guitar, too. Santa gracefully gifted me with a child-sized nylon-stringed acoustic. It was a real guitar, not a toy one, it was just smaller for child hands and had less frets. I knew nothing about guitars. In the tv shows and the movies whenever somebody would pick up a guitar they would just strum and beautiful music would come out. I didn’t think I had to learn anything to play. I have a vivid memory of picking the new guitar up, tuning each string with a digital tuner my parents had also bought me, and then putting all the fingers on my left hand over a fret, and strumming once, producing an awful dissonant strangled sound. I didn’t realize I had to actually learn chords, I thought guitar was just an inherent skill that some people were born with.

My parents wanted me to take lessons, but for some reason I was convinced I could teach myself with internet tutorials. They had me go to exactly one lesson with the pastor and worship leader at our church, and he taught me three chords and a couple of finger exercises, which I proceeded to immediately forget. I was frustrated that he had taught me C, D, and G because I wanted to go in alphabetical order. I tried to learn A on my own but all of those chords hurt my left hand immensely. I could never get my fingers calloused enough to play comfortably. It was a child-sized guitar but my finger still couldn’t reach the top string.

So, I gave up on playing guitar, and mostly gave up on the dream of being a singer. It was pretty unrealistic in the first place. Only years later when I was about fourteen was my interest in music reignited. I had never really sat down and actually listened to a lot of music before my mid-teens. I was hooked on music again, and for some reason I got into 1950s doo wop music, which was how I learned that a lot of pop music uses the same four chords, and I thought to myself, “hey, I can do that!”

Despite already having disappointed my parents with guitar, I begged them to get me a keyboard and let me learn how to play piano. They bought me a casio and I had lessons with an old lady from church. This time I was very dedicated to the craft. I wrote quite a lot of pop songs down in musescore. They were all lost when my pc crashed and I hadn’t made a backup. That was part of why I gave up on music for the second time.

The more important upset that led me to give up is a longer story. I got into classical music when I was learning piano. I wasn’t good enough to play any classical pieces but I really enjoyed listening to them. For some reason that escapes me now, I was convinced I could make it as a classical composer. First, I looked into getting into a conservatory, and they would probably take me even with my mediocre skills, but they were too expensive. Then, I found out that a public university had a bachelor program in music, and that all I had to do was get in through a written general test and a written test on music theory.

I thought this was a piece of cake. I did well on the general test, I’ve always tested well. Then, came the music theory test. I knew I was absolutely fucked by the speech the man gave at the front of the classroom where we were being tested.

“I’m going to press play on a simple tune on this boombox, I will do this twice. Question two is for you to transpose this melody in the answer sheet. Ready? Three, two, one…”

And then the melody was played. I didn’t have pitch perfect hearing, and I found this task impossible. I assumed the melody was in C and assumed the first note was C and then intuited the rest of the notes from there by their relative pitch to the first one. There was no reason to assume the first note was C, I was just guessing. I guessed for the whole test except for a few questions I knew the answer to. Then, the last question was an essay and not multiple choice. What is the historical context for Bach’s Tocatta and Fugue in D minor?

Easy, I thought.

I wrote down something with the gist of,

The Catholic Counter-reformation was a religious movement within the catholic church that…

As soon as I got home, I looked up Bach’s religious affiliation and date of birth and death. Date of death: 1750, almost a hundred years after the counter-reformation. Religious affiliation: protestant, Lutheran. I had missed that question completely and given the exact opposite answer. I probably would’ve had the same marks if I said Tocatta and Fugue in D minor was written by Dracula to play in his castle.

I didn’t get in, and I realized again how unrealistic my dream was. I put away my keyboard in a corner that was hard to get to, and I mostly forgot about playing music. Now, I’m in the middle of becoming interested again in music, and my keyboard is in an accessible spot. I like to play piano, I like to write music, but I no longer have any pretentions. I’m not going to be a pop star, and I’m not going to be a classical composer, I’m just having fun.