[Today’s donation was made to Black & Queer Intersectional Collective. Click here to see my Pride & Joy Project 2020 Daily Donations List.] From 2009 until 2016, I lived and breathed belly dance, specifically American Tribal Style (ATS) by the San-Francisco-based FatChanceBellyDance (FCBD). It was the only reason I chose to move […]
Indonesia
The memory of my childhood of seeing Lynda Carter’s Wonder Woman on TV and reading the comic books, collided with the memory of spending my junior high until university with Pandu. And now, I have this pink pullover from one of the most corrupt and unfair fast fashion companies to remind me of one of the happiest days of 2019 when I finally got to see my best friend of 25 years.
Even before I had the notion of masculine colors and feminine colors, I’d always loved pink. I love strawberry ice cream simply because it’s pink. My old Geocities blog was all pink. Mean Girls became 100 times more significant because it singles out this color and launched #onWednesdayswewearpink.
Glitter has its own place in the LGBTQ community. Its function has evolved from merely as make-up, to religion (such as Glitter + Ash where churches mark parishioners with glitter-infused ash on Ash Wednesday) and politics (with villains like Newt Gingrich and Michele Bachman being glitter-bombed by the Glitterati). And who can forget the iconic ruby slippers in the positively queer Wizard of Oz?
Batik is the pride and joy of (most) Indonesians, including me. There’s such a rich, artistic history and meaning behind this textile, and in some cases, it’s borderline superstitious – like when we’re not supposed to wear a batik pattern called “parang” (the dagger) to a wedding because it’s a weapon and would bring bad luck (ie: conflict) to the couple.