Month: June 2015

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Do Your Holiday Celebrations Match Up?

Honor Guard marching in a paradeHow do you celebrate your holidays? The Wikipedia entry for Memorial Day begins with the following description.

Memorial Day is a federal holiday in the United States for remembering the people who died while serving in the country’s armed forces… It typically marks the start of the summer vacation season, while Labor Day marks its end.

 

Many people visit cemeteries and memorials, particularly to honor those who have died in military service. Many volunteers place an American flag on each grave in national cemeteries.

 

Continue reading “Do Your Holiday Celebrations Match Up?”

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Whose Sex Change Was It?: Caitlyn Jenner and the Boundaries of Public Identity

Caitlyn Jenner on the cover of Vanity Fair

Lately, there has been no shortage of commentators eager to discuss Caitlyn Jenner’s recent Vanity Fairy cover (featured above). In the public eye, Jenner has been a famous male athlete-turned reality show husband-turned transgender femme fatale, and this series of transformations has inspired plenty of ogling. Conservative outlets seem to decry the former Bruce’s sex change as something bewildering and strange (if not disgusting and unnatural), while more progressive ones praise her as a heroine who has had the courage to publicly reveal her “true self.” Continue reading “Whose Sex Change Was It?: Caitlyn Jenner and the Boundaries of Public Identity”

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Meet Me in St. Louis: The Simpler Side of Identity Politics

St Louis Arch

When I was a young child, I lived in the third largest city in Missouri – Springfield – and I hadn’t really traveled much outside of the region. At the time I loved to look at atlases and read maps, and I distinctly remember the day that I came across a factoid indicating that the largest city in Missouri was Kansas City (a city I’d never seen), with St. Louis a close second.

I was livid, convinced there was a mistake, for as we all know, being bigger is better, and St. Louis was clearly superior because I’d a) been there, and b) had fun there. In other words, my positive affiliations with St. Louis, while founded on nothing more than visiting some tourist draws and swimming in a motel pool, were enough for me to align my own identity with the city and therefore create strong positive, and in the context, illogical opinions about it. (Ironically, I now live in Kansas City). Continue reading “Meet Me in St. Louis: The Simpler Side of Identity Politics”