culture

every birthmark, every inexplicable habit — love notes from my lineage.

Hookup culture presented me with the power to never truly experience rejection and to assimilate into teenage norms.

Believe it or not, our beloved college town has a charming doppelganger just northwest of Denver.

But while all men aren’t “bad,” they all have inherited a society which severely needs to reconsider what it means to be a boy, and more crucially, what it means to be human.

My identity felt fluid and contextual. Depending on where I was or who I was with, a different aspect of my identity would come forward. When people ask about my name, Aviva, I am Jewish. When people ask about my parents, I am Indian and white. When people ask where I’m from, I say San Francisco.

I am instantly reminded of what unites my Latine family, and I become hungry at the thought of food. Beyond its tastiness and incredible seasoning — which I will soon obsess over — Latine food symbolizes cultural harmony and solidarity. 

Our very lives are a commodity on social media; the content we post is the main unit of consumption. Social media companies profit off of our lives. When you reduce humans into units of consumption, you objectify humanity.

My baseline of existence as a brown woman isn’t scruffy, it’s silky. Just like my underwear isn’t black. It’s polka dotted. But it still protects me just the same. My activism doesn’t have to come only in choking out my worst experiences. It can also be chucking over them.

Maybe the lion is saying, “More.” Maybe he’s an embodiment of our shared culture at Berkeley, an insatiable beast with a ravenous appetite for more achievement.

The prospect of love and care materialized the shared vision of People’s Park.