Face Value

In the previous blog you all got to take a look at a few pictures of my trip, but I didn't tell you all very much about the point of the trip, and that was to compete in the National Phi Rho Pi Speech and Debate tournament.  Being able to attended and compete in this tournament is an accomplishment in itself.  Phi Rho Pi is one of the oldest forensics organizations in the nation having been founded in 1939.

At the tournament I competed in five events: Impromptu, Extemporaneous, Lincoln-Douglas Debate, Parlimentary Debate, and Program of Oral Interpretation. (If anyone would like any elaboration on what these events are/consist of, just ask and I'll explain). Even though I didn't make it into the finals rounds in any of these events I still had many moments of personal success and achievement in each round. In Impromptu I was ridiculously ecstatic because in my second round I was given the opportunity to quote and analyze two of my favorite artists, Aesop Rock and Atmosphere. I was proud of myself for not panicking and for simply surviving my Extemp rounds, its a terrifying event if you ask me. In LD I was also proud for surviving, and for putting up a fight in each round. Even though I had no clue as to what I was doing, I still did my best. In Parli, I was a hybrid. Which means that my partner was a debater from another school. He happened to be Glen Prell from Northwest College in Powell, Wyoming. Regardless of what our record is on paper, I feel as though Glen and I debated phenomenally! I really do, we frustrated many a team that week with our quick wit and logic, and man was it loads of fun (I love  Parli just fyi).

Now my POI, this is a piece that I have become quite attached to over the season. The entire work is put together and cut by myself, with some help and a lot of encouragement from my amazing coach Jessica Hurless. Jessica and I have discovered that I need pieces that hold personal meaning for me in them in order for me to be successful with them, and that is exactly what we achieved with this piece. I truly believe every bit of the message within this piece, and because of my attachment to it and the sadness I feel for never being able to perform it again I want to share it with all of you. Let me know what you think! The piece is composed of excerpts from four different works, enjoy.

When I was just a little girl I asked my mother
What will I be? Will I be pretty?
Will I be pretty?
Will I be pretty?
And the pretty question infects from conception
Passing blood and breath into cells
The word hangs from our mother's hearts
 in a shrill fluorescent floodlight of worry
Will I be wanted, worthy, pretty?


There was a girl named Annie
She had a very pretty face
She never looked in the mirror
She never liked what she would see


When one types the word pretty into a google search engine, 360 million results appear in less than half a second. This small, seemingly insignificant six letter word has forced an entire culture to question: "Am I pretty?" When the real question needing to be asked is: Why would we want to be? 
Merriam Webster defines pretty as: having conventionally acceptable elements of beauty; appearing or sounding pleasant or nice, but lacking in strength, purpose, and intensity.
Face Value, a program that through the poetry Pretty by Katie Makai, Annie by Safetysuit, drama Reasons to be Pretty by Neil Labute, and prose Miss World of Wheels by Jennifer Burnbaum, challenges each of us to wipe away these conventionally acceptable elements of beauty and gain back our strength, purpose, and intensity in life. Face Value.


As a child, I had small hair. It was short and androgynous, courtesy of my parents, who insisted that - with what they called my "elfin" chin and petite physique - I would look best...with a buzz cut.
"Can I help you son?" shop clerks would ask during this phase of my youth.
"I'm a girl!"


Not saying that this is full of profound insight or anything but any woman I know, like, my age or younger, she's gonna be super upset if she hears what I did. That her boyfriend thinks "oh yeah honey, your face is...okay." There's no way to swallow that down and find a way to come back up smiling. You know what I mean?
Why do we feel this way though? Is it maybe TV and magazines, or maybe its our moms telling us "sweetheart you're pretty no matter what"....I'm not really sure.


The first time I remember feeling consistently pretty was age ten, when I finally go to grow out my hair and would create elaborate hairstyles in the bathroom before school while my five year old sister, Jessica, gazed at me from her perch on the toilet, enraptured.


But puberty left me this funhouse mirror dryad
Teeth set at science fiction angles, crooked nose, face donkey long,
and pox marks where the hormones when fingerpainting. 
My poor mother, "How could this happen?
You will have porcelain skin as soon as we see a dermatologist.
You sucked your thumb, that is why your teeth are crooked.
You were hit in the face with a frisbee when you were six otherwise your nose would be just fine.
Don't worry, don't worry. We'll get it all fixed!"
She would say grasping my face
twisting it this way and that as though it were a cabbage she may buy at the store.
But this is not about her.
Not her fault she too was raised to believe 
that the greatest asset she could bestow upon her awkward little girl 
was a marketable facade.


There was a girl named Annie
She had a very pretty face
She never looked in the mirror
She never liked what she would see
And even if I tried to tell her
She never listened to a word I'd say


By 16 I was pickled with medications, ointments, peroxides
Laying in a hospital bed, face packed with gauze
cushioning the new nose the surgeon had carved
Belly gorged on two pints of my own blood
I had swallowed while under anesthesia
And every convulsive twist of my gut like
my body is screaming at me from the inside out
"What did you let them do to you?"
All the while this never ending chorus droning on and on
like the IV needle dripping liquid beauty into my veins.
Will I be pretty?
Will I be pretty?


By the end of high school I knew I shouldn't care how I looked, because the content of my character was much more important, but I also sensed that I was less vulnerable to being seen as a boy, lesbian, or outcast if I were also pretty.


Can you imagine what he's actually feeling about my body? And this isn't about sex, not really, just how he sees my legs or my arms. The words he'll use to describe my breasts or my but. It's too much, it is, I can't even think about it without wanting to throw up. I always felt like my face was one of my better parts and he's standing there talking about me like I'm so old Buick in the back yard that he's been thinking about fixing up, just never gets around to.


Like my mother unwinding the giftwrap to reveal
the bouquet of daughter her $10,000 bought her
Pretty
Pretty
And now I have not seen my own face in ten years
I have not seen my own face in ten years, but this is not about me.
This is about the self-mutilating circus we have painting ourselves clowns in
About women who will prowl 30 stores in 6 different malls
just to find the perfect cocktail dress
But who haven't got a clue as to where to find fulfillment or how to wear joy
Spending their lives shackled to a shopping bag
beneath the tyranny of those two pretty sylables


I didn't know if I could tell her
I didn't know if I could make her see
Looks don't make the world go 'round
There was a girl named Annie
She had a smile that could light up a room
She never looked in the mirror
She never liked what she would see


After college, I moved to New York City, the epicenter of glamour, but also a place where people like me escaped to. The city offered a whole new value scale - beauty was measured differently, your whole self was taken into account.


I'm realistic and I know me as a person - I know I don't got that much going for me, not really. I'm not all smart and educated, and not gorgeous, not like some girls -  but I like what I've got, and you know what? I'm going to protect that.


This is about my someday daughter
when you approach me already stung, stained with insecurity
Begging me, "Mom, will I be pretty?
Will I be pretty?"
I will wipe that question from her mouth like cheap lipstick and answer "No!
The word pretty is unworthy of everything you will ever be
And no child of mine can be contained in six letters
You will be pretty intelligent
Pretty creative
Pretty amazing
but you will never, never be merely pretty."