Do You Know How to Wear Clothes? (Or rather, a condescending treatise on presentation and propriety and accompanying commentary)

The woman who knows how to wear clothes is a stage director who skillfully presents herself (okay, so now it has to mean something? Newsflash! I’m wearing these clothes so I don’t freeze to death in this frozen hellscape. Next!). This skill in presentation is something for which it is difficult to write directions, because it is a talent rather than a formula (Talent, right. Because it definitely takes talent to convince my Cotillion director that this dress that I’m wearing totally came out of my own closet and not my girlfriend’s.) Naturally, she who is young and whose skin is clear, whose figure is model “16,” can literally put on any hat of dress she fancies and have both become her to perfection (Okay, Lady. First of all, it’s a hormonal disorder. Don’t be fucking rude. Second of all, culottes are for nobody and I will die on that hill). And yet another girl, lacking the knack of personal adjustment, will find the buying of a becoming hat an endless search through such trials of unbecomingness that she buys, not one she likes, but the one she dislikes least, because she must put something on her head (A hat? A hat?! All the clothes in the world and you choose a hat?! Why not something of substance, like a skirt? If you’re really going to keep up this politeness shtick, at least consider straying from the finery into the territory of, I don’t know, something from the day-to-day?).

The sense of what is becoming and the knack of putting clothes on well are the two greatest assets of smartness (God, I hate that word. “Becoming.” Every time it’s followed by the words “of a lady,” I just want to vomit. Because why does it matter? Why does it fucking matter? Are you just going to take away my “woman card” if I can’t wear a hat without looking like an egg? Besides, to hell with formal titles. I’m tired of being told that my worth as a woman is determined by my ability to hold dinner parties, stand in the corner, and look pretty. I’m not your doll. Not anymore.). And both are acquirable by anyone willing to look at herself as she really is (Look at myself as I am? Okay, fine. I am I. I am me. I exist. I don’t have the perfect body, but I have a body that works. I look like an absolute troll when I wake up, but at least I wake up in the first place. I curse and I cry and I make a fool of myself on the daily, but at least I get the option to do that. Many people don’t. So, if you really feel the need to tell me that the things that are “becoming” of me as a lady are floofy dresses and ugly hats, then be my guest. But if you’re going to tell people who are just trying their best to survive that they’re not doing good enough by your arbitrary standards, then you can take your “etiquette” and shove it.)

Process Notes:

The text in bold comes from the 1945 edition of Emily Post’s Etiquette. In the Cotillion program that I taught back home, this was the book from which we taught. It is 640 pages of what could be considered to be valuable information under certain circumstances, but asserts that these rules are necessary for daily life and carries a dismissive undertone, one that suggests that a person’s worth (often a woman) is determined by how well they can follow these rules. From the point at which I realized that this program was not for me, I have harbored a lot of frustration about the tone that Post takes. I guess that the text in italics represents a rather aggressive person of my thoughts upon reading this text now, a year out of the environment that the National League of Junior Cotillions creates. I wanted to interweave a statement about expectation and, to some extent, performativity into this piece, but I’m not sure that I succeeded. In truth, I’m not sure that I like this work very much, but it was an interesting challenge nonetheless.

Welcome Letter to the UChicago Class of 2020:

https://news.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/attachments/Dear_Class_of_2020_Students.pdf

*I utilized different fonts and font sizes in the poem that were lost when I pasted the poem into the text bar, so I’ve attached a PDF with the original letter, my poem, and my process notes below.

writing assignment 6

Controversy: Male Student in Daewon Foreign Language High School Takes “Molka” of Female Classmate | Written 2018-12-03

http://m.kmib.co.kr/view.asp?arcid=0924042168

According to the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education and Gwangjin Police Station, on October 4th, A, a 3rd-year in Daewon Foreign Language High School, reported Student B of illicit photographing to the police. A told the police that “B took a picture of the inside of her skirt” and B admitted this. A stated that she suspected B of taking photographs of her by a similar tactic in the past and demanded an apology, and reported to the police when B refused.

This is the story of someone not involved. This is not the testimony of a witness. This is how someone who has been eating pancakes with her high school friends on the day the article was published has to say about what happened in her high school. This is her obligation as a graduate of the said high school to at least not forget.

As she does not know the victim or the perpetrator in person, she will not specify what the “similar tactic” of B was, although she has heard much hearsay from her friends, who heard about the incident from her underclassmen or her brother. However, she feels it is necessary to reveal what she heard about the incident- that A demanded an apology via the class’s chatroom and B conceded in front of the whole class. Which means every single person of the class inevitably knew what happened. But A suspected that the photo she caught B taking wasn’t the only photo of her.

Daewon Foreign Language High School suspended B’s attendance for 4 days and referred the incident to the School Violence Countermeasures Committee (SVCC) and the SVCC requested 20 hours of social service and completion of special education to the school. However, the school let B fulfill his hours of social service after his CSAT. Moreover, during his suspension, the school let him study in a study room made for him in the 2nd-grade staffroom. After the suspension, B continued to attend school and take classes as usual.

Posters were torn down. Students were silenced. When the girls talked about the incident in their classroom a teacher warned that they could be sued for defamation. Graduates shared links of the article in their social media, in hopes that the incident would be known and criticized. All this while the perpetrator was safely studying in a space provided just for him.

Among the students, suspicions have been raised that the school broke the rules to B’s benefit. According to the Act on Prevention and Countermeasures against School Violence, the school should carry out the measures imposed by the SVCC within 14 days. If the student refuses or neglects to do so, the punishment could be imposed again. “Considering that B is a CSAT taker, the SVCC told the school to carry out the punishment after the CSAT,” Daewon’s school official explained.

While possibilities that there might be more than one victim has been raised, no school-level research has been conducted. “There are rumors that someone saw more than 300 photos of this kind in B’s Cloud,” one student commented.The school has an obligation to report in case of sexual crimes against students, but this was also not followed. According to the Act on Prevention and Countermeasures against School Violence, the school must report to an investigative institution even when a third party already reported. A school official stated, “As the student already reported the case, we did not see anything else to do.”

They say

that B might have a thousand photographs of his peers which the police left untouched

that B might have installed a camera in the female lavatory(that the teachers even use)

that the whole class of male students might have been complicit in distributing these photographs, and B is just unluckily caught

that my homeroom teacher blocked the police from investigating by lying that they’re supposed to go to the 2nd grade staffroom

that the 3rd grade teachers rounded A up and asked her why she reported to the police in the first place

The memory is already a year old and it’s blurring.

How do I differentiate truth and fiction again?

The police closed the case without charging because the victim did not want any punishment. A police official stated, “We considered the fact that the victim is a minor and is about to take the CSAT. There were no reports or accusations afterward.” The incident happened right after September 27th, when Min Gap Ryong, Chief of the National Police Agency, declared take strict measures against “molka” (illicit photographing) crimes.

Working notes: I did not expect myself to be exhausted right after translating the article, but I was. There were many articles on the same incident, but I decided to choose the one I saw with my friends that day. I’m still worried that my translation does not sound formal enough. I first wanted to divide the text vertically and add my comments right next to the paragraphs of the article, but I could not figure out how to do this. So I decided to divide the text horizontally and add the comments.