My Project Idea: I Live Here, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, USA.

For my project, I want to do a graphic novel in the style of I Live Here. I will be writing from my own perspective on issues of gender (expectations of women, roles), race (information that doesn’t reach “white girls”), expectations of college-age students, and socioeconomic status as they pertain to being a student at Miami and growing up in Oxford, Ohio, USA. We have been reading a lot about the importance of drawing upon our/their own experiences as women, so what I want for this project is to use my own experiences, observed experiences of others, and information and experiences from others to paint a picture of Miami’s college-age woman culture, student culture, expectations for women in America (especially of a particular SES associated with Miami in Oxford – examples include what women should aspire to look like, what kind of men they should want to be with, the idea that they’re expected to find a male partner), and the struggles young women face, either when they “fit” into the expectations or when they “don’t fit” into them.

I hope to use the I Live Here graphic novels as inspiration for how my project will look, and I plan on drawing from other course documents, such as the International Declaration of Human Rights, Kilbourne’s “Killing Us Softly,” Katz’s “Tough Guise,” the idea of “the single story” from Chimamanda Adichie, and any other class readings from which I can draw ideas to support my project.

I guess the main claim of my project will be that expectations for women at Miami University are stifling and cause for insecurity (I chose Miami specifically because I wanted to keep my topic narrow), and the expectations are dictated by something other than ourselves as young women. I will explore advertisements, media (reality shows, music videos, song lyrics), other people’s ideas of what a “Miami girl” is, and first-hand interactions with young women at Miami. What I hope to end up with is an illustration of Miami as the way I and many of my friends feel that it is: if you’re not skinny, tan, rich, and a binge drinker, then you’re not the typical Miami girl. I’m not trying to stereotype Miami or the young women here; I want to ask questions about why young women at Miami who don’t fit this mold feel like there is a mold to fit in the first place. What makes this kind of girl the “typical” Miami girl? Whose expectations does this girl live up to? Does this girl really exist? Why is it that whenever someone asks a Miami student what a “Miami girl” is, everyone knows exactly what they’re talking about?

My unique perspective: I stopped watching TV regularly at the age of 8, and I don’t listen to the radio; while I acknowledge that I am still bombarded with advertisements and messages about women/etc, I truly am somewhat naïve about it all. When I heard Rihanna’s song “Rude Boy” or whatever, I had to change the radio because I felt sick. When I flip through a US Weekly magazine (which I did for this project), I can recognize less than ten of the hundreds of celebrities in the magazine. I come from a low-income family (my famiy is about ~153% of the poverty line, where 200% is officially considered “low income”) and I go to Miami for free because my mom works in the library system. My parents are both highly educated; my father has two PhDs but does not work because he uses a wheelchair and doesn’t feel like he can really do anything. This is not a sob story – it’s a perspective that I think, or at least I have been lead to believe (and why??? what led me to believe this??) that is different from most Miami students in Oxford.

I hope to be able to use my perspective and draw on the experiences of others, as well as reliable statistics and class readings, to explore Miami culture and what it means to be a young woman on Oxford’s campus.

What Miami looks like to other people...