{"id":8148,"date":"2015-09-02T08:36:38","date_gmt":"2015-09-02T13:36:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/?p=8148"},"modified":"2015-09-02T08:36:38","modified_gmt":"2015-09-02T13:36:38","slug":"on-boxing-in-pictures-children-and-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/2015\/09\/02\/on-boxing-in-pictures-children-and-identity\/","title":{"rendered":"On \u201cBoxing In\u201d\u2013Pictures, Children, and Identity"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at Inequality by (Interior) Design<\/a> on March 15, 2014<\/em><\/p>\n

__________________<\/p>\n

\"HNA7078r1+ToyStories_Jacket_edit1203.indd\"<\/a>Photographer Gabriele Galimberti<\/a>\u2019s project on children around the world depicted with their most prized possessions was recently published. It\u2019s an adorable set of photos of children with odd collections of items they feel define them. The photos are collected in a volume\u2014Toy Stories: Photos of Children From Around the World and Their Favorite Things<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

Initially, I was reminded of JeungMee Yoon<\/a>\u2019s \u201cThe Pink and Blue Project\u201d (here<\/a>), where she took pictures of girls surrounded by all of the pink things they owned and boys surrounded by their blue clothes, toys, and d\u00e9cor. Some of what struck me was the global uniformity in the objects surrounding children. It\u2019s a powerful statement of globalization to see that children are growing up all around the world with some of the same cultural influences: from characters, to colors, to cars and weapons, and more.<\/p>\n

\"Enea,<\/a>But, at a larger level, I think this project reflects one way we like to think about identity: that each of us has one <\/em>of them and that it is established early on and that it (or elements of \u201cit\u201d) stick, such that we can recognize vestiges of our childhood identities in our adult selves. Indeed, when I\u2019m explaining Freud to students, I often start by summarizing what I take as Freud\u2019s central insight\u2014\u201cLife history matters.\u201d It matters for who we are, who we might become, and more.\u00a0 But, “life history” is rarely captured in a snap-shot.\u00a0 We think of it this way–but out identities are projects that unfold in time.\u00a0 Some things make larger marks than others, but identifying exactly what <\/em>is important and why<\/em> is often more difficult than we like to think.<\/p>\n

\"Naya,<\/a>Galimberti\u2019s project is wonderful and the pictures vividly capture a moment in a child\u2019s life. I\u2019ve often looked for signs of who my first child might become in some of his early interests. For a while, he was much more interested in cooking utensils than toys. We actually brought a pasta claw on a plane once to distract him during a flight agreeing that the pasta claw was our best option at the time. I have all sorts of pictures of my son playing with wooden spoons, spatulas, whisks, and more when he was just learning to crawl. And if he turns out to be a chef some day, I can imagine pulling these out and saying, \u201cYou know, he was always<\/em> interested in this. He was born to be bake.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Shotaro,<\/a>I caught myself wondering what my son would have pulled off the shelf to display were he included in Galimberti\u2019s project\u2014or, indeed, what I\u2019d pull off the shelf for him if I were asked to identify his most prized possessions. Today, for instance, I think I\u2019d select a truck or two, his heart wand, a blown-up balloon, a rubber spatula, his grocery cart, an assortment of rainbow colored wash clothes, a few of his stuffed animals, a toy train, perhaps one of his dolls, and I\u2019d probably include a hodge-podge of his favorite books. But, the most important word in the last sentence isn\u2019t one of the objects I selected; it\u2019s the word \u201ctoday.\u201d If you asked me a week ago, I\u2019d have a slightly different answer\u2014a month ago, I might have had a completely different answer.<\/p>\n

\"Mikkel,<\/a>The photo series reflects a bias against an understanding of identities as flexible projects\u2014an issue that is, perhaps, best illustrated in childhood. Every morning, I have a discussion with my partner about what we\u2019re having for dinner that evening. We\u2019re both mentally planning on what the end of the day is going to look like. But, our son has picked up on this and loves talking about dinner each morning as well. Sometimes he asks me what our evening meal will be when I get him up in the morning. But, often, when we get to the meal, he declares: \u201cI love ____________. ____________ is my favorite!\u201d Not every dinner (or book, or toy, or experience, or\u2026) is his \u201cfavorite,\u201d but it\u2019s more often the case than not.<\/p>\n

One way of explaining this would be to say that he doesn\u2019t understand what \u201cfavorite\u201d means\u2014we like to think you can have lots of things you like, but only one \u201cfavorite.\u201d But, I think if he could articulate it, he\u2019d either say that he has more than one favorite, that everything is his favorite, or that his \u201cfavorite\u201d is, like mine, a continuously evolving category that changes depending on his mood, the time of day, what he\u2019s wearing, how he feels, who he talked to that day, what he\u2019s reading right now, and more. His identity is no different from the rest of us. It\u2019s a work in progress\u2014and that is a beautiful thing.<\/p>\n

Gabriele Galimberti came up with this project, not the children he photographed. I love the pictures. He asked them to select their most prized possessions; they didn\u2019t ask themselves. Galimberti has a talent for capturing these children\u2019s spirits\u2014at least in that moment. But, how to read<\/em> these photos or what these photographs actually mean about the children they depict is another question entirely.<\/p>\n

When we create our own narratives, thinking through the people we \u201cknow\u201d ourselves to be, it\u2019s not uncommon to say, \u201cWell, I\u2019ve always liked ______________\u201d or \u201cEver since I can remember, I was a _________________ person. It\u2019s just who I am.\u201d But, for every instance of identifying moments in childhood we feel like stand out as representative of who we are are a series of moments that might have been identified as meaningful had we turned out to be someone different altogether.<\/p>\n

I grew up with two sisters. So, it wasn\u2019t uncommon for the three of us to play games together, organized primarily by my eldest sister. We\u2019d play dress-up and I can remember wearing tutus, dresses, and all sorts of feminine attire. My parents took a great picture of the three of us in our back yard\u2014all in \u201cgirl\u201d one-piece bathing suits. I\u2019m sandwiched between them. My dad has the picture in a photo album at home with the caption \u201cMy son the gender scholar!\u201d next to it. I imagine if I\u2019d gone on to later identify as a woman, this picture might have been intensely meaningful to me.\u00a0 Indeed, the blog “Born this Way<\/a>” collects childhood pictures of gay men and lesbians who identify their sexual identities as shining through when they were children–often in the form of some gender transgressive outfit, haircut, pose, or activity.\u00a0 Today I like the photo of my sisters and me in “girl” bathing suits because I like to think it represents my spark and my passion for questioning boundaries. But, there are many more photographs of me playing with sling shots, water guns, and all manner of \u201cboy\u201d toys that my parents and I might not<\/em> identify as important parts of my identity today\u2014though perhaps we should.<\/p>\n

We allow children to “play” with identity much more than we allow others.\u00a0 But, even children’s identity play is limited and limiting when we ask them to take a stand for who they are early on.\u00a0 Perhaps there’s something important about having 17 “favorite” dinners that we ought to preserve–it allows kids to recognize their various selves and acknowledge their capacity to change, shift, and change back again.<\/p>\n

When I haphazardly label my son lately, I always get called out.\u00a0 If I say, “Look at you.\u00a0 You’re a dancer” when we’re jumping around in the evenings, Ciaran looks at me and says, “I no dancer, Dada.\u00a0 I Ciaran.”\u00a0 He might think I’m suggesting “Dancer” is his name.\u00a0 But, maybe he’s just resisting being boxed in, and maybe I should be listening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at Inequality by (Interior) Design on March 15, 2014 __________________ Photographer Gabriele Galimberti\u2019s project on children around the world depicted with their most prized possessions was recently published. It\u2019s an adorable set of photos of children with odd collections of items they feel define them. The photos are collected in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1958,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25814],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-manly-musings"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1958"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8148"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8149,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8148\/revisions\/8149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}