Identity: Who are you for?

Objective constructions build our exterior. They mirror ideals and write memoirs. They establish the individual self by the category each form has been wedged within. The consequences are manifested within the tangled chains of ego building territory and discrimination. Identity: Who are you for? Is a historic question spread on many lips. Why? Potentially it lies within its continuous existence, its switch in role-play, and its cloudy watered ownership. Our generation is evolving; amplified vocal chords are bellowing the implications of engrained, historic perception towards identity. However, in the distance a white fog shades my view, allowing one to see only an endless road. Therefore, I want to take a moment…. a breath… to break down the power of words and its role to play in regards to the internal and external monologues of identity.

Figuratively speaking, I endorse your spectatorship with the following:

A narrow substance is tightened with a cotton-hemmed fabric. Cut straight. Bluntly.

Follicles tinted forest green, endowed with mustard gold streaks. Multiplying squares design a dance floor for the fingers tips to delicately waltz seamlessly.

Checkpoint.

/

There are tinted spindles that curl softly. High up towards the glistening black ocean, they are decorated in kohl paint. Flickering through the evening’s night, their hoods dyed with an eye capturing shadow. Enlightened. The occasion calls for a luscious tint of red. Puckering out the sweetness. Departed from a tart residue left upon another’s lips.

/

By writing this way I aim to demonstrate the objective associations attached to our physical existence. Each ‘thing’, ‘product’, ties itself to our being, partaking in forming our identity; but, will we escape the categorisation of these objects that consequently pigeonhole our identity?

The items we indulge within become a language of their own. For example, the use of a red lipstick above was a seductive signifier. It sends signals, capturing an element of an individual’s identity. Our manufactured selves therefore translate ideas for another to detect and make judgement upon. Identity here is for the other.

But, if this element of identity is manifested for the other, their external monologue. How then, does this impact the internal monologue of the individual? If one looks towards materiality as a manifestation of their physical existence it leaves them vulnerable to external influences and misconception. They are outwards searching for the material to manifest what they are, or who they think they are. This is where it becomes teeth clenching and mind numbingly tangled.

The individual is frozen at a crossroads. There are multiple routes upon offer, but a decision must be made. One may choose to indulge in a journey of socially fed influences accepted by the culture they live within. The romanticised ideals that have become both idolised and normalised. Or they could internally reflect on what they are translating through the material world, manipulating the manipulator that is objective language. Or maybe they decide to scratch against the grain, diverting external influences, waiting for others to disrupt the swallowing of spoon-fed concepts.