色？
Colours？
I did something different. I'm making a distinction (for now) between my videos of the public and my conversations with my grandma.
The videos of the public, I am aware, position them as perpetrators. The older men, as chekopeks, the women who stare as staunch and conservative. I would like to go beyond this and come to understand why those eyes. I would like to have conversations with them and get to know them.
All are perpetrators as they are victims. All are victims as they are perpetrators.
Maybe they stare just because it's a different look in the hawker centre.
Maybe the flesh is very eye-catching
肉色很吸引人
什么样的人？
录影的时候，我一直笑。I kept laughing every time Ee Wei and I noticed someone staring intensely.
It was refreshing. Refreshing because I captured it on camera. Replaying the videos surprised me, exciting-shock factor but equally scary.
Eyes staring, whereby you don't know what they are thinking.
Important question: Do I even need to figure out what they are thinking?
眼神带着什么色？
Reflecting on the way I collect 'data', how as though I "collect data", I seems like I'm seeing the people in the hawker centre, the public as a tool. The people I know in the market and even my grandma seems to have become tools too. These are three different groups of people so I'm going to separate them into two segments.
19 July 2021
After conversations with Xiao Ke and Zihan,
It has come full circle.
My challenge in the public, of the public, exist first and foremost as a challenge within me.
What do I want to achieve out of the challenge? Who do I want to resolve?
Perhaps I'm using the wrong words. Instead of using 'resolutions', 'reconciliations', I should seek for, engage in shapeshifting, a term by Dr. Bayo Akomolafe.
Are resolutions possible? I seem to be asking for a form of acceptance or non-care ironically. To be myself, to dress however I like, to behave however I like in public, or at home.
Perhaps, the moment I'm accepted, I need not dress scandalously. I need not try to stand out. I wouldn't bother. I wouldn't feel a need to rebel and be myself.
The personal challenge that is enacted in the public space, seems to emerge from a yearning to be accepting by the people around. For the people around me to be open and embrace differences. Only this way, will the people at large, outside my immediate circle start to change or not hinder me.
To not wear a bra in public is to make up for my inability to be braless at home.