Disney Channel – The April Diaries

I recently saw an article about Selena Gomez and her new documentary My Mind and Me. Though I have yet to see the documentary and really connect with the actress and producer, I’ve always had some sort of connection with her since Wizards of Waverly Place premiered in 2007. As the Disney Channel started to not align with me anymore I still heard and read about Selena Gomez in fan magazines and on E!. She became mostly known as “Justin Bieber’s girlfriend” to me, which, looking back on it, is a terrible thing to associate her with (no offense to Justin Bieber). It’s mainly terrible because no woman, any female-identifying individual should be primarily known as “so-and-so’s girlfriend/wife.”

Another example is Giselle Bundchen, Tom Brady’s now-ex-wife. When I broke out into the modeling industry at 14 years old, (fun fact, I was a model and starved myself in the process), my mom told me about Giselle’s “discovery story.” She was discovered in her hometown in Brazil when she was selling ice cream. She was mainly known to the media, nonetheless the public eye, as “Victoria’s Secret Model who married Tom Brady.”

Now, what do these high-profile celebrities have to do with me in 2016? In 2016, I got out of a terrible relationship that was insidiously controlling. I remember when the guy and I were dating, someone had asked me at a college party, “are you so-and-so’s girlfriend?” But that’s just an addendum to the story. In the last few months into that relationship, I felt more or less like a beard that just had to be maintained, until I was thankfully and metaphorically “shaved off.” I would give that 20-year-old a huge hug and tell her the following:

“Listen, you really do have your entire life in front of you. Use it to every part of your advantage. You’re only at the beginning of the golden decade. And believe me when I say that MS was not the ‘love of your life.’ In fact, you’ll meet him when you’re 25. As far as who you are, you’re a writer. Own it. You’re blog is internationally known, and according to high-profile recruiters, you exude confidence. You are more confident than you ever have been, or least tricked yourself into thinking. One day, you will be done with being the reporter, and be on the other side of an interview. And who knows? One of your books might just be turned into a movie!”

I’d be lying if I said that this post did not make me muster up a ton of courage and even make me shed two tears. However, it’s like The Wizard of Oz. Each one member of that quad, the lion, the scarecrow, the tin man, and Dorothy all had their powers all along. In fact, Dorothy was given those ruby slippers just to make her feel confident.

20-year-old April, and for any 20-year-old reading this, this one is for you. Enjoy this song, an oldie but a goodie.

Happy six years of this blog. 🥳

xoxox,

April 💕

Persona: (n). the aspect of someone’s character that is presented to or perceived by others; a role or character adopted by an author or an actor; “person” — (Spanish translation); or, in poetry, the mask that the speaker wears.

These are four definitions of the word “persona.” I’ve never thought about this word until we went over it in my Form in Poetry class. We then reached into depth about how this word applies to our everyday lives. A person can put up a front and mask their emotions. That way they are pretending everything is okay. I then start to think: what kind of persona am I showing in my poems? My blog posts? On Instagram? I once had to write a sort of erotic poem for that class, and in my poem, I made a point to say, “I’m a virgin talking about sex, how does that sound to you?” That’s one example of putting on a “mask.”

Artists tend to put on a “mask” at all times. When Demi Lovato was on Disney Channel, no one knew she was hiding an eating disorder and addiction. The same thing with Miley Cyrus — she started out on Hannah Montana as an eleven-year-old playing a fifteen-year-old, struggling with anxiety and body dysmorphia in the process. As for some of the more complex artists like, say, Lady Gaga? The world may never know why she dresses up in ridiculous costumes. Or is she just being herself? She is who she said she is at the 2011 VMAs: theatre.

And that’s just the thing: we become our passions. It’s similar to the way method actors become and understand their characters. When I write short stories, I become and embody the main character(s) to try and get inside their heads. That is called “character development.” Or, when I wrote a poem dedicated to Henry David Thoreau, I had to crawl inside the head of a transcendentalist in order to create a cohesive, thoughtful ode to him.

As functionaries in society, we’re forced to hide what we don’t want our peers to know. I’m reminded of Elsa from Frozen: “conceal, don’t feel, don’t let them know” when she finally unmasked her power to freeze anything in her path and finally said (I know, we’re aaaalllll sick of hearing these three overhyped words) “let it go.”

As much as I’ve grown to be sick of that movie, it proves a point. How many of you remember those dark days we like to call… middle school? And this is where I’m going to be flat out honest with y’all. In seventh grade, I went from not giving a you-know-what, to caring incessantly about my appearances. It was all because of this stigma from the town I grew up in: conformity and to be “socially accepted.” Funny, I just wrote a poem about my old town and how transferring high schools and eventually colleges gave me my own voice — my own identity. When we put on these “masks,” we’re essentially locking away our own voices from these outside sources who are too stubborn to take them into consideration.

But when I think about Louise Glück’s “Wild Iris,” and she puts on the persona of a wild iris trying to push through the dirt, it’s almost a source of empathy for the poor being. Let this, alone, be an analogy: we are all wild irises, emerging through earth’s thick skin trying to survive. We have instances which we may be “reborn” and discover ourselves again. At the end of the day, we are still writing our poems in first-person — so somewhere in the midst of all that, our voices and identities are still being conveyed in our poems of life. Our words may be used in the future to be studied, and who knows? Maybe a little-redheaded girl looking at poetry for the first time will wish she knew that source of wisdom.