First Skype Discussion Group

Tonight I joined my first discussion group focusing on topic one.

We covered a number of topics in relation to the lenses, starting with social media and how that can be used. Social media, personally for me, is an excellent platform- in effect it is my CV. It's an online library of videos, previous gigs and an instantly accessible show reel that I can send to potential employers. It has been my foot in the door for many of my jobs out here in Dubai. The down side to this, and we touched on this as well- venues and companies are now wanting performers with large followings with the intention that this will increase footfall. 

Is this reducing the quality of the performer that would get an audition for the job? Is someone suddenly more appealing if they have more followers? I believe in the social media obsessed world we live in today sadly the answer is yes. 

We then moved on to talk about ethics and I brought up the fact that after having worked around the world, white privilege was something my eyes were opened up massively to. Putting it simply, because I had white skin I was treated far better and was given much greater privileges than my fellow dancers that didn't have white skin. This then led us to talk about heritage and race and one of the big things I took away from this discuss there is a massive difference between asking someone about their heritage and their race. 

I can loosely relate to this. Having an Arabic name, Ayesha, living in Dubai but being a white christian female I get asked the question all the time ' where are you from?' ' Why Ayesha if you're not Arabic?' 'Is your mum muslim?' 'are you at least half?' It stumps the airport security every time I travel. 

Should these questions be asked? 

Helen brought up the interesting topic of assumptions in regards to race and heritage. And there's a famous line from the film mean girls that springs to mind when we were discussing this. 

 ' If you're from Africa, then why are you white?' 

I believe day to day that we do wrongly make assumptions on what someone should look like based on where they are from. Stereotypes blur our vision and the line from mean girls highlights the naivety and close-mindedness that is sadly still going on all around us.