I started thinking about my first monologue I ever did in The Art of Being titled Judgement because of facebook. Yes facebook. Thanks to that magical site I have reconnected with people from junior high who I haven't seen in seventeen or so years. I love looking at their pictures and seeing how a very high percentage are married with kids and living very happy lives. Some email me and tell me how happy they are to see me living my dream and will go on to recall some story about a play I did, a pageant I won(hey I grew up in Texas), or something that reminds them of the passion I had for my art even then. Thanks mom! She passed on her passion for dance and theater to me and I am eternally grateful to her for that or I wouldn't be able to write this today. Well I would be able to but not about this experience.
You see in junior high I was popular by default. What I mean is I was popular because I was Mercedes' sister. It was not her fault. When we are that young we go with what we are shown and if what we shown is an enviroment where things only have one way of being and you don't fit that way then your basically an outcast. I was one but I was also the sister of a cheerleader so I was popular by default. I was made very aware in more than one ocassion that I wasn't pretty enough. I never forgot the comment Johnny made while I was just standing waiting to go to class, "stop sticking your chest out you'll never be your sister." Mind you I was just standing there and till this day I don't match my sister in that department but I am quite happy with what I have. ;-) WORDS!! Ah words can be so impactful and at that age we are too young to get what I strongly believe today. People see the world as they are not as it is, so his comment truly had nothing to do with me. He probably never imagined that when I think of him all I can really recall is that scenario.
Junior high wasn't horrible but it wasn't great. I just pretty much got by but then I was what I still am now. A sponge. I observed and took in everything and here is what I learned. When you don't fit the standards of society you have to fight harder to be seen but for me it turned out to be an opportunity to grow in so many other ways. I took up reading, theater arts class, and devoured my dance classes. I went on to be on the dance team in high school and was the lead reindeer in the Christmas performance. A pretty dorky thing for high school but I was honored.
So for me being an outcast turned out be a blessing. A preparation of sorts for what lied ahead in Hollywood. So how did facebook prompt all these memories? Well Teanna, who I admired deeply in junior high for having the courage to be the only female football player at the time, tagged me in some pictures from junior high. See below. I had my own style thing going on hence the tie.
WOW was my first thought but as I looked closer I realized how drastically my perspective has changed. I may not have been the prettiest girl in school by societies' standards but I was certainly not as ugly as I allowed life to make me feel. I wish I had known then I had a choice to not buy into what I was told about myself and that I created my own reality but I didn't because I was still learning the lesson. A lesson which led me to The Art of Being. I was tired of how judgmental everyone is and how most of the time people aren't aware of how harsh we are to one another and the impact words have. They can scar someone for life.
What saddened me the most was that people where living life according to the rules of what I considered to be a very superficial society. One that values following along and strips you bare of your God given birth right, individuality. So between memories of the past and ten years of Hollywood defining for me what I was when it came to my ethnic background I grew tired. So much that I almost walked away from it all but instead of doing that I gave my career one final shot. At that time The Art of Being was strictly for the Los Angeles community. My intent was to bridge the gap of loneliness within humanity through art and show all that it entails to be human in hopes of having the audience leave feeling less alone. I did this by casting ten very diverse people of all backgrounds ranging from age to religion to sexual preference and allowing them to express themselves and their choices in a monologue onstage. Ten people onstage simply and beautifully being.
So it leads me to this. Life has shown me that it's up to us what we choose to give value to. It really is. So if you ever find yourself judging someone based on their looks stop to think about that thought and if it truly has anything to with you or if it's just about what society has sold us as truth because afterall the truth is subjective so you can define your own idea of beauty. With that in mind I leave you with my monologue from the first ever Art of Being performance and with the three Adriana's that live in me and will always be a part of me. The one who felt unseen as a teenager, the one that came to embrace her dorkiness and see it as an attribute, and the one who was recognized for recognizing the beauty in others. Thank you God and Universe for my journey and thank you Jason Mraz for your LONG HONEST blogs but most of all for being YOU. I came to this site to read your blogs and you inspired me to write my own for when it came to length I saw that I had met my match. Although this one probably outdoes yours. ;-)
JUDGEMENT by Adriana Garza Cortazar from 2006 The Art of Being performance
So what are you thinking right now? Let me guess. You’re thinking she’s hot, I’d do her and you may be thinking, she’s okay, she’s not that pretty, did you see how big her ass is? Whatever it is your thinking it’s a judgement based on how you see the world. It’s all in how we perceive things. The great thing about perception is that it’s a choice. Unfortunately though for all of us we’re handed these standards of society and worse we buy into them. So me I’m probably not who think.
That’s me growing up. I know. One day my sister is saying to me Adriana why bother looking in the mirror you are still as ugly as you were yesterday and the next I’m being crowned Miss Teen Spokesmodel. How it all happened? Well that’s been my journey.
Just like a lot of you I was taught that my worth was based on my looks. So I set out to be worthy. Although I was quick to learn that the kind of worth I yearned for wasn’t going to be given to me this way but I choose to try it anyway. So pageants became my choice. Prior to winning a pageant and “coming into the world” I pretty much lived an existence in the shadow of my sister.
I tried out for the cheerleading squad because I could hold my leg all the way to the top of my head, fall into the splits, get up right back up and cheer my little heart out. She tried out cause it would add to her coolness factor. She made it.
Then there was David Gonzales. I dreamt of going to the prom with him. Keyword dreamt. She wasn’t in his grade, didn’t really know him but went with him because she could. Now don’t get me wrong it wasn’t her fault, she was handed the exact same standards I was and the only difference was that she fit them.
What I get now is that the choices I was making where of a girl so afraid of not being seen that she became the very thing she feared the most. A continuation of my mom, my sister and society standards. That sash and fake painted on “it’s all okay” smile only made matters worse because it was so far from who I was. It has been a long treacherous road back to my being. Filled with years of therapy and the acceptance that there are some things I am just not going to understand.
What I do understand is that what meets the eye is not always what is. You see these heels and this dress can help me sell you the illusion of beauty but that’s all it is an illusion. True beauty, the kind that transcends time and leaves something behind when we are gone comes from inside. And no, that’s not something parents tell their ugly kids to help them get by.
It’s my truth because I’ve lived both sides of the coin. So the thoughts of that girl whose own sister took the one guy she liked to the prom because God knows there wasn’t another 299 boys in the school, or the girl who somehow got it instilled in her that her father leaving never to be heard from again was somehow her fault, that girl, she’s is my constant struggle. (no matter what things look like on the outside)
So the next time you want casually walk up to me and ask me if I’m perhaps a gold digger or if I can ever leave the house without blow drying my hair or you want to condemn me because I am where I am based solely on my looks and you’ve had to work hard and life isn’t fair, think about this. None of us, not one of us chooses what we come into this world looking like but what we do choose is how we let it affect us.
The skin no matter what it looks like to anyone, it just veils the soul. Behind every face is a human being just yearning to be loved for who they are, seen for who they are. And in this town where turning older is a curse, I think Dickinson was right when she said, “we turn not older with years but new everyday.”
So getting so lost it forced me to find myself was exactly where I was supposed to be because it gave birth to my own becoming.
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