My summer camp has rats in the walls and rotting wooden decks and haunted basements. My summer camp is hot and cold, made up of love and hate and freedom and restriction and myth and reality. My summer camp is more corrupt than the Brazilian government but still comforting enough to call it a religion. My summer camp is where I grew up two weeks at a time. 

I have lots of stories about preteen girls. Like, lots. I’ve done my rounds as a camp counselor, older sister, babysitter, and (recently) elementary Jewish educator. I have stories about misusing urine, ginger chews, trombones, boys, and matchmaking. I feel #blessed to have been able to witness pivotal experiences in the lives of preteen girls, because preteen girls are incredible. 

Twitter has slowly, but surely, cemented itself as the ideological battleground of the 21st century. With access to only 140 characters per post, the ability to put out and respond to personal opinions seems to adhere to that one line from Hamlet that most people don’t remember is from Hamlet, “Brevity is the soul of wit.”

I wrote my most important college admissions essay about The Big Lebowski. This is probably less indicative of my commitment to higher education, and more indicative of my unabashed love of the unstoppable film duo that is The Coen Brothers. 

I am the funniest person I know. Out of all of the aspects of my identity, my sense of humor is probably my favorite. I say my jokes loudly; I laugh at the things I say even if nobody else does. Shari Short asserts in her article, "Jewish Funny", that humor is a common ground for Jews. Self-deprecation and sprinklings of Yiddish go a long way when identifying fellow members of the Tribe by jokes alone. 

As a teenage girl who has had a consistent, though definitively low key, internet presence since I was 12, I have witnessed the rise and fall of many-a carefully tailored persona. Online venues (Tumblr being the most recent and preeminent, but MySpace before this) provide a space for young people to pick the best bits and pieces of themselves, and to cut and paste them together into some straw man fallacy of a person.

For the young woman, a thrift store serves as the proverbial laboratory of feminism. The reactants: bits and pieces of people left behind in coat pockets and skirt pleats (the people, hopefully, being solely metaphorical). The product: a newly formed sense of self, or the ability to form said sense of self. 

Art as a form of healing. Art as a form of escape. Art as a form of human connection, or livelihood, or emotional fulfillment. Art as everything that you need it to be. 

The variety of feminist voices gives me all the more reason to look for a variety of Jewish voices. Both Judaism and feminism give me the warm fuzzy feeling that comes with feeling like you truly belong somewhere. These two aspects of my life are so closely intertwined that sometimes I can’t even tell one from the other, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.