Normalization: A Senior Listener Lyric Photographic Diptych by Sydney Mozer (2017)

My lyrical essay, titled “Normalization” represents what it’s like for someone to experience the uncomfortableness of being sexually identified and singled out before one has even discovered who they are.

My narrative is written in a way that normalizes a gay relationship rather than a straight one. I decided to write is this way so that straight people can put themselves into the shoes of those in the lgbtq community. The teenagers begin discussing their relationships and crushes. The subject of the essay (“you”) is different than all of the other people at the party because they are straight which is the sexuality looked down upon or denormalized in this society. Heteronormativity and the assumptions that people often make are a huge issue in our current world. I wanted to specifically focus on the idea that people should not be forced to determine their sexuality nor should people assume it. Using this idea, the passage I chose was “You feel like you are being grabbed and pulled out of something that you still were unsure of whether you were inside.” This sentence worked really well with the photograph I chose because it is of a kid being pulled at his arm by his mother. To add color to my photo, I painted over the boy’s striped shirt with the paintbrush tool to add a rainbow. I wanted to use a lot of different colors to represent gay pride, however did not want it to be super obvious, so I made the colors transparent and not fall in the order that a traditional rainbow would. I used a pretty typical font because I did not want anything too crazy and it needed to fit evenly between the lined shirt. I did however change the font size for some of the words and split it up between the lines on the shirt in a way that put emphasis on some of the words while de-emphasizing other words.