There's a "celebrity whore." A would-be "gangsta." A father. Pinocchio .
And they're all part of the University.
The Pan-Asian American Community House has embarked on a campaign to give Penn community members the chance to express themselves anonymously, with blank postcards as canvas.
There are no limits on how much a person may submit. Postcards are available at PAACH, the Greenfield Intercultural Center, the LGBT Center and Houston Hall.
After Nov. 30, the postcards will be put on display at a soon-to-be determined location in December.
About 100 cards have been turned in, and the submissions are quite diverse.
"I am someone who had an abortion and I think I only pretended to feel bad about it, does that make me a bad person?" reads one postcard.
Another is a collage of celebrities with the phrase "celebrity whore" plastered across.
Some entries are light-hearted, like a picture of Pinocchio accompanied by the caption, "Sometimes I wonder if I'm human at all." Others are more obscure: One shows a hand holding up a mask with the word "imperfect."
"Penn is extremely diverse," said College and Wharton sophomore James Liu, who is helping head the project. "Your professor is not just your professor - he does a lot of neat things, and the person down the hall who studies all the time might [unknowingly] be interested in art."
The program was initially inspired by PostSecret, a community art project started in 2004 in which people mail in secrets written on homemade postcards.
The postcards aren't the only way PAACH hopes to help people express themselves: The group is also collecting art submissions for people wanting to explain who they are in a more tangible form.
Shiella Cervantes, associate director of PAACH, said, "The postcards don't have to be in a specific 'I am this.' format; they can be one word, 10 words, incomplete sentences, bad grammar or in different languages."
One submitted postcard just says "Empty", while another red one says, "I only get my period when I'm in love."
"One great thing about the project is that the question is left up to interpretation. Not everyone's immediate reaction of identity is race," said Wharton sophomore Tina Yu, who is also helping to organize the project. "It's cool to see what people's immediate reactions are."
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