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The Beginning of the Shift
When I started my college journey, I had a clean slate. And it wasn't really because I wiped it clean, but because I didn't do much in high school. I wasn’t someone who stood out, someone who made a name for themselves or had already established goals and dreams. I graduated high school and everything hit me immediately — I didn’t know what was I going to do, where I would go, but the question that stood out was: who am I going to be now?
Who was I?
So, starting college helped me define that. Refine it. Mess it up. Fine tune it again.
And during this process, I realized how unsatisfied I was with everything I did, I created, I pursued. I realized how empty the results felt and how even after the many struggles and sleepless nights, I wasn’t fulfilled. Something is missing, I kept telling myself. One night four years ago, I was watching Teen Titans and I kept admiring Beast Boy. And slowly admiration became jealousy and hatred. I hated how he was able to transform himself onto other things, while still being him. I hated how I didn’t have that escape or that freedom.
So I created it.
The idea of Shifter came to me four years ago, and it took me four years to develop it. To find the right people to help me start this project and help me define it, refine it and mess it up. And four years later, Shifter was born.
Shifter Mag is a visual and literary magazine and media company. It slowly is becoming an intersection between gender, race, fashion, and on going human factors. Factors that impact our everyday, directly or indirectly. Factors that socially define our every moves and thoughts until a certain point.
Through my process of hating the shifting titan, I came to the realization that he stood as a metaphor. While, yes, he is a cartoon, his essence resembles so many people in this world. It represents the urge to change your image every single day, the urge to be reborn, the urge to change inside and out. And this is something we’re able to do through fashion, through art, through music, through social media. It’s something we’re able to do to celebrate our individuality while also coming together.
Shifter was created as a thing to fulfill me and help me identify who I am; but it was also created to bring out the freaks and geeks and art lovers and gender bending artists and the performers and the trailblazers and the no-fuck-giving daredevils.