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Judy Is a Punk

Writer's picture: Natalie SnyderNatalie Snyder

This is one of my favorite doodles. I guess I drew it somewhere around 2016. I was pregnant then. I remember holding my belly and fretting. My mom said I had to calm down or I was going to have a nervous baby. I told everyone she was probably going to look like Bernie Sanders because there was no way that was happening. It wasn’t in my nature.

All my characters have always been in the counter culture. Piercings and studs all the way. My sister was a punk. She had a Bikini Kill xeroxed piece of paper taped to the bumper of her car and all her art projects at school was recreating album covers from The Queers and Operation Ivy. And I worshipped my sister. She got her nose pieced with a safety pin in someone’s basement, came home with a belly button ring next and then a tattoo she had given herself with pen ink. When I wanted to get my eyebrow pierced and later the bridge of my nose, she committed herself to talking me out of it though. For all her rebellion, I had to be the stable one.

She took me to my first shows. She only brought me to really tame ones. My first concert at 14 was at the First Unitarian Church in Philly to see Rainer Maria. Girl fronted or girls on bass bands were my absolute favorite. I was so excited my older sister had chosen to be nice to me and take me to the coolest thing there could possibly be, I was dressed and ready by 3pm. I had heavy make up and pleather pants I bought at hot topic. I made a bracelet out of a plastic tooth brush and bought a studded bracelet every time I went out if I had disposable income. It was also the hay day of the jelly bracelet and I had a collection of black and blue. Oprah was deeply convinced this meant I had gone to come kind of degenerate party, but really it was just the cheapest piece of jewelry you could get and preteens aren’t known to be flush with cash.

That day I wanted nothing more than to be bathed in the scene forever. First it was checking R5 productions and the marquis out front of the TLA. Then it grew to small time bands and finding myself in moldy basements with a boy playing guitar I was sure I was in love so close he would flick sweat on me whenever he moved. Eventually it was -my- basement where Undercover Bastards and Foosa would play. Music and shows became my religion. I could close my eyes and feel it consume the inside of me, like I imagine the Christians that speak in tongues might. Getting in the pit and getting absolutely wrecked gave me bliss and endorphins that has only ever been matched when I played in my first derby bout. It is so weird to feel complete love for someone as you absolutely shove the shit out of them. There was always a big dude that would scoop you up and made room if you fell. I remember the guy who did it the first time for me. He had to be at least 6’2 and was thick just by the look of him. He had four braids dangling off his head and glasses. I fell and he spread his wide arms out and pushed back the crowd and then used those same arms to scoop me up by the arm pits. He asked if I was ok and and laughed and smiled and said I was having a great time. He smiled and then shoved me back into the pit. He was brutal though once it was back on. I realized that pit was a little too hard for me and I dipped out shortly there after.

But anyone is the scene knows that things work differently. Everyone lived in some kind of commune art house with definitely spray painted the walls. There were potlucks all the time where the dirtiest crust punk you ever saw brought the most delicious vegan Mac and cheese you thought existed. Communication was different and direct. In regular life I always felt like I was missing something but there most people said what they meant. There was still drama based on the same kind of social construct of real life, especially because polyamory was taking off and people did not do the work to deconstruct their thinking before diving head first into that. But the biggest rules seemed to be “piss off cops” and “punch a nazi”

I don’t know how Nazis seemed to always be lurking about. Maybe they just wanted to fight. The music preached equality, women’s rights and political action. What on earth made them think the music was for them? The situations I found myself in were never major. I wasn’t in any of the historical punk fights of Philly which the old heads will regal you with at the slightest provocation. It was always one hay maker punch and the nazi was never seen again.

The scene became my inspiration. My characters were in bands with every piercing you could imagine and giant spiked shoulders like they were a ninja turtle villain. It was all in aesthetics though. I just wanted to draw cool stuff and I couldn’t see a way my art could mean anything in terms of activism. Then I went to college.

Art school is a trip for its own post. You will never find a group of people more insufferably arrogant and deeply insecure at the same time. Every project had to have grandiose meaning because they were making the next great historical art piece that for sure would change the art world forever. “It’s cool” was no longer enough, so my roots in the scene came into play. Stories about dystopian futures with a destroyed environment where only dandelions survived like a scourge, surreal horror were women were subjected to the same brutality as cows which applies now in a totally different and perhaps more disturbing way, and a drive to make every character at least a little bit gay. The first comic job I recieved was actually a post-apocalyptic joint about the desolation of the suburbs. Then another about resurrecting cops with a techno virus so they could fight the criminal underbelly with impunity. But never did the stories really go “the nazis come back!”

Honestly the “what if the third reich won?” trope seemed absolutely tired. As tired as “if the south won” though in that case I could imagine the slave population overthrowing a greatly weakened brand new southern government and a new country founded by them could be incredible interesting, but more often than not its “we still have slaves” because of all the things the most unbelievable is that humans have compassion. But even then, the vision of the future the creators were putting out seemed to feature a fourth reich. Far more likely, people released deeply personal stories that looked back on the past to inspire it to never happen again. Maus was required reading in one of my classes.

But perhaps they are right. My punk roots are completely at odds with current events as they were in 2016. It seems unbelievable. I drew my punk girl when the Muslim ban was put in effect and we had the first reports of the kids detained in cages at the boarder. The game plan in 2016 already read like a preamble to American concentration camps and it seemed clear as day to me. Again, I’m not an alarmist, I read the source material. And the campaign site was actually worse than people were reporting at the time. I cried for my daughter thinking of what we were in for. I’m not always the person so ask on this. I came from a place where we never called the cops and didn’t trust the government and had implemented our own little anarchist communities and it was great. Boarders were absolutely stupid to me. People should be able to move freely in my opinion. A criminal will be a criminal on any side if that’s the only way they think they can live. But I don’t really believe in an inhernt evil in humans. When people asked if you could go back in time would you kill Hilter didn’t seem to be the solution to me. I wanted to go back to when he was a baby and make sure he was loved and supported. I thought that was the key to being as good person, and wouldn’t it be better if he just turned out to be a good person instead? Though if nature prevailed and proved me wrong, we can go back to plan A.

The spirit though, that I came from was shut it down immediately. There is no value to it we are missing, we have all the history books to prove that. Why entertain it? Free speech is fine but it never meant freedom of consequence. And I couldn’t imagine a situation were someone should be granted a stage to espouse that 2+2 equallyed 5 with the same validity as a person who had the factual answer of 4. Fascism lead to the worst. Nazis were racists and racists were bad. 2+2=4 If they wanted to yell about the option of 5, go do it on the corner. No one will stop you but welcoming you into a lecture hall was dumb. Somehow though, approaching things that way was seen as true oppression and everything else was made up. As they say, the nomads had settled down but I longed to run back to a punk show where things make sense.

My characters will continue to be punks forever. The best people I ever knew and the only time I felt real justice ever dish out. Punk Rock and at least kind of gay forever. Though now sometimes they have to wear some cute winter boots.

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