(The earliest photo I can find of the blanket, vs my blanket this week)
[Prefix: I am just a girl, and when writing this felt quite vulnerable with the idea that I would share it with you. My mom reminded me that while vulnerability feels like a weakness to ourselves, it looks like courage to others. So be nice!!]
When we’re babies, we’re given many toys, stuffies, and blankets, but many of us grow an attachment to just one particular thing. In my family, we refer to that one thing as a “Lovey”. Many children begin to lose their attachment to their lovey when they enter their teens, sometimes younger, sometimes older. Others hold onto that attachment for life. Clearly, there was a gene in my family that made us so attached to our Loveys; both my parents still have teddy bears that they were given as young children and held onto. For me, my object was my little pink blanket.
The blanket itself is not impressive. I’ve been told and seen in photos that my blanket was soft and bright pink at first, but as far as I can remember, it’s been rough and white. It’s about 2ft by 3ft, and literally tearing at the seams. It’s worth nothing, but to me it is worth everything. To me, it’s worth going back to my house to grab it in an emergency, or pack fewer clothes than I need to bring it with me on trips; it’s even to come to friends’ houses with me. This blanket has moved houses with me eleven times and has spent the last 20 years with me. It is, without a doubt, 100% a security blanket. It is an analog of my emotional data. Each tear or stain is a sign, an index of past use and care. It bridges my past and present, mediating the “temporal aspects” of experience, as it literally allows me to relive or re-access memories and moments of safety and comfort from earlier stages in my life. In this way, it shows how media and memory are coextensive, and how even a humble object can serve as a living archive of feeling.
But to me, it’s so much more than a blanket, and it offers me so many affordances. It allows me comforted sleep at night, it offers me warmth. The blanket acts as an anchor, a constant in my life, and stays with me every night when I am most vulnerable; when I’m asleep. The affordances of comfort aren’t inherent to my blanket alone, it emerged through embodiment, my lived experience and relationship with it over time. In McLuhan’s terms, “The medium is the message”, the way my blanket soothes and anchors me is inseparable from what it is, a soft, small, familiar object.
My blanket is a medium of experience, just like how our bodies are a medium of human experience. Like Turkle’s evocative objects, it’s both loved and thought with, my emotional companion and tool for reflection on things in my life. The blanket mediates my feelings on such a wide spectrum, in moments of joy and in moments of hardship, it is always waiting for me, wherever my “home” at the time has been. It is something that knows everything about me, and yet nothing at all (because it’s just a blanket, not a conscious thing). It acts as a technological medium in miniature, something that stands in the middle between my inner world and my external world, helping me process and feel my emotions and transitions.
As we continue through time and advances in technology, I can’t help but think about how much media is experienced through their physical qualities, and how that meaning is threatened by the digital age as we become more abstracted from material experience in a digital world. My blanket is lived and tangible, and stands as an opposition to the transition into digital mediators. It reaffirms the importance of touch, texture, smell, and material presence in the making of meaning. Nothing digital could replace any aspect of my blanket, material or immaterial in meaning. It is also an active counter to dematerialized media: a reminder that mediation can be intimately physical and that memory is not just cognitive, but physical and textual. Would a carpet still feel the same on a phone screen? Would the Mona Lisa be as popular if it were only to be seen digitally? My blanket is also a great example of Eco’s “vegetal memory”- memory preserved in organic material. It stores my personal information and history in its fabric, colour, tears and frays
If we were to think about my blanket with some critical theoretical insight, it could teach us that media are not always obvious or high-tech, mediation begins with everyday objects that are transformed to have meaning. The comfort, touch, and emotional security are themselves mediated experiences that can change an object’s meaning. The memory is not abstract or purely cognitive but entangled with physical matter. The theories of media and mediation must include the affective and tactile, not just the visual or digital.
In closing, my blanket shows how mediation begins with the material and personal, not just digital or technological media. It embodies the link between body, memory, and materiality, showing that meaning and comfort are felt through touch and texture. It illustrates Turkle’s idea of evocative objects as things that are both loved and thought with/through. It reflects Gibson and McLuhan’s affordances, as my blanket’s value comes from what it allows, which is warmth, safety, and reflection. Its value is not determined by what it physically is. It reminds me that media theory isn’t only about our devices or information, but also how objects can mediate our relationships with the world and ourselves. And ultimately, it teaches me that mediation is intimate and embodied, a process that connects mind, matter, and memory across time.
Thanks for reading!
I cannot agree more with your mother: vulnerability is our strength as it is core of human connections. Thank you for taking the courage to be vulnerable and producing such a beautiful piece.
You did a great job tying your lovey to the media theory, too. It reminded me of our discussion on the chapter “Apples” from Evocative Objects: as the author connects to her (and human in general) past when taking a bite, so do you, I imagine, feel back to being so much younger. This notion of connecting generations with a single object is such a beautiful thing. I wonder if it could ever be achieved with a digital object or place: will our kids look at our instagrams and feel the same connection we feel when flipping through physical photo collections? Probably no. But is Wplace kind of reminds me of the Cave of Hands? Yes.
I forgot that comments need to be structured, but I think you get the idea.
Thanks again for writing, I loved every letter of it.
Hi Bara!! Thanks so much for your comment. I really appreciate it and loved hearing your thoughts. I almost feel like the physical aspect of a childhood object is what makes it so important to us as humans. I like to think of it the same way as a dog with its favourite chew toy. The physical sensation of holding onto something for safekeeping and comfort couldn’t be replaced as easily digitally, I think. Imagine how strange it would be if someone’s childhood comfort object were something you could only view on a phone; it would have more limitations. If the child lost the phone, or it broke, or they didn’t have service, their comfort item would be inaccessible, and they would have to then find another way to comfort themselves. The serotonin boost that our brains get when we hold something familiar and full of memories is something that is unique and special to physical objects. It’s that same serotonin that guides us to collect little objects as we continue through life and hold onto them for when we’re older, and can look at them with the old friend nostalgia by our sides.
I really appreciated how your reflection turns something so intimate and personal into a meditation on what mediation itself means. The way you describe your blanket as a “living archive of feeling” is fascinating — it reframes materiality as not just a backdrop to experience but an active participant in it. I was struck by how you wove together Turkle, McLuhan, and even Eco to argue that media aren’t limited to the digital; your blanket becomes a theory in practice, showing how meaning is always embodied and affective.
Your point about the blanket resisting the dematerialization of the digital age also stood out to me. It made me think about whether touch and texture might be forms of knowledge — ways of understanding the world that can’t be replicated through abstraction. Perhaps, as you suggest, mediation doesn’t begin with technology but with the body’s encounter with matter. Your piece really pushes us to reconsider where “media” begins and what it means to feel through it.
Hey Celeste :-)!This was so beautifully written and deeply personal – I really enjoyed reading it. I especially liked your description of your blanket as an “analog of emotional data.” That phrase perfectly captures how physical objects can store memory and meaning over time. I also appreciate how you tied in McLuhan and Turkle to show that even something as humble as a blanket can be a powerful medium of experience. Do you think the emotional “data” your blanket holds could ever be translated into a digital form, or would that process strip it of its meaning? I loved your point about the digital age threatening material experience; it made me wonder how memory might change as more of our sentimental objects become virtual. Your post also reminded me how much comfort and meaning can be found in the most ordinary things. Thanks for sharing such a nostalgic, sentimental post !