post- magazine October 19th, 2023

In This Issue

jeanine kim

Audrey Wijono

2

Senior Anxieties

Speaking in Tongues

3

olivia cohen

5

samiha kazI

mack ford 4

How to Be a Girl

Ode to the Crossword

A Tangle of Movement 6

Daphne Cao 7

The Shape of Love Will Hassett

New Dorm 9

postCover by Ella Buchanan

OCT 19

VOL 32

— ISSUE 4

FEATURE nights have yet to remedy.

It’d be easier, maybe, with someone to teach me.

But with my oma gone, I don’t know a single Dutch speaker. Not here in Providence, and certainly not back home in Indonesia.

To deem Dutch the “colonial tongue” is not straightforward. Unlike the Portuguese and the Spanish, whose colonial ventures sought to assimilate native populations through language, the Dutch occupation of Indonesia was one of separation and distance.

Native Indonesians had to remain subordinate for their ventures to remain profitable. Denying them the Dutch language and culture prevented the spread of Western ideas, the “dangerous” kind that might inspire rebellion. The Dutch language, then, was one of power.

It represented Western civility, the kind Indonesians were inherently denied.

To be an Indonesian Dutch speaker was a sign of status. It granted proximity to the colonial regime, and represented a claim to modernity and civility—as defined by the colonial state.

Dutch was used to render us Indonesians lesser beings, to keep us silent within their regime. Rejecting it in our day-to-day life is a source of national pride.

This colonial tongue was abandoned with intent— because to rid ourselves of Dutch is to deem ourselves free from our colonial past.

Speaking in Tongues

Why turn back, then? To relearn this language, a foreign tongue so disgraced?

A narrative of freedom and forward-looking progress is a tempting one, but it is far from the entire

musings on language and identity

picture. Our archives are in Dutch. The stories of our

By audrey wijono

is only through wielding the weapon—the language—of

people are written through their words, their eyes. It

illustrated by Emily Saxl

our oppressor that we can move beyond the colonial legacy and find our own truth.

Dutch, then, is a means to upend regimes of

After

hundreds

of

years

of

disruption,

those monikers will be my own, too.

control and access, and to reclaim the archives as our

displacement, and colonial violence in Indonesia,

It was not so long ago, then, that we knew what

own. I’m fueled, I suppose, by some sense of duty, of

I’m learning Dutch. Rudimentary, garbled Dutch, but

it meant to speak through their voice. White man,

responsibility to a decolonial effort. Embedded in

Dutch nonetheless.

white speech. But now, in this attempt to relearn their

these efforts, though, is something more—because to

Hoe gat het? How are you?

tongue, these words feel foreign, their shapes large and

learn Dutch is to glimpse, briefly, into the world my

Three generations ago, my great-grandmother

imposing in my throat.

oma once knew. To unravel, fully, her life.

had been fluent, a product of our national history. She

Heel goed. Very good.

I cannot preserve her past without it.

didn’t use it much in her later years; her children had

Dank je wel. Thank you.

So: Dutch.

been born post-occupation. By then, Indonesian was

I cough out the first lesson with bitter disdain.

enough.

Het spijt me.

Even still, we have cherry-picked the Dutch linguistic legacy. It is ingrained, in some ways, in the

* Still, there’s something to be said of speaking as

I’m sorry.

they did. What is lost when we articulate ourselves

I am a traitor, and this language is my sin.

through their words? Is there room for our authenticity

loanwords of Indonesian itself: sepatu, we say, for

*

shoes. Jendela, for window. But my family, too, has

Why Dutch? Why now?

in the language of the oppressor?

The elephant in the room, I suppose, is my

made this legacy our own: I still call my grandmother

Dutch, by every measure, feels unnatural: its

my oma. My grandfather is still my opa. And I imagine

words are so different from my own, its consonants an

Anglicization.

“You speak English so well,” people tell me. It’s a

that in fifty years or so—once my brother has taken

entirely new feat. There’s a gurgle at the back of the

little demeaning, but the statement holds some truth.

up the responsibility of child-rearing for the family—

throat that I can’t quite emulate, a fact that my late

Part of it, undoubtedly, is being mixed. English was the

Dear Readers,

In A&C, a writer enthuses over the NYT crossword,

that makes me feel part of something larger than just

and explores her obsession with words. Another A&C

myself. For me, this week has been fraught with anxiety

This week, like many other weeks, I am getting a

writer discusses female YA heroines in the books that

and insecurity, cramps, mysterious pains and bruises,

this generation grew up reading, how their dainty,

confusion at what’s expected of me, and hormones,

effortless,

Letter from the Editor strong dose of the female experience. What does that entail, you ask? Well, it just so happens that this issue of post- Magazine is written, illustrated, and brought to you by an all-female team* who are much more qualified in weighing in on the matter: In Feature, the writer discusses learning Dutch in light of the legacy of the Dutch colonization of Indonesia, and what cultural ownership really means. In Narrative, the writer talks about her anxieties as a senior and how it manifests in her attitudes toward the past and her future self. Another writer talks about her appreciation for dance from the perspective of a non-dancer, and how it can serve as a release for her.

2

post–

characterization

so many hormones. I am slouching towards the week-

impacted her own perception of what it means to be a

not-like-the-other-girls

end, and not even in a mall goth scenecore y2k grunge

heroine in real life, and explores the process of unlearn-

way. But in reading Olivia’s piece about simple love or

ing these ideals. In Lifestyle, the writer discusses the

Audrey’s reflection on the innateness of matrilineal

pressure to be in love, and the beauty of non-romantic

responsibility, I am reminded that experience connects

love in a collection of moments.

me like a web, an Indra’s web, where my struggles do

The female experience can be so varied depending on geographical location, mother-daughter relation-

not have to only be my own. So go forth, read post-, and see yourself in your fellow human!

ship, access to support, and so many other factors, but at its center is something universal. Not saying what it is because I’m secretive. But glints of familiarity catch my eye, as in every story I see a thread of shared reality

*All-female save for Will, our crossword staffer, and Joe and Elijah, our editors, whom we love and appreciate

Bye Barbies!

Kimberly Liu Editor-in-Chief

FEATURE language of my home, the bridge between my parents.

Senior Anxieties

Thai woman, Indonesian man. Anglicized, mutt-like children.

to be lost and found and lost once more

The language is so ingrained that removing it would leave me with nothing. I was raised with an

by jeanine kim Illustrated by Caroline HouseR

English-language education. I was read Englishlanguage picture books. Even my names—the very core of me, as a distinct individual, are Western. Names, not one, but two. The first is Audrey, the second Belle.

I’m so far bastardized that I dream in English.

If Dutch was the colonial tongue of the past, then English may be its modern equivalent. It’s the aspirational language of today; English is lauded and praised for its proximity to the Global North, representing the same notions of “modernity” and intelligence as Dutch did so long ago.

At the same time, though, this Westernization is seen as corrupt, a neo-colonial force undermining local values. Un-Indonesian.

Language

opens

doors,

but

not

without

consequence. I lament not understanding one colonial tongue, yet construct myself in the words of another.

An amalgamation of different influences has made me strange—a patchwork of the postcolonial, the globalized.

What does that mean, then, for my authenticity? * Our

national

language,

Bahasa

Indonesia,

emerged out of necessity. For an archipelago of over 17,000 islands and 1,300 ethnic groups, a common language was crucial in the fight for unity and national

I am jealous of every single first-year. It’s a sad truth, but an honest one nonetheless. Sitting in an

it has been caught on a line. Rather than think about applying to grad school or looking for employment,

English seminar, populated by everyone from grad students to seventeen-year-old first-years, the range of ages jumps out, refusing to be subdued by the equalizing experience of the classroom. Despite my constant irritation at every naïve question posed by a plucky first-year, I am left with nothing except a deep, excruciating envy that eats at my heart: I would give anything to be in their shoes.

Another semester at the same old school. As the leaves slowly crisp and drop to the ground, I fall into a familiar pattern, a warm embrace that reminds me of the natural rhythms of life. Yet this year, the red leaves and brisk autumn air don't bring the usual comfort—they only serve as bitter reminders of the impending end of all this.

As a senior facing the end of my college experience, the natural reaction is to look to the past, to the many things I did and didn't do during my four years at Brown. Faced with the distinct not-college life awaiting me, the only response can be to struggle and splash about, a fish blindly fighting its fate after

I choose to submerge myself deeper into college, throwing myself into academics with a zeal unseen since my very first weeks at Brown.

In many ways, the first days of senior year are very similar to the first days of freshman year: both are a blurry mess of parties, celebrations, events.

Beyond the physical parallels, they both invoke a nervousness, an entry into the unknown. Freshman year, thousands of hard-working, high-achieving students flood Brown's campus. For many, it’s their first foray into a life outside of the classroom and the home. As these recent high school graduates taste the many freedoms associated with college, they get caught up in their blur. For myself and other seniors, there is a similar sensation of overwhelming movement, the feeling that things are finished before I even knew they began. Despite the growing monotony of college, there is an underlying rhythm of finality, knowing that this is the last year of this life. This bass tone of conclusion begets madness, a feeling that I must continue to act on or else

consciousness.

As Indonesian nationalism grew in the early 20th century, discussions of a national language produced three main choices: Dutch, the colonial language; Javanese, the language of the islands’ most prominent ethnic group; and, finally, Malay, the historic lingua franca. Malay was not “authentic,” necessarily—it was ethnically neutral, and had been favored among European traders for being lexically simple and easy to learn. And it was Malay, ultimately, that was chosen as our language.

Enshrining it as the Indonesian language was the first step to a united national identity—a claim to an identity independent of the Dutch.

It

was

Malay’s

“un-nativeness,”

as

Joseph

Barrington put it, that enabled its success. And it’s this idea of un-nativeness that I return to, over and over again. Malay was not inherently ours. We made it so. An instrument of the colonial state, turned against them.

A co-opted language was our first weapon. And as we move to decolonize our past, we will continue to wield these languages as our own.

Un-native, but ours.

10s

1. Top 10s 2. Things I Hate About You 3. One Tea House 4. You ;) 5. -nis 6. Commandments 7. Amendments to the Constitution (aka the Bill of Rights) 8. Ben 9. October 10, 1010 (10/10/10) 10. -nessee (cuz ur the only 10 i seeeeeeeeee)

“If you don’t have what it takes to be a stripper, you don’t have what it takes to be in investment banking.”

“I don’t use mechanical pencils; they’re for people who are out of touch with nature.”

October 19, 2023

3

NARRATIVE everything will pass me by.

Despite the parallels between myself and my younger peers, the differences between us have never seemed so large. As a senior concentrating in English, I have sat through too many seminars where students prattle on about meaningless details and blindly defend misreadings, posturing about their own intellectualism while fundamentally misunderstanding the text. Having been in too many classes where the students push on about Marxist frameworks or Jungian archetypes, my patience has reached an all-time low. The unfortunate first-year in my class, the undeserving target of my vitriol, has never been in my shoes; they don't know why I cringe every time they mention praxis, and that's okay.

What to them is a cheeky, go-getter attitude, one that likely endeared them to their high school English teachers, is to me only artless naiveté.

In spite of my outward scorn, the nugget of truth lying at the core of my derision is anything but hatred. Rather, it's jealousy so overwhelming that it can't be denied. My condescension, my false sense of superiority, are all masks to disguise the envy that eats at my soul. What comes across as grating stupidity is anything but—their undisguised hunger for learning is beyond anything I can muster at this moment. To sit in a classroom, to listen without

judgment, to diligently take note of every detail of every comment, is a remarkable skill, one that I feel I have lost forever.

The staggering changes of senior year, and simultaneous reminders that I am still in college, complicate everything. A magnification of the overwhelming experience that is everyday life, senior year combines lassitude with constant action.

Every day is filled with exhausted attitudes that are equally impatient for the future and terrified about its coming. A microcosm of the constant deluge of information and emotion, every day of senior year feels like a war inside myself, one that leaves me a shell of a person, as if I am seeing my life pass me by.

I mourn the freshman I once was, the girl who arrived at Brown bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

Flying across the country, she is here to start her new life, to embark on the great adventure that is college. I see her scrolling through CAB, trying to maximize her educational and intellectual pursuits, and it makes me cry. She is that aggravating first-year in my English seminar, waiting after class to ask the professor unnecessary questions; she is the student who will not stop raising her hand, always eager to participate.

When she first stepped onto Brown's campus, nestled away in the freshman sanctuary of North

Campus, the school was a different place. Instead of the tiresome buildings whose complicated stairways and poorly-planned layouts that drive me crazy, the campus was filled with beautiful architecture and buildings that act as gateways to the heaven that is higher education. The Main Green was not the site of countless mosquito bites and awkward campus dances; it was an Eden bursting with countless activities, whether it was lying on a hammock, soaking up the sun, or playing spikeball with friends, all of whom looked the picture of happiness.

Walking through campus, I am facing the idea that this may be my last first semester ever. I feel her coming back. Instead of cringing every time I see an over-enthusiastic hand refuse to come down, I take a moment to see not a random first-year but myself, three years younger. She is not lost. She's still here with me, guiding me every time I get excited over a particularly interesting discussion, encouraging me when I ask questions about things that confuse me. She's right next to me, soaking in the excitement of senior year, celebrating the things I have accomplished at Brown. At the end of the day, I have nothing to be jealous of; that first-year in my English seminar is just like me, taking in everything that college offers without regret.

A Tangle of Movement

badly written stories; I relish each one. My mind arches and stretches with each new syntactical puzzle—yet it is not quite the same as dancing.

But to sit for too long in the shadows of a story—long and growing longer—is contrary to our nature. We are creatures of movement, after all. I sit and

indeed that I lacked. I was on the windowsill in the topmost room of an old church, with a notebook splayed open on my shins. I was looking down upon it with all the hostility and spite I could muster because my mind had tick-tocked to a stop and would think no more. I have found that in a pinch, a walk will do to resolve this sort of mind-block, but not even the most restorative of strolls could save me now. I tried, of course, with the little green book strangled in one fist as I marched through the dusk.

It was then that I thought of my friend the dancer, with her leaping and twirling and utter excess of movement.

I know my skills, and I know the limits of those skills.

When I was a child, and didn’t know every crease and creak in my body like I do now, I wanted desperately to be a dancer.

I did as my shrill old

the joy of dancing badly by mack ford Illustrated by Icy Liang

I know a girl who dances as easy as breathing.

In learning each dance, finding comfort in the precision of each pose, the clarity of each step, she is her most familiar self. And when the dance is learned, when it is ingrained in the very fibers of her muscles, she becomes larger than herself—a surprise to us and even to herself.

She becomes something beyond.

I understand her joy. I find it too, though not in dance. My feet were made to stay firmly on the ground underneath a wooden writing desk. I find true delight there, in the painstaking process of peeling apart words. My mouth w o r k s alongside the pen in my hand, lips stretching around each syllable as I commit it onto paper. I tell myself bedtime stories to fall asleep, and I wake with the next chapter on the edge of my tongue. In my bedroom, there is a stack of journals taller than that stack of books I haven’t read, all filled with 4

post–

write and sit and think and sit until my brain begins to feel like soup for want of movement.

It was one late afternoon, just on the cusp of evening, when I realized that it was movement

R u s s i a n teacher told me to do and worshiped the mirror.

I tucked my tummy and pointed my toes and wrangled my gangly limbs into straight lines. I straightened my back and aligned my hips, turned my feet out and bent my knees ever so slowly—agonizingly, exquisitely slowly—and raised my arms at just

NARRATIVE the same speed so that I looked like a jellyfish swimming up through nectar, expanding and retracting through the syrupy sweet. My chin was pinned up tighter than the bun in my hair and my eyes felt glued open with gel. That old woman called out the next position and each flower-petal French word seemed to curl up and curdle in her mouth. My heart lived in that terrified place in the small divot of my throat.

I was always fazed by the propriety of dance.

Each sickle-toe made me ill. I have never danced perfectly, or even very well, in spite of all my most absurd efforts. It’s been nearly ten years since I’ve set foot in a dance lesson.

Nevertheless, on that day, when my feet were itching for more movement than just walking could give, I decided to try once more.

Whatever dance is to the heart and body— activity, energy, camaraderie—surely it is more to the soul. Often, my mind wanders to made-up dances. Sometimes these dances are prim and poised with pointed toes. At other times they are bright and fun and born to entertain, meant for a stage filled with jazz hands and a kickline to boot, or else they are wild dances meant for the privacy of a studio late at night with twisting hands and contorting knees. Surely such dances represent the state of the soul. Or perhaps they create it.

There are dances that open their arms, reaching out towards the audience until every single droopy-eyed father in the crowd is tapping his foot along to the rhythm—and there are dances that hug in on themselves and whisper some terrible sadness that brings a tear to the most stoic eye; dances that drag their feet, dances that sour, dances with big glittering smiles so bright they hurt your eyes.

Then there is the dance I danced that night, when I found myself in the bathroom of the church, deep within the old stone walls of the basement.

Truly, I am no good with that tangle of movements that becomes a dance—not nearly as good as I am with pen and paper—but that in no way lessened my pleasure. Moreover, I was in no hurry. I felt the arch of my back, and it was butter-smooth, sweet and easy to carve with even the dullest of knives. My arms began to kick like tongues, flailing and thrashing through the air.

Muscles writhed under my skin like tentacles, like spongy squid legs reaching out to escape boiling water. It was a wild dance, far from the beautiful precision meant for the stage. It was the sort of dance that leaves you alive and alight and covered in sweat.

Then, I was out of the church and on the street in the bright daylight with my eyes closed.

It was late fall; the wind might have stung if I were sitting still. I was not. There was a saxophone duet playing in my ears—all brassy and sly—and my every step tapped along to the rhythm. Here and there my fingers would snap, or else wander out on either side of my hips in a strange wavy movement. But mostly, they tapped on my thighs, right then left then right again, making my very skin into the taut head of a drum.

What are those hands? What do they signify?

Not art, or pride or craft, surely. I’ll call it play.

Ode to the Crossword the absence of limitation on expression by samiha kazi Illustrated by emilie guan Pieces of praise. Type of poem. Flattering lines.

Homage in verse. Ode! It’s a Tuesday night; I have multiple assignments due in the next few hours, and an alarming amount of tabs opened up on my laptop. Instead of buckling down at my desk to grind out my readings and problem sets, I scurry down the three flights of stairs and swing open my apartment’s back door to find a group of my friends eagerly waiting outside.

“We’re ready!”

Within moments, we’re all huddled in the living room, scattered on the floor and in the random assortment of chairs we’ve dragged into the space for the special occasion. Sprawled out across a beanbag, I fumble with the multiple ragged cords hanging off our TV until I find the HDMI and triumphantly plug it into my laptop. Blown up on the big screen, the six words are reflected across our fervent eyes.

“The Crossword: Ready to Start Solving?”

This is an ode to the New York Times crossword: my most-used app, but more importantly, my favorite escape. *** I have always been a word kid. The day I turned five years old, I asked my parents for two things: to get my ears pierced and to get my very own library card. With freshly poked lobes, I dragged my dad to the front desk at our local library and proudly told the librarian that I was finally five years old—which was wonderful for a multitude of reasons, but most importantly, meant that I was officially old enough to be trusted with my own library card.

My dad used to take me to Barnes & Noble every

weekend. I’d beg him to drive the 15 minutes into the neighboring town so I could scour the fiction shelves.

I would scout out the comfiest cushioned chair that looked over the store parking lot as I settled in with my two or three books of the day. After a while, my dad would always leave me in my secluded corner to go run errands; most of the time, I never realized he had left until he returned to tell me we had to go home.

The top right drawer of my desk in my childhood bedroom only opens if it is yanked. Inside, four neatly stacked piles scrape against the roof of the drawer. I have never been able to throw away any card that I have ever received. Whether a birthday card, thank-you card, or even a simple Post-it, I have held onto every piece of paper for over a decade.

People in my life searching their minds for the right words and bringing them to life for me. Putting their pens to paper and tracing each line with the purest of intentions. Signing their name with a heart or a little doodle to keep me smiling. Nothing makes my heart swell more than knowing that their words are meant for me.

When my friend Rachel left for a semester abroad, I was distraught at the thought of passing days on campus without her. I didn’t know how to navigate Brown without her, and it wasn’t something I was particularly interested in learning to do. Before moving back to my dorm, I packed the envelope that she had written my name across years beforehand, with one of the most meaningful cards I had ever received tucked away safely inside.

For the rest of the year, that envelope sat patiently atop my desk, always available for me to crack

I slid to the right as the music slipped down an octave. This strange movement suited me. The sounds of the street floated up to me with their rushing horns and lockjaw steps. All the while the saxophones played, sliding up and down with their bright tones—sultry and teasing and utterly gay.

October 19, 2023

5

ARTS & CULTURE

open and re-read whenever I needed to raise my

evoke an emotion of some sort from someone else.

spirits. 3,775 miles between us, but it always felt like she was sitting beside me whenever I reread her handwriting.

This is an ode to words; the strings that fill up our days, but more importantly, the vessel for how we choose to express ourselves. *** The New York Times crossword loves the word ‘ode.’ It also loves the word ‘apse.’ And ‘ere.’ Ire. Eel. Ape. Tyke. Aria. Eli. Will Shortz may keep these recurring words in rotation (and thank god he does!), but he has never once described them in the same way. A large primate? Ape. To mimic another individual in an absurd manner? Ape. Before a significant event?

What more powerful of a connection could you share?

The NYT crossword puzzle is an irreplaceable connection in my life. It connects my love for words with my love for the people around me. Without fail, I will always complete the crossword with another brain alongside mine. I’ll wake up and whip out a Monday crossword at the breakfast table with my roommates. I can pull out a Wednesday crossword in the ERC, surrounded by friends and lattes. Occasionally I’ll make waffles to accompany a Sunday crossword, with so many pairs of eyes glued to the TV screen. And of course, I’ll invite a bunch of people over on a Tuesday night to solve and celebrate the 100th crossword of our very precious and treasured streak.

This is an ode to the black and white squares, so intricately arranged each morning.

This is an ode to hundreds of NYT subscribers who take the time to leave comments on each puzzle that keep me smiling for the rest of the day.

This is an ode to my friends who have indulged my obsession with their avid participation.

This is an ode to Rachel, who has always understood my love for words, and went the extra mile to gift me a NYT Games subscription years ago because she could no longer stand watching me sulk over the locked puzzles on the Games app.

This is an ode to the New York Times crossword, for preserving the significance of words for people worldwide.

Ante. The initial stake in a game of poker? Ante.

I’ve yet to understand any of the rules of poker, but I can confidently say I’m well-versed in the game’s terminology thanks to Shortz.

Spoken, heard, written, or read—words equip us with unimaginable power. Intentional tones.

Specific sentence structure. Using semicolons instead of periods. Choosing to say exceptional instead of good. Riveting instead of just fun. Deciding to be more dramatic with a tinge of flair instead of concise and straight to the point. Opting for an exclamation point in place of a period. Picking out a word or phrase to sign a letter. Carefully crafting the perfect text to that one person. Knowing that the next words out of your mouth, onto your slip of paper, or displayed on your screen can and will 6

post–

How to Be A Girl lessons from children's books to unlearn by olivia cohen Illustrated by Lucid Clairvoyant Little girls' brains are sticky as flytraps.

When you're young, every facial expression you see, every word you read, and the smallest fragments of information all collect in the back of your brain. These details combine to form a kaleidoscope of beliefs that color everything around you, distorting your world slowly, so that the warped lens gradually becomes your reality.

This process takes place without you noticing, of course. But every so often, a certain piece of information lodges itself into your brain like a splinter, big enough that you’re conscious of it: an unintended insult from your best friend, a slogan from a soap advertisement, a warning from your grandmother. These extra-sticky pieces of information burrow themselves deep into your neural tissue like ticks in your skin, taking hold with barbed lips, and become foundational features of your world.

When I was 12, I read Salt to the Sea, a children's historical fiction novel about refugees in World War II. At one point in the story, several of the characters take shelter in an abandoned

ARTS & CULTURE barn in the European countryside somewhere.

There's one character, a refugee girl, maybe 18 years old, who is a nurse. She takes care of all the other sick and injured refugees in the barn, she never complains, and she remains kind despite the hardship she endures. Even now, I often find myself envious of the characters I read about in books, and when I read this one, I remember feeling bitterly jealous of this girl for how good she was. And then, the sticky line: another refugee describes her as "…pretty. Naturally pretty, the type that's still attractive, even more so, when she's filthy."

As if a peg had slid into place, goodness was suddenly inextricably linked to beauty in my mind. Long after I returned Salt to the Sea to the library, my imagination of this girl—her dusty face, her cracked lips, her bright brown eyes, her high cheekbones—followed me like a shadow wherever I went.

Except the girl's face changed all the time.

When I read Harry Potter, she became a girl with curly hair, an encyclopedic memory, a commendable work ethic, and "thin ankles."

When I read John Green, or The Perks of Being a Wallflower, she turned into someone ethereal and mysterious, with black bangs and piercings, with emotional baggage and a frailty that was visible from the outside: hollow collarbones, maybe, or snow-soft pale skin. In dystopian novels, she was always brave. She never admitted she was hurt.

She was friends with the boys, and she could do anything they could do. She was athletic. She wasn't forthright with her emotions, because emotionality is vulnerability and vulnerability is unacceptable. She was always beautiful, and beautiful meant bright-eyed and innocent and so very small.

I took my study of how to be a good girl very seriously. When I was in sixth grade, Katniss Everdeen taught me that a heroine is athletic. I wasn't. So everyday when I got home from school, I stood with my dad in the front yard, and we threw a blue-and-orange foam football back and forth. He taught me how to release the ball with my fingertips still touching so that it spiraled perfectly through the air. I also started running; my mom took me to Wash Park on the weekend, and we ran-walked two and a half miles around the exterior path as I complained relentlessly.

But my hard work paid off. That year, at recess, John Solomon threw a football out into the middle of the field and told me to go get it for him.

I sprinted after the ball, picked it up, and tossed it back to him in a perfect spiral. He caught it and told me that I threw better than any girl he knew.

I glowed with satisfaction.

The summer after sixth grade I went to a sleepaway summer camp, one with horseback riding and crafts and paddle boarding and group campfires. I decided I would use this summer to address a deficiency of mine, one that separated me from every heroine in every book I'd ever read: my normal-sizedness. I wasn't small enough to be the protagonist in my own story.

So I packed my favorite books—at the time, The Book Thief and Divergent—and, once I arrived, I signed up for a hike every single day of the summer. As I traipsed through the Rocky Mountain wilderness, I developed this peculiar compulsion to check my ankles every few steps to see if they had spontaneously narrowed. I absentmindedly circled my hands around my wrists to make sure my pinky and thumb touched.

Near the end of the summer, I scaled Longs Peak,

hiking from four in the morning to four in the afternoon. I returned to camp for dinner that evening, legs shaking and stomach twisting with hunger, and declined the bowl of spaghetti that a counselor handed to me, worried I'd undo all my progress from the day. When I returned home a week later, my uncle hugged me and smiled. "You look so good, Olivia. Did they forget to feed you out there?" And so it happened again. Another peg slid into place, another fragment of information lodged itself in my brain: Smallness is beauty; beauty is goodness.

Older girls' brains aren't quite as sticky as little girls' brains, but they can be stubborn too, holding onto things that other people might throw away. The heroines of the novels I read now have new, more nuanced characteristics for me to idolize. The Secret History, Memoirs of a Geisha, My Brilliant Friend: The female protagonists of these books have an air of transience, of mystery.

They're brilliant and elegant and impossible to pin down. Most importantly, they aren't emotional.

Emotionality is vulnerability, and a female hero isn't vulnerable.

I don't realize I've absorbed this quality until I'm sitting in a coffee shop across from a man I've met a few times and he says, "I hate it when girls cry. You strike me as someone who doesn't cry," and I take a twisted sort of pride in that judgment. It’s not an accurate one, but it’s exactly the way I want to come across. I realize again on a restaurant patio with an acquaintance, sipping on a margarita, as she's telling me about her anxiety. I can feel an I'm anxious too bubbling up inside me, but when it reaches my vocal chords it transforms into an I'm sorry, and the possibility of a deeper connection flickers and extinguishes between us.

I think my parents loved that I read so much as a kid. A little girl who reads isn't outside falling off a skateboard and skinning her knees; she isn't drinking vodka at an unsupervised sleepover; she isn't sneaking out to kiss boys in the middle of the night. But growing up in a world of imaginary girls comes with its own cost. Your role models become two-dimensional versions of people, so you too become flat. You sit up straight and you don't wear too much makeup because you must be naturally pretty, the type that's still attractive, even more so, when she's filthy. And you're just closed-off enough that the boys think you're "enigmatic" and the girls think you're kind of cold. And when you feel powerful emotions, you let them wrap around your lungs until you can't breathe, keeping a small, reticent smile on your face because emotionality is vulnerability, and vulnerability is unacceptable.

But now I see, at least, the flaw in my perception of the world and in my perception of myself. Day by day, I'm learning to direct more attention outward. The real girls I know, the ones I look up to, are emotionally vulnerable.

They're funny and unabashedly opinionated, and they're kind without putting other people first every time. They aren't afraid to take up space. Nothing about them is small or frail.

And I may never completely dislodge that deep splinter in my mind, the belief that a girl should be mysterious and beautiful, that I should be these things because the characters I grew up reading about were. Little by little, I've started to push the heroines of my childhood toward the back of the shelf, allowing myself to learn from real people and experiences instead—trying to expand rather than shrink, to make room for imperfection.

The Shape of Love teenage romance is way overrated

by Daphne Cao Illustrated by sol heo To love is a beautiful ability. To hold another person’s life as more precious than your own, to stir at night remembering the warmth of their touch: there’s little in life we value more.

The first time I learned of romance was when I finally understood that my parents’ kisses and intertwined hands were reserved for a special kind of bond. I expected it to wander into my life the way a person returns home—as if it always belonged there. All I had to do was wait.

But as I grew older, I began to understand love as an exchange. Beauty (the right kind), intelligence (but not too much), confidence (make sure it’s not arrogance!); if you gathered these qualities, love would find you. So what did it mean to be someone who never found love? ♥♥♥ The first time this love visited my life was through a phone screen.

Wrapped in my comforter, I stared at the text, a silent confession sent from seven miles away. My hands trembled as my eyes scanned the message over and over.

Was this love’s wandering? Had I finally checked off enough boxes to reach it?

I swallowed, trying to calm the intense heartbeats that rung in my ears. Fantasies already flashed through my mind: stargazing under a moonlit night, lying next to a crackling fire in the bitter winter, dancing through a rainstorm as our laughter roared over the thunder.

But when I tried to imagine a specific person, the fantasies blurred. The speed of my heart slowed and the churning of my stomach turned sour.

I closed my eyes, slowed my breath. The phone’s screen faded to black as it slid from my hands, turning the entire room dark.

Who was I to be choosy? I had begged for love, and as soon as it had showed its face, I turned away.

I picked up my phone, tapping it to let the screen display the text once again.

But deep down I knew this wasn’t what I wanted. Love hadn’t found me yet. ♥♥♥ On a December night, lying awake in my bed, I tried to make love diagnosable, a list of symptoms I could check. How do you know?

And it seemed like I would get only one answer: When you know, you know.

And if I didn’t? If I let love slip past me like sand through my fingers?

When you know, you know.

I turned onto my side, letting out a breath as my bed squeaked underneath me. I thought of the smiles whose sweetness I had ignored, the offered hearts I had turned away from. What if I was supposed to know? What if I’d missed the spark, if the bolt of romance had shocked me into running away?

Love felt like a darkness I kept reaching into only to pull back my hand and find it empty.

October 19, 2023

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LIFESTLYE

When you know, you know.

But I didn’t know, and I felt it in every pulse of my heart.

I refused to ask anyone. Admitting my inexperience wasn’t the problem. To reveal my curiosity, to let my trembling desperation loose would break the wall of indifference I had worked so hard to build. If I faked that I was content, I could pretend to myself and everyone else that I didn’t crave what seemed so out of reach for me.

But I did.

What did it feel like? The brush of a lover’s kiss? Their whispered breath complimenting your beauty, your intelligence, your being?

Where is that love?

clock has long since passed midnight, and pop songs meant to be blasted with the windows down instead play softly from the radio.

My friend is rambling about some inane topics—a grade that didn’t quite measure up to his expectations, an annoyance he experienced at work.

But then the beginnings of his tell-tale grin break out on his face, and we both know he’s about to tell a stupid joke.

We can’t help the laughs that escape us, rising high above the music and spreading through the car.

I feel my laugh echo, reverberating through me until it settles, warm and content.

And that’s where I find it. Not in a kiss, a blush, or a shy confession; I find it in a boisterous laugh with my friends.

♥♥♥ ♥♥♥ I find it while sitting in the driver’s seat of my still-running car, parked in my friend’s driveway as the heater shields us from the winter cold. The 8

post–

On my best friend’s birthday, we drive down to a park near the seaport, carrying bags filled with

picnic supplies. Little cakes and overpriced bagels lay on top of a checkered blanket.

I lean back, my hands braced against the ground. I hear the faint voices of sailors as they tie their ships to the port and families on an afternoon walk passing by. I can taste the salt of the sea in the summer air with every breath I take.

My friend turns to look at me and her dark hair swirls around her face, dancing with the breeze. Her eyes meet mine and her smile is wider and brighter than the sky above us.

And I know: to love is beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

I hum along with the music that swells from the speaker. It’s simple, isn’t it?

Love isn’t just a flash, a bolt you feel leaping across your veins.

Love is what I feel when I look at you.

LIFEST YLE

New Dorm

post- mini crossword 15

by Will Hassett

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

Down

Across

1 Online shorthand for "wow!" or "no way!"

1 Online shorthand for "but..." or "also..."

4 Ignite or incinerate

2 NYC home to Picassos and Pollocks

7 Nebraska's largest city 8 ____ Origin Coffee, set to open in 5D this fall 9 Ambient music creator Brian

3 Scrape or scratch (past) Family Hall, adjacent to Jo's and 5 ____ new home for 8A 6 An angel's adornment

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Kimberly Liu

“As I held on to the hug, all the colors and words and shapes and sounds of that moment held on to me with a symphony of voices that sounded like “you are here you are here you are here.” I am here, gladly.”

—Joyce Gao, “Detaching From Detachment” 10.14.22

“Through warm cinnamony conversations, we unravel layers of ourselves. In the middle of the crowd, I speak and listen myself into existence. A seemingly de-individualized coffee chain becomes, for a moment, a world all our own.”

—Liza Kolbasov, “Coffee for Here” 10.15.21

Section Editors Emily Tom Anaya Mukerji

FEATURE Managing Editor Klara Davidson-Schmich

LIFESTYLE Managing Editor Tabitha Lynn

Section Editors Addie Marin Elaina Bayard

Section Editors Jack Cobey Daniella Coyle

ARTS & CULTURE Managing Editor Joe Maffa

HEAD ILLUSTRATORS Emily Saxl Ella Buchanan

Section Editors Elijah Puente Rachel Metzger

COPY CHIEF Eleanor Peters

NARRATIVE Managing Editor Katheryne Gonzalez

Copy Editors Indigo Mudhbary Emilie Guan Christine Tsu

SOCIAL MEDIA HEAD EDITORS Kelsey Cooper Tabitha Grandolfo Kaitlyn Lucas LAYOUT CHIEF Gray Martens Layout Designers Amber Zhao Alexa Gay STAFF WRITERS Dorrit Corwin Lily Seltz Alexandra Herrera Liza Kolbasov Marin Warshay Gabrielle Yuan Elena Jiang Will Hassett Daphne Cao

Aalia Jagwani AJ Wu Nélari Figueroa Torres Daniel Hu Mack Ford Olivia Cohen Ellie Jurmann Sean Toomey Emily Tom Ingrid Ren Evan Gardner Lauren Cho Laura Tomayo Sylvia Atwood Audrey Wijono Jeanine Kim Ellyse Givens Sydney Pearson Samira Lakhiani Cat Gao Lily Coffman Raima Islam Tiffany Kuo

Want to be involved?

Email: mingyue_liu@brown.edu!

October 19, 2023

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