DAMZEL Issue 01 | May 2017
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DAMZEL EDITOR IN CHIEF / CALEY BERG CONTENT DIRECTOR/ MORENIKE OLORRUNISOMO EDITORIAL ASSISTANT / AYANA JOHNSON CREATIVE DIRECTOR / HANNAH MCKEATING DIGITAL ART DIRECTOR / ROQUE RUIZ CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS / CY BRUCE, SHIVA MIRZAHAIDAR
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editor's note
My Dear Readers, I hope this letter finds you in good faith. I hope you are livin’ large and aren’t counting calories-unless that’s your thing, in which case, we support you. Here at Damzel, we have one mission: to make boys say “ew!” or “ick!” or “Grody!” That’s why we only cover topics like period underwear, masturbation, and wet dreams about DILFS. We have been working tirelessly to bring you the kind of content you have to hide from your little brothers. It’s important to us that you feel a sense of belonging with your other female peers, but we also want to challenge the idea that we have to be serious about it. We want Damzel to be a place where you feel comfortable to not only say “eat a bag of dicks,” but also say, “I wonder how hookup culture has evolved over the past decade and what the consequences are?” This a place for you to sit back, flip through a few sort of funny articles, question the patriarchy, and-- more importantly-- be yourself. Welcome to Damzel, Eat a Bag of Dicks
Editor in Chief
CONTENTS pg. CULTURE Fun and Helpful Tips for White People Who Don't Want to be Assholes Homoparadox
pg. LOVE AND ROMANCE Yes, you can say it: Masturbation! I Threw up on his Dick! And Other Tales of Horror Dumpster Diving: Stuck Between a Rock and an Ugly Place God Bless Tinder
REISE | PAGE 2
Fun and Helpful Tips for White People Who Don't Want to be Assholes By Hannah McKeating
My mom was greeted by a woman from our church at the grocery store. We had just moved to Laredo, Texas, and the whole concept of the standard Mexican greeting of a “kiss”-- more of a cheek touch with a kissy noise in the ear than anything-- completely eluded my mother. I was in 3rd grade and had watched my mother struggle to figure out these cultural nuances that she was so unfamiliar with for a few months now. She had gotten a lot of it figured out, but this “kiss” was still baffling her. As a child I was able to pick up on this new culture’s do’s and don’t’s a lot easier than she was, so when I watched as my mother grabbed the face of this woman and lay a real smackeroo on her cheek I remember distinctly shuddering and thinking, holy shit. The woman staggered away in bewilderment, trying her hardest to be as polite as possible as my mom smiled eagerly at her in hopes of acceptance. She wiped her face off, curtly said goodbye, and then walked away in a hurried manner to a different aisle. I stared at my mother, who looked confused by the woman’s reaction, and told her just how terribly weird her behavior just was. My mom, clearly defeated, said, “I’m sorry, I just didn’t know.” There were other things my parents did that embarrassed me, like assuming darkerskinned Mexicans only spoke spanish, not pronouncing churro (fried delicious treat) correctly and instead saying chorro (diarrhea) in public. Hell, my parents even tried to help the D.E.A bust a drug dealer on my block, it was like they were trying to make me a social pariah. However, as I have moved from Laredo and continue to try and navigate my life as an adult, my childhood and upbringing in Laredo have proven to be very important influences on me and my outlook on life. I went about my early life believing I was a minority-- and in that small sphere I was, technically, a minority. However, in a broader scope I am in no way a minority, I’m actually a representative of a race that symbolizes a lot of oppression and anger for the Mexican community, and it’s understandably so. The fact of the matter is, while I was socialized as a part of a majority Mexican community, I’m never going to not get hired because of my name, no one is ever going to discriminate against me because of how I look or because my accent, and no one is ever going to make an assumption about me because of my citizenship. While I associate with the values and customs Laredo has taught me, I struggle to find the most appropriate and respectful way to talk about and interact in the place I consider my home while also understanding that the culture is not exactly mine to take. What’s a white girl to do?
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While my time in Laredo is not comparable to what minorities experience on a daily basis in the rest of America, there were certain things that I went through that sound somewhat similar to what other people have described as their experience being a minority. A lot of assumptions were made about me because I was white, like, “I bet you vacation in Mexico.” A lot of jokes were made about me, too. My personal favorite was when I stood in front of the white board to give a presentation and a kid in my class said, “Where did she go?” The thing about these situations, though, is that none of these jokes or assumptions made about me ever impaired my opportunities or were detrimental to my life other than thinking ouch occasionally. On a side note, while they were kinda mean, they were also really, really funny. As a child with my limited frame of the world, I saw myself as I minority without realizing what that truly means for many American minorities across the country. My way of thinking on the subject changed dramatically when my dad joined the State Department and I moved to Falls Church, Virginia, which is right outside of D.C. Suddenly I was with “my own people”, however I apparently had an accent, was overly touchy, was much chubbier than the majority of the girls there, and had completely different values than a lot of my peers did. All in all, while I was technically within the demographic I belonged to, I was too far from of the norm and was immediately considered an outsider. I was too Laredoan for the white people, and I was too white for the Laredoans. Also, the public school system in Laredo in no way prepared me for the school in Falls Church. I had barely done homework for three years before moving my senior year of high school, and what I was taught was what was going to be on the TAKS test. The TAKS test was a stupidly easy standardized test that was the golden egg of No Child Left Behind. Of course the teachers made it easy to pass-- if everyone passed, they would get the money they need to provide for themselves. There were programs at my high school that were more challenging and were there to help you prepare for college, but why would I take those when I got an A for doing almost nothing everyday? The best metaphor I think I can give about what exactly it felt like to live in Falls Church after living in Laredo for 10 years was “Foreign Food Day” in my international studies class. Everyone was supposed to bring a fun new food for us all to try. Most girls brought French pastries, that sort of thing. I, however, made arroz con leche, basically a rice pudding but better. When I put it on the table, everyone giggled and made fun of it, saying it looked gross and smelled worse. I could not conceive how this was possible, arroz con leche is delicious and my friend’s grandmother taught me how to make it.
After the whole line of people passed it by and muttered “ew” to themselves, I had an untouched bowl to myself. I took the bowl, ate the whole thing at lunch by myself until I was almost sick, and silently hated everyone for making that assumption. I realized a lot about this interaction that day: of course the white kids brushed off my non-eurocentric dessert without trying it first. That was a classic American response to what they perceive to be from a lower class. They knew what rice pudding was, but they didn’t want to try what I brought because the name was in spanish, and the dessert was Mexican. Aside from that, however, I also realized that what I made just didn’t taste the same as the real stuff I had grown up eating, it was inauthentic. I’m not Mexican, and to imitate what I thought was Mexican for my own benefit was to water down the authenticity of true Mexican culture. This was hard for me to deal with, and my identity crisis ensued. All of this to say: how am I supposed to interact with Mexican culture as a white person who feels connected to it? I truly want to participate and interact with the culture of Laredo because I was raised in it and I love it, but I also don’t want to be someone that consumes the benefits of Mexican culture without experiencing the hardships of being Mexican in the United States either, because-- trust me-- there are a lot of hardships, simply because of the way the people in my race treat them. How much am I allowed to listen to the music and eat the food and enjoy those aspects of the culture without appropriating it? Here are a few things I’ve learned so far that I think white people may benefit from: Do not compare your struggles to the struggles of minorities. They are not the same. Even as someone who has experience being a white minority in a different culture, as I have said before, it is still not the same. It is not comparable. Be willing to learn about what minorities have to say and what they experience. Being sympathetic and trying to see things from their perspective will make you a better person, I’m sure of it. While experiencing other cultures is fun, you will never truly understand what it feels like to be apart of that culture, even if you were raised in it. This is important to remember, especially while traveling. No matter how immersed in a culture you are, unless you are truly born and come from a lineage of that culture and face both the benefits and hardships of that culture, you are experiencing an outside perspective. It is important to remember that, especially before you go out and get a Topo Chico tattoo or something.
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Understand that the United States is a relatively new country in comparison with the rest of the world, and if someone from a different culture brings up history it is still very relevant. I have seen this too often. No, you personally are not to blame for imperialism, enslavement, or the Great Depression, but the approximately 241 years of colonial American history does not exactly compare to the likes of Mexico, China, and many other nations across the world that have existed for much, much longer. Therefore, the impact of something that happened 100 years ago is still relevant to the life and experiences of others because from their perspective it didn’t happen all that long ago. People are still affected by things that happened 100 years ago, particularly if your culture did things to another culture that were bad, because most likely the consequences of those bad things are still in effect. If you are struggling with this, see helpful tip number 2.
God Bless Tinder Self Sacrifice Brought to you By Hannah McKeating
Homopardox
By Morenike Olorrunisomo
The Homo-Weird Paradox Living in Austin is kind of strange. It’s strange to live in a city and feel so included yet so out-of-place at the same time. The phrase “Keep Austin Weird” comes to mind—because one could replace “weird” with many different phrases. But the one that seems to fit the best is mostly white. Keep Austin Mostly White. Don’t get me wrong, I do not have some sort of personal vendetta against white people, but all a person has to do is look around to see the homogeneity of the city. As of 2010, Austin’s population is 8% African American, a 5% decrease from 2000 despite the fact that Austin’s overall population grew 20% between 2000 and 2010. Just for reference, Austin’s population is also 50% White, 35% Hispanic, and 6% Asian—the black community is the only one that decreased in this population boom. The Austin motto really should be changed to “Okay, if you’re white, you can be as weird as you want, but if you’re Asian or Black, that’s already weird enough.” As a person who has not exactly grown up around black people who weren’t related to me, I have subconsciously felt even more ostracized living in Austin. Whenever I leave the house, I find myself asking “What the hell are you looking at?” quietly to myself in response to people’s stares multiple times a day. I genuinely do not think I am a vain person, but people are always looking at me. And I realized it’s not because people think I look like an ogre, but rather, people like me are few and far between. Really, the topic of fitting in is a whole other situation—even when I go to south Dallas I feel like I don’t fit in—but like I said, we’ll save that for Part 2. So what’s the deal? Why are there no black people in Austin? Maybe black people don’t want to be weird, so that’s why they don’t move here. But according to a CNN article, African Americans accounted for 25% of the population at one point! How then did we get here?! How did we get to the point where I can go to my local grocery store and not see a single black person?! And I’m not even talking about Whole Foods or Central Market, just a neighborhood HEB!
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Some sources like CNN attribute it to young, mostly white professionals moving in to areas like East Austin, which used to be predominantly inhabited by black people, and those black people moving to the suburbs or even other states. Some attribute it to Austin becoming increasingly unaffordable for lower-income families—not to perpetuate the idea that being black means being lower-income. However, the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management named Austin the country's most economically segregated city in the results of a study conducted in 2015. I’m not going to get into the history of segregated Austin (KUT did a great story on it at http://kut.org) because the real issue is the front Austin promotes of being open, inclusive, and diverse while simultaneously pushing out its African American population. While there is no question regarding the dwindling black community in Austin, much can and should be done to reverse these effects, beginning from within.
Yes, you can say it: Masturbation! By Morenike Olorrunisomo
Uncomfortable vibrating As I sat in my living room on a crisp Saturday morning, casually browsing vibrators on GroupOn, I briefly glanced at my roommate and asked her what brand she used. After an unreasonably long silence, I glanced up once more only to see her uncomfortably swirling water around in a bowl. I wondered for a second if she was even breathing. “Do you have one?” I asked. After another long pause, she replied “Uhm no I’ve never used one.” At this exact moment, I realized my casual words had singlehandedly ruined her day. After I apologized for making her feel uncomfortable, I began to wonder: why is there such a stigma around masturbation? … I too had never used one—but not because of anything more than the shear pride I had for my own abilities. But what was the problem here? How could my roommate, the girl who had a boyfriend-almost-fiancée and practically howls every night from about 9:50pm to 10:02pm, be so solemn at this moment? As I continued to scroll through the “clit-teasers” and “vibrating bullets,” I was stumped. People—or at least all the people I know—like to talk about sex. Millennials love to talk about sex—guys and gals alike. And seeing as our main functions as humans are eating, sleeping, and procreating, I would say it just makes good sense for a third of conversations to be sexrelated. But if this is the case, why don’t we talk about masturbating? Is it because we call it masturbating? It’s definitely not the most aesthetically-sounding word albeit, but still. Is it because people are uncomfortable with their bodies and don’t do it? Or they’re doing it, but they don’t think anyone else is doing it, so no one brings it up. Or perhaps people feel that admitting to doing it implies an inability to find someone else to do it. In a country where we heard our President say he could grab women by the pussy, why are women not more open about grabbing their own? Questionable answers to skeptical questions In order to get my questions answered, I took to the streets. And by streets I mean my phone and my friends. I sent out a text that started with “ATTENTION: this is a survey for academic purposes,” thinking it would make all the girls I texted feel more obligated to respond to the prying question that followed, which was simply: do you masturbate? This was not the case. Of the girls who did respond (about 50%), I got mostly “no, why?” or just “why?” I guess if someone asked me if I masturbated under the premise of “academic purposes,” I would be a little skeptical too. I think it’s important to note that the girls I texted mostly consisted of high school acquaintances who had moved on to big state schools and monochromatic sororities. Maybe sorority houses weren’t very conducive for “flicking the bean” (one of the results from a Google search on terms for girl masturbation— Yuck!).
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Still puzzled by this phenomenon, I pressed my friends for answers on a slightly humid Friday as we were prepping for a night on the town: Why don’t we talk about masturbation? “We do! All the time!” said my redheaded friend as she gingerly applied mascara. Of course I wasn’t referring to my friends and I when I posed the question: we are constantly discussing all things sexual, almost ad nausea… almost. After I rephrased the question, she thoughtfully responded, “I think it’s because girls our age aren’t comfortable with sexuality.” “But everyone’s always talking about sex!” blurted my friend who is always the one to bring up the sex talk. “No, I mean their own sexuality.” This gave me pause. I myself had only grown comfortable after moving to Austin and binge watching all the seasons of Sex and the City, and over the years, this straightforward style had just molded into my personality. This was probably also the case for my other friends. But did this mean that my friends and I are just outliers in a world of silent masturbators? We may never know.
God Bless Tinder
I Threw up on his Dick! And other Tales of Horror By Hannah McKeating
Have you ever had casual sex with someone you didn’t know all that well and, not only was the sex something that was left to be desired, but the whole situation was fairly embarrassing and slightly gruesome, although admittedly hilarious after the fact? If you can relate, you’ve probably participated in hookup culture at least once in your life, and you know what a wild ride that really is. Why is it okay with people who participate in hookup culture to let this standard level of mediocrity in the sack (and overall humiliation about the interaction in general) thrive? From these short interviews, I have noticed there a few characteristics about what makes a bad hookup which include but are not limited to: undisclosed information, the setting in which the act takes place, and unfortunate bodily functions. There are a few expected and unexpected trends I’ve come across as I’ve interviewed college-aged women and men from around the country to hear their worst hookup stories and why hooking up usually goes so wrong so often. Sit back, buckle up, and don’t show these stories to your grandma. Disclaimer: People’s names have been changed for the sake of anonymity. Alice: “One time I was over at my friend’s apartment for a little get together. We all drank heavily that night. Well, one of my friend’s neighbors decided he was going to join in on the fun. As the night progressed, more and more of us realized that we were too drunk to drive home and all started falling asleep in various places around the apartment. The neighbor (we’ll call him ManChild) offered to feed me at his apartment. Of course, the draw of food lured me in. While I was there, I got in a very interesting debate about foreign policy with ManChild and his roommate. By the time I realized that I, too, was far too drunk to drive, there was nowhere else for me to sleep at my friend’s place. So I went back to ManChild’s apartment, knowing full well that I was probably going to have sex with him. At this point, I was so drunk and tired I figured why the hell not? This was easily the shortest sex I’ve ever had. I’m talking less than a minute. When he finished I said, ‘Is that all, ManChild?’ and he was clearly embarrassed by my disappointment. I asked him to get me a pair of boxers to sleep in. After drunkenly continuing to roast him for his ‘shortcomings’ he finally says to me, ‘Well, I just turned 18.’ I thought about this for a second. I was 22 years old at the time. He at least appeared older than 18. I looked down at his Avengers boxers I was wearing and the action figures around his room as the gravity of the situation sunk in. I said, ‘I didn’t just… take your… ?” and he stayed silent for a second before giving me a very disbelievable ‘no’. I laid there for a few minutes and stared at the ceiling. Finally he said, ‘Alice, I need you to do me a favor. I have a shift at Denny’s at 10 AM, can you wash my work clothes for me before then?’ Needless to say, I very impolitely told him I would not be doing his laundry for him and rolled over to go to sleep as quickly as possible. I woke up about 3 hours later sober enough to drive home. I left my shoes in his room and forgot to close the front door as I literally ran out of there. I still have the boxers of shame.”
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Sally: “I worked at a little shop a few years ago. A fairly attractive and older (maybe 10 years older than me) gentleman came in and we started flirting. He asked me out on a date and we exchanged phone numbers. A little while later he texted me and told me he wanted to make me dinner at his place. Because we had been texting, I knew his place was nice and that he was a great cook, so I agreed. When I got there, it was a little uncomfortable. The conversation was tense and it was clear we didn’t know each other very well. There was no food. We started drinking a lot of wine and I got pretty drunk. This is when I excused myself to the bathroom for a few minutes to decide what I was going to do. I figured maybe he just hadn’t started cooking yet or something and that he was handsome enough that maybe I ought to give him a chance. When I came out of the bathroom, it seemed like I was right-- he had started cooking and asked me to sit at the table. When I did, I realized there was a stack of papers on the place setting he had set up. I read the papers with one eye closed. It was a contract-- truly 50 Shades of Grey style-- outlining a daddy-dom relationship between the two of us. We had not engaged physically yet and I still had not eaten a dinner that I was promised. We didn’t really know each other at all. Bewildered with what I should do next, I told him I didn’t want to sign the papers because I wasn’t into that sort of thing and he told me that I would not be eating dinner with him that night. I called my friend to pick me up and we laughed all the way home.” Damn, these guys knew just how to get into the pants of drunk women: free food. Who can drunkenly resist a home cooked meal? Just kidding. This is one of the more vile forms of manipulation. In Sally and Alice’s stories, after the bros offer the woman a free meal, they lure them into their residence and make their move. Unbelievable. In both cases, the women knew that the potential for sex was there. However, in both cases the embarrassing or “bad” element lied in the undisclosed information. In their interviews, both women agreed that if they had known the truth (virginity, daddy-dom) before going into the situation, they probably would’ve thought twice before engaging with the men. In the next two stories, we’ll see how the place setting affected how the hook up inevitably went. Jennifer: “I was camping on the beach with my friends for 4th of July in Port Aransas, Texas. Of course, bottles of rum and bags of wine were in heavy rotation amongst the group. One of the people with us whom I was somewhat acquainted with decided the rum would not be enough and also took Xanax. While I was laying in the sand at sunset like a beached whale, minding my own business, this friend (we’ll call him Xanax) approached me by standing over me and staring down at me. I looked up at him and said, ‘What’s up, Xanax?’ He breathed heavily for a second and said, ‘Wanna fuck?’ I thought about it and said ‘... okay.’ By this point the sun had set and we walked down the beach for a little bit before we started going at it.
I threw up on his dick while trying to give him a blowjob. Then he ripped my bathing suit off me and we started having sex, in the ocean. Suddenly, what seemed like a pleasant old couple appeared a bit away from us with flashlights and buckets, most probably looking for crabs. Xanax covered his penis and bolted into the darkness away from the couple, who unsurprisingly didn’t see him. However, this left me completely naked standing in the ocean by myself. As I silently stood in the waves, I prayed that they wouldn’t shine their flashlights in my direction. Unfortunately, the couple seemed to have found a crab jackpot right in front of where I was still silently and nakedly praying. After about 15 minutes of this, the old lady shined her light directly at me. I said, ‘I am so sorry,’ as I hid my naked body further into the sea. They said nothing and walked away. Disaster had struck. Finally, Xanax ran back to me with a towel and got me out of the ocean. I was furious with him and ran back to my car to get my other bathing suit. The next morning he told me he didn’t remember what exactly happened but that we might have done something regrettable and asked if it was anything he needed to tell his girlfriend about. I told him no. I still see both him and his girlfriend often.” Cindy: “I met a pretty cute boy at a party and I thought he seemed really cool. As the night progressed, we got drunker and drunker from a water bottle of vodka he was keeping in the back of his pants. Well, as the night was winding down, he was making obvious advances towards me and I decided I was down. We ended up walking away from the party and while we were by a field he decided to really go for it. We ended up going into the field and it started getting pretty heated between the two of us. That’s when a cop showed up to bust the party, but little did he know we were having bad, drunken sex right by the car. I wasn’t exactly embarrassed, though I think I was a little scared of getting caught. I can’t really remember, I was very drunk. I think he might have heard some noises, but we were covered by tall grass so he couldn’t see us. We finished, waited for the cop to leave, and never spoke to each other again.” So, what actually makes a bad hook up a bad hook up? I think it’s safe to assume the proficient use of alcohol as a lubricant of inhibitions has clearly played its part in the decision making process of these people. Going into these interviews, however, I had made some assumptions that bad hook ups were a straight guy thing. As it turns out, this is to the contrary. Sally said on the subject, “I don’t think this is limited to heterosexual men at all. In my experience, some of the other ones [hook ups] weren't as manipulative. Weird, yes, but not straight up involving trickery. As fucked as it is, I see that a lot more with certain men and how they treat dates, which is independent from the sexuality they choose to date.” From the perspective of Brian (whom you will meet below), his opinion on the topic is, “I wouldn’t say that it’s limited to sexuality in that way.
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Maybe that gay dating apps are more promiscuous in that unprotected sex is almost fetishized by the "breeding movement" or whatever shit, but the level of manipulation definitely depends on the person, not on who they wanna fuck.” Here are a few short stories from the gay community to enjoy: Brian: “I met this dude on Grindr. We went on a walk at the riverwalk and watched the sunset and then we drank a shit ton of gin. I don't even think we had tonic, I think we just had the liquor and limes. And then we started fucking-- no protection-- and I had already cum a couple of times. Then out of nowhere I smell something really bad, and I look down and he shit on my dick! And so we went to the shower and he cleaned his shit off of me with his own bare hands and I was super freaked out. I still spent the night because I was so drunk and he made me toast with avocado on it. Later I ran into him in November and he then told me I was retarded for not voting in the election even though I just don't believe in my political efficacy in this country. I blocked him.” Daniel: “I met up with this freshman from tinder and we went partyhopping. As the night progressed, we got drunk as fuck and ended up at a random party with some of my friends from high school. I thought he was pretty chill, so I decided to invite him back to my place and we heavy-petted for a while before I realized he was super drunk-- like too drunk to have sex consensually and definitely too drunk to get it up. When we woke up, I started making moves again but I couldn't find a condom, so instead he went to breakfast with me and a friend. Breakfast was fine, despite my disappointment about the night before. We separated afterwards with no hard feelings and talked about meeting up later that week. To my horror, when I got home I realized he pissed my bed and ruined a down comforter. Big yellow piss stain right in the middle of my bed. Had to get my damn silk antique bedspread dry cleaned.” Yikes! Talk about bodily functions! In fact, there were lots of stories which I will paraphrase into the following categories: I shit on someone’s dick. Someone shit on my dick! I threw up on someone’s dick. Someone threw up on my dick! I saw a guy throw up and have diarrhea at the same time the morning after because he was hung over and got the hell out of there. I threw up and had diarrhea at the same time the morning after because I was hungover and I got the hell out of there. Although the embarrassing aspect of these categories definitely lies in the fact that they happened while hooking up, these are actually very normal body functions that, as you may know personally or not, just sort of happen when you’re drunk. I mean, although being a localized anesthetic and a world renowned funjuice since the dawn of civilization, it is technically poison. I believe at this point it is safe to conclude that, no, hooking up is not a gender or sexuality thing. It’s a good ol’ young and drunk thing, and while in the moment you might be thinking you were raised better or that you would rather be at the bottom of the Shamu tank, it’s kind of hard to deny that the stories are, at the very least, entertaining.
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Dumpster Diving:
Stuck Between a Rock and an Ugly Place By Morenike Olorunnisomo
Once upon a time there was a little, innocent girl walking home from school. She was minding her own business when all of a sudden, a large scary dumpster truck pulled up next to her. Two big, scary men creepily asked, “You skippin’ class today?” After a moment of nervous laughter, the terrified girl mumbled “No.” and picked up her pace. In case you haven’t caught on yet, the little innocent girl was me . . . at age 21. This traumatizing experience is but a drop in the bucket of strange encounters I’ve had with even stranger men. But after these encounters have passed, I’m always left with two questions: Who the hell do they think they are?! And in what deranged world am I in their league?! Don’t get me wrong, I’m no Naomi Campbell . . . but I’m also not the Ugly Duckling either. As a result of this epiphany, I’ve come up with a list of things that only happen to women who are somewhere in between drop-dead and used to be dead. 1. You get hit on a lot, but only by men who are either old enough to be your grandfather or are missing a vital part of their body, like a tooth . . . or self-dignity. 2. You NEVER get hit on, flirted with, or otherwise approached by people you ACTUALLY think are cute. 3. In fact, you have pretty much accepted your plight in life and live full-time in the friend zone. 4. People say, “OMG you look so pretty today!” only when you have on makeup or are wearing a skirt 5. You are exceptionally talented in one or more areas of your life such as (but not limited to) telling jokes, rapping, cooking, eating, sleeping, holding your liquor, etc. Because everyone knows you can’t be drop-dead and talented. 6. You have begun to give fewer and fewer fucks about what you do or say around men. For example, I burp a lot . . . but I would also consider this a talent. 7. No one has tried to put a ring on it yet.
If you too have experienced these oddities, join the club. AVERAGE WOMEN UNITE.
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