fall / winter 2018
hooties
contributors Yosan Alemu Rebecca Allen Daria Forde Carys Glynne India Halsted Sahal Hassan Eliza Jouin Claire Lin-Jenkins Nico Lopez-Alegria Margaret Maguire Vanessa Smith CJ Strauss Kira Wilson
additional thanks to Garden by Eden
Anastasia Ahani Tolu Akinyede Honor Barber Morgan Becker Louisa Berti Emily Blake Tracy Chen Posey Cohen Annabella Correa-Maynard Sophia DeLaney Blythe Drucker Rae Edmunds Thompson Eldredge Olivia English Mallory Evans Sarah Hilligoss Colette Juran Avery Kim June Kitahara Maggie Krassner Dahee Kwon Kelley Kwong Courtney Lyons Louisa Mascuch Yuki Mitsuda Franziska Nace Antigone Ntagkounakis Emma Owens Hibah Rafi Arielle Shternfeld Delia Tager Tyrese Thomas Natalie Tischler Taya Voronko Elle Wolfley Maddie Rae
masthead Editor-in-Chief Carolina Dalia Gonzalez Logistics Director Emily Mahan Photo Director Emily Kimura Fashion Director Miarosa Ciallella Features Director Darinelle Merced-Calderon Design Director Rebecca Siqueiros Copy Chief Maddy Aubry Co-Blog Directors Olivia Baker & Maria Adentuji PR Director Layla Alexander
Follow Hoot on Instagram @hootmag Like Hoot Magazine on Facebook For more from Hoot Magazine, visit hootmag.com/blog Find past issues of Hoot at issuu.com/hootmag Email the editors at hootmag@barnard.edu
letter from the editor The word agency has been constantly slipping back into my mouth throughout this semester, and especially throughout this year. The idea that we have the power to make our own choices - and see them through to the personal standard we hold - is a powerful concept. And the way we utilize our agency on this campus, in our community, and through the small spaces we traverse through out our lifetime are all critical to building the person we want to be. The decisions we make with this self-preserved power of agency is a critical act of resilience too. As we close out an unexplainable year and prepare ourselves for whatever may await us next, personal agency remains within our reach. Agency will continue to be the strong embrace of resilience and the act to be who we are, unabashedly. In consequence, the editorial board and I decided that resilience - the idea that we will continue to be and exist was the right theme for Hoot’s Fall/Winter 2018 issues this semester. Leading off from last semester’s theme of “disorder,” our semester of resilience became a perfect second act for the editorial board. Still somewhat fresh in our positions, we trapezed through new ideas and initiatives to underline our core values of accessibility, diversity, and inclusivity. For the first time in Hoot’s history, we launched our “Hooties” program, where we onboarded around 40 new members to experience what goes behind creating both Holler and Hoot. We also sent our first newsletter and held a successful panel on internships in the fashion and art industry! All these exciting endeavors culminated into acts of resilience, of owning our space on this campus and allowing others to share in these small acts of resilience too. As you flip through the pages of Hoot’s Fall/Winter 2018 issue, the idea of resilience is reflected in each stance, each look, each piece of clothing. Our creative directors, photographers, models, assistants, make-up artists, hairdressers and designers channeled resilience in each choice throughout their shoots. Our features pieces orbit around our semesterly theme as well. Included is a “found poem,”* born out of a conversation between members of our editorial board about our encounters with sexual assault or sexual harassment. Everything from the title down to the last word is a product of a candid conversation that helped us heal, together; unified in both our pain and will to push forward. At Hoot Magazine, we stand with survivors, we stand with their families, with their friends, with their partners. From Hoot to our readers, we share this with you to reflect, to speak out, and to heal. Thank you for your support and love. As always, I am so incredibly proud of the work we have created throughout this semester and will continue to make in the semesters to come. I hope that you, our reader, will continue to support our magazine. *Trigger and content warning: the following piece discusses sexual assault and sexual harassment.
Carolina Dalia Gonzalez
landing
director Yosan Alemu photographer/videographer Sahal Hassan stylist Yosan Alemu makeup Vanessa Smith assistant Layla Alexander models Ashby Bland, Vanessa Smith, Matthewos Kassaye, Isaiah Hines clothing from students closet
sugar sweet director Carolina Dalia Gonzalez photographer Carys Glynne makeup/stylist Carolina Dalia Gonzalez assistant Emily Mahan, Collete Juran model Amelia Sawyers
sharing something with you writer Hoot E-Board
what [ I ] remember is the laughter it was my boyfriend at the time my cousin his guy friend there were no witnesses people that you’re close to can also do bad things
[I]
was asleep when it happened it was like in a public place as well smacked my butt pushing me down to the ground my parents hadn’t wanted me to go to the party in the first place in elementary school [ I ] was 20 [ I ] was 6 [ I ] was 12. No, sorry. 13 sexually assaulted. sexual harassment. now what do you do with what’s left?
PTSD, severe anxiety, severe depression
someone who was supposed to be my supporter told me my trauma was my own fault
do we have to get the law involved? two girls had come forward and basically been like he raped me
the cases were dismissed screaming and cheering a reward for getting away with something in high school [ I ] had to report someone nothing happened and now he runs like a nonprofit there’s nothing [ I ] can do about it that’s the worst part too, because you know it’s gonna happen again where do [ I ] look for, um, support find justice, whatever that means. what to do with my body, what to do with myself, the way [ I ] talk about this, the way that [ I ] feel about myself we’re going to be here our whole lives taking off one bandaid and putting on another hold people accountable for these actions but also support the people that this has happened to they might forever hold effect on me, but there’s such a power in realizing your agency we have to push forward because we can’t forever
linger upon what’s hurting [ us ].
sanctuary
director Kira Wilson photographer/stylist/makeup Kira Wilson models Cameron Downey, Blakey Bessire, Hana Rivers,
Lauren Onelum assistants Morgan Becker, Luisa Berti
still life with a flesh-colored bandaid writer Bryn Evans
home is [the color of] a bandage saturated with water after a shower or a soak in the bathtub it is similar it is same it is like it is weak, losing its grip on skin on land [ ] on reality; it dries it is different it is not [ ] it is loose [it is] incoherent it is [transferrable] “neat, flesh-colored, almost invisible� if you are white; if you are black home [does not] exist[s like velcro not a zipper --- it does not stay, it ages impermanent it is cheap it is artificial
it dulls
it is
until you are stolen you will not realize what it means to be [lost] estranged how it feels to forget what you never knew it is dis[abled] posable it is dis-figured it is it is disseminated it is diaspora it is being told that it is not in my capacity to heal without a scar that injury is intrinsic to my existence that my grief must be bare[d on my skin that infection is inescapable that it will scab over in a few generations that at least when wet I am able to blend in and that I am one of the lucky ones the others bled open and died in pools [of blood ]that spanned nations that in comparison mine is just a scratch a small wound that at least I am going to survive[ it [was]/is unimportant it [was]/is unintentional it is it is it is
this is not a masc director Elle Wolfley photographer/stylist Elle Wolfley videographer Carys Glynne assistant Daria Forde, Honor Barber, Maggie Krassner models Jay Clemmons, Chloe Zhang, Aryn Davis clothing from student closets.
this is not a masc: in their own words What does your style to mean to you? It just means finding the best fit for my body while also expressing myself. My style. Aryn I know it sounds a little cliche but I am what I wear. I celebrate versatility, spontaneity, and creativity, and hopefully such characteristics are found in my style as well. A good outfit boosts my confidence. Chloe For me, my style is a direct representation of who I am. The clothes I wear is one of the ways I am able to express myself. Someone taking away my style or forcing another style on me would be the equivalent of them suppressing my identity. Janiya (Jay) How does your identity influence your style? I feel like my style is an extension of my identity so they are naturally linked. As I have come into my identities and come to terms with who I am, my style has shifted to reflect the levels of comfort I feel being read as that identity and prioritizing my comfort over ideals of what I should look like. Aryn I used to be the ultimate epitome of a tomboy, or a “butch”: I refused to wear feminine clothing items and insisted on keeping my hair short. Now I just want to ditch the labels and be myself. Maybe I still am a tomboy in many people’s eyes, but deep inside I celebrate both the masculine and the feminine sides of my identity. It has then become possible for me to try out more styles and incorporate both feminine and masculine elements into my outfits. Chloe I have never really been girly, but growing up the gender stereotypes surrounding fashion felt forced on me. Because of this, fashion was not something I cared too much about, I didn’t even like how I looked in the clothes that I was wearing. It was not until I started to dress myself and form my own identity, that I figured out how to represent myself through my style. Once I was secure with who I was, I was able to form a style that made me feel confident and beautiful. Janiya (Jay)
eros
director Nico Lopez-Alegria photographer Nico Lopez-Alegria makeup Claire Lin-Kenkins, Yuki Mitsuda assistants India Halsted, Eliza Jouin, Margaret Maguire, Layla Alexander, Miarosa Ciallella,
Annastasia Ahani models Omer Baddour, Olivia Baker, Sahra Denner, Ezana Ephrem, Sofia Montrone, Tyler Nadassen-Gladstone, Natalie Tischler, Iris Wechsler, Thomas Wee stylists Miarosa Ciallella, Layla Alexander hair Olivia Baker set India Halsted, Eliza Jouin, Margaret Maguire earrings Garden by Eden crowns Nico Lopez-Alegria
an open letter to the toxic people I have loved before writer Antigone Ntagkounakis
I look back and wonder: Why couldn’t I go? It’s hard to admit that I didn’t want to, but more so that I could never bring myself to do it––to leave you. I valued you far above myself; you were my metric, my tool for self-worth. I stayed and waited. I waited for you to get it, to understand, to finally apologize. I waited for a change. Everyone knew it wouldn’t come, including you and me, and yet I kept hoping. I stayed in the hopes that my beautiful fantasy of you, the one that I had worked so hard to construct, would not prove to be in vain. Doesn’t all that love have to go somewhere? From the beginning, your small mistakes and lack of consideration, went mostly unaddressed. I didn’t want to seem crazy, I didn’t want to seem psycho. As I forced myself to play the Cool Girl ™, my expectations of you plummeted while the fantasy grew. What could I do? Boys will be boys. These signals soon turned into the first time you broke my heart. The second and third (and fourth for that matter) times were, instead, more of me breaking my own, unable to accept the truth of how you treated me. At some point it became normal. I started to think that these cycles and uncertainty were merely a byproduct of love or, at least, passion. The hardest thing to accept was that I believed in a myth of you, not who you actually were. Time and time again you shattered my fantasy of you, time and time again I kept believing. Four years of an emotional rollercoaster didn’t seem so bad because I was never taught that love should be a balance; an exchange or compromise based on the needs of two people. I was coming of age surrounded by reports of daterape on college campuses. I shared the same adolescent development period as mandatory consent programming. The reality I saw not only within our relationship, but also in the world was far from the kind of love I had dreamed of. What I had believed in was prince charming, what I found was coerced sex on football bleachers and unsolicited dick pics. Where was the romance in that? I was sold a fantasy, but I got a fallacy. I heard it all. Boys who tease you like you. He’s being mean because he has a crush on you. Where do we draw the line between flirtatious teasing and emotional manipulation? It was these small details that helped to set the bar so low. Careless mistakes: always being late, flaking, forgetting––I get it. You missed my prom photos, didn’t bother to show up on time, or spend the night with me at all. You didn’t realize Valentine’s Day would imply a gift, or even a card. And I brushed it all off. What could I do? Boys will be boys. I let a few initial months of good behavior––basic decency, rather––excuse a
downward spiral of gaslighting, hypocrisy, and, later, cold apathy. I would tell you how I felt and you would tell me I was being pushy, holding onto the past, guilt-tripping you. Why was it so hard to believe that I was simply telling you how you made me feel, that the things I shared with you were simply the consequences of your actions? Did how I feel really hold that little importance to you, or did you just habitually obfuscate your own blame? Worst of all, if I left, I would have had to admit that I didn’t need you. I couldn’t admit it because I didn’t believe it, and you loved it. You loved being needed––my savior, my hero, my landing pad. You thrived, always being the one to cut me down and build me back up. My pain, your toy, something you may never understand. These are our standards: Boys who tease you like you. He’s being mean because he has a crush on you. Boys will be boys. He’s never laid a hand on me. He’d never hit me. At least he’s never cheated. Why didn’t I go? The list goes on. My first introduction to love revolved around a rationalizing of partnership as something healthy so long as there was an absence of bruises. A relationship that didn’t start with sending nudes on Snapchat seemed above average. Like those things could suffice. As long as it never got physical, as long as you weren’t predatory, you could be my prince charming. Yet, you rarely, if ever, apologized for the emotional scars. You justified, rationalized, and explained––but so few sorrys. And, of course, the emotional abuse wasn’t abuse to you, it was logic, my reactions some kind of variable to plug into your calculations of how to treat me. I adored you and you knew it. I knew it. I waited and waited for the feeling to leave, but it stayed, only fading, painfully slowly. It still oscillates between a strange feeling of indebtedness and a tragic sense of missing you, missing what I know I shouldn’t. Now, I can see the absence of your empathy. I gave and gave and gave, showed you what I needed. I bent over backwards to try to love you in your language, when you never bothered to learn mine. Now, I talk to friends and people around me who find themselves continuously loving the people that break them. I’ve begun to realize it’s much bigger than me or you.The way we are raised designates categories: those who will dominate and those who will compromise, those who will strategize and those who will empathize. I learned to equate someone, especially a man, gifting me attention or basic respect, to true love. But what about true partnership? Not just love or fantasy, but partnership. As in a teammate, someone who is willing to have tough conversations, compromise, and collaborate. I and so many others, have had to pull ourselves out of broken, unhealthy love simply to say: I cannot stay. You are not my hero. I do not need you, and you do not deserve me. What hurts most is knowing that it will take so much emotional reflection, time, and help to actually believe that. It’s one thing to leave, it’s another to believe in my own worth. That’s the hardest part. For the last time, A
hitch
directors Miarosa Ciallella, Emily Kimura photographer Emily Kimura makeup/stylist Miarosa Ciallella assistants Blythe Drucker models Rebecca Allen, CJ Strauss