Kitsch Magazine: Spring 2019

kitsch

pop culture, politics, college, etc.

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Featuring: The Ba

a k ing Ill of t h

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i tivity •B

arefoot • Sp e

Right fo r e p wi

Po s

lk • Siz i g Up Sex a t n w

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O B UND

R A I ES

LETTER

from the editors

CAUTION: DO NOT CROSS. (actually, please do!)

We are constantly surrounded by boundaries, whether we realize it or not. Sometimes, the breaking down of previously established barriers—such as the unprecedented representation of women of color in Congress following the 2018 election—is a means of drawing attention to their very existence. Other times, such as President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to secure funding for his border wall, the presence and significance of boundaries are both apparent and tangible. Even aside from national and international politics, boundaries permeate the everyday lives of college students, dictating everything from our relationships with ourselves to the social norms we subscribe to.

2019 has been the year of realizing boundaries and breaking them down. And in this issue of kitsch, we are following suit.

Alana Sullivan’s “The Myth of the Glow-up: navigating identity after weight changes,” explores how the world creates a schism between one’s inner self and one’s outer self which changes with weight. After experiencing weight loss, Alana confronts the internalized boundary between her two supposed selves after overcoming the societal belief that heavier bodies are a physical misrepresentation of one’s true identity.

If Alana’s piece confronts the boundaries within, other writers turn outward to articulate the boundaries that surround us—in spaces ranging from geopolitics to interpersonal social interactions. For instance, Abby Eskinder Hailu questions why we won’t talk shit about dead people in “Speaking Ill of the Dead: and other taboos.” Through her case study of Cornell’s early history, she exposes the hypocrisy and toxic nature of treating the deceased as angelic do-gooders.

While some articles discuss boundary-breaking as a necessary act, others question its consequences in the long run. In “Sizing Up Sex Positivity,” Jacqueline Groskaufmanis appreciates the contributions of the sex positivity movement while confronting some of the burgeoning philosophy’s shortcomings, like the potential over-sexualization of young girls and the impulse to gloss over consensual sexual experiences as uniformly positive.

In line with our boundaries theme, we have recrossed into the territory of poetry!

As you casually flip through our pages while sipping your morning brew, you’ll likely find yourself enraptured by our featured poems from Ana Penavic, Emma Condie, and Sarah Chekfa. And as our Social Media Manager transcends the Cornell bubble to join adult-kind, they reflect on the opportunities and unprecedented experiences kitsch has given them in a final note to our readers.

So join us on this journey of transcendence. Let’s kick down some doors and, in the words of our Social Media Manager, “enter the cosmos.” It’s been a pleasure serving as kitsch’s editors-in-chief.

See you on the other side!

Annika and Abigail

writers ARTISTS VOL

17 NO 2

SPRING

2019

WRITERS ANA PENAVIC ALANA SULLIVAN EMMA CONDIE OLUBANKE AGUNLOYE SARAH CHEKFA ANGAELICA LAPASTA JEAN CAMBARERI OLIVIA BONO ABIGAIL MENGESHA ANNIKA BJERKE ABBY ESKINDER HAILU EMMA EISLER NICOLE OLIVEIRA ANNA LEE EMMA GOLDENTHAL TILDA WILSON JACQUELINE GROSKAUFMANIS

ARTISTS ABBY ESKINDER HAILU STEPHANIE TOM ALEX BASLER OMAR DIN SHIRO YABEWORK ABEBE KIFETEW KAROLINA PIORKO LEO LEVY CHIARA BENITEZ ABIGAIL MENGESHA OLIVIA BONO ANNIKA BJERKE EMMA GOLDENTHAL ANNA LEE MEGHAN MORGAN AMANDA CRONIN advisor michael koch funded by student activities funding commission

Editors

MEET THE

Nadya Mikhaylovskaya design editor

Ana Penavić

Anna Lee

Jacqueline Groskaufmanis

zooming out editor

watch & listen editor

Sarah Chekfa

assistant zooming out editor

Annika Bjerke

bite size editor

co-editor-in-chief

Abigail Mengesha co-editor-in-chief

Andrew Peiser social media manager

Abby Eskinder Hailu

Annie Fu

art editor

zooming in editor

not pictured:

Chiara Benitez copy editor

Stephanie Tom assistant zooming in editor

Emma Condie copy editor

not pictured:

Jean Cambareri assistant watch & listen editor

IN THIS ISSUE...

Bite size Watch & Listen

Zooming In Zooming Out

A Note From the Social Media Manager Dream Shores !e Myth of the Glow Up Barefoot !e Barbie Crusades Beyond Taxi Cab Encounters !e Oxymoronicity of Desire Beauty/Ugly

7 9 10 12 13 14 16 17

Exploring the Boundaries Between Plagarism and Inspiration Barbie in Her Own Breaking Up with the News From Period Sex to Borderline Personality Disorder

19 21 23 25

Speaking Ill of the Dead Swipe Right for Pillow Talk Looking Beyond the Aesthetics of Sustainable Fashion

27 30 33

Coming of Age on Tumblr Pushing the Boundaries of Language Big Bend and Boquillas Pioneering Sizing Up Sex Positivity

35 39 41 43 47

ES” S O H E S YMOU O “T ON N -A

“JORTS” -ALEX EVNIN ‘19

ITH EGGS” W P U H C T E “K ELLIOT ‘19 N A D N E R B -

HE INE AT T L E H T “I DRAW IRD ROW” TH 9 EVSKY ‘1 H S A D - JOEY “I DRAW TH ONE PUT E LINE AT SOM ETI MOUTH NG THEIR FULL O WHEN T VER A BOTTLE HEY - COLIN TAKE A SIP” MACKEY ‘19

E TH T A ” INE ENT L M E TH UIRE ‘19 W RA REQ LIU “I D ATH AIRE M -CL

- A “TH NN IR A DB SE A M SE LE ” R ‘19

O “GIVE ME TIME T THINK ABOUT IT” ‘19 - THOMAS GALVIN

“I DRAW THE LINE TO TAKE A STO AT HAVING OL SAMPLE” -ANONYMOUS

On the plaza: Where do you draw the line?

“CATHE TE -ANONY RS” MOUS

UGH” M) S T R SHO ‘18 (ALU E K I “B IN LOTK P E I - SUS ” VE! R U C HE ‘21 T T TO AZRA N E NG INA H A T “ -N

“THERE SH ABOUT ‘O OULD BE NO T ALK VER-SEN SITIVITY - LIBBY .’”

CHRIST IAN ‘20

I HAVE ANY” IF R E P PA D LE YC C “ON RE -RHEINBOLT ‘20 - FRANCO URIBE

“AT ECZ E

MA ON M -ANONY Y EYELIDS” MOUS

- LE

” EESE A ‘19) H C L AN “VEG PPER (UC HI NA SC

“I DRAW TH WEARIN E LINE AT GUY G TIMBS S 10 SIZES TOO BIG -ANONY ” MOUS

“AROUN DT - NADIN HE CORPSE” E FULLE R ‘19

Insta POETRY

A note from the social media Manager art by Stephanie Tom Two years ago, a kitsch editor-in-chief summoned me to their office and handed me a blank check. Since that summons, I have learned what it means to be human.

I have also learned what it means to feel shame. I know how hopeless we all are. It has taken years, but I have rediscovered happiness; I look forward to things now. It started with that blank check. It started with kitsch.

The lore is that kitsch are gnomes and that Gnomes are small. I’m not sure how I size up to things. All I know is the relevant truth: the editor-in-chief ’s desk was too tall for me to see over. At least, I assume it was. I didn’t look at the desk. I was too busy looking at the check. It was written out to “Social Media Manager.” My vision cut out. Suddenly, I was a horse at the starting gate, stately and powerful. I understood that I had to win this race. I understood that people were counting on me. I understood that I had a purpose.

I understood those things then, but I do not understand them anymore. That was when the line between fact and fiction was clear. Whatever has happened since—whether it be a blurring, a distortion, or a disruption—had not set in.

I didn’t do much as Social Media Manager. Other people organized events; other people made the posters; other people wrote the descriptions; I just created the Facebook post. I never met the people involved in kitsch. None of us did, I don’t think. We hid behind names that weren’t our own. We held onto representations—we were in the business of trusting them. We did trust them.

I think of the famous Robert Frost—or was it Eric Carle—line, “The rawness of reality like the flesh of roadkill.” Where—or what—was my morality? I was a pawn in a game that I didn’t know the rules to. That’s how these things work out. Other people play the game, and if you’re lucky, you just watch. I was unlucky. I didn’t know what I was doing—incomprehensible things, ineffable things. It is always too late to run the tutorial. I am just an errand boy.

This is what I have learned. kitsch’s Twitter account is spectral. Consider this tweet: “blipblapblopboopop / whhozzsh / ‘’ *glurg* it storm’ owf yepsers there it is” (13 March 2018). Now consider this tweet: “My legs are eggs, hard-boil my body” (30 October 2018). Now consider this tweet: “I’m enraged if Frasier is ON Netflix and I’m infuriated if Frasier is OFF Netflix” (10 April 2019). The first is gibberish. The second is Mother Goose masochism. The last is disturbed. To circumscribe the three with a single cohesive self is difficult. More likely, there are a multiplicity of voices that speak as kitsch.

Brands attempt personhood through the development 7 • bite size

of a unique, sustained voice. Is kitsch attempting to be subversive? Or does kitsch not get it? Maybe kitsch is attaining consciousness, but unable to mimic the human psyche? Maybe kitsch is an untheorized post-human? kitsch is present on Instagram. Most of my efforts went into facilitating this space. When I came in, the Instagram focused on Gnome-posting (which I hope future Gnomes revive). The boom of “Instapoetry”—bitesized poems/aphorisms accompanied by some visual flourish—signalled an opportunity for kitsch: publish the instapoems of Cornell students. We became the premiere outlet for Cornell Instapoetry. Students flooded our inbox with submissions. kitsch began with a 100% acceptance policy, but as submissions came from fans around the country, we became tougher. The social media department at kitsch grew from two to four. When the submission pile got bigger, so did we: four, to six, to eight. Soon kitsch had a staff of editors sifting through poetry submissions. It was a wonderful feeling to bring together a community of poets and give them a platform. We believed in inspiring student poets from Cornell, Ithaca, and beyond.

Then something changed. The posts were deleted.

Other posts started going up. Some were the old works with an authorial “-kitsch” after the body of the text. Others were new works (also assigned to kitsch). People who submitted were blocked. Posts came in bursts at all hours of the night. Then one morning, we couldn’t sign into the account.

We laid off staff. We tried to reset the account. But all we could do was sit and endure the embarrassment.

The confusion. I dreamt of my teeth falling out. My hair thinned. I searched for positions elsewhere: The Daily Sun, Marginalia, The Cornell Book Review. Nobody would accept me. I graduated and looked for a job. Under a pseudonym, I started as Archivist Assistant at New York Public Library.

When they found out my past, I was given the boot. With no reference, no dignity, and no hope, I turned to the gig economy. As a rideshare driver, I was always given one star; all my reviews ended, “-kitsch.”

I left the city. I burned my degree. I tossed my phone.

I forged a high school ID and got a job at Jenkinson’s Aquarium in Point Pleasant, New Jersey. I stood by the octopus tank and scolded children: “Don’t tap the glass, little boy.” I watched the octopus’s long body flow in the water with grace—“Don’t tap the glass, little boy”—the strange head of the octopus made me think of my own—“Don’t tap the glass, little boy”— the way it swung its tentacles, as if it all it wanted to do was get out—“Little boy, DON’T tap the glass!”

I was on the floor, sweating and crying, because the octopus was beautiful and the little boy was tapping the glass.

I applied for a residency in the penguin exhibit. At the last minute, I got off the waitlist. I packed my things and moved in: a winter with the penguins at the Jersey Shore. At night, the custodians turned off the lights and I lay in the cold, dark loneliness. The penguins rejected me, just like everyone else. Living on the margins, isolated on my ice floe, I would imagine that the throbbing sadness in my chest was the reaction of my heart to the proximity of the stars in the Antarctic where I lived with a bird who loved me, who walked across the tundra with me, spotting constellations and sharing fish. When I closed my eyes and let my fingers freeze, it really felt like I was there, the desert of ice.

The morning comes when the custodians do; the artificial regularity of day and night does things to me. My imaginary life of contentment dies in the light. Penguins peck my knees, my back, my head. Spectators

come in and stare. They’re not interested in me. They tap the glass for the penguins’ attention.

They can’t hear me yell: “Don’t tap the glass, little boy!” And I realize, again, how lucky they are: to watch the game instead of playing; me, playing it without knowing the rules. I’ve learned from kitsch that in this world, we’re horses who can’t see our jockeys.

As I try to integrate with another species, I move into a space where my failures are behind me. I am still a failure, but a different kind. Here, I am a failure because I’m human. I can live with that disgrace. After all these years, this torturous life, I know that I now understand kitsch, the magazine who tried so desperately to be human. kitsch tried to have a cohesive sense of self, a poetic expressivity, denying itself its own polyphonic beauty. I hope kitsch liberates itself from the specious glory of the human; but if we share a will—and I fear that we do—then I know it will not. As for me, I will not stop until I hold my true love’s wing in the dark of the frozen night, nothing but the cosmos—and death—ahead. bite size • 8

Dream Shores

The whale swallowed us whole after he looked at us with one big round eye (bulbous) (soft) (blue) mouth opened wide The waves crashed against him creating a maelstrom outside our walls but within was the tender rocking of ourselves Do we build a life here in this whale?

Amongst the sea and the krill where I love you, you love me Awoken from the dream the Sun streams into my room Awakened from our dream my moon, I look ahead

9 • bite size

by Ana Penavić art by Alex Basler

The Myth of the Glow Up navigating identity a"er weight changes

by Alana Sullivan

art by Omar Din

As a mild to moderately fat child, and certifiably fat teenager, I always perceived a distinct difference between the external and internal “me.” And, most importantly, I understood that these two selves were judged by those around me using very different standards and scales, quite literally. I was conscious from very early on that the largeness of my body was viewed in negative terms by certain individuals, but for the most part, I never considered that my internal self had anything to do with my body. If anything, much of my early misery over the size of my body derived from the worry that people would never take the time to get to know the “real” me, a concern amplified when a classmate in fifth grade administered a “test” to see if I could be her friend by asking me to try to encircle the wrist of one of my hands with the pointer finger and thumb of the other to prove I wasn’t fat (spoiler: I failed, and she took her friendship and baby wrists elsewhere). As I grew older and fantasized about what it would be like to be skinny, I dreamed of how incredible it would be to not even think about my body—to finally be recognized as the person I had always viewed myself to be. Which is why, when I began losing weight three years ago, I was utterly unprepared for the realization that actually, to most people, my external and internal selves were intimately linked.

“We’re so happy for you; you’re finally blooming and coming into your own.” “It’s like you’re transformed! Just a totally different person. Where’d Alana go?” “WOW, damn u

really glowed up. Holy shit. Ur not even the same person! I barely reckanize you in that pic.”

While I had, of course, known I looked physically different, comments like these from—respectively—my family, housemate’s father (in the middle of a restaurant, grinning maniacally and using his hands to demonstrate the shrinking of my body), and 16-yearold male summer camp coworker, emphasizing how different a person I was in this different body, sat oddly with me and made my face hot. What I was just beginning to recognize then— but which would become increasingly clear as I moved through the same social world in a different body—was that most observers equate physical transformations that happen to move in a socially acceptable direction as 1. Positive “glow-ups,” no matter the cause, and 2.

Undoubtable evidence of the person evolving into their “true” and best self.

This equation of a physical transformation with a selfidentity transformation by those around me was unanticipated and, at first, simply confusing. I wasn’t different; my body was.

But that wasn’t the message I received from everybody around me. At some point during our society’s love affair with physical transformations, before-and-after photos and, most recently, the Instagram “glow-up,” we concluded that the internal selves of those who undergo physical changes must necessarily also be transformed. Just look at the media obsession with the weight-loss of celebrities like Jennifer Hudson and Adele; it’s not really their loss of physical mass that is deemed worth celebrating, but rather it is their supposed gaining of worth, bite size • 10

value, talent, personality, and attraction. As unpopular as this opinion may be, however, the dialogue surrounding the social construct of the before-and-after “glow-up” during my weight loss was incredibly destructive towards the value I assigned my life experiences, and fundamentally, my selfidentity.

The message I heard again and again was that my new, smaller body was not distinct from my internal self, but instead, reflected a proportionately better, funnier, more moral, kinder, and more worthy self. The implication was that my past, bigger-bodied self was not only flawed, bad, and inadequate, but was a different person to the core. I was left with the psychologically distressing and painful realization that to live as this smaller Alana, the experiences and life of that bigger Alana—and her apparent worthlessness, laziness, disgustingness, and general insufficiency—would need to be eliminated. I felt paralyzed, fundamentally divided; there wasn’t “Alana,” there was this Alana and that other diametrically opposite Alana, and the existence of one necessarily negated that of the other. And so, armed with this perception and an incredible amount of self-loathing, I attempted to mentally exterminate my old self.

I tried to get rid of pictures on social media of me from when I was fat and untagged myself from photos. I couldn’t stand to look at the framed childhood pictures of my sisters and me, happy and playing together, in my mother’s living room. I blocked out many of my memories from high school and earlier, refusing to allow this present version of myself any history with the other. I became intensely anxious in college when I would talk to new friends about my life at home or the past. It wasn’t simply that I didn’t want people to know I had been fat; it was a terrible, horrible, ever-present fear that I would be “found out” for the bad, disgusting, fraudulent person I had always been, but somehow was fooling people into thinking I wasn’t.

I wanted to erase all footage of my life before I became this smaller, better, less shameful person, and I worked hard to construct a carefully maintained psychological boundary between this good self and that bad self, which— in my view, and so many others’—apparently wasn’t even really me to begin with. Anything that reminded me of the boundary, or threatened its fortifications, left me anxious and embarrassed.

This societally and personally imposed pressure to segment myself into usable and discardable parts became not only exhausting, but incredibly distressing, since it goes directly against how our identities work. Humans absolutely love to believe we have a stable sense of self: a coherent, persistent, outwardly recognizable image of who we are as individuals. In fact, nearly every psychology course I’ve taken has taught me that having a continuous, unified sense of who we are is kind of necessary in order to not lose our minds, in more or less academic terms—hence many people’s fascination with horoscopes and personality inventories like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, not to mention the ubiquitous Buzzfeed quiz. While we tend to describe our past selves in slightly more negative terms in order to enhance our current version, in general, perceiving a continuity between our past, present, and future self is 11 • bite size

crucial to our psychological well-being, not to mention simply the fullness with which we are able to experience our lives. So much of the richness of our present experiences come from their interaction with those of our past selves; so much of music, taste, and smell take on their significance and meaning to us in the present based on what they remind us of from the past. To live up to my new body, these are the things I felt I had to give up. When personality, worth, and almost every positive quality is tied so inherently to the size, shape, and amount of your outer self, the creation of an artificial boundary line dividing and quarantining the bad, fat inner self from the good, new, small inner self begins to seem necessary to align yourself with the “good” version of you that others seem to be seeing, even as it creates extreme psychological pain.

I didn’t hit a specific weight and suddenly become capable of goodness and having value. But that’s how I was treated.

I can’t speak for whether the socially enforced dissociation I experienced occurs with all physical transformations, or if it is specific to weight changes. What I know is: living in a fat body in American society wreaks an incredible mental wearand-tear. This is a burden that I recognize that I no longer have to bear on a daily basis with the body privilege I now have. But I do know that society divides bodies—and as a consequence, the people inhabiting them—into real and false, worthy and unworthy, ugly and beautiful. But selves are continuous, carrying every painful experience, positive interaction in the checkout line, favorite flavor of ice cream, and insecurity— no matter how their wrappers change. They are by their very nature at odds with the binary divisions that rule our social lives.

Psychological survival thus means the conscious interrogation of everything we have been taught to believe, think, and judge about the relationship between our minds and bodies.

It became impossible and felt ridiculous to try to create a whole self using only my experience living as a smaller person, let alone to try to pass it off as the one and true self I was always destined to be. That Alana had pain, talents, joys, wants, and needs just as important and meaningful as this current, smaller Alana, because, well, we are the same person. I am ashamed and saddened that internalized fatphobia and self-hatred made me want to erase evidence of my own existence, and I’m disoriented by the mental fuckery that it takes to want to get rid of 18 years of life. Every single past experience and version of Alana is incorporated into the me that is typing this article, and to try to ignore that is a dishonor to everything we—I— have been through. The “real” me wasn’t being oppressed by the larger amounts of fat that made up my body. My “true” self wasn’t lying dormant, waiting years to burst forth dramatically from its confines into a rainy night with its hands raised to a stormy sky like some Shawshank Redemption wannabe.

I am me, and every version there ever was. The me that held the small roll of skin on my 8-year-old stomach between the blades of a pair of small school scissors and tentatively squeezed after being called pregnant by a classmate was younger and quieter, but is still me. The me that held a shaking cup of water to my mom’s mouth after her double mastectomy, trying not to let her see how scared I was, had bigger thighs and chubby fingers, but is still me. The me that drinks my coffee—without a paralyzing, sad fear of adding cream, now— every morning is bigger than last month’s me, but is still me.

It’s well past time we all came together again.

Barefoot

by Emma Condie art by Shiro

dirt in the creases of the skin of the bottoms of my feet tough calluses rub leaves and rock toes dig deeper into soil roots straining farther from my heels all the way down through the ground deep into the dirt.

bite size • 12

The Barbie crusades

by Olubanke Agunloye

art by Yabework Abebe Kifetew Today, with the onset of social media becoming its own world power, the development of institutions give untrained travelers the platform to participate in foreign aid. International volunteers, or voluntourists, have been satirically caricatured with allusions to white saviorism and its presence on the web. Pages like Barbie Savior, Humans of Tinder, and Jaded Aid attempt to discuss the self-serving, ingenuine nature of the modern-day White Man’s Burden phenomenon.

Aspects of foreign aid have become a social and economic commodity, and the currency is selfrighteousness. Voluntourism is not a new concept. It’s been around since the guilt from colonization began to metastasize in the conscience of those who sought to conquer the “undeveloped,” “unmarked,” “uncivilized” world. The implications of colonization are an age-old argument; however, vestiges of it still shape the ideologies of saving the less fortunate.

We can all wish for a change in subject during our cathartic rants about what is wrong with the world, but as of late, colonialism is still a literal and figurative cancer. Ironically, often the contributors to the immortality of colonial ideologies are the same folks who get a kick out of engaging in academic jargon surrounding the issues of folks whose lives they are impersonally involved in. The context continues to change, but the foundational issues still remain the same. Voluntourism has become an institution that has allo travelers from privileged backgrounds the chance to “help” countries fix their institutional issues.

Oftentimes, the interventions enacted in this (not so thoughtful) form of foreign aid are band-aid solutions that aren’t always informed by the actual needs of the community they aim to help. Ernesto Sirolli’s Want to help someone? Shut up and listen! TED Talk discusses the lack of attentive listening and community efficacy that manifests when projects are developed without providing community members with the platforms to state their needs. Program participants are often untrained students and general travelers who stay in these foreign communities for short bouts of time to “make a change.” Concepts of sustainability, community, self-reliance, self-efficacy, and alliance often fail to be explored. To assess these trips from a monetary and social economic lens: there is a disparity in who benefits the most from these trips. The voluntourists 13 • bite size

both directly and indirectly gain social capital and—down the line—economic benefits.

The issue at hand is not the curiosity and compassion that comes with being human, but the lack of ethical, intentional aid given to these disenfranchised countries.

Anybody can see a facebook post about malnourished children in countries with less access to healthcare and have feelings of compassion. However, these emotions alone are not enough to decide whether you’ll be going on a mission trip to help with issues abroad. Sentiments aside, you must think logically and constantly ask yourself why you want to intervene, and how you can intervene without causing harm to the populations you aim to help.

In this thought process, also consider the disenfranchised populations in your own country. Oftentimes they don’t have the luxury of getting airtime on TV or even your Facebook timeline. The same compassion that drives you to want to play a role in uplifting populations with poor health outcomes abroad can be used to aid in domestic issues as well.

Additionally, institutions that exist to serve populations domestically must assess the roles they play in white saviorism.

The white majority of the senior staff in public health and policy departments across the nation is disproportionate to the demographics of the populations being served. The social factors being studied in these spaces represent the circumstances of people of color and low socioeconomic status groups, but little to none of them are there to represent their communities. And even when people of color are in these spaces, their voices are disregarded or overpowered by the voices of the majority. Within academia, there are a number of buzzwords and statistical facts that inherently otherize minority groups from a variety of ethnic backgrounds and socioeconomic statuses. Words such as “underdeveloped,” “underclass,” “low-income,” “urban,” and “inner city” can be disparaging to the groups being discussed. This language subliminally creates inaccurate narratives and biases that can be detrimental to breaking down the barriers that bind them from attaining well-being.

Due to the nature of sociological research, and as statistics about these groups are stated in conversation, this diction is sometimes inevitable. However, one should always remind themselves that the groups being discussed are real people whose health, economic, and social issues do not exist to serve as another asset for one’s education.

Beyond taxi cab encounters

by Ana Penavic art by Karolina Piorko

bite size • 14

I am tired of cab drivers telling me I have nice legs, trying to shove a Snickers bar in my mouth, asking for my hand in marriage, asking me for their son’s hand in marriage, or asking me if I am a virgin. I am tired of remembering the time a waiter pulled me into a closet when I was on my way to the bathroom and forcibly kissed me, at ten years old. I am tired of the random comments, piercing whistles, and unblinking stares. But most of all, I am tired of the aftermath, the gratification they feel when they complete their word-gasm and cum all over my existence. And why is it that after all I have to hear and experience it is up to me—the woman, the girl, the female—to smile, politely refuse, and then thank them?

No thank you, sir, I do not want to marry you. No thank you, please stop shoving a candy bar in my mouth. Let me be a raging bitch to their soft-spoken “generosity.” Let my conditioned femininity leap out of the cab instead of sitting in silence—instead of internally raging. Let me not pay the cab fare after the guy laughs while asking about my virginity. Let the next me be stronger and demand that they stop. But most of all, let there not be a next time.

15 • bite size

The oxymoronicity of desire

by Sarah Chekfa art by Leo Levy

CENTO COMPILED OF LINES FROM DIGEST, BY GREGORY PARDLO AND THE POETRY OF ARAB WOMEN, A POETRY ANTHOLOGY PUBLISHED IN 2001

I don’t know what is in me I can’t contain.

Come, the poem falls from the faucet.

We: a Chinese New Year, red, gold, red, gold, red, gold.

From the primeval waters we arose—you and I, from the boundless caverns.

Our kisses are the writhing pain, sliding from the throat.

Abhorrent force, a hyperborean rebuke to the tropic heat of being, envy of the Other’s capacity for release.

A monumental iconography of joy, certain only that we’d know it if it ever could be found.

We all should have been other people.

bite size • 16

Beauty/Ugly

by Angaelica LaPasta art by Anonymous

17 • bite size

My first reaction to seeing the Mona Lisa in real life was to think that it was a very small painting. A huge crowd clustered around it, snapping pictures, taking selfies. I sought to understand the depths of that elusive Mona Lisa smile as I strained on my tippy toes, trying to see over the crowd. Despite the uncomfortable crush of jostling bodies, I stood and tried to understand and appreciate. This painting did not particularly strike me or make me feel anything, but because it was famous, and because it was prized, I stood and tried to get something out of it. I gave up quickly and wrote it off as a disappointment.

I’m not the only one who was disappointed by the Mona Lisa. According to experimental psychologist Guy Kress, “The Mona Lisa is probably the single most disappointing piece of work in the entire world.” In fact, it is featured on many lists as one of the most disappointing attractions.

But people still visit the Louvre in Paris simply to see the Mona Lisa, and to snap a quick picture with her.

Why does this one small painting get so much attention while crowds meander by so many others, barely glancing at them?

If the Louvre has nothing else, it does have a ton of nice looking paintings.

The massive museum is a treasure trove of paintings. White walls filled up with huge, gold framed paintings. So many paintings that the museum lacks sufficient security to notice and stop a small child from sneaking under a velvet rope and poking at a Renaissance landscape, returning to her mother triumphantly after crossing a line she was not supposed to.

Another taboo line, not mediated by a velvet rope and a scolding security guard, but rather by art historians, fame, and time, is the one between the beautiful and the ugly in art. The Mona Lisa is beautiful—right? We know that this is what we’re supposed to think. We know that we should marvel at her, pay €17 and push past strangers to catch a glimpse of her, and buy a magnet of her image in the gift shop to smugly stick to our fridge. Then again, there is also a Reddit thread on r/unpopularopinion with the title “Mona Lisa is ugly as fuck.”

Even the thread’s author doesn’t go as far as to bash da Vinci, but insists, “I’m talking about the girl, the painting

itself is beautiful but man Mona Lisa is mad ugly.” Another Reddit thread called “Mona Lisa is Ugly!” still calls the Mona Lisa da Vinci’s “greatest work,” while questioning the hype.

Even those who criticize the piece don’t go far, still clinging to convention despite the proof of their own eyes.

Perhaps society relates to beauty standards in much the same way. For example, I would say that I have a Botticelli bod.

I’m round, plump. Things hang, jiggle, and roll. Although the movement towards body positivity has made me more loving towards my form, I still long to be skinnier. I want to lose the fat that hangs around my stomach, the bulges at my thighs, and what weighs down my arms instead of loving it. To ward off these negative thoughts, I remind myself that I am not the skinny perfection of this age, but the rounded glory of another.

The complaints that both Reddit rebels posted actually prove this point, although both are also objectifying of women and their appearance. Both of the users acknowledged that the painting itself was beautifully made, but that they didn’t find the woman depicted beautiful. One questions, “Why on earth would my man Leo choose a lady with no eyebrows, and no lips to speak of?” To that, I would reply that those characteristics were actually considered beautiful at that moment. Although of course these comments are also very objectifying to women, they exemplify the fact that beauty and fashion are not fixed, but fluid over time and throughout different populations.

A lesson in body positivity can be learned from the example of Ms. Mona Lisa. The line between what is beautiful and what is ugly is constantly changing. Even though I wrote this whole article about it, my final word on this subject is that it doesn’t matter!

If the Mona Lisa is your favorite painting, if she’s your girl and you love her and you think she’s gorgeous, then I am so happy for you! And if you think she’s “mad ugly,” then boy do I have good news for you: you don’t have to look at her! We can all be our own version of beautiful, not someone else’s. I like my pudge and my thighs and my chub. So would Botticelli. And a modern modeling agent might not. Conventional beauty is only conventional now and only to a few people, and they probably don’t even understand why. With art as with our own appearance, it is most important to love what you love and embrace beauty where you find it. No expert can tell you where to find those fleeting glimpses of beauty, whether in a shining gilt frame in the Louvre, or in the bathroom mirror.

“The line between what is beautiful and what is ugly is constantly changing.”

bite size • 18

Exploring the boundaries between plagarism and inspiration lessons from the Madonna and Lady Gaga feud

by Jean Cambareri “It feels...reductive,” Madonna snarkily comments in an ABC News interview when asked about what she thinks of Lady Gaga’s hit single “Born This Way” sounding similar to her 1988 track “Express Yourself.”

When the interviewer questions, “Is that good?”

Madonna simply picks up her glass of water, responds, “Look it up,” and smirks while bringing the glass to her lips.

Upon further research, reductive, which in essence means “simplified” or “crude,” doesn’t necessarily paint a positive picture of Gaga’s work, and it is clear that Madonna’s word choice here aims to diminish Gaga to a simplified version of herself.

Gaga, however, responded to the comparison by saying, “If you put the songs next to each other, side by side, the only similarities are the chord progression.

It’s the same one that’s been in disco music for the last 50 years.

Just because I’m the first fucking artist in 25 years to think of putting it on Top 40 radio, it doesn’t mean I’m a plagiarist, it means that I’m fucking smart.”

So is it understandable, or even commendable, that Gaga drew inspiration from Madonna, just as Madonna drew inspiration from Marilyn Monroe and so on, or is it simply reductive?

The original Madonna interview is over seven years old now, but the question is bigger than Madonna and her snarky comments, or Lady Gaga and her defensive fans.

What defines the line between inspiration and plagiarism?

Truly, it is impossible to say that all creative work isn’t 19 • watch & listen

art by Stephanie Tom & Karolina Piorko somehow influenced by artists that came before. Borrowing from the greats is not a new idea; it is certainly not something that Lady Gaga came up with, and it will undoubtedly occur for centuries to come.

However, a problem for many arises when an artist “borrows” from an entire culture that doesn’t belong to them, and then uses someone else’s work to propagate their own success.

Take rock and roll for instance; essentially, the genre is “rhythm and blues,” a style of music created by African Americans for African Americans, that was then appropriated by white musicians for white audiences.

From the Beatles’ catchy number one hits to Elvis’ “King of Rock & Roll” days, all the way up to Bruno Mars’ soulful radio ballads, musical artists have been accused of cultural appropriation due to obvious African American influence in their music. The appropriation isn’t limited to African American musical culture either; white artists have repurposed and boiled down many minority cultures, spinning them into international hits in the process (think Justin Bieber’s “Despacito” and Shakira’s “Waka Waka”).

Distinguishing between appropriation, inspiration, and downright plagiarism when listening to music is obviously an extremely complex process. The lines continue to get more and more blurred every day as artists continue to draw from each other and repurpose ideas despite their race.

Frank Ocean’s “Super Rich Kids” is inspired by Elton John’s classic “Bennie and the Jets.” Ariana Grande’s song

“7 Rings” is heavily influenced by The Sound of Music’s “My Favorite Things,” and Jay-Z’s hit track “Forever Young” samples Alphaville’s original version of the song. Everywhere we look today, artists are drawing inspiration from others and using it to put out innovative new work. It seems that the industry is so entangled in its own influence that calling any piece “reductive,” unless it is absolutely plagiaristic or completely rips off an oppressed culture, is simply unfounded.

Although it is true that inspiration and influence continue to get more complicated as the music industry progresses, it is still profoundly important to be able to recognize what differentiates appropriation from the rest.

K. Tempest Bradford, an NPR journalist, helps to distinguish between exchange of influence and cultural appropriation by turning to the writing of Maisha K. Johnson.

Bradford writes, ‘That’s why appropriation and exchange are two different things, Johnson says—there’s no power imbalance involved in an exchange. And when artists appropriate, they can profit from what they take, while the oppressed group gets nothing.”

Even when keeping this distinction in mind, the boundary between copying and repurposing remains extremely hazy, and it only seems to be getting harder to pinpoint with each passing year.

Have we have reached the point of no return regarding influence in the music industry and beyond? Maybe the melting pot of genres and artists and inspirations that we seem to be continuing to stir is actually a good thing—a healthy part of creating inventive, original work.

This problem arises when white artists begin appropriating minority cultures without crediting them or allowing them to benefit from the exchange in any way.

Even so, the boundary between inspiration and plagiarism in the music industry is difficult to navigate as it is subjective and dependent on perspective. To some, Bruno Mars simply loves soul music, and is attempting to emulate his favorite artists in his songs; to others, he is ripping off a culture that he doesn’t belong to. To Madonna fans, Lady Gaga is reductive; but to Lady Gaga fans she is a musical genius, able to pull from many different inspirations, including Madonna herself.

In essence, it is nearly impossible to objectively determine whether a piece of music, or any art for that matter, is reductive or if it is simply inspired. When looking at the music industry today, it is difficult to pick out any song that is completely original and that has not drawn influence from somewhere else. But hey, what do I know? Maybe they’re all just copycats!

e b y all“ a e M r “ ey’ ats! thopyc c

watch & listen • 20

Barbie in Her Own the struggle between autonomy and stakes

by Olivia Bono

art by Chiara Benitez & Abby Eskinder Hailu I have a lot of opinions on Barbie movies, having collected them as a child since Barbie in the Nutcracker back in 2001. But more recently, with Barbie movies popping up on Netflix—not the original movies of my childhood, but newer installments with entirely different creative teams—I have developed newer, more mature opinions. The changes are startling: For instance, the animation no longer has its charming early-00s jankiness, but has instead morphed into some uncanny valley designs straight out of Alita: Battle Angel.

The changes go deeper than just aesthetics and the persistence of generic electronic pop anthems.

I’ve noticed, aside from my rose-colored nostalgia for early CGI, that there’s a fundamental difference in the types of stories that Barbie is telling now.

At some point around 2010, the movies’ focus shifted so that Barbie’s character chooses to go on an adventure rather than being forced into it, like she was in the older movies.

In modern Barbie movies, the heroines are all more or less “normal teenage girls”—they might live in a world that has princesses and aliens and mermaid magic, but they start off living a conventional life with their loving family. Barbie then gets a call to adventure and chooses to leave her Surfer Grandpa or Science Dad in the name of a more exciting life. After Barbie goes on her adventure, she returns home and lives happily ever after, having combined her mundane life with her new one as a princess/hero. This usually follows the traditional voyagereturn narrative structure, where the protagonist ends up exactly where they began, albeit with new friends and life 21 • watch & listen

lessons. Movies in this vein include A Mermaid Tale (2010) and Star Light Adventure (2016), among others.

These stories put the choice in the hands of Barbie’s character. She may be reluctant to leave her home, and has to be convinced by a friend or family member, but ultimately she makes the decision to go off and become a hero. In the classic Barbie movies, the situation is a little different.

In the classic Barbie movies, the conflict is part of Barbie’s reality—she’s not going on an adventure to save others, but to save herself. She doesn’t have a choice whether to go on an adventure, because— instead of being a story heralded to her by a talking dolphin—it’s already part of her life.

Classic Barbie starts out as an indentured servant in Princess and the Pauper (2004), or literally locked in a tower in Rapunzel (2002). She has to further the plot in order to save herself or improve her life, with no option to remain a normal girl.

Princess and the Pauper is an interesting case, because it was remade in 2012 as The Princess & the Pop Star and again in 2015 as Rock ’N Royals.

(And, arguably, in 2018 as the unrelated Netflix original The Princess Switch, which could have been improved 500%

by Barbie’s Martin Short villain-monologue via song, but I digress.) In the classic Pauper, the protagonists Erika and Anneliese are miserable in their lives, but carry out their responsibilities out of loyalty to their family, even if it means being treated like less than a person. They enact their switch as their last taste of freedom before Anneliese gets married to a king she’s never met, and Erika has to return to her life

“But somewhere in this transformation, the Barbie movies have lost their stakes. “ as an indentured servant.

In the modern Pop Star, the two main characters aren’t struggling to keep up with their responsibilities, but instead take their lives for granted and act really bratty. The princess, Tori, is childish and cares more about pranking her aunt than helping the starving people of her kingdom.

The pop star, Keira, is bossy and yells at her staff about the smallest things. They switch places not to escape indentured servitude or arranged marriage like in the original, but because, as the opening song suggests, “Princesses Just Wanna Have Fun.” It’s just a prank. There are big picture stakes: For about five minutes towards the end of the movie, it seems like every plant in the kingdom might die, but the protagonists caused this problem themselves. There’s really nothing wrong with either of their lives in the beginning of the movie other than their attitudes. They return to their normal lives having kind of changed their outlooks— Princess Tori starts a social services program, but I don’t think Keira actually learns to be nicer to her staff.

The Barbie franchise in general gets a lot of criticism for the way it portrays women—as obsessed with clothes or ditzy and airheaded, or having proportionally implausible bodies. Maybe because of this, Mattel redirected its focus towards feminist topics, as seen in Barbie’s vlogs on her very own YouTube channel. So it makes sense that the Barbie movies would, in turn, try to empower Barbie’s character, giving her a choice in her destiny rather than keeping her constantly captured or imprisoned or cursed.

But does this make for better storytelling? The earlier Barbie movies worked because they showed Barbie’s character overcoming great odds to save herself, her friends, and family, and because the stakes were high. Now, Barbie is almost always saving strangers, and sometimes with very low stakes, or stakes that feel so far removed from Barbie’s daily life that they don’t feel real. Her character is often more spoiled than empowered, as seen in The Princess & the Pop Star. You get the feeling that Barbie cares more about her hair than the independence of a foreign nation, as it took the promise of removing magical pink highlights from her hair for Barbie to agree to save a mermaid kingdom and the life of her long-lost mom in Mermaid Tale.

Ultimately, these new movies do tend to give Barbie more agency, rather than make her someone who does whatever those around her tell her she has to do. She’s less of a victim. But somewhere in this transformation, the Barbie movies have lost their stakes. Barbie isn’t dealing with imprisonment or arranged marriage—she just wants to have fun.

Interestingly enough, even though the Barbie animated franchise traditionally produces two films a year, there hasn’t been a new title since fall 2017. This might be so that the brand can focus on the more grounded-in-reality series Dreamhouse Adventures that launched in 2018, but it makes me wonder: When the fantasy franchise makes a return, will it follow in the footsteps of Old Barbie? New Barbie? Or something else entirely? watch & listen • 22

Breaking Up With the News

by Abigail Mengesha

23 • watch & listen

Our relationship was built on trust, but you are ridden with half-truths. You hide certain anecdotes from me, like what really went down, who was there when it happened, who did it, and how you knew that was the full story. You tell me that the gruesome details will disturb me. There is no need for me to get riled up about things that don’t affect me. They’re happening thousands of miles away. I would argue that what happens in the rest of the world affects us one way or the other, but now when I look back, I find it funny that you told me what to think and feel. That was one red flag out of many, but I was blinded, and chose to ignore it. After all, everyone told me that you were reliable, and my naïve self believed them for far too long.

See, I never thought I would be one of those people who get wounded by their past relationships, but the world has a funny way of working, and here I am: sore and angry in a world you tried to hide from me when you were meant to share it.

Tell the truth!

When did bias become the truth? WHEN DID DISTORTION BECOME REALITY? When did the truth become subjective? I ask myself these questions as I read you in the morning, and you “forget” to mention Sudan’s revolts, and Mozambique’s ruins after Cyclone Idai. I ask you whether Flint got clean water, but you don’t reply. You still call your job “international news reporting,” as you stuff torn-up bits of the truth down my throat and force my paralyzed tongue to swallow. Maybe you forgot. You could have. Maybe I am being too harsh and dramatic. But then again, your job description didn’t have “forgetfulness” as an important character trait. Instead it listed out “meticulousness” and “impartiality” among other things.

Besides, you are always mentioning the losses of certain people in France, in the United States, and in Britain. You tell me about the incidents as if you had lost your mother in all of them. Admittedly, they’re all so sad and heartbreaking, but in a way you are always saying, “Look at the poor white lives that are lost,” even as brown children somewhere are being sold for their bodies. Even when there is a slave trade happening in Libya at this very moment. Even when Israel drops another round of bombs on Gaza. Even then, certain problems are more important than others; certain casualties are more important than others; certain lives are more important than others.

Honestly, I’m tired, and I will forever be exhausted, because I can’t escape you. You are everywhere: blowing up my phone with Twitter notifications, saturating my Facebook feed, playing on TVs in the background, and appearing in almost all conversations. Dear News Media, I am tired. I am trapped in this relationship, afraid that I will never escape or that you will never change. Despite seeming so reliable, despite having the resources, the connections, and the power, you continue to bruise me. And at this point, I don’t think it will ever stop, since you will never tell the truth.

“When did distortion become reality?”

watch & listen • 24

From Period Sex to Borderline Personality Disorder Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, the CW show, transcends the normative discourse on mental illness and feminitiy

by Annika Bjerke

art by Olivia Bono When my roommate recommended a TV show produced by the CW, a network known for its overly dramatic, albeit highly addictive, TV shows (@ Riverdale), called Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, I thought it was going to be like every other reality TV show. Don’t get me wrong—one could argue that reality TV is fine (a debate for a later time), but it isn’t the kind of entertainment that I catch myself spending hours watching.

In a severe TV drought, following a binge of Broad City and Russian Doll, I decided to finally give Crazy ExGirlfriend a go. Much to my surprise, the show was incredible.

A real Jewish female lead (@ Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) who embraced realistic body standards?

Check. A show that bridges musical theatre, dramatic TV, and sitcoms? Check. A powerful discussion of mental illness cradled by comedy? Check.

I think back to why I was less than enthusiastic about starting the show and recall my distaste for the stereotype of the crazy exgirlfriend—a trope that seemed to be embedded in the show’s title. After watching all four seasons, I realize the show’s mastery is in its ability to deconstruct the very core of this stereotype, intentionally including it to dismantle any preconceived notions the viewer might have had.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend breaks down societal boundaries, airing and provoking conversations that we feel uncomfortable confronting like mental illness and intimate feminine issues, and does so in a way that is sensitive and considerate.

Season one’s theme song nicely sums up the premise of the show in a cheery number; the protagonist, Rebecca Bunch (played by the show’s co-creator and writer, Rachel

Bloom) is a New York corporate lawyer who was “making dough but it made [her] blue.” So after running into her ex-boyfriend, Josh Chan (played by Vincent Rodriguez III) from band camp on the streets of New York, she decides to follow him to West Covina, California. Here, Rebecca joins the relatively unremarkable Whitefeather & Associates law firm, where she makes “brand new pals.” She tells everyone that the law firm made an offer she couldn’t resist and that “it happens to be where Josh lives, but that’s not why [she’s] here!”

While it may not seem this way at first—with the happy musical numbers, and the constant visits to the local boba popup shop—the show is complex: dark at times, happy at others, serving viewers a radical dose of realism. As the show progresses, we see Rebecca struggle with OCD, anxiety, and depression, until finally, in the third season, we see Rebecca unpack her diagnosis with Borderline Personality Disorder. Unlike other depictions of mental illness, Rebecca isn’t a victim—nor is she a villain.

She is dynamic. And above all else, she is human.

However, Rebecca’s journey doesn’t end with a diagnosis.

Despite her hope that an accurate label for her struggles might end her suffering, as played out in the most moving musical number of the show which is aptly titled “Diagnosis,” Rebecca finds that her diagnosis is only the first step in the direction of self-acceptance and healing, a journey wrought with struggle. Unlike other TV shows in which characters with mental illness are miraculously healed within a couple of episodes, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend kneads the issues over several seasons.

When Rebecca attempts suicide in season three,

“Rebecca isn’t a victim—nor is she a villian. She is dynamic. And above all else, she is human.”

25 • watch & listen

the show doesn’t glorify suicide as a tool for social manipulation. Do we all remember 13 Reasons Why? To bring you up to speed, it is the show about a high schooler, Hannah, who commits suicide and leaves behind 13 tapes to 13 people that she feels were responsible for her decision to commit suicide. In this light, the resulting tapes are portrayed as a tool for exacting revenge, a deliberate way to make those left behind feel guilty. The death of Hannah is triggering and gruesome. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, on the other hand, depicts Rebecca’s suicide attempt in a less triggering manner. Unlike 13 Reasons Why, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend also goes into the specifics of mental illness through Rebbeca’s struggle with profound symptoms. Viewers of the show are also able to witness a recovery process. We see Rebecca seek help in the midst of her suicide attempt, as well as the guilt and shame that followed in subsequent episodes.

We see her supportive friends stick by her side during the hospital stay and the aftermath. And we see the complexity of suicide in a way that most other shows do not even dare try to explore or try, but then fail.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend doesn’t just shine an honest light on mental illness. The show is also groundbreaking in its depiction of bisexuality and nuanced masculinity, as well as its honest portrayals of female issues.

In the first season of the show, the owner of Whitefeather and Associates, Darryl Whitefeather, comes to terms with his sexuality. After his divorce with his wife, he realizes that he is also sexually attracted to men. The hit song, “Gettin’ Bi,” in which Darryl comes out to his office during a meeting, features lyrics that dispell commonly held myths about bisexuality: “Now some may say ‘Oh you’re just gay, why don’t you just go gay all the way?’ But that’s not it, ‘cause bi’s legit. Whether

you’re a he or a she, we might be a perfect fit.”

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend also challenges tropes of masculinity in a comedic way, with songs like “Fit Hot Guys Have Problems Too” from season three. Here, the three “fit hot guys” of the show are heartbroken after their love interests have left them, leading them to feel emotions that society has told them are not meant for men. “We’re expressing our pain through the art of dance, but we’ll express so much better without these pants.

There’s so much pressure when you’re a fit hot guy, so just let us ugly cry! Let us ugly cry!”

Finally, the show provides a breath of fresh air with its honest portrayal of female issues that are otherwise largely ignored by public television. The episode, “To Josh with Love,” marks the first time that any live-action television network has used the word “clitoris,” according to Rachel Bloom on a Late Late Show interview with James Cordon. While there has been some debate about whether this is true—Dwight from The Office may have said it once—this is still some groundbreaking stuff! Not to mention the show’s continuous comedic riffs on period sex, normalizing the act that makes so many people uncomfortable. With a whole song dedicated to the act, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend creates a space for women to be whoever, act however, and do so with confidence.

And if none of the above reasons are enough to convince you to watch Crazy ExGirlfriend, then hopefully this will: name one other show that casually drops Jeff Sessions in the middle of a musical number with neon 80s blazers and choreographed dance moves.

By challenging gender norms, grappling with mental illness, and pushing against societal stigmas, the TV show makes a statement and raises the bar for other shows catered towards women.

watch & listen • 26

Speaking Ill of the Dead and other taboos

by Abby Eskinder Hailu

art by Abigail Mengesha

“For the most part, it’s a taboo to speak ill of the dead, even if their actions in life sanction it.”

27 • zooming in

Storytime! Way back, when Cornell University was still a distant dream, Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White stood on a grassy patch of what is now a corner of the Arts Quad, and they just knew. They looked down the valley at Cayuga Lake and baby Ithaca, and saw the future. White and Cornell were fully committed to building a university open to any person and offering instruction in any study.

They knew it wouldn’t be an easy feat, particularly because the university wasn’t very popular in its early days. Despite the many public attacks on their endeavors, Cornell and White were fully committed. The founders struggled to get everything together in time for opening. In fact, even when the school began matriculating students, campus construction hadn’t been completely finished.

Students had the option of covering their tuition costs by completing the construction of the very classrooms that they were learning in.

Cornell University and its founders really rode the struggle bus for a long time, and that little grassy corner remained a symbol of their perseverance and foresight. Those difficult times made the sacred patch of grass even more special to A.D. White, especially as Ezra Cornell’s health started to fade, until Cornell’s death in 1874.

Fifteen years later, the university started to thrive and the Board of Trustees was plopping buildings down everywhere and populating the Arts Quad. In one unfortunate instance, A.D. White was away from campus and missed an important meeting, during which the Board decided to construct a building dedicated to chemistry. The

infinitely wise Board decided to put this new building, Morse Hall, on the sacred grassy patch. When A.D. White returned and saw the building, he flipped his shit. In his defense, Morse Hall was a truly mediocre and flimsy building. Students had to wear their winter coats in the classroom; their experiments would get disrupted by the wind; their watercolors would freeze before they finished their scientific drawings. But despite being so dysfunctional, Morse Hall was a place for the chemistry department to grow and have a space it truly deserved (keep in mind, Cornell was barely a university and absolutely needed a space devoted to chemistry). To add insult to injury, Morse Hall was named after Samuel Morse, the man who invented the telegraph and had a rather sour working relationship with Ezra Cornell. All in all, Morse Hall was a line crossed, but it could be argued that the building was necessary. That didn’t make it hurt any less for A.D. White. Honestly, the Board was pretty messy for going directly against the wishes of an original founder.

When people die, their legacies are granted certain courtesies. For the most part, it’s a taboo to speak ill of the dead, even if their actions in life sanction it. This isn’t necessarily a critique on Ezra Cornell’s life per se, but rather a way to justify A.D. White’s reaction to Morse Hall. Our society, in the here and now and under Western cultural hegemony, sees death as a finality. Death becomes an untouchable space that people along with their legacies enter into. This is somewhat speculative, but of course A.D. White would see Morse Hall as a disrespectful intrusion of this space. Death seems to be a border, but the spaces that it curbs are manipulable and also based on temporality. The inevitability of Ezra Cornell’s death probably helped the Board decide where to place Morse Hall, particularly when considering his overall vision for the university. Perhaps the greatest evil of Morse Hall lies in the fact that A.D. White had not approved of it, and that it was built too soon. It seems less so that death itself is the sacred, eternally untouchable space. Instead, it can be argued that the psychological distance death brings is what allows us to put people and places on a high pedestal or gouge them out of our memories. This is probably why we don’t always think so critically about the Arts Quad and the fact that we are on stolen land. It would be wrong to talk about the sacred grassy patch on the Art’s Quad and ignore the settler colonialism that undergirds this entire conversation. Cornell’s campus is built on burial grounds of the Cayuga people (including that “sacred” grassy patch). There are very few detailed records of what life was like for the Cayuga people before and during the construction of Ithaca and Cornell University. One of the reasons for this is that the settlers would go to Cayuga lands and excavate them, in the process disrespecting and destroying important ancestral lands. They would exhume and discard the skeletal remains. Moreover, the Cayuga people were attacked by settler armies, and their lands and people were caught up in war. Even recently, the state of New York has breached treaties with the Cayuga people and has illegally acquired land. This zooming in • 28

was and continues to be violent and very tangible erasure.

This callous treatment of the Cayuga people by Ithaca settlers and Cornell builders was largely enabled by the psychological distance necessary for settler colonialism.

Can the sacred ground one builds over somebody else’s sacred ground ever really be sacred? It’s easier to disregard legacies when physical spaces and actions can mirror and enable that very erasure. Looking at death as a sacred space with an expiration date can enable this kind of violent erasure. The way we look at death, and its freshness, masks and enables future problematic behaviors.

An example of this is when Karl Lagerfeld died on Feb. 19, 2019. He was a fashion designer with over 50 years in the industry under his Fendi belt. He worked with many famous couturiers and fashion houses. He also became the creative director of a struggling Chanel in 1983, making it into the power house it is today (yeah, the iconic two interlocked C’s? That was Karl Lagerfeld). He did all of this while opening his own incredibly successful eponymous, self-titled brand. This man was an icon in the fashion

to adjust himself when ideas of religious tolerance, body positivity, and racial inclusivity became a little bit more mainstream in the past few decades (wow such concepts).

It can feel like he missed his chance, and therefore doesn’t deserve the courtesy of being whitewashed in death.

So when the defensively bereaved argue that it’s too soon to criticize Lagerfeld, it becomes a demand for passive patience. In this case, Lagerfeld is not alive for us to be patient with him. More importantly, passive patience is a form of oppression. This site of reckoning for this second cousin of cancel-culture exists in a seemingly untouchable space, much like death. I think of people that use nostalgic value to justify their support of problematic people. I recently made a playlist of throwback songs we used to play on the school bus and I realized just how much of Chris Brown we listened to. It’s both cringeworthy and viscerally sad. There’s no way to go back and change things. That’s partly why it’s difficult to talk shit about the dead; it’s the only thing you can do to make the memory of their problematic behavior serve a more positive purpose. The whole point of deciding

“More importantly, passive patience is a form of oppression.” world—and when he died, that whole world mourned. In an increasingly connected global community, the deepest of grief can be shared online. Celebrities were quick to share their pictures with Lagerfeld and heartfelt, personal anecdotes about him. It was pretty sad. It was certainly too soon to bring up the fact that Lagerfeld was fatphobic, racist, and Islamophobic—but it was also part of his legacy.

Many of the culture critics who started treading into that touchy territory of calling out Lagerfeld’s problematic behavior and actions were people of color. Critiques of his legacy ranged from respectful to I-don’t-give-a-flyingfuck, and after reading more about Lagerfeld, I struggled to fully empathize with those who were grieving. It felt as though those who were grieving so protectively did not carry Lagerfeld’s indiscretions in the same psychological proximity as they were asking others to carry his legacy.

Moreover, defensive bereavement is fixated on temporality, implying that there is a proper time and place for problematic behavior to be called out. Active patience is a real thing, and it can be a very useful and dynamic way to grow. Maybe it would have been too soon, and unfair if the man had been trying to improve his behavior and combat his prejudices. Granted, Lagerfeld was born in the 1930s, and it can be argued that he was a product of his time— but he died in 2019. At the very least, he had the chance 29 • zooming in

to honestly recount the legacies of the deceased is to keep these things from happening again, right? Treading into that untouchable space is difficult but necessary. Sometimes it is unavoidable, like literally walking to class on the Arts Quad after knowing what it was built on. Death surrounds us here at Cornell, and that too will be part of the university’s legacy.

At the very least, moving in and experiencing these spaces should inform and produce anti-colonial praxis. Death can spill over into life.

Let’s return to our first story. In 1916, Morse Hall burned down in a terrible fire. The blaze started from the top floor at around 6 a.m. and engulfed the whole building. Thankfully, the chemistry students were able to form a line to White Hall and save most of their apparatuses. The firefighters struggled to contain the fire because of the highly flammable and dangerous chemicals that were in the building. There were a lot of exciting explosions coming from the flames and it attracted a big crowd, even in the wee and freezing hours of the morning. The second reason why the fire was so hard to put out was because, in true Ithaca fashion, the temperature was freezing and the water couldn’t get out of the pipes. Some accounts also state that A.D. White was in the crowd cackling as the building went down. It was almost as if there was some type of spiritual intervention to ensure that Morse Hall really burned.

Swipe Right for Pillow Talk

by Emma Eisler art by Annika Bjerke

I ’ m sitting next to him in bed, hickey blooming on my neck, when he says the dreaded words: “I’m actually fiscally conservative.” A chill runs down my spine. I feel my stomach clench and scan the room for the nearest trashcan in case I need to vomit. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. It’s not like he’s my boyfriend, I remind myself. So what? He doesn’t believe in social programs or redistribution of wealth–most likely because his own family benefits from capitalism. At least he isn’t outwardly racist or homophobic. Probably.

I realize this is a pretty low standard.

Later, I find out from a mutual friend over lunch at Okenshields that Mr. Fiscally Conservative also would’ve voted for Trump if he’d been old enough. My palms begin to sweat. A ball of dread forms in my stomach. Fiscal conservatism—that damn gateway drug! How could he not have told me before? But why do I really feel so betrayed?

We aren’t in love, definitely aren’t getting married, and how much does it really matter which presidential candidate the guy whose dick I’m sucking would’ve voted for in 2016?

But it does matter. To me, anyway.

Since starting college, I find myself constantly talking about what is and is not a deal-breaker for hookups.

Has a foot fetish: fine. Lives in a triple and sleeps on the top bunk: not ideal, but workable. Differing political beliefs: no one seems to have an answer.

It’s not that I expect the people I’m hooking up with to also be part of Planned Parenthood Generation Action, or to support the exact same candidates that I do. Of course, on a campus as huge as Cornell, there’s going to be a broad spectrum of political beliefs and values. Most of the time, I think this is a good thing. As much as I loved my (very) liberal San Francisco arts high school, being surrounded by people with such similar values did also start to feel a little insular. Part of the point of college is to test my

own beliefs against those of people who look at the world differently. I couldn’t do this if I only ever talked to people who automatically agree with me.

After my run in with Mr. Fiscally Conservative, though, I started to wonder if it’s simultaneously possible for me to be grateful for the broad spectrum of views that exist at Cornell and also to really, really not want all of those views in my bedroom.

I wondered, as well, to what extent the fact that what I was doing with this boy was distinctly separate from a relationship impacted my “right” to even be bothered by these differences in our beliefs.

If hooking up with someone is a kind of social contract where you both agree to share physical intimacy but maintain e m o t i o n a l separateness, then how does someone’s political party matter any more than their favorite fruit or childhood memories?

Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d been deceived.

I knew that I wouldn’t have done the same things with him if I’d found out sooner. At that point in the year, I was still interested in casual hookups, and considered whether or not I should go about things differently to prevent a similar situation. Should I walk around parties with a drink in one hand and a clipboard in the other and say, “Hi, want to make out? Oh–but first, could you just really quickly tell me your stance on gun control?” Despite these considerations, I ended up mostly continuing in the same way I had been– crossing my fingers that I wouldn’t encounter any more conservatives in the bedroom–while in the back of my mind, I questioned what kinds of people I was dealing with, and if I should be making a greater effort to actually find out.

A while after we had stopped seeing each other, I heard from another girl who’d hooked up with Mr. Fiscally Conservative that he’d said a few things that were potentially anti-Semitic. Although I didn’t and still don’t know the full extent of these comments, I felt another jolt of anger and revulsion. How had I let this boy kiss the mouth that sits below the nose I inherited from my Ashkenazi great zooming in • 30

grandparents? Pull the curls so like the ones that hung down my great grandmother’s back as she fled Europe?

I wanted to yell or write him an angry letter, but both of these actions felt pointless.

For most of my life, my Jewish heritage has been largely theoretical. Sure, I went to a few tense family Seders growing up and stuttered through the Torah p o r t i o n at my Bat Mitzvah, but none of these experiences are something I bring up when I introduce myself, or even a part of me I consider at the forefront of my identity. I thought about what I would say if I were to confront him: “how could you not tell me before I took my clothes off that you think my people hold too much of the world’s wealth?”

B u t even the description “my people” feels problematic when such a small fraction of my life has actually been influenced by this heritage. I considered to what extent my reaction would change if I had a different religious background. I considered whether I would have been less bothered by the realization if I were Christian, or if I would have felt equally horrified. If I had gone to synagogue every weekend growing up, and kept a mezuzah on the door of my dorm room, would my rage be deeper and more righteous than my current anger?

I still don’t know to what extent my anger is unique to me or fully justified, but almost every time I bring up this story, it turns out that someone else in the room has had a similarly disconcerting experience. There was my friend with two moms who found out a boy she’d been kissing used “gay” as an insult. Another girl who blocked

a boy she’d been sleeping with after seeing a Facebook photo of him in a MAGA hat. There are other kinds of stories too, of course—people learning from one another and expanding or challenging their views. My friend’s parents met when her mom was a Foucault-reading feminist and her dad, a buttoned-up conservative. If these differences had been a deal-breaker for them, then they never would have fallen in love or built a life together.

Looking at all these examples, it’s clear to me that it can go either way: sometimes ideological differences are too vast to reconcile, but other times, conversation and compassion can expand both people’s views and actually lead to a deeper relationship. I still haven’t figured out where I draw that line.

But whether I decide that fiscal conservatives are acceptable, and Trump supporters are not, or that I just can’t deal with anyone right of moderate, I want it to be my decision and no one else’s.

More and more, it seems that these questions about what is and is not a deal-breaker for me in hookups are really questions about whether I am actually willing to follow the implicit agreement of all hookups: that I will separate myself and the other person from the physical act.

The other day, I was eating lunch at Okenshields (again) when a boy I’d been seeing on and off came over to talk to my friend and me. We happened to have our Planned Parenthood Generation Action petition to get Cornell Health to offer medication abortion services lying on the table, and he asked what it was and if we wanted him to sign it. My heart was in my throat—what if he read the description and said no? Was I about to find out I’d been actively having sex with a guy who’d rather women be forced to stay pregnant than have a safe alternative option? Luckily, he quickly read over the petition and said he’d be glad to sign, and also that he tries to trust and defer to women on issues of birth control and abortion since he isn’t directly affected in the same way. My body flooded with relief; I might even have swooned a little. Sweet, sweet Prince Liberal, I thought, blushing as I handed him the clipboard. I didn’t stop to question my own reaction or how being happy we shared this might itself have been a violation of the way I was allowed to think or care about Prince Liberal as a person beyond the physical.

“Looking at all these examples, it’s clear to me that it can go either way: sometimes ideological differences are too vast to reconcile, but other times, conversation and compassion can expand both people’s views and actually lead to a deeper relationship.”

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texted me that, going forward, he just wanted to be friends.

I stared at my phone until my eyes blurred with tears. I felt so stupid for being hurt, for letting myself become so attached to a person I barely knew. The whole notion of him asking to be friends seemed laughable. We had never been friends. Not really. We’d slept together—not only sex, but sleep in its literal sense, too. I’d leaned my head on his chest and felt the warmth of his skin, and I’d believed that this counted as intimacy. He’d texted and touched me when he wanted to, and discarded me when he was done. I wanted to be angry, to feel I’d been treated unjustly in some way. And I did, to an extent, because we’d been seeing each other for three months, and he ended things in one sentence. But I also felt that as much as he had led me on in some ways, I had participated equally in tricking myself.

Early in our “relationship,” Prince Liberal had asked what I wanted, and when I said I was okay with being casual, he responded, “Thank God you’re not a drama queen.” My fear of that label set the tone for everything else that happened between us. Even as I started to like and care about him more, I didn’t communicate what I was feeling or ask for greater closeness. Looking back, I wish I had pushed through my fear and asked for more. I wish I had told him that I wanted sex, not just as sex, but also as an aspect of greater intimacy that also included knowing his political beliefs, hearing about his emotions, and learning who he was beyond the surface details. Maybe if I’d let on that I wanted to be with him for real, he would’ve ended things sooner, and losing him would have made me sad, but at least then I wouldn’t have had to spend three months locking away my heart and folding into a smaller, colder version of myself.

After my experiences with both of these boys, I’m not totally sure what I want to do next. But I’m not alone in this. These kinds of situations and questions are put in stark relief on college campuses where hookup culture is often predominant, and questions of identity and belief are encouraged in nearly every lecture hall and extracurricular.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll add a line to my tinder bio requesting that people swipe left unless they’re down for political pillow talk. Or just delete the app entirely. Possibly I’ll hook up with a boy from Hillel to avoid the anti-Semitic issue. Or equally likely, I won’t hook up with anyone, and will instead start looking for someone who isn’t only interested in my body, but also in the version of me that includes “drama” and complexity.

Most of all, I want to stop apologizing for being angry or for being hurt. I am not violating the agreement of hooking

up by wanting to know a person’s political views before anything happens between us, and I am not a drama queen for having feelings and desiring physical AND emotional closeness. Even though I don’t yet know how I will navigate politics, sex, and dating for the rest of the semester and definitely not after college, I have learned one thing: My body is not separate from my mind, heart, or history, and even if that means having some awkward conversations, anyone I’m with—regardless of our relationship—is going to have to respect all of those parts of me.

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Looking Beyond the aesthetics of sustainable fashion

by Nicole Oliviera

art by Emma Goldenthal

Given increased concerns about climate change and the speed at which humans are quite literally destroying the planet, many are looking for eco-friendly or lowimpact alternatives to otherwise damaging products in our environment. Clothing has not escaped this, and within the past year, “sustainable fashion” has been everywhere from Youtube hauls to print magazines like Vogue.

Many “affordable luxury” brands pride themselves on being sustainably made. In the context of neoliberal capital, however, what exactly does this mean? Does it refer to the use of sustainably sourced materials in the production of garments, paying workers living wages, buying less, or a bit of everything? Better yet, what does it look like in practice?

Is it possible to truly be sustainable in an economic and political system that prospers with increased consumption?

I have thought about this a lot over the last couple of months and it seems others have too. A quick search on Google Trends reveals that the term “sustainable fashion” has piqued the interest of Americans in the last year with notable peaks during Fashion Month(s), such as September and February. More immediately, however, it has been a burgeoning topic on campus. The Cornell Fashion Collective senior designer, Regina Mun, created a collection for the 35th annual show of the Cornell Fashion Collective, titled Full Circle, which featured pieces that were wearable and completely made of upcycled fabric (let’s be real—the cowboy hats were a nice touch too). More regularly, though, student organizations like Cornell Thrift and Ezra’s Closet have hosted a multitude of events from mending workshops to clothing swaps to help contribute to a larger cultural shift away from viewing garments as disposable and towards a mindset of using and loving goods to their fullest potential.

This is definitely not an easy undertaking. On campus and beyond, we have made some progress in acknowledging and acting on the intersections between climate justice and fashion, but we can do better.

At the moment, I understand sustainable fashion as an industry that produces “clean” garments (i.e. no synthetic fibers, use of green energy, upcycled or recycled fabrics) and supports its workers with living salaries and safe working conditions. In practice, however, it seems that both retailers and consumers are still navigating this newfound space with some on both sides hesitant to label their pursuits as inherently conscious of social and/or political issues. It’s no secret that items of clothing have been used as tools of resistance. Sustainably made clothing is no different. It may not have provocative slogans emblazoned everywhere, but 33 • zooming in

its sheer existence is inherently political—especially when you consider that most of the people making these items, for example, are women of color who are disproportionately affected by climate change.

Even 20-30 years ago, the idea of vertical integration or repurposing fabric scraps was unheard of in the larger retail sector as most of these practices were associated with handmade/homemade clothing or small mom and pops. By producing clothing that is ethically made, fashion companies are taking a stand on environmental issues, whether their motivations are morally or economically motivated. By the same token, consumers who choose to buy these items are making a statement with their money.

Perhaps our generation, which lived through the Great Recession, truly is becoming more aware and actively using

“In the context of neoliberal capital, what does ‘sustainable’ even mean?” their purchasing power to support brands who address issues important to them. I can’t necessarily say the same for contemporary brands because it seems the industry is picking and choosing what it pays attention to. To some extent, this is a result of consumer pressure and profit motives, but sustainable fashion cannot be another trend.

The clothing we wear is ultimately an outward expression of ourselves—it says something. Therefore, we can change what we say by what we wear or do not wear. One of the observations that led me to write this article in the first place was that it seems companies on the market right now are using similar models to those employed by fast fashion.

If you think about it, are the Instagram-worthy brands you follow really doing anything remarkable to change how we think about fashion and our consumption of it? Are their

seasonal collections or aesthetically pleasing marketing campaigns challenging you to think more critically of the institution or simply enticing you to buy into the vision they’re selling you? Don’t get me wrong, I love shopping. I have a closet so full of clothes that it sometimes doesn’t even shut, but I haven’t shopped at a traditional retailer in over a year and a half, opting for secondhand garments because of cost and general disapproval of fast fashion. I am not saying I am perfect. I still have a long way to go because minimalism has never been my forte. If Marie Kondo saw my closet right now with all of its haphazardly strewn shoes and miscellaneous clothing items, she would be horrified.

That being said, if we adopt the mindset that the fashion industry will do what it wants and our input doesn’t matter, then that is exactly how things will play out. Some of the most well-known “sustainable brands” foster misguided ideas about how we can actually mitigate environmental degradation as a collective.

Buying more clothes made of upcycled fabric, for instance, doesn’t exactly equate to being sustainable if it means you are disposing of previously owned clothing that may have been purchased from a fast fashion retailer because you no longer use an item until the end of its life.

A report published by the University of Cambridge last year states that consumers place sustainability as their fourth concern when purchasing clothing, after fit, price, and style. With this in mind as well, can we genuinely say that we care about sustainability? It’s hard to definitively say. It’s a tricky question because one of the biggest distinctions of ethically produced clothing is its cost. A dress at Reformation, for instance, can set you back anywhere from $80 to $500, which, for a working-class student like myself, is more than I can spend, even on the lower end of the spectrum. Perhaps I can dream of one day owning a beautiful dress that screams #prairecore, but the reality is that well-made clothing costs money. This is not to say that price tags should be conflated as indicators of quality because there are definitely designer items out there that are not worth the money (I’m looking at you Off-White). The cost of garments reflects the labor and

time a worker invested in it, but a high price tag should neither exclude those who are low-income from accessing sustainably made clothing nor should it let brands off the hook in doing better and improving their practices. Only when they begin to do so will they start embracing their identities as socially responsible companies which may not seem like much taken alone, but can certainly make waves in fashion that we have yet to see.

There is still much work to be done beyond the politics and aesthetics of sustainability. Contemporary brands also share many of the same problematic behaviors of their less ethical peers including lack of body, racial, and ethnic diversity in ad campaigns and limited selections for men. It’s well-known that many women often feel pressure from the fashion and beauty industry to uphold unrealistic standards or ideals.

With this added pressure of living as close to zero-waste as possible, what does this say about our overall frame of thought towards climate change?

Women, it seems, regardless of whether they are producing or buying garments, are pulling the majority of the weight. There is an indirect burden on them to change their lifestyles in order to acquiesce to the pressures of “doing the right thing” without ever being given the space to understand the inequalities at play. There is a lot to unpack and it, unfortunately, it can’t be done overnight.

Perhaps it’s not solely about doing the right thing, but doing a better thing. Sure, most of us cannot afford to purchase an entirely new wardrobe (discarding of an entire wardrobe seems contradictory to the ethos of sustainability anyways), but we can find other ways to practice more ethical behaviors. Whether we choose to buy second-hand, swap clothes with friends and family or mend our own garments, we do not have to compromise our personal style or shell out hundreds of dollars to make a difference in the environment or our mindsets. As students on this campus, we already have institutional and organizational support from our fellow peers to do better while we are at Cornell and in Ithaca (e.g. Ithaca ReUse). We may not be perfectly sustainable all the time, but fashion is definitely one place we can be more conscious and caring about one another and the planet. It’s a process many of us are still working through, but knowing we have a community to lean on makes the journey all the more rewarding. zooming in • 34

Coming of Age on Tumblr a memory collage

by Anna Lee

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Pushing the Boundaries of Language using metaphor to say what we mean

“Whether or not we use our words conventionally or metaphorically, what matters most is that we choose them...”

39 • zooming out

by Emma Goldenthal

art by Emma Goldenthal

Language is one of the most fundamental tools with which we communicate with others. We paint pictures, share stories, evoke emotions, and form deep, lasting bonds with and through our words. In doing so, therefore, we must be deliberate with these words so as to describe our thoughts and experiences aptly. But just how, exactly, do we know when our words are enough? As we constantly endeavor to express ourselves, how can we best navigate the rigid lexical definitions and customary contexts in which our words are so often situated? And how do we reconcile those situations in which there are simply too many suitable words with those in which we can hardly find a few? Sometimes, answering these questions is a matter of searching for the just-right, perfect word, and sometimes, I think, it means resorting to more figurative, creative means.

In the former case, traditional thinking tells me that I have a dictionary app on my phone for this very reason. If I have a thought that I want to articulate, or a conceptual line that I want to clarify, there are quite literally endless amounts of words at my disposal. If I don’t know what a particular word means, I can look it up, and if it doesn’t feel quite right, then I can easily find some synonym that does– insofar as we all agree that synonyms exist. I can handpick my words in this manner, set them upright on a nice shelf, and look at the image they create. Sometimes, the words on their own are enough to say what I’d like to; sometimes they capture an idea or a thought that I have, and they feel right, and they fit. This—of course—is the ultimate goal.

Sometimes, however, the words themselves aren’t quite enough. Words, like ourselves, fall into patterns of action and use, and these patterns wear us, and them, out quickly. And when a word, or even a phrase, is worn out, old, and commonplace, it quickly becomes a mere abbreviation for some equally stale concept. To only ever use vague words like happy/sad/beautiful in place of, for example, glad/tragic/breathtaking etcetera, is to squander the potential of the feeling or idea behind the statement, to dilute meaning by resorting to generalities. And even these slightly more specific words like glad/tragic/breathtaking and so on may themselves not be exactly right for a given situation–and what on earth do we do then?

There are few mental experiences more confounding than having a thought, feeling, or idea, and not quite knowing the words with which to express it. When faced with this particular stuck-ness, though, the last thing we should do is settle for saying anything less than what we really mean. It is precisely these moments of linguistic

uncertainty, when no word fits properly, that call for real selfreflection and deliberate entanglement with language. These are the moments in which figurative language might offer a solution, when we find ourselves sifting desperately through a pile of words, all of them seemingly unsuitable.

The adjective “figurative,” according to my ever-reliable Merriam-Webster app, can be defined as “expressing one thing in terms normally denoting another with which it may be regarded as analogous.” When used to describe language, “figurative” refers to a departure from the literal use of words into more metaphorical territory. We don’t usually use figurative language when speaking to others, and for good reason: it isn’t the most efficient way to communicate if we’re just trying to say something in a straightforward way. But when ordinary language doesn’t quite do the trick, we can sometimes take the essence of an idea and nestle it within some figurative context in order to try and describe it better. Using figurative language as a filter, that is, we can sometimes express a thought indirectly by comparing it to an analogous concept, even if this concept is superficially unrelated to the topic at hand.

For me, it is the element of indirection that best characterizes figurative language. When we try to approach a thought or idea from the side—when we feed it with words selectively, and treat it with esteem as we slowly coax it out of its deep, hidden cave—we can come to understand it without resorting to rougher, more approximative or hurried means.

The process may be slightly unconventional and drawn out, but if we have the time and space and patience to allow an idea to define itself, then we avoid frightening it into a shape that doesn’t quite describe it. In the slightly more literal spirit of George Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language,” this means allowing our ideas to choose our words, and not the other way around.

Whether or not we use our words conventionally or metaphorically, what matters most is that we choose them, that their composition is the product of careful thought and refinement. Words, like us, do not have to be tethered to their definitions all of the time. And sometimes—oftentimes, really—it’s okay if they are, but only so long as we are deliberate and purposeful about how and when we use them. When faced with uncertainty about how to best express ourselves, therefore, careful word choice combined with a simile, metaphor, or analogy or two often does far better than a mere scattering of evocative but ultimately shallow clichés or generalities. It is through these more purposeful linguistic strategies that we can best treat our ideas with the attention and care that they deserve, and use our words and languages to expand, rather than constrict, our understanding of the world and ourselves. zooming out • 40

Big Bend and Boquillas a park on both sides

by Emma Eisler

art by Meghan Morgan We have been driving through the Southwest for long enough, now that the inside of my car is caked in sand and I know instinctively to check my hiking boots for scorpions.

This is it, the adolescent American dream: a post-high school road trip. Two best friends, highway stretching on into the distance from California to Texas. Foot on the gas and Doritos crumbs in the cup holder. What could be better? We are free. And it is everything I wanted, everything I expected. Except it also isn’t.

Finally, we’ve reached our southernmost destination, Big Bend National Park. In front of me, the Chisos Mountains rise, reddened by the setting sun, the Rio Grande a silver glimmer in their wake. I am looking out at Mexico, I realize, though there is nothing in the landscape to indicate where one nation becomes another.

Black bears and bobcats wade across the Rio Grande and across the two countries daily.

Gray wolves paw at both Mexican and American sand and howl at the moon, unaware of the change in government.

As a kind of thought experiment, my friend and I imagine what kinds of conversations might happen if there was a bar exactly on the border between the U.S. and Mexico. This is impossible, of course; in this part of the country, the two countries are separated by a river, and it seems unlikely that any US president—especially Trump—would allow a bar to be built where you’d need a passport to get from one table to another. Still, though, it’s interesting to think about.

Would rangers from each country compare knowledge of cacti, confess fears for what the new era of U.S. government 41 • zooming out

might bring, or maybe just complain about the 110-degree weather?

Sometime after we enter Texas, we start encountering border patrol stops. At first I am surprised, since we aren’t actually crossing into Mexico, but after the second or third time, it feels routine. Sometimes the cars in front of us are stopped for a long time, and we watch the border patrol agents asking question after question.

But we are two blonde girls in a bright blue Subaru blasting Kacey Musgraves, and are often waved through only seconds after reaching the front of the line. Each time, I feel motion sick and uncertain. How wrong is it for me to drive through this land so freely, as if it is my birthright? For others, the mere act of living here involves surviving so much hostility and distrust, while still more are cut off from this land entirely. If I wasn’t so white and blonde, so much of the arbitrary and limited media definition of “American,” I would have spent more time talking to border agents and would have to justify my presence and existence, despite the fact that my family did not come from this part of the world but from across the sea from Europe. I wonder as well to what extent the intensity of these inspections has increased since Trump was elected, or if the mere act of my questioning the severity of border patrol before Trump is yet another signifier of my own privilege.

Driving through the southwest, I find myself at turns feeling expansive, idealistic, sad, and disillusioned. Each time we pass a “Make America Great Again” sign, my friend and I grow quiet. American flags waving in the wind

strike me not as old-timey or aesthetically pleasing, but as dangerously nationalistic. Being so close to Mexico, Trump’s wall feels less theoretical. This is the land that would be split—not just in lines on a map but with a physical barrier. I want to wade into the Rio Grande and declare the divide between these countries null, to stand in the way of construction. For years I have been doodling rattlesnakes and cacti in the margins of my notebooks while dreaming of this trip. I thought traveling through this landscape would be my own personal Odyssey, my journey home.

But home is more than a place; it is also a feeling of safety, comfort, and recognition. I do not feel at home in a country that voted Trump into power and put so many of our rights into question. Other people have never felt at home in this country, and feel even less so after the election. I was so vain to think that this road trip was in some way promised or destined for me specifically. The only claim I have to this place is the accident of my birth and the arbitrary borders of this country.

Despite all this, each night lying in my sleeping bag and listening to coyotes howl, I find myself feeling hopeful.

I think how, despite everything we’ve done to the planet, there is still so much left that is beautiful. I also think of all the people working together to fight back against this administration, and the history of activism that is also embedded in this country. I can’t help but question, however, how much of my idealism and optimism also come from privilege. After all, whether or not this country feels fully like home to me, I am still able to drive through this land freely, and to take the trip I grew up dreaming about. Still, I cannot help looking at the mesas and canyons in front of me and feel that they—that this place and this land in general—are worth fighting for, and that there is a better way for us to coexist with each other and the natural environment.

Not too far from where we’re camping, visitors to Big Bend National Park can wade through or row across the Rio Grande at the Boquillas Crossing Point of Entry, explore the town of Boquillas, and hike protected lands in Mexico.

Most of the economy of Boquillas comes from this kind of tourism, although with each new set of immigration laws, it becomes more complicated for visitors from the U.S. to cross the border and see this part of the land. Both park rangers in Big Bend and residents and rangers of Boquillas are opposed to Trump’s border wall. Not only would the wall endanger a number of wildlife species, it would also damage the tourism industry in Boquillas and detract from the number of visitors who come to Big Bend based on their desire to experience nature on both sides of the border.

Thinking about this conflict makes me wonder again what a bar on the border would look like. Would park rangers from the U.S. naturally mingle amongst themselves, while rangers from Mexico talked primarily to each other?

Would there be a dotted line map where the bar crossed into Mexico, and would visitors from each side respect this designation? I sense they would not—that actually, park rangers from both countries would talk and find common ground as they share their knowledge of the desert and appreciation for this harsh but beautiful place.

As I look out towards Mexico, I think about how all

these questions about borders and national boundaries are not only questions of how we choose to divide and treat people, but are also questions about our relationship to the natural environment, and what kind of mark we want to leave on the earth itself. If Trump’s wall is built, it would devastate the wildlife I am witnessing and scar the landscape for generations.

“This is the land that would be split—not just in lines on a map, but with a physical barrier.

I want to wade into the Rio Grande and declare the divide between these countries null, to stand in the way of construction.”

There is no inherent difference in the desert on either side of the Rio Grande, and I wonder why we feel the need to draw such arbitrary distinctions.

I watch as a scorpion tunnels into the sand at my feet and think how building a wall—or maybe establishing any kind of border—inherently involves fighting the landscape. We live and die by these lines, but no matter the walls we build or maps we draw, our borders remain unreal and arbitrary. I am no more “American” than a high school graduate or any other person living in Mexico, or crossing the border to reach the U.S. As the sun sets over the desert, I think how silly it is to think that any person or nation can own this land. No property or deed can cede these golden canyons or valleys, the swish of the Rio Grande, or the expansiveness of the stars. Rather than look at the land and attempt to divide it or possess it, we should look at this land with humility, and remember that it is from the land that we grow. I don’t want to just travel through this land appreciating its beauty. I don’t want to call a place my home without working to make that definition of home inclusive of all kinds of people, not just those who look the way I do. I am scared, and hopeful, and angry. This country is not what I thought it was growing up, but maybe I and other people of my generation will grow up and tear down the walls left for us to create something better. zooming out • 42

Pioneering

by Matilda Wilson

art by Karolina Piorko It is a warm early September day in Wales, 152 years before I’m born. My great-great-great-grandfather John Parry, Jr. is persuaded by the Latter Day Saint missionaries Lucius Scovil and Joseph Cain to go to church. Years later, John Parry, Jr. tells this story in his journal. He knows immediately upon entering the LDS church building that “this is [his] eternal home.” It is a feeling so profound that John Parry, Jr. decides to give up his entire life in Wales. He travels across an ocean by boat and then across a continent by foot on the U.S. pioneer trails to reach Zion, the promised land. A place labeled on maps as Salt Lake City, Utah, and labeled in the hearts of my people as a birthplace: home.

John Parry, Jr. goes on the be the head contractor of the Mormon Temple in Logan, Utah, which I pass by on my way to class every single day during my freshman year of college.

themselves; they write them for me. They write journals in the hope that all of their descendants will gain an understanding of just how much the Mormon church means to them, and how much was sacrificed to make my church the large and meaningful institution it is today.

Flash forward 120 years and it’s 1966, just 32 years before I’m born. John Parry, Jr.’s great-great-grandson, my father, is six years old. He is sitting cross-legged on a shaggy-carpeted floor in Riverside, California. It is a Monday night, so the whole family has gathered for a night of scripture reading and family history and games and treats and laughing called Family Home Evening. This isn’t their own tradition; it is part of being a Mormon. Families go to church together on Sunday, and on Monday nights, they spend time together as a unit. It cannot have been easy to do. At just 30, my grandmother already had to keep four kids sitting together

“John is hungry.“

Meanwhile, on the same hot, dusty pioneer trails that John Parry, Jr. would later cross, my great-greatgrandfather on my mother’s side, John Stucki, is eight years old and hiding in the back of a handcart as his family sets up camp. John is waiting for his mother, Magdalena Stettler Stucki, to reach camp. She falls far behind the group every day, burdened with the task of carrying and caring for John’s newborn baby brother. John is hungry. So hungry that his stomach is painfully lurching and he can’t think straight. He eyes the carefully rationed food sitting in the back of his family’s handcart, and decides to take a small piece. Nobody will notice, he thinks. Once he takes one bite, he cannot stop, and he eats through well more than two days of his rations. He sits in the back of the cart, horrified and awaiting punishment when his mother arrives. When Magdalena finally reaches camp and sees what John has done, she does not reprimand him. She begins to cry. It is painful to see her son so hungry and unhappy.

I find all of this information in the dutifully transcribed and annotated books of the journals of both John Parry Jr. and John Stucki. My ancestors don’t write journals for 43 • zooming out

in one room for an entire evening. My grandfather asks my dad to say an opening prayer. My dad folds his small arms, and says words he’s uttered a thousand times since learning how to talk: “Dear, heavenly father.” Everyone shuts their eyes reverently except my grandmother, who opens hers briefly to keep my baby uncle Alan from fussing. She smiles down at her family from her perch on the cushy leather couch, and feels how strongly the holy spirit ties her to these people.

It’s 1980, 18 years before I’m born. My mom is 17 years old and applying for college while attending Skyline High School in Oakland, California. Most of her friends are going to UC Davis, but she doesn’t even apply there. In fact, she only applies for one school: Brigham Young University. The Mormon school. My mother’s upbringing isn’t always stable like my dad’s. When things get complicated—when her dad spends nights away drinking with Bob Douglas, when her parents fight, when she gets negatively compared to her sister—she turns to the church. Mormonism is a place of stability and predictability for her. The adults at church care for her deeply. They are people she knows she can fall back

on if she ever needs to. When, at 18, my mom leaves her home in California for Utah, she heads towards stability.

She is undeniably proud to be a Mormon.

Around the same time, my dad is 19 and getting on a plane from Provo, Utah (where he also goes to BYU) to Seoul, South Korea to embark on his two-year Mormon mission to preach the gospel. He doesn’t know the language yet. He goes without considering any other options. This is just what Mormon boys do. My grandma still has binders full of the cheerful and funny letters my dad wrote home to his family. He tells stories about baptizing people and making conversions, as well as funny moments like accidentally attempting to proselytize to a group of prostitutes who think he is trying to purchase their services. My dad, like many of his ancestors before him, writes journals about his mission. Years later, I catch him reading through all of his old mission journals, and I ask if I can read them, too. He looks deeply emotional. He shakes his head. No. On August 29th, 1992, six years before I am born, my parents are married in the Salt Lake City temple. My grandfather on my mom’s side cannot attend because he is not following the church’s teachings, so he does not have a temple recommend. My parents are married in the temple to become an eternal family. They are tied to one another in the afterlife now, and any children they have will now be tied to them and all their Mormon ancestors before them, as long as they follow the teachings of the church and end up in the celestial kingdom of heaven. My grandfather waits

outside the temple in a suit during the marriage. For him, this family is temporary.

Four years before I am born, my parents go on a roadtrip to California to visit family. They make a stop in Southern Utah to take a picture of my newborn older sister, Magdalena Stucki Wilson, with the grave of her namesake, Magdalene Stettler Stucki. The grave is inscribed with the words, “Walked 1,000 miles.”

I am born on Wednesday, December 2nd, 1998. 11 days later, on December 13th, I am dressed in a long white dress, worn by my mother and her mother before that, and am given a church blessing by my dad in front of the entire congregation.

I am blessed with the name Matilda Rose Stucki Wilson. I am the first of my siblings to be given my own first name; we don’t have a close ancestor named Matilda. Rose, on the other hand, is a family name. I had never thought to ask my father what he blessed me with before thinking about this paper, so I call him on the phone and ask. “I blessed you with curiosity,” he tells me in a comedic tone. “Most girls get blessed with finding their eternal companion and having children, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Everyone thought I was weird.” I laugh and tell him it is his fault that I’m never going to get married.

All I’ve got is damn curiosity.

I am six years old and my dad is walking home from work on a chilly September day. He is thinking about religion. For years, he has justified his position as a member of the Mormon church despite the numerous more outrageous beliefs he doesn’t accept (see: everyone gets their own planet when they zooming out • 44

“All I’ve got is damn curiosity.“ die), because he believes in God. On this walk home, he comes to terms with the fact that this isn’t true anymore.

The last thread that ties my father to the Mormon church doctrine breaks. My dad doesn’t believe in God. I have just turned eight years old and I am driving to church with my grandma. Today is special, because I am getting baptized. I have a brand new white dress and my hair is tied up in small braided buns right above my ears.

I think I look like Princess Leia. I have been told all about what it means to get baptized. My sins will all be washed away, and I will be blessed as an official member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. My grandma looks at me lovingly. “I am so proud of you for making this choice, Matilda. This is an important decision,” she tells

45 • zooming out

me. I giggle at her and say “What choice? It’s not like I could actually just not get baptized.” She rolls her eyes at me. “Your father’s daughter.”

We get to the church and I change into a different all-white outfit, this one to be baptized in. I step out into a pool of warm water and smile because it is like a hot tub, and I’m wondering if anyone ever fills up the baptismal font just to swim around.

My dad meets me in the middle of the font and holds my wrists with one hand while raising the other hand in the air.

My large extended family watches in seats facing the font. I see my cousins, playing with toys in the corner of the room, and I feel left out. I’d rather be playing with them. My dad gives the memorized prayer: “Matilda Rose Stucki Wilson, having been commissioned of Christ, I baptize you in the name of the

Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” He guides me under the water. It isn’t until many years later that I discover that my father has already lost his faith by the time he baptizes me. My dad isn’t being dishonest during my baptism. He is passing on a tradition that still matters to him. He is giving me an extra community, should I ever need it. He is giving me the chance to find the faith he lost.

I am 12 years old and I am feeling rebellious. At school today, Kassidy Johnson called me a goody two shoes, and I want to prove her wrong. I know exactly which rule I’m going to break; it is a rule that I have been psyching myself up to break for a long time. I am going to drink coffee.

There is a scripture in Mormon text that states, “hot drinks

and those who are not. My dad lets me take a sip from his Hydro Flask, which has diet coke that he has secretly spiked with rum. My oldest sister let it slip to some of the older cousins yesterday that my middle sister has a girlfriend.

When we’re done telling stories, the adult Wilson siblings—my aunts and uncles—meet in a separate room to discuss how best to care for their aging parents. The conversation quickly dissolves into a discussion of the church. I listen outside the door, feeling tension permeate from so many unsaid words. When my dad and my aunt Rosanne stopped going to church, they abandoned their eternal family. Unless they repent, unless they start following the rules again and get their temple recommends back, this

“I am deeply indebted to the people who raised me, but I cannot let them define my path. I, too, am a pioneer.“ are not for the body or belly,” which has been interpreted by church authority to mean that coffee and black tea are sinful, regardless of temperature. Mormons don’t drink coffee, but non-Mormons do. Non-Mormons drink a lot of coffee. I pass by a drive-through coffee stop on my walk to middle school every morning, and the cars line up so far back that they block the street and cause a traffic jam. I can’t help but wonder at what I’ve been missing out on.

I walk to the same drive-through coffee stop today. I am brimming with excitement and nerves. Coffee must be even better than root beer. Why else would God make it a sin? I walk up to the drive-through window, and shakily ask for a small coffee. The barista, staring down an anxious 12-yearold wearing a CTR ring, asks, “Do you want decaf? It’s kind of late.” I take a deep breath, gather all my confidence, look the barista directly in the eye, and say: “Hell no.” I walk a few blocks down the road with my hot cup of coffee, and then I sit down in the grass to try it. I take a slow sip. My face changes. I spit the liquid out on the ground, horrified.

I take out my journal and write, “This? This? This is what you’re all going to hell for?”

I am 19 years old and I am sitting on the floor of the living room of the gigantic house that my extended family has rented out for the triennial Wilson family reunion.

We’re all wearing matching, bright blue t-shirts with a picture my sister drew of my grandparents printed on the front. My aunt Jennifer is reading from the journal of Rose Badger, my namesake and great-great-grandmother. Rose writes about her daily life, about how much she loves her church and her family. She is funny and endearing.

There is more tension in the room this year than there has been at previous family reunions. We all show up, but there is a divide between those who are actively practicing

family is temporary. My aunt Kathy starts crying. She looks my dad in the eye and asks him how he can deny the church that raised him. The church that built his community and family and world. I do not hear a response.

I’m 19 years old and I’m nervously bouncing my leg and staring at the grey walls of an airport terminal. I got in a car with my dad and drove here directly from the family reunion. I am going to Ithaca to start a new life. I get my backpack and pull out my journal and a new pen from the pack I have purchased for school. Writing calms me down.

I can’t stop thinking about Rose Badger’s journal, and the love with which my aunt Jennifer read it out loud. Rose was just detailing her day-to-day life, and my family cares deeply about this because we believe we have only been briefly disrupted from knowing her. One day, my family will be up in heaven laughing with her, already understanding her. But I no longer have this privilege. I have chosen not to go to church on Sundays, not to attend BYU, and not to go on a mission. I am flying away from the promised land that my ancestors adored, and into the unknown. I feel sick to my stomach. I look down at my journal and realize that I have cut myself out of my family narrative to the point where my journal and my story are entirely my own. The story of the girl who left won’t be told at the family reunions of the future.

I am 19 years old and I am sitting on my bed, drinking black tea on a rainy September afternoon. As I listen to the rain patter on the window, I feel a deep sense of calm wash over me. I do not have my family’s eternity, yet my history and my present add up to a bright and uncharted future.

I am deeply indebted to the people who raised me, but I cannot let them define my path. I, too, am a pioneer. zooming out • 46

Sizing Up Sex Positivity

by Jacqueline Groskaufmanis art by Amanda Cronin

S e x positivity is an attitude towards sex that largely aims to remove guilt, shame, and overthinking from the equation. Slut shaming and kink shaming are among the flagged behaviors that it works to combat, but it also promotes a larger possibility of experimentation and expression where pleasure is allowed to be paramount.

Urban Dictionary—an authority on many terms that climb into the mainstream liberal zeitgeist—describes Sex Positivity as “an approach to sex that embraces sexual interaction as uplifting, based on the premise that sex is good and healthy and that societal repression is bad and unhealthy.” More formally, the American Psychological Association notes that elements of sex positivity can now be integrated into research, training, and practice for psychologists.

It almost goes without saying that the main target beneficiaries of sex positivity are people who have historically been shamed for their sexuality, with an obvious example being women. (Whereas for straight men, sex has effectively always been positive.)

And while the burgeoning philosophy has given many people well-deserved permission to be sexual without shame, I’m wary of some of the ways in which it’s marketed towards young women, and of the simplicity in how it often conflates feminism and empowerment with sex, without specifically mapping out what that means.

The average American loses their virginity at age 16, 47 • zooming out

meaning any conversation about sex positivity needs to consider how it’s received by young people.

In February, I sat down with seven high school girls at Cafe Jax, a punishingly quiet coffee shop in New York City where we discussed everything from when they lost their virginity to how they viewed feminism in relation to sex, if at all.

Even at four years apart, our conversation felt “intergenerational.” There they were, the undisputed pioneers of Gen Z, and there I was, precariously perched between the tail end of an older millennial generation and the inaugural class of theirs.

Positioned like a weird narc, I started by asking them all about the dating landscape at their high school. The differences between their experiences and mine were striking, although it was hard to tell which differences were the consequence of geography (I went to high school in the markedly less chic suburbs of Virginia) and which were the consequence of timing (Instagram didn’t even have a DM feature when I was in high school—for them, it practically functions as Tinder).

I leaned into these differences a bit, gauging how they were informed by notions of sex positivity. We talked about feminism and empowerment. Alexa, the quietest one in the group, said that sex should be as empowering for women as it is for men. The rest of the group nodded, and I nodded myself. Then the conversation shifted to age and maturity, and the consensus at our table started to dissipate a bit.

Fiona, who insisted that I use her real name, Juuled while explaining to me that she prefers hooking up with older men. (“They’re more mature.”) Some members of the group disagreed, and said it’s sketchy when adult men hit on them and their friends—an alarmingly common occurrence, especially now that they’re all 18. But even those who felt unnerved by the trend ultimately surrendered their reservations to a sex-positive spin, chalking it up to a “to each their own” attitude.

This didn’t totally give me pause until we discussed contraception, during a conversation in which I learned that some of the more “sex positive” girls were the same ones who weren’t on birth control (despite wanting to be), citing conservative families or concerns about stigma as barriers to access. And while one conversation can’t act as a portrait

of how sex positivity creates a pathway for (or doesn’t create a pathway for) safer sex, this illustrated how the philosophy can be a bit hollow. Here, sex positivity offered little utility—facilitating very adult sexual experiences for very young girls, but without connecting them with tangible protections to help keep them safe and healthy.

It feels prudish to be critical of sex positivity in any way.

And after growing up in Virginia, I’m no stranger to the need for more progressivism in attitudes towards sex.

“Having sex is like chewing gum,” is a real thing my religious education teacher said to a class I was in as a young teen, presumably as part of some preplanned lesson in shame, purity, and abstinence. “Once it’s done, things are never the same.” I thought about chewed gum—wrinkled, dull, and flavorless. The impossibility of smoothing it out and wrapping it. The impossibility of someone really wanting it again.

Needless to say, I see value in the goals of sex positivity.

I’d love to go back to that time and unlearn suggestions that sex is unnatural or dirty. In theory, sex positivity could be a panacea for a lot of what ails attitudes about sex in our current culture. But in practice, even with the best intentions, many of the mantras are hollow, and many of the consequences are mixed.

I think part of the problem is the suggestion, even if unintended, that we eliminate negativity from our equations involving sex, as if it is something that shouldn’t exist as opposed to something we could lean into and investigate. I understand where the necessity was born from: an empty shame that is often associated with sex, directed largely towards and shouldered painfully by women.

But the fact of the matter is that not all sex is positive, even when consensual.

“Last year I hooked up with someone and felt really off afterwards, even though I had wanted to and he had wanted to and nothing about the hookup was bad,” said Amanda*, a Cornell senior I spoke with in April. “I obsessed about it for

weeks and eventually realized that hooking up with someone I’m not exclusive with makes me anxious to the point where I can’t sleep.”

Amanda, who told me she had felt that same anxiousness in the past after other hookups, said she used to shrug it off.

“It’s not exactly sex positive to stop and say that something consensual, that everyone around you is also doing, is bad,” she said. “And it’s not bad for everyone,” she quickly clarified, “but I feel safer and more comfortable and less anxious when I know I’m exclusive with the person I’m with—and to figure that out I had to be less dismissive about what was making me uncomfortable.”

It’s hard to gauge the net impact of sex positivity, but if I had to guess, it’s been more beneficial than harmful. And still, elements of the philosophy are worthy of greater thought and criticism than they currently receive. Sex positivity has given people permission to enjoy sex the way they want to, absent of shame, repercussions, or implications in general. But sex positivity is also dangerously imperfect when applied blindly, because sex isn’t always good. Sometimes sex is neutral and sometimes it’s negative, and it’s important that we have the space to acknowledge the difference.

“In theory, sex positivity could be a panacea for a lot of what ails attitudes about sex in our current culture. But in practice, even with the best intentions, many of the mantras are hollow and many of the consequences are mixed.”

zooming out • 48