break. Sometimes I want to feel superior with my old technological knowledge. I have the urge to start wagging my finger and telling him how back in my day but what’s the point?
I wonder why I feel this sense of twisted competitiveness about the technologies of the past. Perhaps a superiority complex is one factor, but I think more than that is a sense of grief for this long-lost past. I desperately want to defend these memories of my childhood, try to preserve them from the wear of time. But it’s no use. What’s gone is gone. So instead I romanticize what I lost, become protective of these vanished technologies out of a nostalgic longing for some unreachable, idyllic past. For a simpler time.
I was going through my parents’ house this summer, helping them donate and sell things before they move next year. Knowing both my mom and I were sentimental, my dad kept reiterating that we no longer owned a DVD or CD player, so any tapes we kept would just collect dust. Nevertheless, as I worked through the DVDs, I struggled to let go. Shrek 2 was a staple of long car rides while the scratched collection of Dora the Explorer movies has left hazy, permanent visions of colorful parties and magical adventures somewhere in my subconscious.
nostalgia
rewinding a generation of
by Sydney Pearson
Illustrated by Kaitlyn Stanton
At the sand-colored strip mall near my elementary school, wedged between the dry cleaners and ice cream parlor, was my sister and I’s childhood playground. On long summer days or rainy afternoons, my mother would park beneath the dusty sycamores and walk us across the asphalt to the glass storefront. After wandering the aisles and craning our necks to size up the images in front of us, we would pick out our week’s treasure and take it home—a promise for the evenings ahead. The Silver Screen Video store was paradise, but one day we lost it—another casualty of the rise of streaming services in the 2010s. Until recently, I never noticed the store’s absence; digital movie rentals must have had me in a chokehold by the time it shut down. So all I know is that sometime in my adolescence it disappeared, leaving nothing but visions of sunny days and plastic-filled shelves in its wake.
I, like many other Gen Z-ers, was born in the early 2000s, a few years after the dotcom bubble burst. My childhood is an amalgamation of past and future—CDs and music downloads, DVDs and cable. I remember
Letter from the Editor
Dear Readers,
I feel more visible than usual this week. Every year, around this time, it's the same; I imagine this must be what grizzly bears feel like when they emerge from their secluded dens, the chirping birds and floating butterflies welcoming them back into the world. On Monday, I celebrated my 22nd birthday, feeling all of those happy, free, confused, lonely sentiments that have been discussed at length before. “How was your birthday?” I get asked, anywhere from one to seven times for the next few days at least. I struggle to answer that question. It contained a few small joys—the free loaf of bread from Seven Stars Bakery, my particularly quick load of laundry. It contained a few moments of discomfort: the anxiety of hosting, unexpected texts from those whose last reply was to my wishing them a happy birthday. And however one characterizes that sin-
watching Annie on the iPad with its cracked blue case just as much as I do curling up in my parents’ bed as my mom popped Beauty and the Beast into the VHS player. Thus, it irks me when people describe Gen Z as a post-physical media generation. While my memories are hazy, I’ve talked to others my age who have similar anecdotes to share: recollections of The Wiggles tapes or watching those old grainy Barbie movies on repeat. Yet, articles listing “10 Things Gen Z Will Never Know About” or videos that claim “Gen Z Has Never Seen a VHS Tape” believe our generation has never used a CD player or opened up a phonebook. When I see and hear these assumptions and stereotypes, I quickly become annoyed. You don’t know our childhoods , I want to scream.
While these assumptions anger me, I try to give my predecessors some grace. How often do I do the same thing? My brother is almost 12 years younger than me, a Gen Alpha through and through. He’s grown up with iPads and streaming services as his norm, with no understanding of this crazy thing called a commercial
gular feeling of being sung to, of unease and love and raw, unadulterated visibility.
This week in post-, our authors are thinking about visibility too. In Feature, our writer reflects on living through the transition from physical to digital media and the ageold battle between generations. Meanwhile, our Narrative writers are exploring what it means to be back on campus, as one thinks about how her environment has altered her sense of self while the other shares musings from the seclusion of the Quiet Green. In A&C, one writer talks about the price of fame and Chappell Roan’s difficulties with her recent rise to stardom. Conversely, our other writer considers a recent internet trend of crushing on animated characters, a pattern that some may hope stays unseen. Rounding us out in Lifestyle, one writer shares her relationship with her eyeliner, and all the unwanted eyes that come with that, while the other just is trying to get herself
As I attacked the massive CD collection, similar feelings arose: I remembered popping Christmas albums and ABBA’s Greatest Hits into the player in the living room, the hum of the machine under my palms as it prepared the disc to play on those cold winter nights. Running my finger over each case, checking the copyright dates and price tags, I found worlds in my memories from the decades before I was born— stories and speakers I had never encountered. Where had my parents bought these albums? Who had they listened to them with? What was happening in their lives, in the world, as the discs spun round and round? It was a strange desire that dug deep into my chest, this longing for a universe I would never know. I eventually shoved all of my favorites into a box, ignoring my dad’s objections ( when will you ever use them again?! ) and sold the rest at a secondhand bookstore. As I turned from the tower of CDs on the counter and left the store, I tried to ignore the small pang of grief, the feeling that I had just given away decades of memories.
I’m not the only person gripped by this sense of nostalgia for pasts I have and have not experienced. Vinyl records and film cameras have become repopularized over the past decade. The cyclical nature of fashion has brought trends such as Y2K back into vogue. We live in an age of nostalgia, an era of longing for when things were “simpler,” both in and out of our lifetimes. How many hours have I lost
together for the start of this year. Make sure to also catch the crossword this week; one which plays with one of our other five senses.
I find that post- writers often do a terrific job of making me—and hopefully all of you—feel seen. They have a unique, non-intrusive way of patting me on the back, the way it feels to engage in small talk with an old friend and have it flow just how you remembered. It’s the feeling that you really do contain the multitudes that you like to think you do. What a special feeling that post- creates for me, a feeling I hope you immediately understand when you pick up the latest issue of post- this week.
scrolling through my old photos, wishing things were “how they used to be?” How many pieces have I written reminiscing about my childhood home and that unique magic of the single-digit years? I know it’s futile. As intensely as we crave what once was, as much as we pine for those bygone days, they will always remain unreachable. Still, there is something about the past that draws us. Victoria Owen writes, “The average Gen Z childhood has been defined by events that rocked the world. Terms like ‘Pre-9/11’, ‘Pre-financial crash’ and— more recently—‘Pre-pandemic’ have been slotted into their lexicon since birth. As they’ve grown up, they’ve been unconsciously steered to look back at how the world was before these major disasters—even if they don’t have any concrete memories of what that world looked like.”
The astonishing amount of change in the world throughout our lifetimes has led to a longing for a past that we barely had. I spent my senior year of high school trapped inside during a pandemic, wishing to return to a time when things were “normal.” I’ve come of age in a period of economic, political, and global uncertainty, a time marked by intense declines in mental health. I’ve grown up surrounded by the unspoken pressures of, and constant communication through texting, social media, and the internet. I’m not alone in feeling the weight of the internet age; according to a survey by the New York Times, 34% of Gen Z wishes Instagram had never been invented and 45% would not give their children a smartphone before high school. These technologies are practically staples of our generation, yet there seems to be a collective desire for escape. I’m grateful for how the internet and smart devices have improved life, but I’ve always secretly imagined what it must be like to live in a world where I didn’t have to overthink every text I sent, every image I posted. A simpler world.
Still, as much as I want to run back into some mythical past, I know it’s impossible. Silver Screen Video is gone. The CD player broke long ago. No amount of nostalgia can transport me back. But perhaps that’s not such a bad thing. The present is a place of so much beauty and goodness. I’m attending my dream school. I’m surrounded by friends and family I love. And the world, despite its messiness and pain, is still full of hope. Medical advancements are bringing about unimaginable cures for previously deadly conditions. We can connect with others across the globe in ways that were impossible even 20 years ago. Time moves fast, but I will continue to change and adapt, just as technology has. Maybe one day Netflix will be archaic, my phone a relic my children have no clue what to do with. And if the thought of that seems scary, I know that I can still curl up, find one of those old movies, and sink into them again.
change and choice as one
the tug-and-pull becomes familiar
by Gabi Yuan Illustrated by Ella Dayton-Yaeger
I find myself in an ebb and flow state of mind— wandering in and out of consciousness—one part of me here and one in my hometown. Feelings like this regularly shadow me throughout late summer, the seasons unraveling into one until every part of my routine is twisting and turning without reason to stop.
The seasons melt into each other as I look at every familiar thing I have ever known. I swim to an anchor in times of change. Inch by inch I walk, hands pressing down on different parts of me, to fill a mold—a mold of a person I once was.
The luxury of my 263 square foot dorm, tucked away in the bare corridors of the second floor, is not mine anymore. Returning to campus, I feel the driver start to turn astray at the cross-section around the river. Instead of speeding up the tormented hill, passing our campus center, the mail-delivery room, the hidden dining halls, to finally arrive among the northside dorms, he falls feet short from traversing up College Hill. He turns right, driving unsteadily onto a flat road.
I yell at him to stop, emphasizing that he’s gone in
the complete opposite direction. But then, I remember, my voice is not my own anymore. I look back through the front mirror to see the mound of heavy suitcases in the back of the car. The baggage, both physical and emotional, tells me that I have already packed everything up.
Come, the Providence wind calls on me.
Come, look over here.
Fighting the reluctance plaguing my body, I find myself standing in front of a building, stories and stories high, not brick, but a rectangular, run-down version of a college dorm that resembled the one I had once seen in a movie when I was nine. Even the corridors are different. No longer are the lights brightly lit, but dimmer, flickering in anticipation with each step I take up, and up and up and up, arriving at the second floor.
The dread of coming home to an empty room. Not even dust rests in a place like this. Dust moves, back-andforth, back-and-forth, the feverish rush of people, sliding movement of refrigerators, rustling of shoes being taken off, brushing away fallen locks by the doorway.
But here, in this empty room, I remember nothing.
“Using etc. is a shitty little move.”
“No one can make me dance like a jester.”
1. Privately owned public spaces 2. Corn 3. Socket 4. My dad 5. Soda (in the Midwest) 6. -pers 7. Snap, Crackle
Joints
Smoke (RIP)
And yet, it is nothing and everything at once.
Perhaps, it is my turn to have a theme, a level of special decorum, a mindfulness in decoration. Maybe, with the notable downsize in space from the year before, in my environment, in light’s ability to seep through the windows, I can learn to pick and choose who it really is I want this room to know.
The certain stillness I wake up to at home is gone. No longer is the silence filled with crickets, excitable cardinals, critters running around in the grass as if they, too, are on their way to somewhere important. Now, the sounds are sudden movements—shifts in your roommate’s slumber, beeping from roving cars, even the act of fumbling for glasses in the morning, shifting other objects on the desk, emulating over the silence.
And yet, even so, the feeling of sliding on shower shoes, drawing the curtain closed, closing your eyes against the warming water feels different, and maybe even better. No longer am I afraid that my tattoos will be spotted by my mother, or that my newly dyed ginger hair will be mocked in my little town in Ohio. Even more, maybe now I can dress in the colors I want, whether bright and with potential, or dark and pondering, but choice is evident here, even before, even now.
Waking up used to feel like an unavoidable hot shower, endless and endless beyond control, even when tugging at the faucet to stop. Now, it resembles the silk of gliding through the water after the first initial laps. Breakfast in hand—a bar and a banana—I wander through these new parts of campus, admiring the scamper of the squirrels, the sounds of toddlers on the slides, even the way the smell of bacon steadily trails me as I pass local coffee shops so close to me now.
Only here is it acceptable to put on the biggest headphones, the loudest boots, the shortest skirts, the longest sweaters (in 90 degree weather) and feel understood, loved, admired, all while holding a vanilla latte—extra pumps of syrup included.
And then, I see her, the sun parting for her like the skin of an overripe mango—first her face, then the rest of her emerges, the clouds working to part for her and me in the meadowy campus. Upon first touch, I wonder how I really lasted three months without her.
She confessed to me that her love language is physical touch and in the beginning of last winter, I was overly worried. I shriveled from the thought of physical affection, whether a hug or a caress. And yet, when last
May came around, I was the one standing in the airport, tears blurring the vision of my hands handing away my boarding ticket. How would I endure months away?
As the summer passed—June stickily, July happily, August quickly—both of us were consumed by our lives at home. Riding on the subway home from work, my body ached from fatigue followed by endless walking through the hovering heatwaves. I imagine her with her car top-down, hands laying outstretched on the wheel.
Just for an instance, those three months of limited talking, hushed conversations, whispered affections at night, dissipated into nothing. It seems that I have forgotten how to display love.
And yet, when we finally embraced that dewy late summer afternoon, my stomach dropped, the pit sinking deeper and deeper, leaving a deep indentation in my skin. The worries plaguing my summer felt farther and farther away. Maybe the distance after all was simply a facade—a deep, twisted, unraveling thought. Whittled away were the feelings and revealed was the tethered string, connecting one another after all.
I part from her embrace and fully stare at her radiant, large, smile. All this time apart has taught me that maybe, yes, physical touch is my love language too.
I am here, I am here, I am here!
Can someone tell me if I’ve changed? It’s always been a tug and a pull, wanting to understand myself so deeply (too deeply) to see how I am changing into the person I’ve always wanted to be.
I want to wake up and choose grace, immediately using a guasha, applying layers of sunscreen throughout the day, fueling myself with vanilla yogurt and a side of sunny-up eggs.
I want to wear loud, clomping motorcycle boots to class, raise my hand in every class, start and end the day with large, beautiful, sweet-tasting breaths.
And yet, in actuality, to be truly mindful is to choose yourself each morning.
Change is good. Embracing change is enough. Maybe, perhaps, I have finally entered that period of acceptance.
Maybe, as change is inevitable, so is the evolution of myself.
the sounds of the quiet green a simple september day
by Sarah Frank Illustrated by Jiaying Li
It’s quiet here. It’s too early for cicadas, but I swear I hear them. I hear them intermingling with three girls sharing the highlights of their weekends and the rush of engines on the roads nearby. A school bus, followed by a motorcycle, followed by a minivan. I hear their engines hum, pause, rev, and settle as they play chicken at the intersection.
Cars roll down their windows to share their music with the world, which I’ve always thought was odd. They either think people want to hear them, or they simply don’t care whether they do. Either way, it seems out of touch. At least one of the cars blasting music has decent taste: an old Queen song I can’t remember the name of.
Beneath me, the uneven stone (or maybe concrete?) is surprisingly comfortable. Wearing only jean shorts, I can feel the cool textured surface on the backs of my legs. I lean against the column, feeling the coarse texture through my cotton tank. I get it now, why people are always sitting here.
Settling in further, I let my eyes flutter closed and my shoulders relax, letting the tension melt out of my body. I’ve never been one for meditation, but I find myself breathing in deeply. The air smells like nothing. Usually, I can pick out the smell of something—food cooking nearby, flowers or freshly mowed grass, even the perfumes or colognes of passersby. And yet, here, it smells like nothing. Is nothing a smell of its own?
It’s mostly quiet here, so every sound that sneaks through the still air is highlighted. I clearly hear postgrad plans and dinner reservations and upcoming travel itineraries being made. One of them has a sister going abroad soon, and one of them has never been abroad in her life. There’s typing on a nearby computer in a pattern I recognize. It’s familiar, and so is he.
Eyes shut, ears open. I wonder if silence is a break for our ears or if it means they have to work harder, always looking for stimuli. Always waiting to be useful. Always searching for sound, the same way eyes search the darkness for visuals. In a way, silence means work
rather than peace.
There’s a lot to notice in the relative quiet, yet I keep coming back to the conversation next to me. Another person might put on headphones and stack another layer of sound over their voices, but layers of stimulation have always felt like a tangled web of noise. With more than two senses working at a time, I find myself feeling overstimulated and overwhelmed.
The girls are talking about their weekend plans and what they’re going to wear to dinner Friday night. One suggests a pink dress, the one with ruffles on the hem. They describe the entrées at a restaurant downtown, one I might have been to based on their descriptions, but I can’t be sure. I feel an airiness in my chest, as if I too, am going to this dinner with them. Perhaps it is this—this shared experience of conversations like these ones—which brings me such peace: we are all experiencing everything for the first time, sorting through pieces of our lives in fragments of conversations.
And perhaps this is the core of the female experience: the late-night roommate talks, the early morning breakfasts in the dining hall, the recapping of a long week at the end of a long day. Maybe guys do this too, but there’s something about girlhood that feels so fundamentally rooted in conversation, in the sharing of experiences, and the communication of every feeling, thought, and question. I am hard-pressed to think of a person I’m close with that I couldn’t talk to for hours on end. These three girls are comfortable disrupting the silence with their joy, just as they should be.
I do my best to tune out the individual words because they’re not for me to hear, but I still hear their voices. The rhythm of them talking continues to bring me peace. More so than if it was completely silent here. Silence means work—unconscious but tiring work searching for sound where there is none. My brain likes to fill these gaps with sounds and thoughts and spirals of an internal monologue that takes advantage of whatever spaces are available.
And not feeling alone is certainly quite a feeling. Their voices, and the continued sounds of typing, remind me that this—all of this—is just the communal human experience. One we are all stumbling through together. Moments like this—completely normal, arguably boring moments—are the most raw, authentic, and human moments.
It’s quiet here—not perfectly quiet, but quiet enough, dotted with pockets of welcomed sound. Perhaps amongst silence there is a need for noise, and perhaps amongst noise there is an even greater need for silence.
the rise and fall of the internet’s princess
what
Chappell Roan’s struggles with
fame can tell us about the music industry
by Eliot Geer Illustrated by Tarini Malhotra
Is Chappell Roan unfit to be famous? Some think we are currently witnessing the downfall of 2024’s most beloved pop princess—an artist too fresh to the industry to be able to handle the pitfalls of mainstream success. To others, these controversies are just the expected bumps in the road paving the way for the next global “Femininomenon” to take the world by storm, one
sapphic cheerleading anthem at a time. Despite the explosive ups and downs of her year in the limelight, I feel that Chappell’s struggles with fame are not only expected, but entirely inevitable in today’s toxically online world, and that everyone needs to take a few steps back and reconsider what we think pop stars owe to us, and in turn, what we owe to them.
If you haven’t witnessed Chappell Roan’s meteoric rise to fame, it might be difficult to convey just how rapidly she has advanced into the public eye within the past few months. Since last September, following the release of her debut album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, the pop artist’s streams have increased over twentyfold, bolstered heavily by her performances at Olivia Rodrigo’s Guts tour, Coachella, Boston Calling, Lollapalooza, and most recently, the 2024 VMA’s. Her theatrical, cabaret-inspired, indie, synth-pop style harks back to pop artists of the 2000s and 2010s, and coupled with her distinct makeup looks and captivating live vocals, she has cemented herself as one of this year’s biggest stars. And yet, just like many of her pop predecessors, Chappell has begun to find herself in her fair share of controversy, prompting discourse amongst fans and haters alike about the prices of fame.
On August 19th 2024, Chappell posted a TikTok in which she called upon her audience to reconsider how they approach celebrities in public, asking, “If you saw a random woman on the street, would you yell at her from the car window? Would you harass her in public? Would you go up to a random lady and say, ‘Can I get a photo with you?’” This video garnered millions of views and an immediate reaction amongst netizens, some supporting her and commending her vulnerability, with others criticizing her inability to deal with her newfound fame. Her comments regarding whether fans should ask for photos sparked heated debates online, as well as memes joking about the artist’s potential reactions to public fan encounters. Chappell followed her comments with a second video in which she questioned the industry’s normalization of invasive behavior, stating, “I don’t care that this crazy type of behavior comes along with the job … that does not make it okay. That doesn’t make it normal.”
While fresh and topical, Chappell’s struggles with this kind of “fan behavior” are not at all unique. As she revealed in an interview with Rolling Stone, several notable artists such as Sabrina Carpenter, Charli xcx, Lorde, and Mitski contacted her to show support following the backlash to her statements, with Mitski writing to her, “I just wanted to humbly welcome you to the shittiest exclusive club in the world, the club where strangers think you belong to them
and they find and harass your family members.”
The gap between fan and artist responses to this situation makes it frustratingly clear that these shared experiences—happening mainly to female artists—reflect larger flaws in the music industry as a whole.
Parasocial relationships are often the topic of discussion when it comes to artists who exist in the age of social media, and at the root there is a disconnect between how fans discuss these concepts and how they act on them. According to recent research from Thriveworks, “51% of Americans have likely been in parasocial relationships, even though only 16% admit to it.” These one-sided perceptions of connection dominate the celebrity world, with fans of musicians, actors, sports stars, and more engaging with stars as if they were their friends. The K-pop industry capitalizes on parasociality; idols are prevented from having publicly-facing relationships in order for fans to believe that they could have a chance at dating their celebrity faves. While these strict rules don’t appear as explicitly in the U.S., it remains clear that the same financial incentives for K-pop idols to appear accessible to their fans exist at the roots of the American music industry. As Nick Bobetsky, Chappell Roan’s manager, discussed in a recent Billboard article, artists are often compelled to use their social media platforms to heighten “the personal connection that fans feel,” supporting the idea that there are great amounts of money behind images of relatability, even if they come at the cost of the comfort and safety of the industry’s biggest stars.
Fan reaction to Chappell’s TikTok feels somewhat similar to that of Doja Cat’s statements criticizing fans’ choices to call themselves “Kittenz” received extreme backlash. In addition, when asked by a fan if she would still say she loves her fans, she replied with “i don’t though cuz i don’t even know yall,” one of several comments which would frustrate fans throughout the leadup to the release of her 2022 album Scarlet . While Chappell has never made such direct claims that she doesn’t love or appreciate her supporters, both situations bring up questions regarding to what extent musicians owe their success to their listeners, and whether or not such gratitude warrants providing fans with more access to stars’ personal lives. Some have pointed out that more veteran pop icons such as Lady Gaga or Beyoncé have already limited this kind of personal access, likely a result of the same invasive behavior that Chappell is grappling with today. In fact, it wouldn’t be surprising if Chappell took a similar approach moving forward, as she has been clear for much of her career that she considers the character of Chappell Roan to be a “drag project”: a means of separating her on-stage persona from her personal life. Most recently, she told Face magazine, “I feel like fame is just abusive,” comparing it to “the vibe of an abusive ex-husband.” Her words make it clear that her reactions to fame are not up for debate, and that those who choose to fuel the toxicity are only contributing to the abuse.
Being a celebrity today places you in an uncomfortable middle ground in which strangers are given permission to interact with you as if you know them, and yet the socially agreed upon rules of consent don’t seem to apply when asking that artist, a stranger, for access to their time, image, body, and space. In an Instagram post published on August 23rd, Chappell writes, “Women don’t owe you shit … Please stop touching me. Please stop being weird to my family and friends … I feel
more love than I ever have in my life. I feel the most unsafe I have ever felt in my life.” Celebrities like Chappell have been commodified beyond the point of recognition and when they act in a way that opposes those skewed images we hold, we as fans get angry at their “unreasonable” demands. We deem it to be socially acceptable to ask for a hug from an artist we have never met, and yet we mock the “where my hug at” men who creep around girls they’ve never met, asking for the very same things that we claim we are owed. In the end, Chappell Roan deserves to be given the time and the room to find a more comfortable footing in the industry, and yes, that does mean respecting her boundaries. Maybe then she will finally feel comfortable enough to fully enjoy her newfound success. But, as the music industry stands today, the best we can do is wish her “Good Luck, Babe!” Judging by how people have reacted to her simple requests, she will most definitely need it.
those drawn to drawings
simping over cartoon characters
by Ann Golpira Illustrated by Coco Zhu
Like any true academic weapon on a Monday night, I found myself doom-scrolling through a multitude of questionable dances and Biden x Trump ship edits, mostly accompanied by Chappell Roan’s “Hot to Go.” However, on this particular night, I stumbled across a corner of the internet that destroyed my childhood faster than the American Girl Doll: Care and Keeping of You picture book.
It all started with a thirst trap inspired by Gravity Falls (a 2016 Disney XD animated kids show), where the potentially deranged creator simps over the character “Bill Cipher” who, let me clarify, is a triangle . As seen through the Colleen Ballinger apology video, the seemingly neverending years of Minecraft music parodies, or even Kim K’s Instagram page, the internet houses some of the world’s most terrifying ideas, but the Bill Cipher thirst trap managed to cross the line in a new, even more chaotic way.
Despite my horror, I couldn’t help but surrender to my intrigue; that’s when I discovered “judyhoppsl0vr69.” Currently also found under the usernames “Nik” and “BradleyUppercrusttIII,” the TikTok influencer has amassed a whopping 1.8 million followers as a result of his unhinged content surrounding his romantic fixation on Judy Hopps, a female rabbit from the 2016 Disney film Zootopia . Every video on the page illustrates this (most likely satirical) fixation: Judy Hopps posters covering more of his apartment walls than paint, a life-sized cardboard cutout of the anthropomorphized bunny sitting by his bed, and even an extensive collection of stitched videos asking Judy Hopps cosplayers to meet him for dinner. I was entranced by the chaos and success of the 26-year-old content creator; while I was stuck attempting to get my degree and bawling over NEUR0010, this perplexing man had already built himself a career on nothing more than the sexualization of a rabbit and a dream.
Inevitably, I did some more internet sleuthing, and, to my horror, I was met with thousands of similar (although not quite as well-renowned)
accounts. I would rather take a bath in my high school’s lost and found bin than be subjected to the horror of a Spongebob Squarepants thirst trap again. Animated victims of these appalling CapCut edits included none other than the Ice Age tiger, Lord Farquaad ( Shrek ), and even a concerning fanbase for Zootopia’s own Nick Wilde. He is, in fact, a fox. Perpetual “hear me outs” flood the TikTok algorithm, and, as an unfortunate result of my research for this article, my FYP as well. However, there’s a bit of a gray area as to who truly inspired this heinous trend, as animation companies themselves are far from innocent when it comes to character designs. Especially in animated movies, Disney uses clearly gendered imagery as a way of distinguishing gender among primarily animal casts, as seen in the constant bows (i.e. Minnie Mouse, Marie from Aristocats ) and elongated eyelashes of their female characters. Many of them look fresh from a full-face Sephora consultation. Even before film had advanced enough to have color, animators still found ways to sexualize cartoon characters through the content of their stories. Throughout the 1930s, Max Fleischer’s Betty Boop served as the protagonist in a variety of allegedly “comedic” films detailing her being sexually harassed, objectified, and catcalled. In both the 1932 “Boop-Oop-A-Doop” and the 1934 “Betty’s Big Boss” episodes, Betty is harassed by her employers, with the first shot illustrating a carnival ringmaster inappropriately touching Betty and subsequently threatening to fire her if she didn’t allow him to continue. The sexualization and physical stereotypes seen in animation also extend to infamous characters such as Jessica Rabbit, Snow White, Jasmine ( Aladdin) , and Elastigirl ( The Incredibles ), who all similarly display impossibly small waists, skin-tight outfits, and other unrealistic beauty standards. Even just looking at a character like Tinkerbell, it’s practically impossible to ignore her nanometerlength waist and dramatic hourglass figure. So while the satirical simping over cartoon characters on TikTok is undoubtedly amusing, it’s also quite sad to think about the long history of animation companies perpetuating this objectification through their unrealistic designs of female bodies.
Yet in true internet fashion, there are also just some individuals like “judyhoppsl0vr69” who have no one to blame but their own tormented minds. As of the night before writing this, the infamous content creator directly asked fans to start a rumor that he was both on Ozempic and
dating Jenna Ortega. While this new lore initially seems like the most chaotic update of the night, I was quickly introduced to something even more horrific, something even more chaotic than a divorce episode of The Kardashians : the terrifying world of Peppa Pig thirst traps. I’ve truly lost all faith in humanity at this point in the article, as I now find myself lying awake at night pondering what could have possibly possessed someone to create this. The video targets “Daddy Pig” ( Peppa Pig’ s father), who is a mere amalgamation of two poorly drawn circles and a beard so horrid it could’ve been mistaken for that of a fifteen-yearold boy who’s yet to invest in a razor.
Moving on from the heinous world of sexualized cartoon animals, I later discovered the utterly baffling world of the My Hero Academia fandom (hey, at least they’re humans this time). I first began watching the show on my own after a couple of my friends coerced me into starting it, and it seemed like a pretty tame series at the beginning—at least until I discovered its fanbase. TikTok is practically overflowing with ship edits of every possible character combination in the MHA universe, with some of them making me want to hurl my phone at a brick wall before ever opening Netflix again. The series has become a meme on the internet due to the absurdity of its fanbase, and in the same nature of judyhoppsl0vr69, some individuals have just become too creative with their content.
I’d like to create a list of acceptable and nonacceptable cartoon characters to simp over, as I believe myself to be an expert in the subject after my aforementioned extensive research. I’ll start with the more obvious, non-acceptable characters (all of which I’ve witnessed): Judy Hopps ( Zootopia ), Nick Wilde ( Zootopia ), Bill Cipher ( Gravity Falls ), Grunkle Stan ( Gravity Falls ), the dad, Marlin, from Finding Nemo , Ralph ( Wreck it Ralph ), Squidward Tentacles ( Spongebob Squarepants ), the horse from Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron , and Lighting McQueen ( Cars ). Now, if you really believed I would provide a list of “acceptable” characters after all of this, then you’re utterly mistaken and honestly can’t take a joke, but I am quite interested as to who you thought I would say. Anyway, I’ll conclude with one last message to “judyhoppsl0vr69”: Congrats on your success; there’s no doubt that you’ve earned it after all the dignity you’ve sacrificed. I just pray your type expands from rabbits one of these days.
why do you wear so much eyeliner?
on eyeliner, the color black, and my body
by Indigo Mudbhary Illustrated by Rokia Whitehouse
// tw sexual harassment
You know you’ve made a significant change in your appearance when you have to set a new Face ID for your iPhone. Or when a friend says that they don’t recognize you today because you’re not wearing the color black. Or when you run into your former TA and the first thing they say to you is, “No eyeliner today?”
And you know you’re committed to a look when you go through an eyeliner stick every one-and-a-half weeks, and two-thirds of your closet is the same color, and your nose feels naked without your septum. It’s even changed your body language: You don’t wipe your eyes when they itch anymore because it would smudge your makeup.
You also know you have a fairly distinct look when you wonder, at least once a day, “Is there something on my face?” Because some people do a quiet double take when they glimpse you in passing. And then you remember, “Oh right, I’ve basically painted my eye bags black. A lot of people don’t do that.”
As a child, I went to an all-girls K-8 school that required a uniform. From kindergarten to fourth grade, I wore a plaid button-up dress and white sneakers, per the dress code. Then, for the remaining years, I wore a knee-length navy blue skirt and white button-up midi that constricted my chest so much that I was often in pain. “They’re like straitjackets if you have boobs,” said my eighth-grade Spanish teacher, who had also gone to the school.
You may be thinking, “It’s just a uniform; it’s not that deep,” but when you’re a bullied preteen who dreads walking up your school’s steps more than death itself, a boob-maiming uniform that makes you look like a sailor is the last thing you need.
In high school, I was suddenly
overwhelmed by choice. I could wear whatever I wanted. Every. Single. Day. My freshman and sophomore years saw a lot of jeans and striped crop tops—almost like a new, self-imposed uniform, just slightly more Brandy Melville-influenced. After the COVID shutdown ended, I came back to my high school campus obsessed with cottagecore and dressed accordingly. Long, flowy sundresses and florals were a staple. Whenever I wore these outfits, I felt pretty but also somehow like a girl pretending to be a girl. It was like I had gone to Party City and picked out a “girl” costume, and out of the package had tumbled a near floor-length floral-patterned cotton dress. It wasn’t a bad feeling necessarily, and I was too busy applying to college to worry too much about my looks.
But one afternoon, my friend P. came home from college. P. is one of the most aesthetically cohesive people I know. If you knew them, and I said “That shirt is soooooo P.,” you’d have an image in your head within seconds and know exactly what I’m talking about. To give you some visuals, think platforms, chains, dyed hair, the color black, and piercings—bright colors, too, but mostly as tasteful accents. On this particular afternoon, they said they wanted to do a photoshoot with me, and I happily obliged, knowing what a skilled photographer they are. They then proceeded to dress me in huge black boots, an oversized blazer, and a silver spiked collar, and took photos of me looking edgy and mysterious at various locations around San Francisco.
That day, posing for my friend and their camera, I felt a feeling I had never known before; the clothing felt like an extension of my skin, of me. I didn’t feel like I was dressing up like Indigo—I was Indigo. It was that afternoon that my present-day aesthetic sensibilities were born, and today, even when I’m barely awake and already running late to my 10 a.m., I will put on some eyeliner, throw on a pair of statement earrings, and make sure there’s at least one black article of clothing in the mix.
I could end my lifestyle piece here. Stories with neat resolutions sell well—look at any movie theater’s showings or the bestseller list.
Narratives with confusing endings are usually given bad reviews on Letterboxd and Goodreads. (Perhaps this is a result of capitalism, but that isn’t the central focus of this piece.) So, while I could leave you with the image of me stomping around campus in all my dorky, colorless glory, that would be lying to you by omission.
Because consider this: From a young age, men decided to start talking to me. These were men I didn’t know, who would come up to me in public, sometimes calling me beautiful, other times saying things too vulgar for me to repeat without my hands shaking. Men have done this to me in front of my parents. They have yelled at me out of car windows, refused to stop talking to me after I kindly told them to fuck off, followed me for blocks and blocks, etc. (How much pain and fear can one “etc.” hold?) In fact, just this weekend, I took a bad tumble on a run, and as my blood dripped onto the sidewalk, my skin stinging as the wind whistled against my leg, I got catcalled. Even with a bleeding leg, hunched over in pain, according to his logic I still deserved to be harassed. Before he saw a bleeding body, he saw a feminine one.
Therefore, it was not lost on me that when I started dressing like this—filling in my eye bags with eyeliner and wearing all black—I was catcalled, approached, and harassed far less. In fact, wherever I went, people started to give me a bigger personal space bubble than I’d ever had before. Now people look at me more, sure, but interact with me far less. So even if I don’t dress for the male gaze, I’m certainly listening to it.
But bear with me, one last time, as I complicate things further. This Tuesday, two boys waited at the bottom of a staircase in my dormitory while I walked up it so that they could look up my skirt and made vulgar comments about what they saw to each other. (You don’t need to know their precise words to understand that they were monsters who made me feel small.) As I walked out of the stairwell, humiliated and nauseous, I could hear them running up the staircase mimicking the exact cadence of my Doc Martens hitting the floor and laughing. Somehow, in the span of a minute, I had been converted from an object of desire into one of ridicule. What perturbed me the most was the fact that they’d probably hang out normally after. My day had been derailed; meanwhile, to them I’d just be a funny encounter they’d eventually forget.
All this happened while I was wearing one of my everyday getups, which typically repels random, public, male heterosexual desire (or at least the expression of it to my face). Afterward, I remembered I had plans to go on a run with a friend, and I wasn’t going to cancel them because of those two. So, I wiped off my eyeliner and changed into a pair of floral running shorts and a T-shirt. I told my friend what happened and it helped. The next day, I woke up. As always, I was late for my 10 a.m., but as always, I took a few minutes to fill in my eyebags, color them black—black like the void, black like dread, black like a scream into a pillow, but also black like the ocean at night, black like two crows spinning in aimless circles against a clear blue sky, black like the darkness of your eyelids as you drift off to sleep.
operation: against my worse judgment on getting my
shit together
by Nina Lidar
Illustrated by Dinah Biga
Ticktock, ticktock, make your bed, go to class, click-clack on the keyboard, dinner. Stop, take a breath. See a friend? Hug, catch up, chitchat, chat shit, shit, it’s late and I did no work, click-clack, click-clack click-clack click-clack—there’s laughter outside and I have to chase it!—and how on earth is it 12:00 a.m. and I have nothing done and tomorrow morning is impending and I’ve got to go to bed!
Goodness gracious and good morning.
Or at least that’s what the purple sickles under my eyes and the mess of papers on my floor and grooves in my neck from my necklace sighed at me from the threshold from my bedroom to the world beyond. Goodness gracious and good morning, you diva. You look just a little bit like shit.
I brushed the voice away. Nothing a little mascara and a good outfit couldn’t fix, but it was a small shock that I required those extra measures to enliven myself this early in the school year. Two weeks prior, my under-eyes had been bright and I’d been recording my morning jogs on Strava. I’d even envisioned running a 5K for fun. For fun! Now my running shoes hide somewhere beneath the winter clothes cascading from my leaning pillar of cardboard boxes. Did school really claim me from myself so fast? I’d only been back for one fortnight and I was unspooling.
Am I reminding you of you at all? I hope not, less because I commiserate (which I do, of course, but already my emotional bandwidth is tautening, so you’ll understand my empathetic limitations) and more because I fear the state of the world if so many of us are juddering around with our fuel gauges grazing the empty line. How bleak! Can you imagine the colossal pileup if one too many engines stalled, and we couldn’t swerve out of each others’ ways, and all of a sudden we were all backing up the entire world with our overwork and fatigue? I’m from LA—I’m no wimp around traffic—but that thought gives me goosebumps.
I hope you read this with your eyebrows raised in mild shock at another woman’s chaos, and I hope you feel the warmth of self-assurance tickle your fingertips. You can wipe your brow. Say, “Whew,
glad that’s not me.” I won’t be offended.
But. If I’m reminding you of you, then first, I’m sorry, and second, I’m glad you’re here. Maybe my ruminations will resonate—camaraderie and shared experience and all that. Or if—though it would be quite a shame, dear reader, after willingly sacrificing my dignity to you—you find my ideas of self-betterment misdirected, they may at least help you identify superior alternatives.
Since becoming conscious of my start-ofsemester disintegration, I’ve dedicated myself to its study. What brings on this phase shift with such semesterly reliability? If I can identify the triggers, maybe I can teach myself not to pull them. Though if I have already fallen apart, then how do I reassemble myself?
I think I just might have cracked the code. So don’t get too excited now, because I’m about to walk you through it. We’ll start with a journey back in time.
I spent last spring semester struggling over classwork—or really, the thought of the classwork, as I could never actually get myself to do it—for a subject I simply didn’t care about. I’d been invigorated by my friends (good!) who expressed vibrant interest in things such as naval war strategy and nuclear politics, and I had mimicked their enthusiasm by taking the same classes as them (bad…). I had known, of course (because I know myself) that this was out of step with my better inclinations. Contrary to popular belief, I’ve really never been one for Russian-language battle maps without translation. And yet, I strategically avoided recognizing that my education felt most fulfilling when oriented toward literature and writing (in English, no less).
I love language. I love the way it moves, the way an arrangement of words can ring a gong in my chest, and, when rearranged, whistle instead like wind through chimes. I love how language can distill a swirling nebula of sentiment into a crystal of pure thought. It’s a magical medium to me. And maybe naval war strategy and nuclear politics are a magical medium to my friends. But why suppress the interest that’s been begging me to pay closer attention with a task that makes my head hurt and my heart feel leaden?
I ended up buckling under the weight of my (mis)education fatigue. I dropped the war strategy class two days before the final exam. I scrambled to compose literary pieces for the writing workshop I had once been giddy about.
One might figure that, at the very least, all that spring semester trouble would have yielded a lesson
learned.
Not quite. In just these first two weeks back on campus, I did it again. Shopping period had me racing back and forth between classes I didn’t particularly care to take. I tried out—and tried valiantly, if also futilely, to keep up with—twelve, maybe thirteen lectures and seminars. Like clockwork, halfway through what felt like every possible first-day class offering, the clip-clop of my boots knifed through the professor’s lecture. I fell asleep to the furious whir of my computer as it processed enough PDFs to constitute a small library. No wonder I woke up feeling disastrous.
But now, finally, I can say with true, delighted conviction: No more! I’m taking English classes galore and I’m loving them.
Of course, what we do in academia accounts for only a single square in the infinitely capacious quilt of our personalities. One threadbare square might not be so bad, but too many and the quilt will fall to pieces. I, for one, am in the business of holding it together. Luckily, there are so many means to that lovely, lovely end.
For example: I’m tired. But I hear chatter downstairs, and I have a voracious social appetite. Where do I turn at this fork in the road?
(1) I can force my drooping eyelids up with the might of coffee, and stomp downstairs for conversation inebriated by the cocktail of physical exhaustion and caffeinated palpitations. I can wake up tomorrow morning with my head full of fog and my social appetite still less than sated.
(2) I can poke into the kitchen, say a sleepy hello, go to bed, and wake up tomorrow with a full cache of oxygen in my lungs and my friendship engine oiled. I can sit down for a conversation with a pal and, the day after that, without having to dig through any brain mud, remember the full array of thoughts and giggles that passed between us. Looks like this way, I’m a better friend and I have more fun.
Isn’t it funny how readily I choose Option 1? I also find it funny how, held up against each other, Options 1 and 2 simply do not exist on equal planes (2 is better, in case that wasn’t clear). But, call me subversive: the phrase “against my better judgment” has always had the most alluring little ring. Or maybe, if I stop and think about it, the most Pavlovian ring. University—that sly thing—seems to have conditioned me into identifying the path towards self-destruction and charging down it.
But yesterday I implemented a strategy I’ll call “Operation: Against My Worse Judgment.” I heard the chatter. I felt the fatigue. I felt the magnetism toward the chatter, and the deeper—and easier to ignore—magnetism towards my bed. Reflexively, I rose, went to see what the fuss was about. And then on the threshold of my bedroom, I stood. Wavered. Tipped toward the door. Paused with my hand on the doorknob, and thought: Oh. This is that critical moment. And I lifted my hand and turned around and tucked myself into bed and woke up with slightly lighter under-eyes than the day before.
In order to appropriately underscore the significance of my evolved behavior, allow me to take a page out of the Oscar Wilde reading I did for a seminar that I dropped within 30 minutes of attending. And maybe my retention of this reading, however misinterpreted, is proof that even our less wise choices may still yield some value.
Helping myself is part of an individualistic effort toward team success (Wilde’s vision of team success was socialism, but that’s just a technicality). And “helping myself” is not just my endeavor to right myself from my capsized heap on the floor. It’s even
more—it’s a vision of a clear way forward, where anxiety, fear, and burnout are, at most, visible as hazy specks on the horizon. Evidently, by the close of last spring semester, I’d done little in the name of this mission. In Wildean speak, I chained myself to the laborious, suppressing my personal proclivities for the sake of conformity (what I’d misconstrued as inspiration), and so I limited the potential of my inner artist, my inner genius, my real, unadulterated self! Ignoring my natural dispositions stymied the energy I put into my tasks. But if—as I’m beginning to do now—I honor those dispositions instead, my contributions to society will become more energetic and innovative, and society will respond with an equal and opposite reaction! A beautiful cycle!
Envisioning a world where I have my shit together gets my heart racing. Life becomes so much kinder when you’re not rutted into patterns that exhaust you.
I admit that Wildean individualism and forks in the road and all are romantic and maybe a bit extravagant. I’m a college student living in a house with six roommates, and I’m mildly obsessed with Facebook Marketplace. I went to a non-disciplinary hearing with Brown’s off-campus dean on Monday for a noise complaint about a 20-person birthday party in my backyard. I just acquired a bike to cut down on my home-to-class commute, and this morning, panting and sweating, had to walk it up College Hill, adding instead of saving five minutes. Theorizing my future achievement of holistic lifestyle balance and the realization of my artistic potential is nothing if not lofty, and writing this sentence makes me want to smack my palm to my forehead a bit.
But I think that’s the point.
It’s hard to take myself so seriously all the time. To experience the consequences of my decisions in genuine psychological and physical forms. It shouldn’t be so hard to keep up. I should be allowed to wake up in the morning without the buzzing in the back of my head telling me I picked the wrong fork in the road yesterday, without the pressure of a cinder block behind my eyeballs. So yes, I will make my aspirations romantic and extravagant, if anything, just to add a bit of fun to the whole journey. I’ve always loved a dramatic flair—it makes books fun, it makes friends fun, it makes writing fun—and now it can make taking care of myself fun!
Let that echo for a moment.
Taking care of myself is fun! Fun! FUN!
charcuterie
by Will Hassett
“It’s a hazy, remote memory in my mind, but it’s there. The lingering song of a raunchy salsa band wafting through the streets. The wandering stray dogs with matted fur. The white cross of the stone cathedral. Each direction births a new recollection, unwieldy and uncertain, yet unmistakably there.”
— Laura Tamayo, “Exile” 09.30.2022
instrument from the Indian subcontinent _____, vidi, vici
Target of sit-ups 1
Pitted or stuffed, pairs well with 6D More adorable Queen, in Hindi Baked or with honey, a sidekick for 2D
“But home isn’t a place you find, is it? It’s a place you build. On this strange and beautiful campus, I still feel fragile and leaky. I cry so often. But I feel it sometimes, eating with somebody outside on a sunny day, learning to dance in Sayles, going on walks by the river— little glimmers of hope.”
