post- 04/29/2022

In This Issue

mack ford

laurel meshnick

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Dearly Departed

Cult Sore

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kaitlan bui 5

Regret is a Four Letter Word Madeline canfield

Against Beauty 6

lily seltz 8

Me, Myself, and I selina liu 9

A BrownU Starter Pack

postCover by John Gendron

APRIL 29

VOL 29 —

ISSUE 10

FEATURE

Cult Sore from my father's archives By laurel meshnick Illustrated by elliana reynolds We sat down across from each other in the corner of a West Village cafe. How does one even begin a conversation of such colossal proportions?

“I loved your father,” she prefaces.

Those few words disarmed me. In an instant, I was un-composed, emotions rushing like a flood from behind a dam. I loved him, too, I thought, but could not say. Silence was the only steadying force left.

Looking at her was like looking at a broken mirror. She was who I could’ve become, but didn’t.

Had I been born 30 years prior, my happy childhood would have been replaced by her fractured one. As it happens, our childhoods had only one similarity: my father’s unconditional love.

Long before having me and my siblings, my father spent every Friday with Sarah for 13 years, and during that time, raised her as his own.

“Why did your mother join The Group?” I asked.

I come back to this question with every former member that I meet. Even so, I feel that it’s an immovable blind spot in my understanding of The Group’s formation.

“She was the daughter of a Methodist minister.

She got herself out of there, she was valedictorian, she did not have money, she lived in some shitty town in upstate New York. She left, went to college. She was a very good student, but I think like socially she was just—and I think this was true for a lot of people— which was that like not totally knowing how to be in relationship with other people and also being angry, having not the best home life, not the best relationship with your parents, pressure in this way and that way.

I think not being religious, being around a bunch of creative people, it started in a way that was different than where it went. I don’t think anybody joined being like ‘I would love if I could join a group where my therapist controls who I date and everything I do and the job I have.’”

I try to envision myself in my father’s circumstances: I’m a sheltered, nerdy, arrogant, 20-year-old Jewish boy from Queens. I’m almost certainly a virgin. I went to college at 16 on a full ride, bearing freshly-healed acne scars and spectacles I’d had for as long as I could remember being bullied for them. On the weekends, I’d go home for Shabbat dinner, where my mother barked at me to finish every last scrap of food on my plate and then did

Letter from the Editor Dear Readers, Here we are: the final stop, the end of the line.

That is to say, welcome to our final issue of the semester! Spring 2022 has been a doozy, at least for me, but a lovely one. Well. Epic highs and lows, you know the vibe. But post- is always a highlight. The pieces all falling into place as edits coalesce and illustrations fit in between them and layout ties it all together with a little bow. Prod night, with our conversations like a runaway train.

Our last issue contains multitudes, as I’m sure you’ve come to expect from us. In A&C, one writer critiques the culture of beauty at Brown, while the other discusses her attempt to be alone without feel-

my laundry. After I graduated, I went straight to medical school, all this time having never left the city. And then one day I met a woman —in class or at a party, I’m not sure, but in my imagination, she had spirals of long, red hair running down her back. She promised me sex, intimacy, friendship, art, culture, and drugs, all in one quixotic package. And somehow, she tied up this offer without me noticing the strings attached, and I realized that all this time I’d been so lost, but now, finally, my life could begin.

The disc freezes. I can’t project my imagination any further down this hypothetical trajectory. At this point, I’ve reached the part of a tree's roots where it disperses into tens of prongs diverging in different directions. There are endless permutations of “hows” and “whys” that lead up to joining a cult, but at its core, every recruitment story is more or less the same.

“It started with a bunch of young people who had just lived through the sixties and still believed that the world could be different. Fuck this nuclear family shit, we don’t need this. Let’s have a theater group, we can make our own rules!”

She continues, “A lot of people in The Group were really smart, really funny. There were all these musicians who were in The Group, and people who were interested in the same stuff. It’s like, I get it. I get the dream of it, and then over time it tightened and tightened and tightened…”

When I first decided to research The Group, I was told immediately that I would hear an enormous range of opinions depending on who I talked to. To this day, there are former members of The Group that are old crooners, endlessly nostalgic for the ideology that they so adamantly believed in. The enduring merit of The Group, they believe, is its good intentions. Communal parenting, therapy, free love—they all seemed like great ideas in theory. The communally-raised kids, though, who never chose these ideologies for themselves, have a different perspective.

Being a child born into The Group, devoid of autonomy, Sarah’s empathy and understanding of The Group’s formation astounded me. I had expected to hear her reflect on her childhood with only resentment and anger, but instead she showed a delicate compassion for the adults that were passive bystanders to the 12 years of abuse that she endured.

Growing up, she was allotted one day a week to spend with her mother. The rest of her time was

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ing lonely. Our Feature writer learns about the cult her father grew up in and reflects on her relationship with him. One of our Narrative writers considers the lifespan of an idea while the other thinks about endings, regrets, and love. Lastly, our Lifestyle writer provides a spring starter pack!

So welcome to our final issue of the semester! I’ll be missing prod nights for the long months standing between now and the fall. And most of all, I’ll be missing our senior post-its who will be graduating!

The life of the party, the backbone of this magazine…

Whatever will we do without them? Perhaps they’ll return as post- ghosts in the future, as our former Editor in Chief did just today. One can only hope.

Tops 1. Beyblades 2. Ladies you are… the tops… AND bottoms… of the week 3. Top volume 4. Top Model with Tyra Banks 5. Taupe 6. post- top ten lists :( 7. Active learning platform Top Hat 8. MATH 1410: Topology 9. Box Tops for Education 10. Tapas

Enduring the concept of ‘goodbye,’

Kyoko Leaman Editor-in-Chief

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FEATURE occupied by babysitters, and spent at the apartments of other children who lived with her at the group’s shared apartment building. One day a week, she spent with my dad, long before I was even a twinkle in his eye. On those days, he made up stories about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. For her birthday, he bought her a microscope, she told me.

The cult was polyonomous—naming themselves The Group, the Sullivanians, and the Fourth Wall— and polyamorous. Everyone in The Group had multiple intimate connections within The Group, and were encouraged to date people outside of The Group to bring them in as new recruits. They each kept a date book to keep track of their social pairings, both romantic and platonic.

“What was your conception of the cult’s ideology?”

I asked her.

“From young, we were taught how to talk about it, so it’s a little hard for me to thread out what I actually thought. I knew that all the grown-ups had date books, I knew that they scheduled their dates. They dated different people at different times of the week.

As I’ve grown older I’ve learned that monogamy was really discouraged; you were not supposed to focus romantically on one person. To my mind, that has to do with, again, whether that was a conscious intention or just felt like a convenient, effective way to do this. I think that if you have two people that are in love and just want to be together, how hard is it for them to turn to each other and be like, ‘Want to get the fuck out of here?’ but if you have everybody dating everybody, then everybody stays.”

Non-monogamy was at the heart of The Group’s ideological blueprint, but therapy was its concrete foundation. Whether or not their radical ideologies were established as genuine belief systems or as control tactics is impossible to say. Every member had a therapist with whom they had regular sessions.

Referring to such people as therapists is likely offensive to legitimate therapists everywhere, but this was the ’70s, and lying on your resume was even easier without the internet. These loosely defined therapists were trained by The Group, and overseen by head therapist and guru Saul. The therapists had

no conception of a “conflict of interest,” and they were often friends with their patients, or dating them. But even more common, they acted as their patients’ parole officers.

These therapists fervently followed the whackjob philosophy of pseudo-psychologist Harry Stack Sullivan, who can probably be credited for the term “mommy issues” even more so than Freud. The Group’s guru, Saul B. Newton, founded the Sullivan Institute for Research in Psychoanalysis, which held that traditional family ties were the root cause of mental illness. ​​The end goal of The Group’s therapy was for you to realize that every single one of your flaws can be blamed on your parents.

A truly devout member, my father preached this philosophy for 13 long years. He met my mom a few years after escaping The Group. I was 16 when I heard this story for the first time.

May 10, 1982 Dear Mother, You have sent me many letters over the past years asking me to reestablish my “ties” with you. I will never do this, and I will tell you why. I cannot live with a lie.

Your version of our relationship is a lie.

November 10, 1985 Dear Mother, How dare you send me that ludicrous note? In truth, you’ve always hated me and don’t deserve to have a relationship with me. Anyway, it’s too late to draw me back into your narrow, petty, pleasureless world. Don’t try to contact me again. I won’t respond.

For the first time in my life, I had the horrible, intrusive thought that my Dad might not always have been a good person. Memorializing someone can be a treacherous path. It’s all too easy to let nostalgia cast a glowing, angelic light on someone’s past, and for my Dad this is easy to do. I feel more defensive over my Dad’s reputation now than ever before, and I’m desperately afraid of tainting his memory. So, in my exploration of the archives of his life, it has been hard for me to admit to his shortcomings.

My aunt never came to his funeral, and I thought I would never be able to forgive her for this. I was

incapable of understanding what grudge could possibly outweigh the importance of mourning a dead brother.

August 20, 1979 Dear brother, Congratulations on your graduation. I would have loved to share it with you.

I realize now that mourning a loved one’s death might not be a possibility when, after 13 years of absence, you are still waiting for them to come home.

I realize now that my aunt and my grandmother grieved for my dad long before I was even born.

For this, I feel angry at my dad. It was his decision to ostracize his family, to sever them from the important milestones of his life. And it was a needless amputation. The cosmic irony is that my dad will never see me graduate college. He won’t be there to meet my future partners, or look after his grandkids. In this fate, I have no choice.

November 16, 1985 My dear brother, In the short story “The Monkey’s Paw,” the parents wish back a dead son, only to wish him away because the reality did not fit their dream.

That’s how I feel about you.

I am filled with remorse and I mourn the death of the brother I knew.

I am 21 years old now, the same age my father was when he first joined The Group. There’s so much we don’t know about our parents’ lives, and in every case, that ignorance shields us from a hard truth about who they were.

Putting myself in my father’s shoes has felt like a non-chronological dialogue with him; as if now I have the chance to go back and get to know my father at 21, when he was a lost, idealistic, angsty youth. By the time I got to know my father, he bore virtually no resemblance to his 21-year-old self. He’d grown into a level-headed, optimistic, and incredibly selfless person. He was everything I aspire to be; I only hope I don’t have to join a cult to get there.

“My assignments have been feeling more punitive lately… discipline and discussion post.”

“I think I am incapable of paying attention to works of literature if they have cars in them.”

“Just say ‘balls’! It’s not hard.”

“If anything, bottoms are the Democrats.”

april 29, 2022

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NARRATIVE

Dearly Departed how ideas live and die

by mack ford Illustrated by joanne han It’s my favorite feeling: when a really good idea hits me. Almost like I’ve been dumped face-first in a cold bucket of water and the chill is traveling all the way down my back, yet I can’t help but grin.

And then I nurture the idea, stretch it out, and tug at the corners until it starts to develop. It grows and grows and then suddenly I’m left cradling a fullgrown idea.

And then I can’t seem to let it go. This little brainchild of mine has taken over my mind and my heart. Whenever it wanders into my brain, I feed it—breathe new life into it. I hold it close, become possessive and intensely protective. Without my care and guidance, after all, my precious idea might wilt; it might die.

This makes me sad, which is an odd reaction to thinking about the death of something so abstract, so conceptual, so very much not alive. But it’s true.

Thinkers die, so ideas must too.

I’ll admit, it sounds odd. But the metaphor of an idea as a real, honest-to-god, living, breathing person isn’t just a feature of my own overly imaginative mind. In fact, using metaphors that describe ideas as living people is a common feature of the modern English language. One might breathe new life into an idea; it may be their brainchild; an idea can live on, while another might be a dead end. To refer to ideas as people is to endow them with a certain weight.

We bring these ideas to life, help them develop and mature. And eventually, our ideas must die.

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, celebrated cognitive linguists and philosophers, wrote a book in the ’80s called The Metaphors We Live By. This book explores the ways that metaphors are tools for using our everyday experiences to understand more

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abstract concepts. For example, their theory asks us why we might use a metaphor like “He won her heart” instead of “She cast a spell over him.” The first phrase reveals how we talk about love as a battlefield. (e.g. He is known for his many rapid conquests. She fought for him, but his mistress won out.) The latter compares love to magic (e.g. I was entranced by him, but now the magic is gone.) Lakoff and Johnson admit that using these metaphors is not something that people tend to be aware of. Regardless, they can have a great impact on not only how we speak, but also how we act. We use metaphors to express and take ownership of our ideas.

We don’t just talk about our thoughts as people.

We actually create and develop ideas in a gestationlike process. We create them with care, and hold them close once we have created them; we become possessive over them.

On my first day of kindergarten, my mom cried––or so the family story goes. I was toddling to school, an enormous backpack tilting my tiny body backward. My mom held my hand as we made our way through the red gate, squeezing hard. I, of course, tossed off her hand and bounded down to the playground toward the bubbles. When I ask her about that day, she says the same thing. It’s hard work to raise a little kid, but you have to let them be active. You grew so much over so short a time, and it was incredible to see you take on a life of your own. I was so worried about you being safe but so excited to see you live.

If we apply a parental metaphor to an abstract concept, like an idea, we impart parental feelings onto the idea. For example, we tend to use life-giving metaphors with regard to ideas: He is the father of modern biology. Look at what his ideas have spawned.

His theory gave birth to many developments in physics. In using these metaphors, we imply that a good idea is like a child. An idea requires work to mature; ideas are active; ideas can develop over time; ideas can take on a life of their own; ideas can live; ideas can die.

When I was 12, I pulled my little sister out of the way of a car. We were standing outside our dance studio, dutifully waiting for our ride home on gravel that poked our feet through our tights, tap shoes in hand. My sister had wandered a few steps out onto the smoother concrete of the street, when suddenly a minivan flew toward us. A rush of air slammed into my face, and I lunged forward to grab the back of her leotard, yanking her back onto the sidewalk. I don’t remember the car ride home, or even what she said.

I just remember the cold terror that I felt at that moment when I thought my sister might die.

When we metaphorically compare ideas to people, we confer the same protectiveness and fear on them as I felt for my sister that day. For example, most great thinkers pray that their ideas will live on forever. Tragically, those ideas died off in the Middle Ages. That’s an idea we ought to resurrect. Where did you dig up that idea? These metaphors, which imply an idea can both live and die, hint that a good idea requires nourishment. Ideas depend on our dedication. Ideas must be cherished. Ideas demand sacrifice. Ideas can be mourned.

The people in my life are my biggest joy and my greatest frustration. I am jealous of them; I am intensely protective and endlessly proud. Through years of using unintentional metaphors, I have conferred these same sentiments on my ideas as well. I want to hold onto them, to help them grow and develop. I care about them deeply, and I am terrified that, without my care, they will wither.

Now, I am sitting in the rare volumes section of the library, surrounded by the dusty smell of books written by those who are long dead. Now, their ideas live only between fragile pages. Each idea was once faithfully, laboriously grown by someone who cared about it so deeply. Each idea was someone’s darling.

I imagine each book reaches out a little when the patrons walk by, begging to be picked up from that idea graveyard and flipped through so that just for a moment, it might be brought back to life.

NARRATIVE

Regret is a Four Letter Word my unfinished final love letter by kaitlan bui Illustrated by elliana reynolds How do you begin to articulate an end? Perhaps shakily. Or hesitantly. Perhaps with your heart on your sleeve, or else on the verge of tears. Perhaps, like me, you wouldn’t want to begin at all. Perhaps you can tell, even in these words, that I am trying my best to run away from goodbye.

I have been running away from a lot of things, if I’m being honest with you. About three weeks ago, I was running away from my thesis—I had been writing nonstop for days, with only a few hours of sleep in between. (At one point, I was so delirious I asked someone if their water bottle was a lotion dispenser.) So I ended up running up, out, and into a corner of the Salomon auditorium to watch a dance performance. I was still feverishly typing up a chapter (yes, on my phone) until I heard my name.

My name?

Someone is waving at me. I crane my neck to see a string of freshmen friends sitting mere feet away, all waving. I’m unable to join them—there isn’t enough space in their row—but one of them moves to sit next to me anyways. You don’t have to, I say, but in truth, it is nice to have someone do this. It’s nice to be a senior welcomed by freshmen. It’s strange too, and I realize I’ve become so accustomed to taking care of others that I forgot what it is like to be taken care of.

This is a good kind of strange, I decide.

Stranger still is the fact that I cried that night in the corner of Salomon. Not because of the friend who decided to sit next to me, or because of my thesis, or because of anything in particular. I just think my body is flooded with a feeling so unspeakable it has to find release through tears. As the music plays and the dancers tangle and untangle themselves onstage, my heart tangles and untangles itself too. I am tearing up because I’m going to miss this, I think to myself. I’m going to miss randomly bumping into strangers-turned-friends, who want to sit next to me; I’m going to miss the student productions and all the other valid reasons to procrastinate. I’m going to miss coming home to the lights on and sharing soggy lemon cake with my first and forever college friend.

There is nothing more college than this, I think to myself, as the lights dim and I whoop the name

of my housemate, who is now dancing to BTS on stage. Everyone in this room knows that the person next to them is also here for someone else—a friend performing, a friend sitting to their left, a friend who dragged them here even when they complained they had an assignment to finish. The funny thing about running away from everything is that in your wild escape, you realize you’re running toward something else. I guess that’s the point of running away, after all.

You run away from EverythingInGeneral in order to run toward Something, or Someone, who will hold You in particular.

During intermission, my friend asks a question that has not left me since: “Before you graduate, you have to tell me about all your regrets, okay?”

“Regrets?” I wonder aloud. “Wait—you only want to know about my regrets?”

We laugh at my question. We laugh even more because my friend is now regretting asking his question about regret—that’s not what he really meant, he’s sorry, oh no, haha. And there’s a recognition, at least on my part, that this laughter will end, too, that soon I’ll have to consider the question seriously.

So for three weeks now, I have been thinking about regret. What is it? What do I regret in these past four years? I have been asking my other senior friends these questions, as well as my mentors, and some of my professors too. Is there anything we wish we could have told our younger selves? Is there anything we regret? I guess these are the things we discuss with each other in order to articulate—to cope with—an end. Like my friends dancing on stage, I guess we all want to end our dance with a gesture to the crowd. We want to track the motif of music in the story we have lived. *** Some nights later I am washing the dishes with my floormate. “You know what,” I tell her.

“Sometimes I just wish I could talk to God face-toface. I wish I could just sit on the couch with him and chat.”

I imagine what the dialogue would be between God and me, and so I say aloud, “I’ve been

wondering how you looked, God. So I guess you fit on our couch.”

My floormate is laughing now, and then she is crying, and she tells me she doesn’t know why. I understand her entirely. “I guess I want to sit with God on the couch too,” she tells me.

But when I ask her, “What would you ask God if you were sitting on our couch?” she says she doesn’t know.

“What about you?”

“I don’t know either,” I say. “Maybe just, like, God, can you…hug me?”

This time we laugh until we’re both crying.

Later that night, we are both sprawled on the couch, munching on pretzels. I put my hand on my floormate’s knee—the same way I did during my first year when we lived together in New Pembroke 4— and I say this: “Julianne, I think since God can’t be here in person, he gave me you.”

I think about regret again. And then I think, there is never any regret in telling the people we love that we love them. *** “I worried a lot,” wrote Mary Oliver. …Will the garden grow, will the rivers flow in the right direction, will the earth turn as it was taught, and if not how shall I correct it?

Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven, can I do better?

Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows can do it and I am, well, hopeless.

Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it, am I going to get rheumatism, lockjaw, dementia?

Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing.

And gave it up. And took my old body and went out into the morning, and sang. *** I guess even God had to say goodbye. I guess even he had a Last Supper and a last kiss. And in one of his last conversations with his friends, even God asked them, “Do you love me? Do you love me more than these?” (John 21:15) I think he wanted to know if his friends loved him more than the fish they went to catch that morning, and the water those fish swam in. He wanted to know if they loved him—the real him—even more than their precious memories together.

We’re taught that God knows everything. And you know what’s funny? Even though he does—even though he knew his friends loved him—God still wanted to hear those three precious words. Three words, which, for some inexplicable reason, make us all feel like we can walk on water.

“You know everything,” his friend Peter replied to him, “you know that I love you.”

I think about regret again. And then I think, there is never any regret in telling the people we love that we love them. *** I suppose I still haven’t answered the question.

It’s because I’m good at deflection, I tell my friends— but if you really pay attention, you can see everything about me. I wear my heart on my sleeve, and right now my heart is still thinking about regret.

april 29, 2022

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ARTS & CULTURE So what do I regret in the past four years?

I guess I wish I found Pedestrian Bridge earlier. I wish I realized earlier how easy it is to wander through Providence under the care of blossoming trees. I wish I took myself a little less seriously earlier. I wish I had allowed myself to eat more spicy withs earlier. I wish I had found people and friendships earlier.

But not all of these things I can control. And all of these things, after four years, I have indeed found.

There is not really anything I regret, only things I nostalgically wish I had found earlier—simply because if I had, we would have spent more time together. Yet even then, I think it is for the best that I found these loves when I found them. If 20 million years ago the butterfly flew in a different direction do you think we would have met?

This is what Clint Smith asks in his poem “Chaos Theory”: …maybe we wouldn’t have even been people, maybe we wouldn’t have even been us, you know… maybe we would both be plants on opposite sides of the same coral reef, so that we could have been connected without ever having met… but what I mean to say is that it would have been such a tragedy if something happened that would have prevented me from meeting you like a butterfly who didn’t realize it was flying in the wrong direction. *** So maybe regret is the wrong word.

Regret is too imbued with guilt, sorrow, and anxiety—emotions I feel anything but. What I feel is gratitude. And did you know it’s neurologically impossible to be grateful and anxious at the same time? The neural pathways literally shut off; it’s one or the other.

In my favorite TV show as of late, 39, the main character says something like, “The stars are so pretty tonight it makes me sad.” I think I feel that.

A sad happiness. Maybe that is what gratitude feels like, maybe this is the wisdom of endings. I am overwhelmingly, achingly grateful for my past four years of college—for being able to build a home out of Brown, for being able to build a dance out of chaos. To be able to do these things with you, and you, and you.

I think when we say “regret,” what we really mean is that after all this time, we have realized the things we love—and we have realized, too, that those things have been loving us back all along and after all this time. Maybe we wish we had found them sooner, these places and these people. And then again, maybe it’s okay we didn’t. Maybe if we had met earlier, we wouldn’t have fallen in love after all.

I’d like to think that finding each other here and now makes our embrace warmer, more incredible, and even more undeserved. I’d like to think it was always supposed to be this way.

So when I think about regret, I’m not really thinking about regret at all. Just, I don’t want to say goodbye yet. Just, I love you, and I’m sorry it’s taken so long to realize it. I wish I loved you sooner.

I can’t change any of that, though.

So instead I will run toward you, now and forever, and I will refuse, and refuse, and refuse goodbye.

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Against Beauty

critiquing a campus valorization of aesthetics by madeline canfield Illustrated by connie liu @the_con_artist I am sitting in class with my hair limp down my back. It does not curve and it does not layer and it does not flutter. It sees my scalp for the chair that it is and sits there, unfashionably, without appeal.

I have lost my claw clip.

By lost, I mean I never owned one. I never particularly wanted one. One day I learned of their social importance by watching my beautiful friend perfectly fasten her hair with one, her stray strands spilling over the top of their encasement and cascading in tufts across her head. The claw clip was tortoiseshell, or maybe pastel. Wow, I thought. She looks incredible.

And this is true, and other people tell her this at times, and they say it to her the way they say it to many people who also look incredible: staring her straight in the eye, with a casual but insistent tone, because they wish for her to know that she has achieved something. The exchange happens as an affirmation of beauty’s centrality, in which the verbalized acknowledgement of the beauty is as significant as the reception of the compliment.

My friend looks incredible because prettiness is her natural state, but also now because this prettiness is expected. Her appearance boasts a confluence of the genetic and the assembled, the inherent and the intentional. She looks like how she’s supposed to look when she goes out in public. She looks like someone who will walk across campus and attract attention, turn heads— like someone who belongs.

To move with her coveted air of noticeability is to integrate seamlessly—remarkably—into the fray of individuals. This is not a contradiction, I assure you: being perceived with a positivity so accentuated and unique has become the central litmus test for acceptance. We look at people like my friend and we approve, because we know they are fulfilling a necessity. Everyone is beautiful here and we love it. Everyone is beautiful and this is lots of fun and this is good.

By we, yes I do mean us, and by here, yes I do mean here. Because this is not merely a condition that permeates Instagram and yoga studios and Netflix offerings, it is a culture endemic for Brown students, one that asserts itself from the red brick foundation of this school.

Beauty on its own is inherent. It’s natural and expected and random; it’s nice and fine and all that, sure. In its basic and pure state, beauty exists as a pleasure, but one that is valueless. People are attracted to the looks of others because aesthetics will always guide us and matter to us. But these aesthetics on their own do not constitute the absolute mode of exchange in the way we interact with one another.

In its most basic form, beauty exists as a phenomenon. We may touch it and we may see it and we may want it. We may uphold it and pursue it as a marker of our subjective attractions to others, and as a proponent of self-esteem. When beauty becomes lauded to the point of social pressure and obsession, however, it transcends beyond its position as an inhabitant of our lives to a position of sovereignty. Its totality in dictating social exchange indicates that beauty on our campus has indeed become amplified from a

simple phenomenon and now operates as a culture.

But beauty does not deserve glorification to this extent. And yet, beauty has become so valorized and dominant and constant that it is no longer just a phenomenon, as indefinable and unmarketable and subjective as attraction. Beauty has become a culture, and that’s where the problem arises, because culture expects you to abide by and perpetuate it. If your features (and tastes) do not fit into the mold of the dominant culture, then this mold aggressively encourages you to pursue an exclusive and demoralizing assimilation.

We see this because it manifests everywhere. I state that my friend is beautiful and we recognize this affirmation because we encounter its constant iterations, in every setting and moment. A day in my life runs as follows. I walk into the Ratty for breakfast and shudder at the ubiquity of 9 a.m. flawlessness, and I wonder if I should don a mask simply to avoid being sized up. I sit in class and listen to the duo in front of me tell each other how great each of them looks. I walk through the Main Green and feel the urge to rave about the girl with the long skirt splayed out on the grass. I pick up a copy of a campus publication and read a lighthearted evaluation of someone’s hotness. I stand in line for the bathroom at a party and hear strangers connect as they gush over each other’s gorgeousness. Whether we are telling the one who has captured our attention or simply conferring with our friend about the people we pass, this fixation on those who look “objectively” appealing pours out ceaselessly. I think everyone knows the presence of our campus obsession. Half the time, the first words we offer someone when we see them here are a validation of their appearance. “OMG you are soooo pretttyyyy!!!” And “Yeah, look at you today, so hotttt like that,” and even the simple “Hey I love the eyeliner/dress/hairstyle/randomway-your-shirt-happens-to-be-hanging-overyour-boobs-and-waist-today, it makes you look great.” We do not say this to the person wearing old jeans and a sweatshirt and large bags hanging beneath their eyes. Not because they are not attractive, but because they do not seem to care.

Their appearance is immaterial, not beholden to perception. Only the curated and vivacious deserve our attention.

The other day someone relayed an anecdote about leaders of a student organization she is involved in, who tried to ingratiate themselves to her by gossiping about another team member’s purported ugliness. She declined to participate in the degradation. She is a rarity, not simply because she displays kindness (open mockery of ugliness marks an extremity; mainstream beauty culture silently shuns plainness off to the margins, “ugliness” an ineffable stigma unbefitting of the “Hottest Ivy”). Unlike most, she confides her exhaustion with this need to adore beauty, to cast it around like a token that buys our eyes and our words and our favor, yet whose value remains bolstered only by constant promotion.

The problem arises when we attempt to ascribe unified, measurable meaning to an elusive medium that presents itself as a matter of both birth and preference. Some people have really

ARTS & CULTURE striking and lovely faces while others are quite plain and ordinary, c’est la vie; but at the same time, what is striking and what is ordinary is entirely unknowable, circumstantial, volatile.

It is given and it is socialized. So, by marketing beauty as important, we render something which is perennially immaterial into something inauthentically material: a commodity, one that imposes a hierarchy and expects conformity. We interact with beauty as if it is capital—something

Beauty is capital because it is the very articulation of capitalism. Phenomenon becomes culture becomes economy. We must all be hot and gorgeous and beautiful; anything less spoils our

we tell each other we must possess, that we must ostensibly strive to possess if we do not already.

Something actuated as a combination of birth and personal achievement (through actual wealthbased material products like the things we put on—or in—our bodies), yet something that only retains its value as long as some who pine for it cannot attain it.

tell you I have noticed it, I will not praise you for it because it is arbitrary and equivocal and unearned.

We are merely dealing with the subjectivity and selectivity of visuals. In its optimal form, beauty is relevant to our interactions, but beauty doesn’t mean anything.

Some days I wake up and stand in front of the mirror and will my reflection into obedience. I

riches and leaves us to duck our heads in shame.

I am not arguing for a greater inclusivity and democratization of beauty. I am saying that I do not want beauty to operate as a collectivelynegotiated value. I do not care if you look pretty, and though I may notice it and offer a kind word to

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Kyoko Leaman

“That kind of love is like a second brain, my neurons running about with a butterfly net scooping up thoughts to tell her later.”

—Siena Capone, “Oh, This Old Thing?”

04.09.21

“The goal is to metabolize my mistakes and regrets and convert them into life lessons. Fuel futurity.

Maybe then I’ll lead a life of will and intention.”

—Julian Towers, “Nerve-ous Breakdown,” 03.13.20

FEATURE Managing Editor Alice Bai Section Editors Andrew Lu Ethan Pan ARTS & CULTURE Managing Editor Emma Schneider Section Editors Joe Maffa Sam Nevins

examine every sag or lift or swell or bump or splash of color that possibly developed in the night. I celebrate the excitement of having a pretty face day, and I chastise the inadequacy of a bad one. Is there anything as immutable as my own face? And yet, I have learned to fixate on the almost imperceptible minutiae of every momentary shift, as I hope upon hope that each morning it arrives to me in a good enough form to be witnessed. This ritual exhausts me. I do not mean we shouldn’t enjoy clothing or getting ready or self-presentation. I do not mean we shouldn’t offer sincere compliments when individual circumstances move us to do so. I mean we should not speak of hotness as if it is essential.

We must rearticulate the distinction between beauty as feature and beauty as virtue. I would like to just be content to be.

NARRATIVE Managing Editor Siena Capone Section Editors Danielle Emerson Leyton Ho LIFESTYLE Managing Editor Kimberly Liu Section Editors Tabitha Lynn Sarah Roberts HEAD ILLUSTRATOR Connie Liu

Want to be involved?

Email: kyoko_leaman@brown.edu!

COPY CHIEF Aditi Marshan Copy Editors Katheryne Gonzalez Eleanor Peters Tierra Sherlock SOCIAL MEDIA HEAD EDITORS Kelsey Cooper Chloe Zhao Tabitha Grandolfo Natalie Chang

CO-LAYOUT CHIEFS Jiahua Chen Briaanna Chiu Layout Designers Alice Min Angela Sha Caroline Zhang Gray Martens STAFF WRITERS Dorrit Corwin Lily Seltz Alexandra Herrera Olivia Cohen Joyce Gao Zoe Creane Danielle Emerson Kaitlan Bui Julia Vaz Liza Kolbasov Marin Warshay

april 29, 2022

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LIFESTYLE

Me, Myself, and I

an extrovert's defense of time to ourselves by lily seltz Illustrated by jeffrey tao

Last semester I cracked my phone and dropped my Andrews pho just because I would not sit down alone in a dining hall. I’d just gotten out of a class that met from 6:30 to 8 p.m. (awful, I know) and I had a four-page Spanish essay to write before the clock struck midnight. There was no time for the typical quick-dinner-turned-hour-long-sit-down with my friends that day (besides, they all grumbled about eating so late) but I needed fuel, so off to Andrews I went.

I stood in line for 10 to 15 minutes, scrolling through Instagram with the performative reverence usually reserved for final paper comments or emergency advice threads in the “shenanigans” group chat. I would not look over my shoulder, I would not stare at the ground, I would not look bored or aimless, or worst of all, look alone.

At last I picked up my meal, grabbed some napkins and chopsticks, and poured myself a doublecardboard cup of Earl Gray tea. Then I wavered. My hands were awfully full: I could just sit down and eat at a nearby table and spare myself a lot of risk and trouble.

Nope! I would not. Instead I would carry my cardboard bowl and my cardboard cup, each filled with near-boiling water and covered either by a barely cinched-on piece of Reynold’s tinfoil or an extremely flimsy plastic lid, all the way through Andrews, across Pembroke Quad and under the MoChamp arch. Then I would fumble for my wallet inside my tote bag while trying to balance the pho and the tea on one arm; pull out my phone instead, notice the tea start to tip-tiptip—reach out to steady it, promptly drop my phone onto the concrete, face-down, swear loudly, kneel down to assess the damage, and let the pho and the tea release their sizzling contents all over the pavement.

In what world was that mess preferable to 15 minutes of solitude at Andrews dining hall?

Brown’s world, I guess. *** It wasn’t always like this. Sometimes I think back to the three or four years in middle and high school, pre-Covid, when on weekdays my parents were both in the office until relatively late, and my sister had school or piano or dance until the mid-afternoon at least. Once or twice a week, when I didn’t have my own track practices or orchestra rehearsals or so on, I’d come home after my last class to an empty apartment.

I’d roll up the blinds, put on some Adele (cut me some slack, it was 2018), drop a slice of cinnamon bread in the toaster, and work or lounge in the light-filled living room in utter solitude.

After a seven-hour day of babbling to teachers in class and to friends for every second of our fourminute passing periods or at lunch, it was a good and necessary break. I never for a minute considered that I was doing something wrong, that my momentary solitude was “sad,” or that the peace and calm I felt was really abject loneliness suppressed. *** What makes college different? I’m still more or less the same person who craved her solitary meals and moments in high school. But here at Brown, the only time I really feel the same certainty and relaxation that I did at home in New York is when I’m off campus. On long walks through India Point 8

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Park, doing errands in Wayland Square, or running on Blackstone Boulevard, I can be sure I won’t run into anyone I know. That means I don’t need to worry about being observed by others in my aloneness, or being subject to the judgments they might pass on it.

That kind of privacy from our peers isn’t available on campus, where pretty much every space is a public or shared one. Instead of a dining room, we have dining halls. Instead of a living room, we have lounges. This lack of personal space is especially acute for younger students, who are required to use the meal plan, who overwhelmingly live in doubles, and whose common spaces are shared by neighbors we didn’t choose and don’t necessarily like or trust.

But a lack of privacy wouldn’t matter if students (like me) didn’t participate in stigmatizing solitude.

Why do we? I think it’s a consequence of another unique attribute of college—constant access, constant proximity. Take this example: Even in my dorm when my roommate is out and no one can see me, I can see, and hear, at any time of day—five in the morning to, well, five in the morning—all the posses of students as they round the bend from Pembroke Quad to Cushing Street. Even closer at hand are the 30-ish people living in my hall, just a door-knock away.

The implication is that fun—in the very specific sense of “direct human interaction with someone my age”—is very much available, and therefore there’s no excuse not to partake in it. Why would anyone be alone? Solitude can no longer be chalked up to geography or money or a busy schedule. In college, you can do everything in the world with another person. Eat meals, study, walk from class to class, watch Netflix, play music, sleep. So if you’re not doing those things with other people, there must be something wrong. You’ve failed. You’re different.

But God, what if I don’t want to be surrounded by other college students all day? *** For the first few weeks of college, that thought never would have occurred to me. I was only a month or two removed from a senior year of high school spent almost entirely online. Quarantine starved us of other people. But let’s take a step back.

If you’re like me, during the pre-vaccine eternity of 2020 and part of 2021, time spent in the physical company of other human beings—especially your loved ones, but even fellow grocery-shoppers or dogwalkers or subway station buskers count too—was so intensely precious that you convinced yourself that you couldn’t possibly get enough of it. But there is a

big difference between something being good, and it being good all of the time, or being the only thing that is good.

During quarantine, yes, being with friends was leagues better than basically anything else. But now that we’ve returned to something closer to normalcy, I would argue that the version of aloneness that’s available to us now is much preferable to the one we experienced in that earlier, monotonous era. A day at home in quarantine was boring, routine, and really, truly alienated from other people. All of our lives and spaces were steeped, to various extents, with uncertainty and fear; and it was this fear that compelled us to stay home. Not just for a day, but for months, over and over again; each day of solitude nestled between two more spent entirely alone.

A day alone here, now, is nothing like that. A day alone here involves nearly unrestricted freedom of movement, including into spaces that are filled with people, even if they’re people I don’t know. Isn’t it amazing to be anonymous in a busy space, to watch and to absorb without any pressure to play a part or prove belonging? Movement means variation, which is the antithesis of boredom—plus, while the hundredth day of quarantine was the hundredth day I’d spent alone, a day or an hour by myself here is nearly guaranteed to be preceded and followed by days and hours that are filled with people.

And the flipside of this issue of constant access means that aloneness is nearly always a choice and never a mandate. To choose to take time to yourself feels amazing, I promise you. *** There’s no changing Brown’s highly public landscape now, and even if we could, I wouldn’t want us to. But what I do want us to do is to make the spaces that we share more comfortable for those who prefer to be by themselves. To respect each other’s choices, to overcome our judgments—they might lend us a moment of comparative pleasure but they will always come back to bite us—and to stop assuming that to be alone is to be lonely, too.

Loneliness most essentially implies a lack of control, a feeling of adriftness. To be lonely is to navigate the world with no anchor and no oars. But to choose to be alone is the opposite. It implies a deep sense of security, and the will and capability to make independent decisions, sometimes unpopular ones, out of a sensitivity toward what you need. And that, to me, is powerful.

A Brown Student’s Starter Pack (Spring Edition) by selina Liu Illustrated by John Gendron

Before moving to New England, I thought seasonal depression was just a saying. The raging wind and episodic chills seem to have wiped the idea of warmth from my head (Have I ever been warm before?). It was not until two weeks ago when I was greeted by a blossoming sakura tree that I recalled the existence of “good weather” and the joy it brings me. I was all at once overwhelmed by the arrival of the overdue spring. This mindset might explain the clustered crowds on the Main Green each time the temperature is tangentially balmy: Maybe we do celebrate the arrival of spring like a festival. So, here is a non-exhaustive starter pack for you to join in on the spring fiesta before it slips away!

The spring fit!

The winter cold completely destroyed my spirit for dressing meticulously and left me in sweatpants and hoodies, but it’s finally time to change up the game. Get your hands on a lighter palette to match the blue sky and fresh greens! White and cream are always a classic way to place yourself in harmony with the blossoming campus (and it never fails in pictures), while bold patterns or highly saturated colors are loud statements that characterize your own acknowledgment of spring’s arrival. Your options also open up as it gets warmer: dresses, denim jackets, skirts, shorts, shirts, sunglasses—the list goes on. Still feel a lack of inspiration? Just go out to the Main Green on a sunny day: There will be a spectacular fashion show put up by your fellow fabulous classmates.

I spring, you spring, we all spring for ice cream Spring is not complete without digging into that first scoop of ice cream on a waffle cone under the

blazing sun. Aside from the classic Ben & Jerry’s on Thayer and popsicles from CVS, here are some of my recent discoveries that are definitely worth a visit.

1. The smoothie machine in the Metro Mart sells smoothies of flavors ranging from acai to Snickers. You can choose the consistency of the smoothie as you place the cup onto a holder to be lifted up. The machine will then, like any other interactive machine for display, make loud blending noise that raises your anticipation for an icy cup of joy.

2. Kow Kow and Like No Udder are two amazing ice cream places on Ives Street. The first place lavishly combines hot egg waffles with spoonfuls of ice cream and dazzling toppings, while the latter serves creative flavors of vegan ice cream such as unicorn poop, key lime pie, and Thai tea. Make sure to savor the ice cream before it melts in the agitated spring air!

A waterproof and good-looking picnic blanket This is, I would say, the golden ticket to a nice spring day at Brown. The unfolding of a nice picnic blanket is a necessary routine that establishes your temporary domain on the Green and an open invitation to your dear friends. It is also a place where all the mundane everyday work can happen, elevated as you listen to the music from a speaker playing from a blanket 30 feet away from you. Transform your dining hall food into a picnic, bring your readings out, pet the random fluffy dogs that walk by you, or simply watch the breeze comb through the fresh buds dotting the branches—what could be a more ontheme way to celebrate a spring day here at Brown?

Extensions exist for a reason The quintessential part of being a college student is learning how to use your time wisely. When it’s the fifth time in a day you hear someone say “I don’t want to do school anymore” or “I am so ready for summer,” you know you’re not the only one who’s mentally and physically drained as the semester reaches an end.

Instead of scrolling through your phone anxiously with a blank Word document or untouched problem set open in front of you, you might as well take a walk on campus or have a nice cooking session with your friends to recharge your battery before the final push. Asking for an extension might give you just the right amount of rest that better prepares you for the upcoming shenanigans. april 29, 2022

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