4 minute read
I WISH THE WORLD ENDED IN 2012
Picture this. The year is 2012. For many of you, that looks like an elementary school classroom filled with preteens dreading the looming threat of middle school. A year of unparalleled pop culture moments: Psy’s “Gangnam Style” replacing Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” as the number one hit, the Gale and Peeta feud erupting post the release of the Hunger Games movie, and Flappy Bird launching on the iPhone 4. My fifth-grade experience was defined by Tiger Beat posters of Justin Bieber lining my walls, leggings layered under the smallest Hollister shorts you’ve ever seen, and afternoons spent gossiping with my girls while watching the final season of Wizards of Waverly Place. But I was afraid this would all swiftly change, as the end of the world was upon us. No, not from climate change or a world war, but a scarier third thing: the Mayan doomsday. According to the Mayan calendar, the world was going to end on December 21, 2012. The resident emo boy had warned us for months. So, on the eve of the big day, my best friend Maddie and I packed our most precious belongings into a shoebox, just in case the world really did end and our cardboard box full of useless junk somehow made it out the other side for the next intelligent species to find and study. We were going to be cemented in history. I would be the next “first human” found to be named Lucy. Included in our trunk of trinkets were our brightly colored flip phones, a dELiA*s magazine, Lip Smacker lip gloss, my favorite pair of ballet flats, last year’s yearbook, both of our diaries (cataloging all the major drama and villains of our entire grade), and the infamous “like web” meticulously detailing all of our grade’s intricately entangled romances. Naturally, fifth-grade me was unable to register the chokehold the patriarchy/ male gaze/heteronormativity (and all those other good buzzwords) had on me. Writing down all the hot gossip and judging the poor fashion choices of my male peers (muscle tanks and shark tooth necklaces) in my floral print diary was the deepest introspection I was capable of at the time. I had yet to be worn down by the incompetence of teenage boys and the horrors of teenage girlhood. I had yet to question my main character syndrome; I thought my surviving end-of-the-world belongings would be an absolute treat for the next generation to find. I was almost disappointed when the world didn’t end that night and I had to take apart the contents of our treasure chest.
The experience of curating my time capsule left me continuously thinking about what, if anything, would be left behind in an end-of-the-world scenario.
And what would these objects say about us? Now, my shoebox would contain my cracked iPhone X, a Jellycat or two, my favorite thrifted pieces, my hot pink digital camera, and a handful of depressing journals. But what would that reveal about me to the imagined next generation of life? And why do I care about how I’m perceived by others even from the grave? What have I lost by trying to make my life appealing to the imagined viewer? Being a piece of media to consume—Truman style—has been a guiding force for me since the ripe age of 11, convincing me that my crush could see me 100% of the time via hidden cameras (I can confirm from TikTok that this is not a unique experience). Now, 21-year-old me is convinced that my mental breakdowns and depressive episodes are the next hit segment on the Truman Show. I sprawl across my bed, legs dangling, eyes puffy, taking selfies in the golden hour lighting as I rot for the third consecutive day. I wear mascara so that when I cry it will smudge down my face in a hot and pretty and desirable way. And I am not alone in this. My favorite internet girl cult classic, “standing on the shoulders of complex female characters,” puts it best: “we rationalize our own suffering through the romanticization of those who have suffered before us and, in turn, we provide a blueprint for the hot-girl suffering of those after.” So, I am in my fleabag era (derogatory)! My pain is for consumption so that I don’t have to really feel it. My unhinged, glorified diary entries are for future generations to feast their eyes on the trials and tribulations of my adolescent years. The need to create a legacy that people will want to consume and a life that constantly appeals to the imagined (almost always male) viewer has caused me one too many headaches to be worth it. “We consume so much, now, that perhaps we don’t know what it means to exist as something unsellable. I had to give up journaling because I couldn’t stop writing for the people who would read it after I was dead.” Although my fifth-grade diary was written purely for the consumption of future me and others, some of my most entertaining work is created under these conditions. The panopticon has left me constantly thinking about how I will be perceived even when I’m long gone. Maybe my legacy would have been better off ending in 2012 with the rest of my charmed adolescence. Although my diaries post childhood teeter the incredibly fine line between distressing and hilarious, that’s a legacy I’d be content leaving behind.
WRITER LUCY PERRONE GRAPHIC DESIGNER EMMA PETERSON DREAMING IN DENIM
