The Guide: October 7, 2022

Georgetown Marriage Pact Returns

Grace Blendonohy and Maeve Pierson Hoya Staff Writers

Strangers to Friends to Lovers: The Marriage Pact Strikes the Hilltop for a Third Time

This year’s Marriage Pact inspired complaints about its mysterious algorithm, as well as concern over the organization’s new location-based matching app.

Grace Blendonohy and Maeve Pierson Hoya Staff Writers

On Sept. 19, two twin sisters eagerly await ed an email.

This email would contain the name of an other student on campus who they should marry, should they both be single at age 30.

After the excruciating wait, at around 9:30 p.m., Caitlin Schwarz (NHS ’26) and her sis ter opened the email.

The twins matched with each other.

All around campus, similar stories unfold ed. Students opened their match emails to find strange matches — friends, ex-lovers and twin flames, literally — all designed by an algorithm.

The Marriage Pact consists of approxi mately 50 lifestyle and personal questions,

and asks students to rank their preferences from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree.”

An algorithm then matches students in terms of long-term compatibility, based on their responses. The results can vary from 99% compatibility to around 65% depending on who fills out the pact in a given year.

“We can’t promise you a match made in heaven, but we can promise a match made via groundbreaking algorithms and a little linear algebra,” the Marriage Pact website reads.

Despite matching with her twin, Schwarz said she was not upset by the fact that she did not get a romantic match.

“I thought it was funny and fun. I would do it again, to see if we would match again,” Schwarz told The Hoya.

Despite almost half of all Georgetown Uni

versity students participating in the pact, stu dents have mixed emotions about the pact’s success. Some question whether the pact was successful in meeting expectations this year, and others are skeptical of the future direc tion the organization may be taking following the recent announcement of a new feature.

A Match Made in Heaven

Filling out a 10-minute questionnaire seems like a small price to pay for the reward of a soulmate.

Stanford students and co-founders of the Mar riage Pact, Liam McGregor and Sophia SterlingAngus, designed the pact for a market design eco nomics course. Although the pair never intended it to leave the classroom, five years later, the pact now exists on over 70 college campuses across the country.

Filling out the Marriage Pact has become a semesterly tra dition on campus. Yet many students noted problems with its algorithm, such as match ing friends or even siblings — some participants even doubt whether it helps foster actual relationships.

COURTESY MARRIAGE PACT

“The Georgetown Marriage Pact is a special tradi tion — of course we are fond of it! For the third year, we figured, why not try something a little extra?” McGregor wrote to The Hoya.

The pact, which came to Georgetown’s campus in 2021, has become an exciting, strange and in some cases frustrating event. Last month, about 40% of the student body participated.

According to Piper Englert (SFS ’23), who is part of the team responsible for creating and distribut ing the pact at Georgetown, the pact is formulated with questions determined to be specifically rel evant to Georgetown students. For example, the team responsible for creating and disseminating Georgetown’s pact added questions about social and political activism, given the nature of George town’s campus.

To participate, students must fill out a ques tionnaire asking them to rank their agreement on particular statements on a scale of one to seven. Questions range from political beliefs to long-term relationship goals to how smart students feel com pared to their peers.

In an era where more than half of Americans (54%) say that relationships that begin on a dating site or app are just as successful as those that begin in person, the idea of meeting a future partner us ing an algorithmic matching system seems far from ludicrous.

As a member of the original team that brought the Marriage Pact to Georgetown, Englert said there are a variety of reasons students are motivated to complete the pact: belief in soulmates, hopes of matching with a crush or simply out of curiosity.

“Some people believe in soulmates and some people don’t, but I think everyone kind of has that, ‘Oh I wonder if there is a perfect person for me.’ You never know when you might walk past someone you might fall in love with,” Englert said in an inter view with The Hoya.

Sabrina Shaffer (SFS ’25) said she filled out the pact for the second time this year because she had a fun time doing it last year and enjoys the energy it brings to campus.

“I think it’s interesting and it generates buzz. Maybe it could be successful, but I just think it’s kind of a fun thing,” Shaffer told The Hoya.

However, despite some students completing the pact for enjoyment rather than in serious consid eration of a long-term partner, the questions seem to get at issues that are genuinely important to stu dents — as if they were looking for a more serious relationship, Shaffer said.

“I think the questions are really good. It’s the best you can kind of do on paper. It can’t measure actual interpersonal interaction, but for just being ques tions, I think it does a good job,” Shaffer said.

Filling out the Marriage Pact is voluntary, so it makes sense that those who filled it out seem to see value in its presence. However, not everyone feels the same about the concept of “friend matches,” which proved to be a disappointment for some stu dents during the most recent pact.

Friend-Zoned

The Marriage Pact algorithm does not know who students’ friends are, who they

have dated in the past, or who they are relat ed to, which leaves all of these options on the table for matches, should they be compatible.

Several hundred heterosexual women who completed the questionnaire this year re ceived an ideal “friend match,” rather than a romantic match. Georgetown’s undergraduate gender ratio — 43% male students and 57% fe male students on campus — and a speculated higher data security concern among men ac cording to Englert meant that many hetero sexual female students and homosexual male students recieved an ideal “friend match” this year rather than a romantic match.

Consequently, many students who filled out the pact with the expectation that they would receive the name of someone with whom they are romantically compat ible ended up receiving friend matches that didn’t align with their sexual identity.

Englert said these strange and frustrating matches — such as twin sisters — keep the excitement of the pact alive.

“Part of the drama is part of the fun,” Englert said.

Other students, like Noelle Robinson (COL ’25), said it was disappointing to receive a friend match when the pact promised a po tential romantic match.

“I was hoping that I would find my prince charming, and I didn’t necessarily achieve that goal,” Robinson told The Hoya. “I actu ally knew my match — he lived on my floor.”

“When I got the initials, I was like no way: it is gonna be him. I found out that it was him, and we joked about it. It was a good laugh. We were already friends,” Robinson said.

It goes without saying that Schwarz and Robinson were not looking to ignite a spark with their matches — yet others found themselves actually seeking something more with their matches.

For instance, Ben Calvert (COL ’24) said he went on a few dates with his 2021 Marriage Pact match, though they never ended up in a long-term relationship.

“I probably would have met her in passing, just like quick intros, but not to the extent that I met her through the Marriage Pact,” Calvert told The Hoya

For those disappointed by a friend match, a new Marriage Pact feature introduced shortly after the release of initial matches may provide hope for romance.

Marriage Pact 2.0: Mixing Things Up

Following the initial release of matches, the organization sent a follow-up email to students about a new location-based app, which has been met with suspicion.

With the new app Soulmate Radar, if par ticipants consent, Marriage Pact will send them a notification, to which they have four minutes to respond, when they walk past a potential match. This requires students to complete another questionnaire and consent to the pact using location services.

According to Englert, this new feature is

COURTESY MARRIAGE PACT

This year, the Marriage Pact also released a new locationbased feature that sends users a notification if they pass a match on the street, prompting concerns about safety and data privacy.

the brainchild of McGregor, the original cocreator of the Marriage Pact, and currently Georgetown is the only school where the new feature is available. “We made this beta so it’s only available for people at George town,” the Georgetown Marriage Pact said in an email sent to students who filled out the initial pact.

“Soulmate Radar is cut from similar cloth as the Georgetown Marriage Pact, but it is its own thing, at the end of the day. You can totally participate in one without the other,” McGregor said in the email.

While Englert thinks the new feature has a lot of potential, not all users feel so positive.

For example, Calvert said the app might make interactions awkward rather than authentic.

“It’s just so weird because like you walk by someone and like, you’re just casually stroll ing down to Lau and then you get a notifica tion that hey, you have four minutes to like try to reach out to this person,” Calvert said.

Other students, like Robinson, are reluc tant to enroll in the new feature because of privacy concerns.

“I feel like that is definitely an invasion of privacy. I don’t want Marriage Pact knowing my whereabouts,” Robinson said.

The Marriage Pact’s website assures par ticipants their data will not be shared. The website states that they are firmly against

advertising and selling users’ data.

“As fourth amendment fans, we care a lot about privacy ourselves — so we designed Soulmate Radar to be as private as possible, from the start,” McGregor said in his email.

However, some students remain skeptical about the tracking aspect.

For instance, Shaffer said tracking her makes her uncomfortable.

“I don’t like apps that track your loca tion. Like, I don’t have Find My Friends, like I don’t like apps where they are physically tracking your location,” Shaffer said.

Robinson said she was concerned that the new feature is straying from its initial purpose.

“I definitely think the Marriage Pact is be coming too big for their purpose,” Robinson said. “The Marriage Pact is something that people do kind of like either as a joke or to find a lovemate, and I don’t think that the lo cation thing is really going to fulfill either of those things that people use it for.”

Despite students’ irks, Englert said that the pact, regardless of any new apps or programs by the organization, will always maintain relevance to those seeking their special someone.

“If you have a crush on someone, you hope you get them. Here is your way of getting to know someone — and having an excuse to reach out to them,” Englert said.

All Things Go Dazzles Even in the Rain MUSIC FESTIVAL

@ALLTHINGSGO/TWITTER

All Things Go — an annual indie music festival just 40 minutes outside D.C. — was a spectacular, serene experience that created a magical night of music for audience members.

Sofia Wolinski Hoya Staff Writer

Dewy, forested and mystical, the All Things Go music festival didn’t let horrible weather prevent a magical day of electric, transformative performances.

Hosted at the Merriweather Post Pavilion, the indie music festival took place Oct. 1, 2022. The festival hosted Lucy Dacus, Mitski, Bleachers and Lorde, amongst smaller, indie artists.

Tucked into a wooded area in Columbia, Maryland, the venue managed to accommodate 20,000 fans while still maintaining an intimate vibe. Fans arrived armed with ponchos and um brellas to brave the rain for their favorite artists. While waiting for the bigger names, fans stood in excruciatingly long lines for their overpriced chicken tenders to hold them over.

Fans could easily walk to and from the two stages: the Pavilion and the Chrysalis.

In the Pavillion, fans were able to get a close view from the pit, relax in the reserved seating

area, climb up multiple flights of stairs to view from above or even watch from the grassy area be hind the reserved seats.

On the other hand, the Chrysalis felt more like a modern art exhibition, literally resembling the hard outer casing of a larva during its metamor phosis into a moth or butterfly. Bright green and arch shaped, the stage was almost as entranc ing as the artists performing on it. Peach Pit per formed the heartbreaking “Shampoo Bottles” at the Chrysalis stage, which had the entire crowd singing along in unison.

One of the standout performances was given by folk-rock artist Lucy Dacus during her last song, “Night Shift.” The entire crowd sang along and the live screen alternated between her strumming her guitar and clips of the audience tearing up.

Indie-rock darling Mitski followed Dacus and enthralled the audience with her angsty hits.

Wearing a ghost-like dress consisting of multiple layers of white fabric, she leaped, kicked, punched and even theatrically collapsed to the ground. Am plified by the commitment and intentions of her

supporting musicians, Mitski delivered an unfor gettable performance to all present.

The final performance from pop star Lorde did not disappoint. Her ethereal presence cap tivated the audience, especially as rain driz zled from the dark sky. Her stage consisted of a large ladder towering over a circular prop that emanated multicolored lights, resembling the sun, a nod to her most recent studio album “Solar Power.” Lorde traveled all over the stage, but she looked most magical standing on top of the ladder or in the sun-like enclosure where only her silhouette was illuminated.

She stopped periodically to chat with the audi ence and offer words of encouragement or past experiences. She jokingly mentioned swimming in the Potomac, referencing her recent blow-up on Twitter after mentioning the experience at a con cert in Washington, D.C., earlier this fall.

Her words of encouragement struck deep, at least to a college-aged audience, and provided some much-needed inspiration. She spoke of feeling disillusioned about the future and how

it is necessary to imagine there is a “little piece of grass” waiting for everyone somewhere in the future. She even got off the stage and walked through the front row of her cheering fans during the first half of the performance.

Lorde would follow her talks with the audience by performing absolutely gut-wrenching songs such as “Liability” and “Ribs.” During the perfor mance of “Ribs,” she shared that she wrote the song when she was only 15 years old and invited the audience to reminisce back to their 15-yearold selves alongside her. Listening to her haunting voice while wrapped in layers of clothes to protect against the constant drizzle was a transformative experience and the perfect end to a long day.

Despite long lines, expensive food and dismal weather, the ticket price was more than worth it. In a way, the cloudiness of the day brought every one in attendance closer together, bonding over their favorite artists despite the drawbacks. With performers pulling at heartstrings and creating in delible spectacles for the crowd, it’s safe to say that All Things Go was a roaring success.

How to Find the Perfect Healthy Breakfast on Campus

Sophia Williams Guide Columnist

to alter these tips to fit your specific meal plan.

Hi, Hoyas — welcome to wellness!

As a freshly formed gym rat, I’m here to give you the inside scoop on group fitness classes, eating healthily with DIY recipes and taking care of yourself mentally. I will single-handedly attend every workout class and scope out the healthiest food on the campus meal plan. Whether you’re looking for a starting point to wellness at Georgetown University or you’re a seasoned gymgoer, look no further!

To start off this wellness journey, I will cover the best Georgetown breakfast tips, including healthy DIY recipes I’ve discovered and my favorite nutritious eating spots within the meal plan. As a disclaimer, I’m vegan, but take these tips with a grain of salt if you have allergies to items like nuts or soy! Even if your diet is not plant based, feel free

First, The Table at Leo’s has “Plant Power,” a completely vegan station that offers endless choices of meals. The variety is perfect for someone with an expansive food palate, but if one of these meals isn’t your favorite, you’re out of luck for that day.

My recommendation for “Plant Power” is to look at the menu online before going to Leo’s. If you’re an “Oatgurt” person, you can check when “Plant Power” offers yogurt for breakfast and grab a few containers to go. Otherwise, you can always make yourself a bagel with vegan cream cheese — potentially from Call Your Mother — or head upstairs for Whisk’s vegan pumpkin or banana bread.

For bagel fans, I recommend Einstein Bros. Bagels on the second floor of Car Barn. I like to use a meal exchange to get a strawberry-banana smoothie and a bagel. However, they don’t carry vegan cream cheese, so I use my own.

For smoothie lovers, I have recommendations for you, too! First, The Corp’s Uncommon Grounds

NEW RELEASES

By Nikhil Nelson

has a variety of fruit smoothies. However, if you’re someone who loves green smoothies or creating the perfect, personalized concoction, I would strongly recommend investing in a blender or adding one to your holiday wish list. I got one, and it changed my life!

My favorite smoothie recipe includes one cup of frozen spinach, one banana, half a cup of mango, half a cup of pineapple and one cup of almond milk. Somehow, the fruit cancels the spinach flavor out to form a delicious and beautiful green mixture that leaves you feeling healthy and accomplished.

Let’s say that you’ve gotten your blender. How do you get your ingredients?

The first option is to journey by foot or GUTS bus to Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods or Safeway and purchase your ingredients. If you want to stay on campus, I have another option for you. This one requires you to be resourceful: you can buy almond milk and fruit from Vital Vittles. If you’re in a pinch, you can substitute water for plant-based milk.

For vegetables, you can find spinach, kale

and all your other typical smoothie vegetables at either Leo’s or Epicurean and Co.’s salad bar. At Epi’s, you can fill your container — covered by meal exchange — to the brim with these vegetables and freeze them. For bananas and other fruit, keep a lookout for when downstairs Leo’s has bananas, and recruit your friends to grab extras for you. Then, you can cut them up and freeze them. You can use this method for any other coveted fruit that your smoothies require.

My last healthy breakfast DIY recipe is overnight oats: You can buy the ingredients from Vital Vittles, or buy it pre-made at various Corp locations. As long as you have measuring cups and a container, you can make yourself breakfast for a week. If you’re feeling generous, perhaps you could share with your roommate and “pay” them back for grabbing extra bananas!

I hope these tips gave you some healthy eating inspiration. There are plenty more to come; with this column, I hope to document my entire wellness journey. Feel free to follow along as you take yours! Happy healthy eating.

ERIKA HAYASAKI ‘SOMEWHERE SISTERS’

This captivating new book takes readers through the lives of two sisters born in Vietnam in 1998, but separated when one is adopted and raised in Chicago. In addition to being a fascinating tale, the book raises larger, more general questions about adoption and how identity is shaped by both up bringing and birthplace.

FREDDIE GIBBS

‘$OUL $OLD $EPARATELY’

Freddie Gibbs, the longtime independent artist and hip-hop sensation, released his major label debut last week. Distributed by Warner Bros. and featuring hit singles like “Too Much,” the al bum showcases Freddie’s love for R&B and his vocal prowess.

SOLVAN NAIM ‘MO’

This fall, Palestinian American comedian Moham med Amer stars in a new Netflix series that follows the story of an immigrant family in Houston strug gling to gain citizenship and fit in. The story, based on Amer’s actual life, speaks powerfully to the im migrant experience and succeeds in mixing humor with more serious topics like Islamophobia in the United States.

EDWARD BERGER

‘ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT’

Fans of historical movies will be pleased when “All Quiet on the Western Front” hits select theaters on October 7 and Netflix on Oct. 28. Based on the classic novel by Erich Maria Remarque, the film takes place in the brutal trenches of World War I, where a young and naive German soldier wit nesses the stark reality of war.

Kid Cudi’s ‘Entergalactic’ DisappointsFans, Shows Off the Same Old Sights

“Entergalactic” isn’t the worst effort of Kid Cudi, but it’s certainly not the best. With cliche lyrics, mellow beats and unoriginal ideas, Cudi failed to successfully evolve his sound.

suit. Look no further than the original “Enter Galactic (Love Connection Part 1)” on Cudi’s “Man on the Moon III: The Chosen,” where he proudly raps the painfully uncomfortable lines: “Because your voice is angelesque (aye) / I want to kiss you on your space below your navelette / The taste that you keep neat, so moist like a towelette.” Try saying that out loud without laughing.

On “Entergalactic,” thankfully, there are no bars as absurd — but instead, Cudi’s focus on writing from the perspective of his char acter turns his rapping into vague, boring cliches about emotions. His definition of love seems to be straight from a middle schooler’s love letter, as displayed in the song “In Love,” where he delivers the cringeworthy line, “Never have I seen someone so pretty, wow / it’s pretty, wow, crazy.”

Cudi’s blunt discussion of loneliness and depression is specifically evident through out “In Love,” which starts with an elongated sigh into the microphone and ends with him yet again lamenting how he is the “lonely” man. The whining, “why, why, why” chorus of “She’s Looking For Me” is representative of the whole album: a maudlin but banal atmo sphere of emotions that leaves the listener feeling empty.

Ironically, the most enjoyable part of “En tergalactic” is “Livin’ My Truth,” where Cudi raps some of the more evocative lyrics on the album over a sample of Al Green’s “Sim ply Beautiful,” immediately invoking Kanye West comparisons.

Gaang Choi Hoya Staff Writer

For over a decade, Kid Cudi has champi oned the “lonely stoner” he referenced in “Day ‘N’ Nite,” his first hit single: the misun derstood, emotional male who finds solace in drug-fueled escapes from the despair of night. His 2009 debut, “Man on the Moon: The End of Day,” became a collection of anthems for teenagers smoking their first blunt or railing against the unjust world after being rejected by their crush. Since then, Cudi has been attempting to revisit the relatable lon er-stoner, sorrow-tomorrow narratives he constructed back before the internet gave us abominations that claimed to convey “true pain” like XXXTENTACION songs over edits of Bart Simpson.

In an interview with Complex magazine, Cudi explained his latest studio album, “En tergalactic,” as his “perspective on love” which “people haven’t really heard.” Yet in reality, it represents more of the same trite nostalgia for narratives of lonely stoners.

Based on the themes of an upbeat love song from “Man on the Moon” called “Enter Galac tic (Love Connection Part I),” the album “En tergalactic” is the accompanying soundtrack for an animated Netflix special that Cudi cowrote, about — you’ll never guess — a moody stoner, voiced by Cudi who, of course, finds love with his neighbor. The film is serene and pastel, more interested in creating a vibe than a compelling narrative.

Unfortunately, without the animation’s charming visuals, the soundtrack is sonically watered down, like the mellow urge to lie on

the floor when you are stoned. The beats are ear friendly but not very interesting, like vid eo game background music. Tracks like “New Mode” and “In Love” feature bubbly, some what psychedelic synths that are completely forgettable, and the guitar lines on “Ignite the Love” and “Can’t Shake Her” are emotionless.

Moreover, Cudi lacks the earworm charm of some of his melodies back on “Man on the Moon.” On “Entergalactic,” his autotuned warble usually resonates as a lifeless, flat line buzz, with Ty Dolla $ign carrying more vocal inflection in two features than Cudi on the whole album. And on songs like “In Love,” “Burrow” and “Angel,” Cudi simply hums over the track whenever he doesn’t have anything substantive to say, sounding like a caricature of himself.

Lyrics have never been Kid Cudi’s strong

Originally a throwaway from Cudi and Kanye’s 2018 collaboration album “Kids See Ghosts,” the drums on “Livin’ My Truth” were reproduced by artist E.Vax to avoid crediting Kanye due to Cudi’s friendship with come dian Pete Davidson, who dated Kim Kar dashian, Kanye’s former wife. That bit of pet tiness is likely the most interesting part of the entire album, because there is nothing particularly heartfelt, ethereal or transcen dent about “Entergalactic.”

The album is not completely unlistenable, but Cudi’s droning vocals and dull beats make the auditory experience feel pointless, like hearing somebody humming next to you in an elevator.

“Entergalactic” is indicative of the inher ent impossibility of repackaging an artistic and cultural formula built over a decade ago. It just gets boring.

IMDB

This latest biopic from director Andrew Dominik is a horrifying, exploitative and inaccurate portrayal of Marilyn Monroe’s life.

FILM ANALYSIS

‘Blonde’ Is A Grotesque Perversion ofMarilyn Monroe’s Story and Struggles

Mason Stempel Hoya Staff Writer

CW: This article discusses graphic sexual vio lence. Please refer to this article on thehoya.com for on- and off-campus resources.

Fiction, however fabricated, inevitably mirrors and impacts reality.

“Blonde,” while marketed by Netflix as a bi opic, is historical fiction and a grotesque mis use of the genre. Based on the 2000 Joyce Car ol Oates novel of the same title, “Blonde” takes audiences through a sensationalized and ag grandized version of the life of famed model and actress Marilyn Monroe (Ana de Armas).

Pieced together using scenes of extremely graphic sexual violence, sexualized female nudity and mental health struggles — most of which are fabricated to turn Marilyn Mon roe and her story into a spectacle — both the film and book depict a Monroe far from the true Norma Jeane Mortenson.

“Blonde” treats Marilyn Monroe like a punch ing bag, like the sexualized fantasy everyone wanted her to be, like a tragic woman needing to be saved and ultimately like a woman defined through the lens of misogyny. “Blonde” turns Monroe into a subjugated, oppressed, exploited woman who is used as an object of pleasure for

men and punished by other women for it.

The film dismisses the beautiful joys and factual struggles of Monroe’s life in favor of offensive and harmful reimaginings, go ing so far as to film a scene in the very room where the real Monroe passed away.

In just one horrifying example, the film depicts Monroe as having two separate abor tions, one forced, which was marked by guilt and trauma, with one disturbing and mock ing scene featuring an unborn child speak ing to her from the womb. These graphic depictions paint a specific portrait of Mon roe and push a thinly veiled anti-abortion rhetoric, despite a lack of evidence that the real Monroe ever had an abortion.

This film and its content raise distinct points of horror. The film’s notion that “fic tion” is a justification for abuses against women and other oppressed groups, espe cially by people with privilege, is ultimately harmful to these groups. Furthermore, there are serious moral implications of misappro priating a real person’s life and story and infusing it with falsehoods for shock and en tertainment value.

“Blonde” could have been an emotionally stimulating analysis of fame, womanhood and mental health if it had given de Armas’ Monroe a semblance of agency or autono

my. In “Blonde,” Monroe doesn’t do things; things happen to her.

Instead of portraying how the misogyny of the film industry limited and exploited a powerful and intelligent woman, “Blonde” reduces its subject to exactly what it was attempting to critique: a sexualized, de humanized rag doll repeatedly raped and abused by the men in her life, ultimately ful filing the sexist “damsel in distress” trope so many wish to project onto Monroe.

With the film’s controversial and harm ful depiction of Marilyn Monroe, a real his torical figure, we must also dissect the moral implications of using formerly living people as media with which to achieve spectacle rather than vessels to deliver truth.

“Blonde” and its director, Andrew Dominik, are not concerned with reality or truth. Dominik intended to depict raw, vio lent feelings and experiences, which is cer tainly attainable in a fictional space, so the fact that he decided to add to the plethora of abuses against Marilyn Monroe’s memory and legacy raises questions that may never be answered.

Whether Dominik truly wanted to repre sent the “truth” of Monroe’s emotions or sim ply depict a wounded, battered version that lives in his mind is up for debate. Dominik

pushed “Blonde” through production for a decade and was giving quotes to magazines about the film in 2010.

“Why is Marilyn Monroe the great female icon of the 20th Century?” he told Screen Dai ly in 2010. “For men she is an object of sexual desire that is desperately in need of rescue. For women, she embodies all the injustices visited upon the feminine, a sister, a Cinder ella, consigned to live among the ashes.”

“I want to tell the story of Norma Jean as a central figure in a fairytale; an orphan child lost in the woods of Hollywood, being con sumed by that great icon of the twentieth century,” Dominik said.

Dominik’s rhetoric, even a decade ago, reflects the infantilized Monroe that appears in “Blonde,” a Disney princess that receives a plethora of in justices rather than a happy ever after.

Monroe has been so glamorized, fanta sized, sexualized and romanticized that we forget she is not a figment of our imagina tions with which we can do what we wish; she is just like us. She is a piece of reality, a person who should be treated with dignity and respect.

Many believe that the spirits of the de ceased haunt the living, but in the case of Marilyn Monroe, it’s the living that continue to haunt her.

Lutèce Delights Visitors With Fresh, French-Inspired Dishes

Audrey Biles Columnist

the group, a role I took on as a child and have held onto since. I am a Resy queen and can skillfully navigate a menu, your very own “I have a place” friend.

Now that we know each other a bit better, let our exploration of Washington, D.C. deli cacies commence with the excellent Lutèce!

rived at Lutèce in 2020, bringing with him a fresh, approachable take on French flavors.

Welcome to The Hungry Hoya!

To introduce myself, I’m obsessed with food culture. I scour The New York Times daily for new food articles and spend hours searching for restaurants before booking a dinner reservation. But you might be won dering — in what world am I trustworthy?

dedicated my time in high school to my food-themed Instagram account, which has since been retired. However, I know my way around a kitchen and can recommend a de licious meal in every major city. I have selfdiagnosed reservation anxiety: symptoms include a palpitating heart and a churning stomach during the mad rush that is trying to find a table on a Friday night.

What I eat and where I eat is not some thing I take lightly. But you only get to be this way if you are actively the planner of

I was sitting in my “International Rela tions” class when The New York Times re leased its annual 50 favorite restaurants in the United States. I ravenously scrolled through the list, staring longingly at the ar ray of acclaimed restaurants that would re quire a plane ride to visit.

But then I landed on Lutèce, the charming blue bistro I pass on my way to Trader Joe’s every Sunday in Georgetown. I immediately switched tabs and browsed their website, and with only a ten-minute walk separating me from Lutèce, I knew I had to find myself a table.

Lutèce, a neo-bistro on Wisconsin Avenue, is known for its French-inspired seasonal menu and celebrated chef Matt Conroy. For merly based in New York, Conroy is trained in both Mexican and French cuisine. He ar

The restaurant has been open since 2020 and showcases the best local produce through a selection of simple dishes with elevated profiles — think gnocchi with mi molette and shishitos. The experience is certainly expensive but worth it. It’s not every day you get to eat the creations of a Michelin-starred chef!

Whether you are celebrating a special oc casion or dining with the parents, Lutèce is my number one pick for Georgetown dining. Open for dinner Thursday through Monday and brunch on weekends, space is limited and reservations are strongly recommend ed. My first time, the other Times devotees beat me to dinner openings at Lutèce, but a brunch reservation was still available.

“Cancel your plans. We’re brunching,” I texted my roommate.

In my haste to book, I had mistakenly se lected outdoor seating. My roommate and I realized this upon arriving at Lutèce, when we were led to an outdoor table that was slightly flooded with rainwater and covered only by a

meager umbrella. I panicked until the menu arrived: nothing like freshly baked brioche to warm up an otherwise chilly day. We or dered everything, including avocado tartine with aleppo and sesame seeds; Comté strata in a spicy tomato sauce; and mezcal smoked salmon served alongside creme fraiche.

The flavors of all three were intricate and scrumptious. Our lattes were the only menu item we could describe as average, and even that appraisal feels scrutinizing. The service was excellent — they treated us with dis tinct care, answering our questions and en suring we were bundled up in special Lutèce blankets. We left the meal satiated, content and eager to return — and only a little bit damp from the rain.

A future reservation has already been made, and my roommate and I are already deliberat ing over which new menu items we will order.

Run, don’t walk, to make your reservations now. See you there?

Audrey Biles is a first-year in the College. The Hungry Hoya appears in print and online every other week.

By Clayton Kincade

This Week’s Theme: Midterms

Last issue’s solutions

ACROSS