The Strand | Volume 62, Issue 6

the

STRAND VICTORIA UNIVERSITY’S STUDENT NEWSPAPER VOLUME 62, ISSUE 6 | 26 NOVEMBER 2019

Where have all the good times gone?

Ontario court rules in favour of the students

The Strand reviews In Fabric

opinions | page 7

news | page 2

arts | page 12

02 NEWS

EDITOR | ANN MARIE ELPA NEWS@THESTRAND.CA

Will Northrop Frye Hall soon be a relic of Vic’s past?

Students may soon be saying goodbye to the 52-year-old building emma paidra editorial assistant

A sleek, futuristic glass structure emerges out of aged brick. For most Victoria College students, this is an everyday sight on Bloor Street—the ROM. There have been all sorts of reactions to the museum’s new addition: “It’s horrible!”, “It’s wonderful!”, and everything in between. Well, it seems that debates of this nature are soon to be had at Victoria College, as it is a very real possibility that the Northrop Frye Hall will soon be torn down to make room for a modern replacement.

The proposed replacement for Northrop Frye is a five-storey “Integrated Learning Centre” and would potentially be built out of mass-timber due to the environmental appeal of the material. In accordance with the University of Toronto Secondary Plan Review—a document that contains a series of goals and regulations concerned with architecture and land use—such a building would “preserve and enhance the built and open space environment.”

However, in order for construction of this replacement structure to commence, a few legal matters must be sorted out.

Firstly, the 27,000 square-foot lot upon which Northrop Frye is situated is officially known as the “Triangle Lands”. Far from being the geometrylover’s heaven the name suggests they might be, the “Triangle Lands” are an exemption from an 1892 land lease from the University of Toronto to Victoria College. This exemption means that in order for construction of the proposed building to occur, the 1892 lease has to be amended to permit Victoria to build upon the “Triangle Lands”. Accompanying this proposed amendment must be an Official Plan Amendment application as well as a Rezoning application. These logistical obstructions mean that regardless of whether Vic students love or hate the proposed new addition, it likely is not at risk of becoming a reality in the immediate future.

Yet, it would not be so out of character for Northrop Frye Hall to be torn down, considering Toronto’s rich history of dismantling old architecture. For example, in January of 2017, a 110-yearold midtown Bank of Montreal building was demolished. As one of the last remaining examples of a beaux-art style structure, the loss of this building is another chip in Toronto’s architectural charm and character. While many rallied for the building to be made a heritage site, these efforts were not enough to save it from an untimely end. A Victorian mansion on Wellesley Street suffered the same fate as the bank and was knocked down in 2012 to be replaced with a condo. The demolition of these two buildings is far from anomalous, as a 1917 Mimico factory was torn down in September 2016, and perhaps the most devastating loss of all can be found in the 2015 destruction of The Stollerys Building.

Complete with stone facades, The Stollerys Build-

photo

ing at Yonge and Bloor was one of the city’s most irreplaceable structures—so why was it not one of our most treasured and protected? There are two likely reasons for this conundrum: the difficulty in determining which buildings possess cultural value, and the procedural inefficiency of securing heritage status.

The most glaring obstacle is that it is extremely difficult for buildings to earn the heritage status essential to preservation. Mary MacDonald, the senior manager of Heritage Preservation Services for

| jeff hitchcock

the face of potential demolition, their argument is generally this: destroying an aesthetically irreplaceable building does a cultural damage so great that it exceeds any profit from rebuilding. While this is a deeply important point, it just doesn’t strike a chord with everyone—especially not those who have profit to gain in the destruction of old buildings.

The frequency with which old, soulful Toronto architecture is torn down has forced me to question a section of the University of Toronto Secondary Plan Review, which states that new develop-

DOES THE DESTRUCTION OF NORTHROP FRYE HALL MEAN A BRILLIANT NEW ADDITION TO CAMPUS, OR IS IT MERELY PARTICIPATING IN A CITY-WIDE PHENOMENON OF DISMANTLING ARCHITECTURAL GEMS? City Planning, explains that there are roughly 600 properties in line to be assessed for heritage designation. Of that 600, roughly 90 are already subject to planning and development applications. The race against time to protect Toronto’s beloved buildings is made even more difficult by the vague delineations of what constitutes “cultural value”. When there is outcry on behalf of architecture buffs in

ments on campus should “conserve built heritage resources and cultural heritage landscapes.” Yet, is this really what we are doing? Does the destruction of Northrop Frye Hall mean a brilliant new addition to campus, or is it merely participating in a city-wide phenomenon of dismantling architectural gems? In the coming year, students will see which answer Victoria College chooses.

Ontario court rules in favour of the students Student Choice Initiative struck down after legal challenge by the CFS-O and YFS rebecca gao editor-in-chief

In a unanimous decision heard on Thursday, November 21, the Ontario Divisional Court struck down the Ford government’s Student Choice Initiative, which mandated universities and colleges to allow post-secondary students to opt-out of some of their student fees.

In its decision, the court called universities’ autonomy “fundamental to the academic freedom that is their hallmark.” As well, the decision

notes that the problem with the Student Choice Initiative was not that it directly interferes with the way that student organizations are run, but rather that “the imposition of the opt-out, including the classification of some programs as essential and others as non-essential, is itself a form of interference with university autonomy.”

The lawsuit was filed jointly by the Canadian Federation of Students-Ontario (CFS-O) and the York Federation of Students (YFS) in May, 2019 on the basis that the government lacked authority

to implement such a policy. They argued in front of the court on October 11.

The court determined that the Ford government had no authority to interfere with the affairs of student unions and organizations. This decision means that student organizations, including student newspapers, food banks, clubs, and unions all over the province will no longer be under the threat of uncertain funding.

NEWS 03

@STRANDPAPER THE STRAND | 26 NOVEMBER 2019

Trump’s impeachment hearings, explained How does a president get impeached, and why is it happening to Trump? noah kelly podcast editor

With the ongoing impeachment hearings, it’s easy to feel lost in the headlines, and with so much breaking news it can be hard to catch up. Why is Trump up for impeachment? How does a president get impeached?

What’s all this talk about a phone call? And who is Viktor Shokin?

How does the impeachment process work?

Impeachment is the process by which the House and Senate put an elected official on trial to determine whether they have committed a crime that would justify being barred from office. There are three impeachable offences according to the United States Constitution: “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanours”. That third offence is intentionally vague, as it leaves open the possibility for prosecution of other unforeseen crimes against the country.

The process of impeachment starts when any member of the House issues a motion to impeach.

Many of these motions don’t go anywhere—before they can be taken seriously, they must be approved by a majority of the House Judiciary Committee.

The Judiciary Committee is a group of 41 House representatives––24 from the majority party and 17 from the minority—who are responsible for considering legislation pertaining to the judicial system, crime, and civil liberties. If a majority of the House Judiciary Committee votes in favour of the motion to impeach, then an impeachment trial in the House follows.

The next step is for the House of Representatives to vote on each article of impeachment (each individual charge in the impeachment process). A simple majority is necessary to pass each one. Prior to this vote, the House can hold hearings to inform their votes. Witnesses are brought forward to be cross-examined by both parties, and this is what is currently happening in the televised impeachment hearings against Donald Trump. If, following the congressional inquiry, a majority of the House votes to impeach, the individual under investigation is then officially impeached, but not yet removed from office.

This has only happened to two presidents in history: Andrew Johnson, who was impeached for illegally removing his Secretary of War from office after the civil war; and Bill Clinton, who was impeached for

lying under oath about his past sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky.

If the vote passes in the House, the proceedings then move to the Senate, where a trial is conducted.

This trial determines whether or not to convict the individual of the crimes put forward by the House.

Here, a 67 percent majority is needed to convict.

This has never happened (although Andrew Johnson was only one vote shy of conviction). This is usually because senators vote along party lines, which often bars the possibility of reaching the two-thirds majority needed to convict.

In Richard Nixon’s case, he resigned the presidency before being impeached. His knowing participation in the break-ins of the Democratic National Committee’s Watergate office was so troubling that even some Republican lawmakers supported impeachment.

A bipartisan group of House Judiciary Committee representatives decided to support all the articles of impeachment, as members from both parties were deeply concerned about his involvement in this espionage. Once Nixon saw that his own party was backing the impeachment proceedings, he resigned before the house could impeach to avoid being the only president to be convicted in the Senate.

Why is Trump being investigated?

The history of Ukraine as a battleground between Western powers and Russia is long and complex.

In recent years, the US has been financially backing Ukraine as it has been distancing itself from Russia.

Earlier this year, Congress approved sending more than $391 million in military aid to Ukraine, but Trump told his chief of staff to withhold these finances as he wanted to talk with Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, first. In this conversation, Trump asked President Zelensky to investigate Hunter Biden (the son of Joe Biden) for a money laundering scandal in exchange for this foreign aid.

This is where the story gets a little confusing.

While Joe Biden was the Vice President, Hunter took a job at a Ukrainian oil company called Burisma Holdings Ltd. At that time, the president of Burisma was being investigated by the UK government for money laundering. The UK asked Ukraine’s top Prosecutor General, Viktor Shokin, to pursue the case against the president of Burisma, but he refused to. Shokin had a pattern of failing to investigate corruption cases, and this refusal started a public and political uprising against him. Joe Biden was then tasked by the Obama administration with pressuring

Ukraine into firing Shokin for his failure to investigate the president of Burisma. Biden succeeded in getting Ukraine to fire Shokin, ushering in a new Prosecutor General.

Now, in a phone call with President Zelensky, Trump insinuated that Joe Biden pushed to get Shokin fired in order to protect Hunter. This doesn’t make sense, as Shokin had refused to investigate the company that Hunter worked for, and so, by getting Shokin fired, Biden was aiding the UK in its investigations against Hunter’s company.

Trump was trying to get President Zelensky to make it look like Joe Biden acted in his own selfinterest, not that of the United States, in firing Shokin. There is no evidence of Biden’s wrongdoing, but framing Biden as corrupt would have helped Trump in his re-election campaign. Trump’s threat to not release the US’s military aid unless President Zelensky helped him in his re-election campaign was seen by Democrats as both bribery and a high crime, prompting the impeachment attempt.

Trump is likely to be impeached in the House, as the Democrats hold the necessary majority there.

However, it is unlikely that Trump will ultimately be convicted in the Senate, because Democrats do not hold the necessary two-thirds majority, and Senate Republicans have made it clear that they intend to vote along party lines.

photo

| michael vadon (wikipedia commons)

Campus Police under fire for handcuffing student in distress UofT community calls for changes in mental health policy ann marie elpa news editor

Content warning: mentions of suicide Campus Police are under fire after a student in distress was handcuffed outside the Health & Counselling Centre (HCC) at UofT’s Mississauga campus.

On October 2, third-year anthropology student Natalia Espinosa, sought help at the HCC with the support of a friend, Anita Mozafari, requesting to meet with a psychiatrist. After being told by a receptionist that a mental health nurse was not available to meet and that the process for meeting with a psychiatrist could take roughly a month, Espinosa became distressed and was placed in an appointment with a regular nurse. Under “UofT protocol” however, Campus Police were called to the scene to apprehend the student in distress despite her telling them her intention to end her life, and subsequently taking her to Credit Valley Hospital.

Criticism on crisis response

Following the incident, community leaders and mental health activists have called on the university to acknowledge the arrest and revise their law enforcement policy. Beverly Bain, Women and Gender Studies professor at UTM, voiced her support on behalf of Espinosa, drafting a letter in response to the incident.

“The police represent the law. When police come, it means they are arresting you. When they put you in handcuffs, it’s an arrest. People with mental health issues should not be arrested. People who go for help should not be arrested. They are not criminals. They are in crisis and they need support.” she says in an interview with The Medium, a campus publication at UTM. The University of Toronto Mississauga Students’ Union (UTMSU) have also denounced the arrest in a statement released on November 12. “The University of Toronto Mississauga Students’ Union (UTMSU)

strongly condemns the actions taken by the HCC, the police and the policies that uphold the violence that took place,” it reads. “These actions taken by the HCC and the police are shameful and further the intimidation and discrimination that students face on our campus when accessing mental health services.”

Our Minds Matter, a non-profit student organization advocating for mental health awareness, released a petition to Ontario’s Minister of Health, Christine Elliott, calling for an allocation of funds towards better transportation and treatment of individuals with mental illnesses. The petition also calls for the University of Toronto along with the Toronto and Peel Regional Police to apologize for the wrongful treatment of students in the past, presenting a list of demands to improve current mental health policies. As of November 22, 2019, the petition has received 549 signatures.

04 EDITORIAL

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF | REBECCA GAO EDITOR@THESTRAND.CA

On the post-Reading Week, pre-finals time warp

the

strand V O L U M E

6 2

editor-in-chief

editor@thestrand.ca

It's finals season. UofT needs to examine mental health infrastructure now more than ever

rebecca gao

managing editor

managing@thestrand.ca

leo morgenstern

business manager

business@thestrand.ca

mishail adeel

news

news@thestrand.ca

ann marie elpa

opinions

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meg jianing zhang

features

features@thestrand.ca

hadiyyah kuma

science

science@thestrand.ca

michal leckie

arts and culture

artsandculture@thestrand.ca abbie moser stranded

stranded@thestrand.ca

max nisbeth

copyediting

copy@thestrand.ca

sandy forsyth

design

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keith cheng

photo

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ilya sarossy

art

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amy jiao

web

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podcast

strandcast@thestrand.ca

noah kelly jasmine ng

editorial assistants

khadija alam gillian chapman jess nash emma paidra eden prosser faith wershba

illustration

| amy jiao

contributors dorota borovsky , skylar cheung , ellen grace ,

james hannay , kenneth kim , ronan mallovy , maya merchant , veronika zabelle nayir , beck siegal ,

rebecca gao editor-in-chief

cilantro weathers copy editors julianna he design team keith cheng, rebecca gao illustrations amy jiao, mia carnevale photos jeff hitchcock, cisco juanes, nasa, pixabay, ilya

sarossy, michael vadon cover art amy jiao

The Strand has been the newspaper of record for Victoria University since 1953. It is published 12 times a year with a circulation of 1200 and is distributed in Victoria University buildings and across the University of Toronto’s St. George campus.

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Content warning: mentions of suicide There is something about this part of the semester, the post-Reading Week, pre-exams time warp, that feels especially awful. Coupled with Daylight Savings Time shortening days so that it gets dark at 4 pm, the #Grind of the last three-ish weeks of school can really mess with me.

Maybe it’s the sense of impending doom that we, as students, collectively feel as we’re pushed into exam season. Maybe it’s the seemingly five billion papers I’m responsible for before Christmas. Maybe it’s the sudden Arctic abyss Toronto has become since Halloween. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m graduating and I’m both terrified for the future and ready to get the hell out of this institution. Maybe it’s all of the above and none of the above.

I feel like I find myself in an alternate universe time warp every year around this time—the last couple of weeks of school as the semester wraps up. Every single year in mid-November, without fail, I feel like a robot. I feel like my thoughts and actions are automated, like I’m on some kind of conveyor belt that is moving me, totally disembodied from myself, from class to the library to class to bed—and then back again. I feel as though I need to shut off the part of my brain that tells me to “slow down, take a break, do something fun” in order to deal with the stress and anxiety produced by finals season.

And while my experience isn’t universal, I know I’m not the only one that feels this way. According to a study done by the American College Health Association, 88 percent of Canadian students reported feeling overwhelmed by everything they had to do. That same study reported that 63 percent of Canadian students reported feeling hopeless at some point in the past year.

As always, although now more than ever, mental

health is a pressing topic of discussion on campus. While it’s easy to poke fun at the #Grind culture at university, the immense stress that students are under, and the socalled UofTears experience, it all points to a larger mental health crisis at our school.

Despite mounting pressure by students, the administration at UofT hasn’t made any concrete changes to their mental health policies or infrastructure. Students still need to wait months for an appointment at Health and Wellness. It’s still hard to get professors to care about declining mental health when getting marks in at the end of the semester feels more important to them. It’s still hard to get adequate support from the school in any substantive form. Even after multiple student suicides on campus, even after a UTM student was handcuffed at the campus’ Health and Counselling Centre after asking for help, students aren’t given anything better than therapy puppies during the busiest and most stressful part of the semester.

UofT needs to do better. We need proactive—not reactive—mental health infrastructure. The administration at this university needs to listen to students and actually hear what we have to say and what we need.

It’s exam season, and things are only going to get more stressful for students from here. The university needs to examine their mental health policies and infrastructure. The post-Reading Week, pre-finals time warp isn’t something in which students should feel themselves irrevocably lost.

If you or someone you know is in distress, you can call: Canada Suicide Prevention Service phone available 24/7 at 1-833-456-4566 Good 2 Talk Student Helpline at 1-866-925-5454 Ontario Mental Health Helpline at 1-866-531-2600 Gerstein Centre Crisis Line at 416-929-5200 UofT Health & Wellness Centre at 416-978-8030

OPINIONS 05

EDITOR | MEG JIANING ZHANG OPINIONS@THESTRAND.CA

Seeking a crowd The highs and lows of open mic nights joseph strauss contributor

It’s eleven thirty on a Tuesday night, and I’m conflicted.

On the one hand, my butt is getting sore and I just want to do my set and get the fuck out of here––on the other hand, I need more time to memorize it. Maybe I just sneak off, I think. Is that kosher? Would I get blackballed by the comedy community? I decide not to.

The host is no longer talking about Triscuits––not that the Triscuit jokes were getting many laughs (I liked them). Now, she’s talking about cocaine. The guy with the goatee in front of me is laughing a little too hysterically, but the rest of us are as silent as we’ve been all night.

Shit. I have to stop paying attention so I can memorize my set. Now all I can think about are Triscuits and cocaine. At least goatee guy will get a laugh out of it, I think as I go through yet another internal rehearsal.

“Alright, guys, let’s hear it for your next act––I’ve never seen him before so I’m super excited, give it up for Joseph… Straws!”

Half-hearted clapping, a whistle, light-headedness, an awkward “good luck” handshake, a yelp from goatee guy for some reason, and I’m on stage.

I start my material, and even with the blinding lights trained on me, I can see the faces of a dozen jaded comedians, half of them on their phones, the rest probably just trying to memorize their own sets.

I reach my first punchline. A couple scattered snickers––goatee guy fucking loved it, but I’m not sure that’s a good thing. I deliver the second punchline and get what I detect to be a pity laugh. Third punchline, fourth punchline and so on, and as I look around this empty room, it dawns on me that it is impossible to get a satisfying laugh in here––there just aren’t enough interested people. Or I’m not funny.

The general rule of stand-up comedy is that before you do anything significant, you have to do the open mic circuit. For years. There’s a long, long ladder to headlining a real comedy club with a real audience, and if you try to skip a rung… well, you fall off the ladder. And people higher up will hate you for it.

Comedy isn’t like other art forms. Write a story and

one or two proofreaders can let you know if it’s good or not. Compose a song and you can run it by your friends before debuting it on stage. Writing a joke isn’t like that.

One friend might laugh at something that most people won’t, while practicing a killer condom joke for your stone-faced parents will make you question whether you ever had a sense of humour––the bottom line is that you need to practice with a real audience, and, paradoxically, open mics don’t always provide that.

Open mics are a mixed bag. Sometimes, the entire audience is a dozen-or-so comics, most of whom are disinterested in everyone else’s jokes. On occasion, there are a handful of other people in the room, but if the crowd is small and the energy just isn’t right, even an established comic will struggle to get the audience on-board (which doesn’t bode well for schmucks like me). Chuckles can feel like major laughs in those settings, but there’s no conversion rate for silence. And the smaller the audience, the fewer the laughs.

I arrive at the pub fifteen minutes early, introduce myself to the host, order a water, use the bathroom, and, as I’m washing my hands, I hear an unexpected sound–– energy. I re-emerge from the restroom and the place is packed (okay, not necessarily packed, but there are way more people than I expected). Did I show up for the wrong night? There must be thirty, thirty-five people, something in that ballpark.

I think back to Tuesday and relive the gut-punch I felt after that pity laugh. I remember what that room had felt like when I walked in––quiet, stale, dead, with no one but goatee guy sitting in the first six rows. Before the show actually began, the room was dead silent. Tonight is different.

“Alright, alriiiiiight,” the host says, his amplified voice competing with the excited buzz of the crowd. The noise dies down, he begins his material, and even though I’m just trying to memorize my own set, I can’t help but tune into the joke. I look around and all these people are actually watching him––I’ve never seen an open mic audience with so many non-comedians. The host says something funny about his dad and the crowd erupts––even goatee guy’s voice would’ve been lost in the crowd.

I realize now that my shirt is drenched with sweat.

This is a real crowd. I’ve never performed for a real crowd.

What if I fuck up? Is it worse to do badly in front of more people?

The host calls my name––the crowd cheers, my lightheadedness ensues, I give the host an awkward handshake and I’m onstage. As usual, I take the mic to the tune of complete silence. But this silence is different. This silence doesn’t stem from apathy or sheer fewness of people. This is the silence of anticipation.

I don’t know exactly what malfunctions in my brain, but the words don’t come out properly and I stumble to my first punchline. Only a couple of people laugh at the jumbled words, but I’m used to the unresponsiveness. I set up the next joke, Tuesday’s pity laughs fresh in my memory, and deliver the punchline. They laugh. Thank fucking God. There’s something demoralizing about performing in those empty rooms with zero energy, and hearing silence after half your punchlines. I’m a guilty party in this, of course––I’m one of those selfish people half-heartedly listening to whoever’s onstage while going over my own material. No one is at fault here, it’s simply the way open mics work––regular people don’t want to watch hours of amateur comedians doing trial-runs.

But if there’s something to be learned in the paradox of the open mic, it’s this: bad crowds can make you better. Unless you’re a bona fide pro, it’s impossible to have a great performance in front of a small, low-energy crowd, and bad performances in front of great crowds are inevitable, too. If you want to gauge how funny your new joke is––well, you might need some real audiences to truly test that out. But practicing jokes in a quiet, half-empty room isn’t futile. The silences are discouraging, as are the pity laughs, but when you’re holding a microphone, performing for a room full of engaged people, those forgettable performances will make you better.

I have a long, long way to go before I’m through with the open mic circuit, but I do feel growth from my poor showings. Those Tuesday nights have thickened my skin and taught me how to fail gracefully in front of bigger crowds. If a joke doesn’t land well, for example, I can just move on rather than panic. And for a guy like me, that is a useful skill indeed.

How are you (really)?

Pushing past pleasantries and showing up authentically faith wershba editorial assistant

“Connection is why we’re here. It’s what gives purpose and meaning to our lives.” — Brené Brown When I first watched Brené Brown’s TEDTalk on vulnerability, I was not prepared for what she was about to tell me. As she began speaking about the positive power of human connection, I thought, “A wholesome, feel-good motivational speaker. I could use some of this energy in my life.” I listened on, ready to absorb whatever life-improving advice and good vibes she had to offer.

What she continued to say, however, transformed my spark of inspiration into a fiery fear. “Connection comes as a result of authenticity,” she said. “You must be willing to let go of who you think you should be in order to be who you are.” In short, she told me that in order to connect with others, I needed to lean into uncertainty and be completely vulnerable.

Why was this concept so terrifying to me? Sure, being vulnerable is hard, but it certainly shouldn’t warrant feelings of panic. Yet allowing myself to be truly seen, washing away the veneer of “put-togetherness”, and expressing myself authentically, felt impossible at the time.

Perhaps this is an implicit notion that I hold close. Perhaps it’s a social expectation that we simply don’t talk about, but I feel pressure to be positive all the time. Any negative or “ugly” emotions that arise must be saved for later, for when I can deal with them in the privacy of solitude.

As a result, I’ve been told, “You’re always so positive!” And I am, for the most part, a fairly positive person. I try to put an optimistic spin on things and find a silver lining in difficult situations. However, I am by no means always positive—no one is. It is not realistic to be happy all the time, and sadness, anger, and fear are natural emotions that everyone experiences. But despite knowing this, a switch seems to go off inside me when I’m in a position of vulnerability, a switch that locks up self-doubt and sadness and puts only my “acceptable” feelings on display.

Apparently, this fear of authenticity is a common one. Brown says people’s main anxiety is that they wonder, “Is there something about me that, if other people know it or see it, will make me unworthy of connection?”

But just because this fear is common doesn’t mean that we are helpless against it. It’s a bit like the saying, “Feel the fear and do it anyway.” Acknowledge the uncertainty, embrace it, and risk being seen for who you really are.

Yes, vulnerability is uncomfortable and scary. It is also essential for meaningful connections.

“You can’t numb the hard feelings without numbing the other emotions,” says Brown. “You cannot selectively numb. When we numb [the bad feelings], we numb joy.

We numb gratitude. We numb happiness.” I realized that by closing myself off to being vulnerable, I had been able to reduce discomfort and awkwardness, but I had also diminished friendship and connection.

This was a lot for me to take in. As a shy, socially

anxious teen, the mere suggestion of being vulnerable set off alarm bells inside. How could I simply start being vulnerable when I’d spent so long avoiding it? How would I choose who to be vulnerable with? How much sharing was too much? Worst of all, what if being vulnerable pushed people away, leaving me even more isolated?

Turns out, vulnerability isn’t all that complicated. It took some adjusting to, and I’m not sure if it will ever feel fully comfortable, but the more space I’ve made for vulnerability in my life, the less terrifying it has become.

I’ve learned to incorporate vulnerability in small ways: expressing self-doubt instead of forcing myself to appear confident, sharing stories of struggle with peers, and answering as honestly as possible when someone asks me, “How are you?”

As for my fears of disconnection and rejection? Well, they’ve all been disproven so far. I’ve found that opening up and being real with people actually empowers others to do the same, creating a circle of authenticity and trust rather than the dungeon of isolation I had envisioned.

By allowing my friends to see the whole me, including parts I deem unworthy or shameful, I’ve established deeper friendships than I ever thought was possible.

So next time someone asks, “How are you?” I encourage you to take a moment and reflect before responding with the usual, “I’m great, how about you?” See if you can make a small space for vulnerability and talk about something other than exams or the weather. You never know what connections you might form.

06 OPINIONS

EDITOR | MEG JIANING ZHANG OPINIONS@THESTRAND.CA

Paving the way Making sure young girls know that sports belong to them too However, the limits on women in professional athletics extends beyond viewers. These limits directly impact players and sports writers, as women on the inside of female athletics face hardships that Ten eager hands shoot upwards at the mention of place an undeniable limit on the stability of women’s the word “sports”—and they all belong to boys. Not professional sports leagues. For example, the average that it’s a bad thing so many young boys at the com- NBA player makes around $5 million, while a typimunity centre after-school program I work at are cal WNBA player earns roughly $72,000 annually. enthusiastic about signing up for the daily sports op- To put this in perspective, the former salary is 70 tion, but it is disheartening to rarely see a girl raise times that of the latter. Yet, this wage conundrum her hand for this activity. Occasionally, I have tried is only one moving part embedded in the complex to encourage the girls to do so, but I always seem to struggle of women’s leagues for legitimacy: if views receive the same response: were better, wages would be higher, and yet, views “No, it’s going to be all boys. I don’t want to.” won’t be better until women perceive athletics as a If the time is taken to fully unpack the signifi- space in which they are respected. So, how to address cance of this statement, it is nothing short of a small the moving part concerned with making women feel tragedy: young girls do not feel that they have a place that they belong in sports? Well, considering that in sports. From a young age, they are told—both ex- 90 percent of sports editors are men, it is unlikely plicitly and implicitly—that the realm of physical ac- that young girls and women are about to see a large tivity is one that does not belong to them. Yet, who increase in female sports league content. However, can blame them for this conviction? this does not mean that athletically inclined women Young girls do not grow up with female athletes should despair. available to them as role models. Rather, female proAdvances for women in sports have certainly been fessional athletes are kept hidden behind a curtain made, and though they are quiet victories, they are composed of poorly structured leagues, little to no there. The Gist is a great example of a step towards televised games, and pay-cheques barely above min- women’s athletics being taken seriously. This Toronimum wage. The abysmal reality of female profes- to-based startup provides sports news articles and sional athletes is highlighted in a study conducted by updates intended for women, written by women.

Michael A. Messner and Michela Musto of USC and Founded by Ellen Hyslop, Jacie deHoop, and RoseCheryl Cooky of Purdue University. This study con- lyn McLarty, The Gist is rewriting women’s place in cluded that in 2014, a meagre 3.2 percent of network athletics while creating a strong female community television coverage was given to women’s sports, while of sports writers. However, the victories to be celSportsCenter donated an appalling 2 percent of cov- ebrated for women’s sports are not limited to sports erage to female pro athletes. These abysmal statistics reporting but reach directly into the world of profesare not due to a lack of demand, but rather a system sional athletics. Such victories include the hiring of of sports journalism that simply does not lend itself Becky Hammon in 2014 as the first female to hold a to equal coverage of women’s sports leagues. Notably, full-time assistant coach position in the NBA. Even a with so little coverage given to women’s sports, the sustainable professional league for women is becomviewings of any female athletics that do manage to ing more attainable as the WNBA enters its 22nd make it to the small screen are slight. Such a small season as a stable association—in large part thanks amount of views leads to sloppy camerawork and to funding from the NBA. Not long after Hammon’s mediocre commentary, meaning that women inter- hiring, Dawn Braid was hired as a full-time skating ested in seriously following sports are not going to coach for the Arizona Coyotes in 2016, and in the watch the WNBA, the NWSL, or the CWHL (the 2016-2017 season, Kathryn Smith became the first latter because it recently folded—a huge blow for the woman to hold a full-time coaching position in the female hockey community). Instead, the views that NFL. There have even been talks amongst the likes would have gone to these developing women’s pro- of Portland Trailblazers player Pau Gasol and NBA fessional leagues go to the NHL, the NBA, and the commissioner Adam Silver of hiring a female headNFL. While it is not inherently negative for women coach in the future. to watch men’s sports, the lack of high-quality, feYet, in uncovering so many victories for women male sports league coverage furthers the notion that in sports, I learned something shocking: the first the closest a woman can be to a pro-sports league is female hired in a coaching capacity in the NHL, in front of a screen or in the stands.

Barbara Williams, was hired in 1977. While it is emma paidra editorial assistant

inspiring to know this a crucial advancement took place more than 30 years ago, Williams’ hiring raises a glaring question that cannot remain ignored: if a development of this significance occurred in 1977, why has there not been more progress since? Why are girls still dropping out of organized sports at approximately double the rate of boys by the time they are 14? The answer appears to be that we still have much more distance to cover—the fight is hardly over. The road for the future generation of women in sports must continue to be paved until young girls cannot even fathom a reason why they would avoid sports.

It is only then when girls trade sports cards of female players and argue over their favourite WNBA teams that the battle will have been won.

And in this not-so-distant future, I will offer the sports option to the children at my community centre, and ten eager hands will shoot up—all girls. illustration

| mia carnevale

OPINIONS 07

@STRANDPAPER THE STRAND | 26 NOVEMBER 2019

photo

| cisco juanes

Where have all the good times gone?

Allowing yourself to survive Reading Week kenneth kim associate opinions editor

Another Reading Week has passed us by. As someone staring at the imminent end of their BA (or the realization that this end isn’t as imminent as it perhaps ought to be), I’ve been given the gift of hindsight this year. Think of me as a modern-day Scrooge hoarding what little insight I’ve earned—but since the holidays are fast approaching, let me describe my reading weeks as a veritable procession of Dickensian spirits.

On a Sunday—the last day of this fall’s reading week—the Ghost of Reading Weeks Past knocked on my bedroom door. They whispered reminders of how my previous reading weeks went down. Two years ago, I was a commuting part-time student, trying to juggle schoolwork for a major I didn’t care for and the actual work that allowed me to keep a roof over my head and food in my stomach. Reading week is a blessing in disguise, I thought. Think of the time and money I would have wasted commuting to school!

I picked up every shift I could that week. When Monday came around, I hadn’t read much—but I thought I was okay.

You ran out of these excuses last year, this Ghost reminds me. I can’t refute them. I no longer had to commute, since I decided to just move downtown to Church Street to escape my family. I no longer had to work as much, since I relied more on OSAP. Since I could squeeze in more time by not experiencing the hour-long joys of delayed public transit during the Torontonian winter, I thought that I might finally get some schoolwork done. But I didn’t. I hadn’t cultivated a safety net of friends to inspire me, and I wasted away in my own filth of take-out containers, Netflix shows, and shame. The Monday after brought its usual shame and stress—but I thought I was okay.

But Monday inevitably comes, and on that morning the Ghost of Reading Weeks Present kicked

my bedroom door down. What have you got to say for yourself? they demanded. At this point in my fourth year, I found that my cup had runneth over in terms of my mental health issues. I was too afraid to do anything or talk to anyone, so I didn’t. This meant I missed too many classes, so I failed my first course in a long time. This meant I missed too many shifts, so I got fired. So, I forgot to promise myself that I’d be productive, I told the Ghost. And why would I? I blinked, and that Monday was already over. I skipped my lectures that day as well—only this time, I was warming up to the possibility that I wasn’t okay.

It’s been some time since then. The Ghost of Reading Weeks Yet to Come has still to pay me their dreaded visit. But by now I think my parodistic framework has long overstayed its welcome, so I will become that Ghost for just a moment and deliver the moral of my own story.

Some students find Reading Weeks to be a generally enriching part of their experience at the University of Toronto. They become opportunities to travel, to visit family, to break away from the monotony of undergraduate academia. Fewer still, at least from my own experience, get a lot of reading or other course work done over Reading Week. But a part of me hates asking that dreaded question: “So, what were you up to this reading week?”

Why, you might ask, do I feel like an absolute waste of space and time? “I spent my week seeing my folks,” your hypothetical friend might say. “I didn’t do much—just all the readings and papers that you must have done too, and something just as productive, like volunteering. It was so good to get out of Toronto’s doom and gloom, you know?”

I don’t know. In part, I theorize, because I don’t get to go home to a family. I don’t get to travel. I don’t get to deserve these things. Social comparison is one helluva drug. There’s definitely a nugget of truth to the possibility that how we students get to spend our Reading Weeks is influenced by factors outside

our control—that is, mostly tied to socio-economic class. There are circumstances that prevent us from turning to friends or family for help, from travelling or just being productive, but we don’t talk about them. They’re buried deep inside, and sometimes they just burst out in unhealthy ways.

That isn’t to say I’m upset at your hypothetical friend. The problem that I’m struggling to articulate—the problem that I’m raising without necessarily having a satisfying answer for—is how to deal with being upset at yourself for how you spent your reading week. The isolating, taking-everything-seriously, results-oriented model at this university encourages us to always do something more. Even if you take the week to relax, that relaxation is only acceptable in the framework of "bettering yourself"— feeling better, reading better, being better. So, when my experiences don’t align with these expectations, something breaks.

Coping with this internalized shame is difficult.

If I could just allow myself to be satisfied with myself and my reading week—but then again, that’s not how our brains work, is it? To the credit of my amazing friends, they tolerate my whining and talking about my issues. Perhaps we can justify our Reading Weeks to ourselves, dear reader, by turning to the titular song of this article from Van Halen’s Diver Down: Once we had an easy ride and always felt the same, Time was on our side and we had everything to gain.

This could be like yesterday, Is that me with your happy days?

Won’t you tell me: where have all the good times gone?

I’m not okay, and I’m not looking forward to that last visit by the Ghost of Reading Weeks Yet to Come. I can’t tell you where all the good times have gone, but I can tell you where they won’t be: comparing ourselves to someone else’s happy days.

08 FEATURES

EDITOR | HADIYYAH KUMA FEATURES@THESTRAND.CA

VERONIKA ZABELLE NAYIR

On exodus and eternity Leonard Cohen is back from the dead

FEATURES 09

@STRANDPAPER THE STRAND | 26 NOVEMBER 2019

Hearing Leonard Cohen’s voice—solemn, steady, divine—is like hearing a voice you have always heard, one that you have always known, one that lives in perpetuity. It is this steadfastness that makes his music all the more jarring; it is a reminder that he is there, as he has always been, whispering some ancient secret, some primordial myth that you think— that I think—only he could know.

Leonard Cohen is the man who seems to turn up out of the blue and—promptly, unequivocally—dazzles. But he dazzles with a pretty kind of sorrow; a sorrow half-exposed, scars and stories laid bare, the Other, wrapped up in a suit—stoic, old-world, bygone.

Cohen is back from the dead. It’s hard to believe that he is even gone. His farewell has seemed like one long holiday, maybe to the Greek island of Hydra, as he did in the 60s, or perhaps, a return to the monastery—the Mount Baldy Zen Center—where he became a Buddhist monk 30 years later. His passing seems like an intermission of sorts, because Cohen, after all, has always tended to hide away. But he didn’t see it as hiding—on Hydra, he wrote some of his most unorthodox work; Beautiful Losers, his 1966 novel, was reviewed in the Boston Globe—they declared: “James Joyce is not dead. He is living in Montreal under the name of Cohen.” The mistake? He was living in Hydra.

Maybe 2016, the year of his death, was only his cue to leave, so that he could turn up once more, out of the blue.

And he has done just that. Recently, Cohen (his “people”: Columbia Records, Legacy Recordings, his producer, Adam Cohen—yes, his son) has released a new song titled “What Happens to the Heart”. It will be included in Cohen’s next album, Thanks for the Dance, scheduled for release on the 22nd of this month.

He sings in “What Happens to the Heart”:

If his last album, You Want it Darker, was a sort of farewell, imbued with religious imagery, humour, and lamentations on regret, his posthumous record is a new “hello”, not quite a continuation of his canon, but music that is largely shaped by the knowledge that it will be received once he has already said goodbye.

I know that my love of music—Cohen’s music, above all—strays into exaltation. I can imagine some calling this a “worshipping of false gods”. They might be right. Kurt Cobain famously sang in “Pennyroyal Tea”: “Give me a Leonard Cohen afterworld / So I can sigh eternally”. When I listen to the songs of Cohen, I imagine that he may be a prophet; not one of any particular religion, but a twenty-first-century prophet, whatever that means. I remember that the name “Cohen” comes from the Hebrew for “priest” and denotes a priestly lineage. I remember that Cohen has been dubbed “the high priest of pathos”. I remember that there is a Cohen mural in Montreal, a nine-story altar. There he is wearing a fedora, and his right hand is over his heart.

In an interview about his father, Adam Cohen states, “He would often say, ‘No matter what oblique strategies I employed’– and there were many of them, from women to drugs to various schools of philosophy and religion – ‘the only thing that offered any solace was the work’. He would say that self-mockingly, as if the answer was always there. It was always the page.”

Perhaps the modern prophet is the writer.

I know that Cohen’s transfixing lyricism does not make him divine. If anything,

it indicates his flaws, his limitations, his mistakes, his sins. His masterpiece, “Hallelujah”, is moreso about grappling with these flaws, all of which are deeply human.

Reflecting on her performance of Cohen’s song at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, k.d. lang offers her interpretation of his lyrics. "To me it's (about) the struggle between having human desire and searching for spiritual wisdom. It's being caught between those two places." She herself is also a Buddhist, and notes, beautifully: “He was a translator between the gods and humans.” All troubadours are.

In “Tower of Song”, Cohen sings:

But you’ll be hearing from me baby, long after I’m gone I’ll be speaking to you sweetly From a window In the Tower of Song Once more, I am excited and patiently waiting, for his return.

Now the angel's got a fiddle The devil's got a harp Every soul is like a minnow Every mind is like a shark I've broken every window But the house, the house is dark I care but very little What happens to the heart

photos

| courtesy of wikimedia commons

10 SCIENCE

EDITOR | MICHAL LECKIE SCIENCE@THESTRAND.CA

Infinity The never-ending debate maya merchant contributor

The size and structure of the universe has been a pressing question for humankind since the very first human being to look up at the sky and ask why?

How is it possible that the laws of physics allow the creation of something out of nothing? How is the universe expanding, and through what medium?

Some believe that human beings are inherently lacking in the intelligence to comprehend the configuration of the universe and how it has been continuously changing for the last fourteen billion years; others believe we are on the brink of figuring it out.

The concept of infinity, specifically when referring to infinite space, is immeasurable, as the definition of infinity itself states. However, Merriam-Webster’s second definition of the word is “an indefinitely great number or amount,” and the most common definition of number is a sum of units (where the sum is, in theory, calculable).

The concept of infinity has always been extremely puzzling and difficult to grasp, and if infinity truly exists as it is defined, there will never be a way for humans to measure it. Should we be using the term in modern astronomy if we don’t truly understand it?

Think of it this way—at any discrete time on earth (assuming everything on earth is held constant for that instant), there is a finite number of grains of sand. Of course, that number of grains would be impossible for a human to count in their lifetime and would be so incredibly large that humankind would likely not even have the phrasing to describe it. However, that “incalculably” large number is, theoretically, definite and fixed. The universe as we know it today is, of course, incomprehensibly large and continuously expanding, but at any one moment in time, its size is bound. Most astronomers agree that it is improper to say the universe is expanding infinitely when no one knows the potential bounds of the universe. Can humans understand the true meaning of “infinity” with our currently limited knowledge of the universe?

The answer to this astronomical enigma lies at the frontiers of modern astronomy.

American philosopher William Lane Craig gives a three-point argument against the infinite, influenced by Byzantine philosopher Philoponus: 1) An actual infinite cannot exist 2) A beginningless temporal series of events is an actual infinite

PHOTO | ESA/ HUBBLE AND NASA

3) Therefore, a beginningless temporal series of events cannot exist This theory argues that since there has been a finite amount of time since the Big Bang (approximately 13.8 billion years), there was a definite beginning to the universe. As stated in point two, if “a beginningless temporal series of events is an actual infinite,” a temporal series of events with a beginning must be finite. As of right now, humans have not defined a “beginningless” event; so, the concept of infinity is void following Craig’s theory.

However, questioning the abstraction of infinity in terms of astronomy brings about the question of infinity in terms of mathematics: is there a number at the end of the number line? If so, what happens when you add 1 to it? Additionally, there is said to be an infinite amount of non-integer numbers; that is, between 0 and 1 lies 0.1, 0.01, 0.001, etc. The prior example of disproving infinity using grains of sand does not quite apply here, as there truly seems to be an incalculable amount of decimal numbers between any two integers; the debate of infinity in mathematics versus infinity in astronomy may just have to be resolved as two diverging abstractions.

Complicating the argument of finite space was Edwin Hubble’s discovery of the expansion of the universe in 1929. Hubble plotted the redshift of distant galaxies (signifying their movement away from Earth) against their relative distance from Earth, which proved that the universe was expanding; at the time, this largely discredited the idea among cosmologists that there existed a limit

for the expansion of the universe. Many thought the idea of a finite universe to be as implausible as the idea of having a brick wall at its edge. As an infinite space grows, it remains infinite; thus, Hubble’s discovery introduced to the 20th century the idea of a truly limitless universe.

Additionally, according to British astrophysicist Joseph Silk, experts “feel closest to” the flat model of universe expansion. This model states that the universe would “expand forever, but the expansion rate would slow to zero after an infinite amount of time”. The current accelerating expansion of the universe (as proven by the Supernova Cosmology Project and the High-Z Supernova Search Team) provides yet another paradox: if the expansion of the universe is speeding up right now, at what point will that expansion begin to slow, and why?

Humans have a tendency to characterize curiosity about the universe as “existentialism”; however, questioning the meaning of life, the nature of the universe, and the origin of ourselves is quite possibly the deepest instinct someone can have.

Some are frightened about how vast the unknown is, and some are exhilarated by it. My favourite part of astronomy has always been that there is really no right or wrong; I can theorize as accurately about the size of the universe as the brightest astrophysicist in the world today can—that is to say, humankind really knows nothing about the universe we live in.

Then again, the next scientific revolution could be right around the corner; as for me, I’m on the edge of my seat waiting for it.

Climate count-up #6: Educating girls Taking a look at Project Drawdown's solutions to climate change dorota borovsky contributor

We’ve all heard of the most common suggestions for solving the climate crisis: implementing alternative energy sources, preventing deforestation, or following a more plant-based diet. However, Project Drawdown ranks a surprising solution near the top of their list: the education of girls. The link may not seem apparent at first, but the idea is that if women receive primary and secondary education, they will marry later in life, have fewer children, and lead healthier lives. Population control is one mechanism suggested to lower global emissions, which may help slow the destruction of our climate. Rather remarkably, it is estimated that if every girl around the world received a full thirteen years of education, then around 52 gigatons of carbon emissions would be reduced by

2050. Furthermore, achieving universal education would cost only around $39 billion annually, according to UNESCO. By comparison, Canada alone spends around $25 billion annually on its national defense and is projected to spend $264 billion on healthcare in 2019. The returns on the investment into universal education are incalculable when compared to the economic costs resulting from climate change. Thus, investment in education is something that ought to make businesses, governments, and citizens around the world very enthusiastic.

An interesting relationship exists between girls’ education and climate change. Climate change is stimulating many weather-related disasters, and to deal with the stress caused by these disasters, girls in poorer countries are often pulled out of school so they can work to help their families financially, or help with household responsibilities. Ironically,

women who complete their education go on to lead their communities in more sustainable practices that protect the environment and are more adaptable in the face of climate disasters to deal with economic stresses.

There are still 130 million girls around the world aged between 6 and 17 who do not go to school. As the climate crisis escalates and discussions on how to respond continue, we need to think beyond traditional approaches and invest in solutions that address the interconnectedness between environmental degradation and global inequality.

Selected climate change solutions compiled and ranked

by Project Drawdown (for the comprehensive list, go to https://www.drawdown.org/). See the following issue for the next proposed solution.

ARTS AND CULTURE 11

@STRANDPAPER THE STRAND | 26 NOVEMBER 2019

The unpopularity of "Popular Film"

PHOTO | PIXHERE.COM

RONAN MALLOVY STAFF WRITER

In August of 2018, controversy arose surrounding the announcement that an award for “Outstanding Achievement in Popular Film” would be given out at the 2019 Academy Awards. Although the “Popular Film” Oscar did not live long enough to be awarded, backlash from academy members, journalists, and moviegoers alike caused the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to pull the category less than a month later. Criticism came from all directions, with the award being seen as an effort by an increasingly elitist Hollywood establishment to pander to a blockbuster audience in the face of flagging awards-show ratings.

Much of this controversy stemmed from the name itself: the term “popular” suggested to many that those films nominated for the traditional Best Picture category were, by contrast, unpopular.

Seen this way, the award would be something of a slap in the face to those creators of art cinema wishing to market their work to a wider audience.

Conversely, some took issue with setting popular film in contrast to art film on the grounds that a film’s commercial success should not be seen as a mark against its art status. In an attempt to satisfy moviegoers and critics alike, the Oscars, it seemed, could satisfy no one.

Just over a year later, we may be on our way to a reprisal of a controversy never properly put to rest. In 2018, Marvel Studios’ Black Panther grossed over $1.3 billion worldwide and garnered widespread critical acclaim. Its commercial and critical success was generally viewed as the impetus for the creation of the Popular Film category. After the category was withdrawn, Black Panther earned a Best Picture nomination but did not take home the award itself, much to the dismay of its broad fan base. In the lead-up to the 2020 Oscars, we are once again saddled with the task of figuring out what to do with a film that troubles academy

categorizations, this time in the form of the comicbook-movie-turned-psychological-thriller, Joker.

Joker soared to acclaim at its film festival releases in Venice and Toronto and went on to major success when released to the public. Since then, its popularity has not waned, becoming the first R-rated movie to gross over $1 billion. At the same time, Joker has been praised by critics for its compelling and nuanced depictions of mental illness and socioeconomic inequality. Still, Oscar predictors—yes, that is a real, full-time job—even four months before the show airs believe that record-breaking box-office numbers and widespread critical acclaim may not be enough to propel the film to a Best Picture nomination.

Here I must “out” myself as someone who believes that Joker is not a film that deserves a Best Picture nomination, and nor did Black Panther a year ago. These films are innovative and exciting, and they bring a higher quality of filmmaking to global audiences than is normally seen in blockbuster hits, but they are by no means the best films of their respective years. They shouldn’t be viewed as such, but nor should they be ignored altogether by a body that claims to represent the Hollywood industry. In seeking the middle ground between the highest possible recognition and no recognition at all, our best option might be to give the Popular Film category another shot.

To those who might reasonably be apprehensive at the concept of an Oscar for “Achievement in Popular Film”, I offer the story of the Best Animated Feature category as a model. In 2002, in light of an increase in the production of animated features, the first Oscar in the category was presented to DreamWorks’ smash-hit Shrek. Prior to receiving the award, there was great disappointment over the fact that Shrek was not nominated for Best Picture, with many citing the newly created category as a means of barring animated films from major awards.

Since 2002, however, this complaint has mostly

been put to rest as a result of the nominations of Up and Toy Story 3 for Best Picture in 2009 and 2010, respectively. A film could indeed receive an award in the animation category and still be considered for Best Picture.

By now we’ve gotten used to the idea of an award for animated features, and few believe that the award’s existence is a mark against animation’s status as art. Given enough time, the same could happen with blockbusters. As more and more movies are made to bring in massive global audiences, we need to realize that blockbusters, like animated movies, are created within unique production contexts, and as such deserve the opportunity to be considered under different criteria. Blockbusters are made with vastly different goals in mind, and we owe it to these films to first consider them on the terms in which they were created. Taking a closer look at last year’s Best Picture nominees, I challenge anyone to find a set of common criteria by which Black Panther could be measured against the slow, thoughtful, black-and-white passion project that was Roma. The short answer is that there isn’t one, and that’s not a bad thing.

Someday soon, however, a big blockbuster will come along that is enjoyed by millions the world over and is, at the same time, impossible to ignore as a work of art. When that day comes, I will happily see it take home two Oscars: one for Best Picture, the other for Best Popular Film. Because what that means is that the film will have succeeded on two planes of creativity, and that should be recognized.

It’s hard to get people to sympathize with the massive, moneymaking production companies that make these movies—that, I understand—but it’s not about them. When we talk about film—and, as flawed as they are, the Oscars are one of the ways we talk about film—we should be talking about what people, all people, are actually going to see.

The Oscars are a long way from doing that, but this is a good place to start.

12 ARTS AND CULTURE

EDITOR | ABBIE MOSER ARTSANDCULTURE@THESTRAND.CA

Chilly bitch winter ABBIE MOSER ARTS AND CULTURE EDITOR

Hot girl summer and thotumn have come and gone; ‘tis the season to sit in front of your light-therapy lamp in an attempt to ease those winter blues while wrapped in endless layers. Here are some icy tunes for sliding into winter’s frosty embrace.

“Horchata” by Vampire Weekend “50 Words for Snow” by Kate Bush “Sister Winter” by Sufjan Stevens “Aurora” by Bjork “Winter Time Blues” by Big Maceo “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm” by Billie Holiday “Ice Princess” by Azealia Banks “Coldest Winter” by Kanye West “Spring Snow” by Vampire Weekend “Purple Snowflakes” by Marvin Gaye “Winter Wonderland” by Aretha Franklin “Player’s Ball” by OutKast “ALASKA” by Brockhampton “La femme à la peau bleue” by Vendredi sur Mer “Blindsided” by Bon Iver “Snowflake” by Kate Bush “Winter Now” by Broadcast “Undone – The Sweater Song” by Weezer

PHOTO | COURTESY OF ABBIE MOSER

The Strand reviews In Fabric ABBIE MOSER ARTS AND CULTURE EDITOR

PHOTO | COURTESY OF IMDB

The category is “Susperia, but make it department store chic”. Peter Strickland pays homage to vintage giallo horrors and Hammer Film Production with In Fabric.

It takes place in a distorted version of either 1970s or 1980s England, in a fictional town that clings to the fading idea of luxury where a beautiful artery-red dress wreaks havoc on the lives of all who come in contact with it. While the premise is simple, the film is anything but that.

Sheila Woolchapel (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) is a newly-single mother whose former partner has already found a new love. Her parental duties become diminished as her teenage son Vince (Jaygann Ayeh) is preoccupied with his bitchy and vampy girlfriend, Gwen (Gwendoline Christie) and dinners with his father and his father’s new partner. In search of a more rewarding relationship, and in attempt to feel seen, Sheila scans the lonely-hearts ads in the newspaper. After securing a date with a man who promises excitement, but ends up failing to deliver, Sheila is faced with a dilemma as old as time: figuring out what to wear.

Lured by hypnotic and vaguely satanic commer-

cials, Sheila finds herself buying a red dress at a department store, Dentley & Soper’s, from one of the many saleswomen there who are garbed in high-collared Victorian dresses and who only speak in Lewis Carroll-like riddles. Despite her unanswered questions about the dress’ apparently fluid size, Sheila wears the dress as she is reassured by a saleswoman that the article of clothing will bewitch any prospective romantic interests. Sheila is soon unknowingly being led down a path of terror as the saleswomen’s ritualistic practices appear to be controlling the dress and its intentions.

After Sheila no longer has a use for the dress, or rather, after the dress no longer has a use for Sheila, we find it in a thrift store. It soon falls into the hands of Reg Speaks (Leo Bill), a washing machine repair man, whose friends force him to wear it at his bachelor party.

Reg and his now-wife Babs experience similar horrors as Sheila as they both end up wearing the dress. The abrupt jump from Sheila’s story to Reg’s takes more away from the film than it gives; it creates more confusion than intrigue.

While the soundtrack is mesmerising, the cin-

ematography is truly incredible, and Jean-Baptiste’s performance is stronger than consumerism’s hold on most people, the script is lacking. Strickland’s film feels devoid of any real emotion, as it feels like he’s just trying really hard to be noticed and to ensure that viewers don’t realize that his script is bad by ensuring that everything else about In Fabric is the best it can be. What I am guessing is that an aspect of his own personal artistic style is imbued in the film, as Strickland has tackled sex and BDSM in his previous films. The few sexual encounters in the film fail to add anything to the plot and they just feel predatory. This is not surprising, as this movie is made by a straight, white, cisgender, British man, after all.

With images of dismembered mannequins and magazine models throughout the film, In Fabric wants so badly to be a sly and fresh critique on consumerism.

The film doesn’t really say anything about consumerism that hasn’t been said before, it just says it all in an eerie and uncomfortable way. In Fabric, darling, you’re just a polyester blend trying to be cashmere. Go take your place on the sale rack.

ARTS AND CULTURE 13

@STRANDPAPER THE STRAND | 26 NOVEMBER 2019

The Strand reviews Parasite Bong Joon Ho’s new film is a beautiful, tragic, and hilarious exploration of the class struggle

PHOTO | COURTESY OF NEON/CJ ENTERTAINMENT

REBECCA GAO EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

From the very beginning of Parasite, South Korean director Bong Joon Ho’s most recent movie, space is of utmost importance. The movie opens on the desolate Kim family and their semi-basement apartment. Right away, Bong establishes the status of the Kim family—half above ground, half below. This stands in contrast to the house of the wealthy Park family, a giant modernist mansion that looks out onto a beautiful green lawn.

Bong’s film follows the exploits of the Kim family as they slowly infiltrate the Park family. First, the son Ki-woo (Choi Woo-shik) gets a job as an English tutor for the Parks’ daughter. Then, his sister Ki-jung (Park So-dam) becomes a bougie art therapist for the Parks’ son. Finally, the Kim patriarch and matriarch, Ki-taek (Song Kang-ho) and Chung-sook (Chang Hyae-jin), become the Parks’ driver and housekeeper, respectively. The first half of the movie goes by easily—almost too easily. The Kim family is able to finagle their way into the Parks’ lives and trust without too much effort. In fact, their exploits are fun to watch, light-

hearted, and comedic.

Halfway through the film, the secret of the beautiful Park mansion is found out, and the titular parasite exposes itself. This is a major spoiler alert, but there is no way to talk about Parasite without talking about, well, the parasite. It turns out there is a family lower than the Kims: in the basement of the Park mansion lives another family. The former housekeeper has been hiding her husband in the basement after fleeing loan sharks. Bong uses space and architectural levels to show the status of characters, both visually and literally. From the Parks’ cloistered lives in their walled-off mansion, to the semi-public half-basement that the Kims live in, to the literal bunker that the old housekeeper’s husband is in, the spaces that the characters inhabit dictate the lives they live.

The parasite in Parasite is not this subterranean couple.

Rather, it’s the parasitic relationship that exists between the classes. The Parks, a young nouveau-riche couple who have found wealth in the tech sector, depend on the lower classes for everything. It’s how the Kims are able to infiltrate the entire family; a string of recommendations from son

to daughter to father to mother that the Parks blindly rely on allows the Kims to sneak right up to the Parks without them even noticing.

Bong doesn’t let the lower classes off easy, however.

Though it’s obvious that the rich rely on the labour of the poor, it’s a two-way street in Parasite. The Kims rely on the Parks for income, stability, and the Kims all hope to one day live in a house like the Parks’.

Though it’s true that the Parks did nothing wrong, their fatal flaw was trusting the wrong people, and the tragedy of Parasite is that the poor don’t band together to fight the rich. Instead, the two families, the one in the bunker and the one in the sub-basement, decide to fight each other. The fight between these two lower-class families is what ultimately drives the film towards a chaotic and violent end. The Parks, however, get out of the film unscathed; the rich coming out on top as the poor fight amongst each other. The rich will always live in their walled-in mansions while the poor fight between the basement and the subbasement.

What I’ve been watching on Disney+ this week High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, JONAS, and more LEO MORGENSTERN MANAGING EDITOR

By the time you’re reading this article, my Disney+ free trial will have expired. In fact, as I’m typing these words, the minutes are ticking down to 9:45 pm, at which point I have to either cancel my account or begin paying for the service. I have a decision to make.

Oh, who am I kidding? I’m all in. There’s no chance I’m cancelling my Disney+ account. The excitement is just beginning. I got to watch brand new shows, like High School Musical: The Musical: The Series; rewatch favourite shows from my childhood, like JONAS; and finally enjoy all the classic shows I missed out on, like Lizzie McGuire. Here’s a little recap of my first week with Disney+.

JONAS

I was never a big Jonas Brothers fan growing up. I couldn’t name any of their songs, and I never watched Camp Rock. I do, however, remember liking their sitcom, JONAS. But was it actually that good? Despite the Jonas Brothers’ popularity, JONAS only aired for one and a half seasons and never reached the same level of popularity as shows like Wizards of Waverly Place or

Hannah Montana. Did I really like JONAS, or did I just convince myself that I was watching it “for the jokes” because I was repressing the real reason I was watching the show (Joe’s hair)? Well, after binging my way through more of the first season than I’d care to admit, I can officially confirm that JONAS is, like, actually good. The show primarily focuses on jokes, rather than character development or storyline, and the jokes are pretty solid. Plus, Joe, Nick, and Kevin all have pretty good comedic timing. It’s also far more absurdist and ridiculous than I would have expected a Disney show to be. Oh, and almost every episode features a Jonas Brothers performance. What’s not to like?

High School Musical: The Musical: The Series

Let’s be real, this show is the true reason I signed up for Disney+. This show has a perfect concept, and my only concern was that it tries too hard to be something more than a gimmick. Thankfully, that doesn’t seem like it’s going to be a problem. Only two episodes are out right now, but so far, it’s buying all the way into the gimmick. The show absolutely feeds off High School Musical nostalgia, as it should. It does this directly by using the set and the songs from the original movie,

indirectly through all the parallels between the plots of the movie and the series, and at a meta-level by frequently mentioning the movie itself. To top it all off, the young actors are all pretty talented, and the actor who plays the teacher, Kate Reinders, is hysterical.

HSM:TM:TS is all it should be and more.

Lizzie McGuire

Man, if I had a nickel for every time I heard someone reminisce about watching Lizzie McGuire. For some reason, I never watched Lizzie McGuire as a kid. But I’ve always been curious about this show. Phil of the Future had time travel, That’s So Raven had psychic powers. What did Lizzie McGuire have? Truth is, I can’t tell you yet. I don’t really see the appeal. It certainly isn’t a bad show, but it just feels to me more like an afterschool special than a sitcom. Should I take this as a sign that none of my favourite shows from childhood were really that good, and I just like them for the nostalgia?

Maybe, but I don’t like to think about that.

What I’ll Be Watching Next Week Original Content: The Mandalorian Nostalgia Content: Hannah Montana Classic Show I Missed Out On: Kim Possible

14 STRANDED

EDITOR | MAX NISBETH STRANDED@THESTRAND.CA

Five ways to spice up your Christmas life

max nisbeth stranded editor

Let’s face it, you’ve been having the same Christmas holiday for years. The magic is gone. The dinners and the gifts are becoming routine, and now you find yourself “planning” your holiday instead of just “doing it”.

Here are five tips to reform your Christmas life to the glory it once was.

1. Date nights When did Christmas become sitting around and drinking hot chocolate all day? What happened to the romance of it all? This holiday take your family out to dinner. They deserve it. Invest in your relationship, and they’ll take notice. Treat them to a trip to the Christmas market and a viewing of Jojo Rabbit. Put in the effort, and you’ll feel it back. Trust me ;)

2. Eggnog Only drink eggnog. You will 1000% be sick—in a good way! You can recapture that one-on-one time with your entire family as they constantly clean up and take care of your projectile ass. Nothing creates intimacy between people like holding their hair as they puke. Trust me ;) 3.Get fucking naked When was Christmas great? When you were young!

When you couldn’t use scissors and barely wore clothes.

Do that now! Throw out your clothes and your scissors.

Parade around your uncle’s apartment like a volunteer model for an art class. You will feel so free. And your family will give you A LOT more attention. Trust me ;) 4. Role-playing Maybe the key to re-activating your Christmas drive is breaking the monotony. Why not pretend to be Santa? Just leave your house at night, dress up as Santa,

break into your own home even though you still have the keys, steal some food, and see what happens. Your family will definitely make you the centre of their discussions, and so will the police. TRUST ME ;) THEY WILL! 5. Be open to polyamory Your family already explores this by loving your guardians and siblings as much as they love you, or so they say. Why not bring someone else in on the fun? Like the local librarian for example. Consensually bring them as your holiday lover. Make gifts addressed to others on their behalf. Your family won’t be able to take their eyes off of them. But DO NOT let your family in on the love-making. Please! Do not have sex with your family!!! Trust me ;)

How to tell your friend they’re part of a pyramid scheme james hannay contributor

It’s that time of year again—that random that you have on Facebook just sent you a message like this: “OMG [insert your own name here]! It’s been SO LONG. How have you been? Anyway, I know the Holidays are coming and you’re probably looking for a gift for your [insert the family member that this person knows here]!! Well, let me tell you about the AMAZING skincare products that [insert multi-level marketing company/pyramid scheme that will ruin your skin here, I’m looking at you, Arbonne] has that would make a BEAUTIFUL gift.”

Either you’ve received a message like this or Kaitlyn from high school just posted about how she’s totally ready to buy that Cadillac with the rewards she gets from her amazing new work-from-home job.

You know that multi-level marketing schemes are a scam, and you are thinking to yourself: “Should I tell this person that they’re part of a scam?” Yes! You should!

It is your DUTY to rescue this person from one of the worst vestiges of capitalism. Now you’re probably asking yourself, how do I tell this person that their job is

just a scam? People involved in these schemes/scams are very attached to their jobs, so you have to be careful!

Well, I have your answer! Here is your definitive list of how to tell your friend that they’re part of a pyramid scheme: Method 1: Just Tell Them “Hey, I think you’re part of a pyramid scheme!” A simple approach, but they might not understand how this direct-to-consumer method works. They are, for this matter, involved in a scheme that is not direct to consumers.

Method 2: Tell Their Boss Go to your friend’s boss. This takes some work. Your question of “Who’s your boss?” can result in two things: one, you get told that they are their own boss, in which case refer to Method 1. Or two, you follow your way up to the top of the pyramid. Tell the top of the pyramid that you need to let their friend know that they’re engaging in a scam. This method is risky because the message might get lost as it travels down the chain.

Method 3: Show Them the Clip from The Office In The Office, Jim shows Michael Scott that he is engaging in a pyramid scheme by literally drawing a pyramid

on a whiteboard. Start posting this clip and then ask them questions like: “Have you ever been to Egypt?” or saying things like “Wow, I would love to go see the pyramids one day.” This should tip them off that they’re probably engaging in some sort of pyramid scheme. If not, your constant badgering about interests in Egypt and ancient tombs of any shape could be funded by joining their entrepreneurial team of business partners from Arbonne!

Method 4: If You Can’t Beat Them, Join Them As the ancient maxim goes, just go where they go. If you cannot convince your friend that they are part of a scheme, then they may not be part of the scheme.

In this case, you’ve gone down the line and expanded your reach with your approaches. You’re at the bottom and you can’t do much more. You look stressed though!

Your skin is defs breaking out, and it looks like you need some moisturizer. I really think you should try some of the new skincare products that I have from Arbonne! They’re totally safe and will totally work. If you’re interested in making money like me, I can connect you to the right person! You will be your own boss and work from home and everything! I’m totally excited for you to join our team!

STRANDED 15

@STRANDPAPER THE STRAND | 26 NOVEMBER 2019

Which WLW (woman who loves women) modernist writer are you? beck siegal staff writer

1) Are you gay?

A. No, just in love with people of the same gender as myself B. I won’t tell you, but I will tell you I am a woman having sex with lots of women C. I’m really into Oscar Wilde 2) Would you ever change your name?

A. No B. I go by my middle name and use my ex-husband’s last name C. I change it slightly all the time. Just figuring out what sounds best for artistic reasons 3) How’s your relationship with your family?

A. They are mostly creepy and bad B. I’ve stayed close with them C. They don’t approve of my debauchery 4) If you had a motto, what would it be?

A. “MORE RADICAL!” B. “Be artistically honest” C. “Live fast, die young” 5) How confusing do you want your art to be?

A. ULTIMATELY CONFUSING B. Just confusing enough to make the reader understand

C. Not so much confusing as unsettling 6) Thoughts on publishing?

A. I don’t know, everyone wants to publish me. I’m just really good B. You’re not artistically honest unless you’re publishing your own work in a magazine you run by yourself C. Self-publish if you have to, anything to get your stuff out there 7) Thoughts on the suffragettes?

A. They’re not radical enough B. I’d work with them C. Indifferent 8) How are you most likely to die?

A. Alone in my one-bedroom apartment as a famous recluse and artist at 90 years old B. In an infamously aestheticized suicide, incapacitated and unable to work, after a lifetime of fighting depression :( C. Of a curable disease, because I’m a fucking dumbass who refuses to use non-homeopathic medicine IF YOU GOT: Mostly A: You are Djuna Barnes!!!!

You will write one of the most explicit (and beautiful) pieces of lesbian fiction ever published and it won’t even be censored because you’re writing something so radical the publishers can’t understand how dangerous it is

(Lesbianism? What’s that? Probably fine). You live large and weird. You are an icon of the avant-garde scene.

Everyone respects, loves, and fears you, but mostly you just want to stay inside and write.

Mostly B: You are Virginia Woolf!!!!

Nobody tells you what to do. You write and edit your own work and then publish it in your own printing press and if people don’t like it, they can fuck off. Everything you do will change the literary world forever (hello, stream of consciousness) and you know it. Lots of people will be in love with you, some of them you will love back. You are solidly, unabashedly bourgeois and the Jews give you the heebie-jeebies, but hey, everyone who makes the sort of ripple you do is gonna have some unsavory prejudices. I wouldn’t worry too much about it.

Mostly C: You are Katherine Mansfield!!!!

You lead a pretty wild life. Personally, I think this is the best option. You got sent away by your parents and cut out of your mom’s will for having too much queer sex, but this is where you will start writing the really revolutionary stuff, and I mean, come on, we both know you’re not gonna live long enough to really need that money. You feel and understand deeply, but you’re not about to let reason or societal decorum cramp your style—whatever your style is. You’re figuring that out, I’m sure.

If I were a software engineer, according to my mum skylar cheung staff writer

I would have finally made it after a one term co-op, two major hackathon awards, and three summer internships—one of which invariably took place at a failing tech company: Lahoo…

A swarm of us Github-browsing students were poached from the Cupa Cafe in Palo Alto one afternoon. It turns out they needed us “student interns” to keep the colossal Silicon Valley meme running despite budget constraints. The more skilled, ex-student interns (full-time hires who had proven their competency) were all laid off that morning.

Times were tough. Teresa Teyer, our CEO, was hosting an auction for a lock of her hair on eBay to prove herself a team player. At the opening ceremony, she showed up with “Lahoo” etched into the hairmissing patch of her head to demonstrate the company value of being such a team player. In exchange for pledging to shave my head in solidarity with her, I received a company t-shirt that I should have sold after the collapse of the company. Instead, I used it as a floor rag to clean my 1000-square-foot kitchen.

I live in one of the mega-mansions concealed within Palmbook’s campus. My house is the testing ground for new surveillance equipment. None of my family members want to visit because they’re afraid of having their data leeched and sold to the Russians. I like the free food and laundry too much to ever quit my job. I have a shiny new Porsche sitting in the driveway, but I never use it since I get chauffeured everywhere on the company bike. It’s painted in the trademarked shade of green (to represent money) and looks like a tandem bike, but obviously cooler. The frame is made from the scrap metal that once belonged to the Rolls Royces of Sun Microsystems’ never-employed-again employees.

Sometimes, I feel bad for the laid off employees. So, I treat them to free coffee at the campus cafe whenever they want. I’m obviously the highest performer in this company, so I have to send robots to chauffeur them whenever they come. The screens on the robot’s heads broadcast my face, so it’s basically like I’m there with them anyway. I used the artificial intelligence I secretly

developed to write the code for these robots that were built by the robots down at Safari’s headquarters next door. Assigning them the task of procreation imbued them with such great gratification! I hear they have begun a project to build a mini colony to overtake their money-obsessed evil human slaves.

I worry they will soon speak more languages than I do. I am cross at my mum for teaching me a nearly obsolete language like French instead of something more desirable, like Ruby on Rails. Luckily, I have bioengineered myself to be fluent not only in Ruby on Rails but to also use it to develop new languages like Emerald on Tracks and Espresso. I’m basically to the history of tech as David Joshua Peterson is to Game of Thrones.

I haven’t watched any television series since seeing a satirical copy of myself on HBO’s Silicon Valley. My television doppelganger, who wears the same glasses and Allbirds as me, was created without my consent.

Consent is so important, which is why I dedicate five minutes of each day training my brain to read the terms

and conditions of various tech products. Then, I spend another five sharing my summary on hackernews.com.

I didn’t get far enough into the season to see whether my character practices this selfless virtue, for I was too offended when my biohacking was depicted as just starving. I’m no Jack Dorsey, I don’t just eat one meal a day. My diet subsists of IV therapy and one Soylent a day, to be taken at dinner time.

All the money I make should be invested in sending my mum to the Bahamas, but instead, I gift her a company VR headset for Christmas. I created a loading screen that is a B-roll of beachgoers in Los Angeles. The scene is a 95 percent match to one typical of the Bahamas, according to the Lahoo image recognition technology. The headset is great since it lets her go wherever she wants with whichever virtual character she chooses.

I profusely thank my mother for birthing me at a time when humans have not yet been obsolesced by a robot army. illustration

| pixabay

16 STRANDED

@STRANDPAPER THE STRAND | 26 NOVEMBER 2019

I try to get baby flathead so you don’t have to Move over Flat Stanley, there’s a new sheriff in town ellen grace baby

chance I get. I read medical books looking for hints on how to get a more malleable skull.

You hear it everywhere: “Nine Simple Ways to Prevent Flathead in Your Baby.” In every hospital room there is a poster about how you CANNOT under any circumstances get baby flathead. The capitalist overlords try to sell us products like “Baby Head Shaping Pillow for Flat Head Prevention, Head Support, Heart Shaped, Made of Ventilated Organic Cotton and Memory Foam, Ergonomic Design.” What is baby flathead? Is it dangerous? Dear Stranded reader, I am here with the answers. I have put my life on the line for you over the past two months as I desperately tried to get baby flathead to see what would happen to me if I did. Here’s what I’ve found.

Week four: I ask my friend to intricately check my head for flat spots. Maybe I’m just not seeing them.

This makes me realize maybe this whole thing is absurd and foolish. It should be the inside of my head that counts, right? Not how flat the outside is?

Week one: I do the exact opposite of what it says online about how not to get baby flathead. I sleep in the exact same position every night. I do not have tummy time to keep myself off my head and help my muscles get stronger. I did not encourage myself to look to the side I do not prefer by distracting myself with an interesting toy.

Week seven: My production of Jesus Christ Superstar where all the characters have baby flathead is getting lukewarm reviews, especially because I changed a lot of the lyrics, which is apparently not allowed in my licensing agreement or something, although I stand behind King Herod saying “Feed my household with this bread / you could do it on your baby flathead.”

Week two: No progress. I check every spot of my head and yet it is still so perfectly round.

Week eight: My production of Jesus Christ Superstar where all the characters have baby flathead got shut down by a committee lead by ACTRA and the Ontario Health Board of Directors. The cast and crew are

Week three: I decide to try harder. I lie down every

extremely upset to throw away all their hard work, but maybe the real work was the baby flathead we tried to get along the way. photo

| this is the desired effect

Week five: I decide if I can’t physically have baby flathead, maybe I can try to understand it emotionally.

Maybe I can bring it into the community theatre production of Jesus Christ Superstar I’m directing.

Week six: I throw away all the hats I made with flat spots in order to accommodate my newly flat head.

How to stop reading wikiHow articles about How To Ask Your Crush Out What wikiHow won’t tell you cilantro weathers contributor

1. Read articles on the same subject matter from other websites.

I love using wikiHow to fix my love life. It seems to promise concrete results, giving you step-by-step actions on how to achieve your goal. They even have tips

at the bottom to remind you that you’re worthy of love and if your crush doesn’t like you, you’ll find someone someday who does. This positive mindset leaves you wanting to return to wikiHow again and again. They will NOT let you wallow in self-pity, so if you want to do this, I’d recommend looking elsewhere. Feel free to read articles from something called “Panda Gossips” (no pandas involved [Symbol]) like “Ten Sneaky Ways to Get Your Crush to Ask You Out”, which is filled with reminders of heteronormativity and enforced gender roles. You know this is, like, bad, and you hate that we live in a world where articles like this exist, but at 3 am, wearing red to school tomorrow because it’s the ““colour of seduction”” seems like a good idea. On second thought, maybe you just shouldn’t read any of these.

2. Read the wikHow article “How to Eat a Bowl of Cereal”.

This is probably the best article on wikiHow. It tells you how to eat cereal, step-by-step. It has handy tips that you might not have considered, like how you can “Feel free to get creative and use coffee mugs, Tupperware, or other containers to eat your cereal. Don’t feel confined to the bowl.” God, I wish I didn’t feel confined to the bowl.

3. Ask your crush out yourself.

Hahahahha, hahahhahaha, I’m just kidding. This is the comedy section, so I had to put a little joke in there.

photo

| pixabay