UT Magazine 10/23

INSIDEUTEEN... ,

Wowser! It’s that time of the month already. No, not that one! it’s time for UT Magazine to bring you up to date on what’s going on in the big badass world. From celebrities to celebrities to even more celebrities, our wonderful writers are here to reveal all on who’s hot and who’s just a hot mess. Not been feeling or looking your best lately? Have you hit a roadblock in your journey to fame? Have all your friends left you to go study with the bed bugs in Paris?

(I can most definitely not relate to this one in any shape or form) Well , look no further, because we’ll have you dolled up, stuffed up (with easy to make and nutritious meals), glammed up and ready to get your taste of stardom! Tips, tricks and truths galore all await you, and who knows? Maybe you’ll find yourself in a UT Magazine someday. So what are you waiting for? Get those Turkish teeth into some hot goss!

Lena Dunham’s Comedy of Errors Phoebe Pascoe, pg. 6

How To... Become a Star on Campus! Yummy Mummies Cleo x pg. 8 Turning Sour?

Maisie Greener, pg. 7

cover-to-cover gossip...

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Is Taylor Swift rewriting history?

Is Lena Dunham still cancelled?

Can television capture campus life?

Make the most of your staycation!

11 12 14 16

Have fangirls gone too far?

Cook up a storm in your college kitchen!

Shein or second-hand?

You ask, we answer!

Test your brains with our bonus puzzles!

5SOS: Girl Trouble?

anatomy ii Sarah Kerr details the tribute to Alexander McQueen in Sarah Burton’s farewell fashion show

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fter Lee Alexander McQueen’s sudden death in 2010, Sarah Burton was tasked with continuing his legacy. In 1996, while studying at Central Saint Martins in London, Burton arrived at the fashion house on an internship placement and returned to the brand after graduation. Two years later she was appointed the head of womenswear. Throughout her 26 years with the brand, Burton has shown consistency season after season.

Although she has shifted the lens slightly from Lee’s macabre and deliberately unwearable designs to a more illuminating and softer look, the fashion house still carries the foundations and ethos of McQueens’s work, which was devoted to empowering women.

In an interview with Vogue India, Burton described the clothes she designs as “soft armour for women’’. Throughout her career as a creative director, we have seen this “soft armour” time and time again.

In her final collection titled Anatomy II, launched at Paris Fashion Week in late September this year, Burton pays tribute to his ethos of empowerment while also bidding farewell to a chapter in her life.

With the royal wedding having been viewed by approximately 162 million, Kate Middleton’s dress is Burton’s most recognisable design. Less than a year into her role as creative director and still coming to terms with the loss of her friend and mentor, Burton was commissioned to create Kate Middleton’s dress and worked on it in complete secrecy. The dress embodies Burton’s soft armour approach to design, particularly the billowed skirt and the 9ft train, the

shape of the skirt and the train imitate the opening of a flower.

This image of flowers appears in many of Burton’s works, especially in her final show titled Anatomy II. The rose represents what femininity means to not only Burton but to McQueen’s work and his ethos for the fashion house. Beautiful to look at but holding a thorny edge beneath, the rose displays McQueen’s work and his desire to empower women. Burton describes the symbol of the rose as “the queen of flowers” and says that “it has a beauty and a strength but a fragility in the fact that it will inevitably wither and die.”

Burton’s farewell collection debuted on September 30th at Spring/Summer 24 at Paris Fashion Week This collection, titled Anatomy II, pays homage to McQueen by celebrating the endurance and wonder of the female body. Burton’s inspirations for this collection were Queen Elizabeth I, the female anatomy, the symbol of the rose, and Magdalena Abakanowicz.

She refers to Abakanowicz as “a transgressive and powerfully creative artist who refused ever to compromise her vision”. At the end of her statement, she dedicated the show to McQueen “whose wish was always to empower women”.

The clothes contain a palette of blood red, gold, black and ivory. David Sims’ photograph of a rose is printed over seamless slip dresses. Dresses with floral folds that also allude to the female anatomy enforce the symbolic meaning of the rose which Burton was so fond of. Open-heart corsets and slashed

Anatomy II

pays homage to McQueen by

celebrating the endurance and wonder of the female body

bodices display a sense of vulnerability and openness. Jewellery pieces embellished with pearls and crystals accentuate and complement the theme of femininity.

This collection radiates McQueen’s belief in what defines an empowered woman, her strength, sensuality, sexuality and beauty. As the show closes, David Bowie’s “Heroes’’ echoes over the speakers in an emotional finale. Naomi Cambell ends the show while wiping a tear from her eye in this emotional farewell.

While Sarah Burton is known for not being one for the spotlight, she steps out from backstage and basks in the applause and the audience appreciation for her service to the McQueen fashion house. As Bowie’s song concludes so does Burton’s 26-year chapter at Alexander McQueen.

Irish designer Sean McGirr has recently been announced as Burton’s successor. His first collection as creative director is set to be released in February 2024.

The parent company only has creative directors who are white men. This has sparked a debate online as to whether McGirr will be able to do justice to McQueen’s ethos of empowering women. Can McGirr keep the torch that Burton has passed to him lit or will it all go up in smoke? We will have to wait until February to find out.

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taylor’s version

Sáoirse Goes asks whether Taylor Swift can rewrite her history through her re-recordings.

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s fans worked their way through Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) when Taylor Swift released the re-recording of her third album, many were shocked as they got to the tenth track. In her version of ‘Better Than Revenge’, Swift changed the controversial lyric “She’s better known for the things that she does / On the mattress” to “He was a moth to the flame / She was holding the matches”. Although some eagle-eyed fans had anticipated this change, searching the original lyric on Apple Music to find no results, the change in the mattress lyric has had a mixed reception, leaving some fans disappointed as others welcome the change.

This change comes as Swift makes her way through the task of re-recording the back catalogue of her music, ranging from her self-titled debut through Reputation. She began this endeavour following the expiration of her contract with Big Machine Records in 2018, one that she had originally signed in 2005, as a sixteen-year-old country singer, trying to forge a niche in the Nashville music scene. In signing this deal, Swift relegated the ownership of her masters and original recordings of her first six albums.

While Swift has since switched labels to Universal’s Republic Records, the problem arose when Big Machine was bought by Ithaca Holdings, a private equity firm owned by music manager Scooter Braun. The

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latter then went on to sell her masters to Shamrock Holdings in 2019, for a reported $300 million.

In an Instagram post announcing Fearless (Taylor’s Version), her first re-recording, Swift noted that “artists should own their own work for so many reasons, but the most screamingly obvious one is that the artist is the only one who really knows that body of work”. Explaining her rationale further in an interview on Late Night with Seth Meyers, the singer elaborated, “I made it very clear that I wanted to be able to buy my music, that opportunity was not given to me, and it was sold to somebody else”.

She continued, stating: “I was the one who made this music first, I can just make it again”.

While her re-records are an ingenious and undeniably lucrative loophole into reclaiming her discography, Swift’s rewriting of her history is not new. Following the release of her debut album back in 2006, the singer changed a line in ‘Picture to Burn’ in the radio edit and in all subsequent

releases of the song. The ending to the original lyric, “So go and tell your friends / I’m obsessive and crazy / That’s fine, I’ll tell mine you’re gay”, was altered to “You won’t mind if I say”. This fact has since become entrenched in the lore surrounding Taylor Swift, with many of her fans seeking out old CD versions of the album in the hopes of finding what they have dubbed ‘Picture to Burn (Homophobic Version)’.

Swift’s uneasy track record of altering her lyrics begs an important question to consider regarding her motives: are these changes really about making her fans happier, or are they a means of absolving her own guilt?

Should art reflect the time it was written in? Wouldn’t you edit your diary chronicling the tumultuous and rash emotions of your teenage years if you could, especially if you knew it was being broadcast to the world? Swift was a sixteen-year-old girl living in Nashville when she wrote ‘Picture to Burn’. Most of the songs on her self-titled debut al-

“

Why, then, is

she so eager to cover up her past?

bum were penned during her freshman year of high school, as the young singer attempted to navigate her way through the confusing landscape of growing up, lending a new voice to the tropes of country music, while voicing the deeply personal yet universally relatable perspective of a teenage girl.

Despite never publicly acknowledging her lyric modification in ‘Picture to Burn’, Swift’s insight into the important context of her music is significant.

In a 2014 interview on the Australian radio show 2DayFM, Swift looked back on the time since she released her debut, recalling “my first album came out when I was 16, so I would write about my life as I saw it, as I felt it. And then what happens is as you get more successful, [...] all of a sudden the perspective has changed”.

This would suggest the nature of the lyric as a product of its time.

Why, then, is she so eager to cover up her past?

Equally a product of the personal context in which it was written, ‘Better Than Revenge’ introduces the theme of vengeance into Swift’s discography, a motif which has endured much of her career and discourse surrounding it, including most notably ‘Look What You Made Me Do’ and ‘Vigilante Shit’.

Critics were quick to comment on the problematic nature of the mattress lyric, noting its slut-shaming overtones as well as its seeming perpetuation of internalised misogyny, tearing other women down in a romantic rivalry. However, while the problematic nature of the lyric is undeniable, it must be noted that at the time of writing ‘Better Than Revenge’, Swift had yet to experience the barrage of slut-shaming that befell her in her 1989 era, and would endure through her mass internet cancellation in 2016 and her ensuing Reputation era.

Read in this light, can you really blame Swift for wanting to wipe over these past mistakes? The crux of Swift’s popularity resides in her ability to faithfully relay relatable feelings and experiences to her listeners. When you peel away the layers of her celebrity and the mediated mask of a public persona, is the experience underpinning this lyric alteration not akin to the feeling of noticing a spelling mistake in an essay you have just submitted, cursing the fact that you can’t resubmit anything on Turnitin? The only difference is that Taylor Swift has gone back and changed the line she regretted writing.

What’s more, her re-recording project is about autonomy and reclaiming the agency that she lost.

Why shouldn’t she have the autonomy around what’s going into the music she is re-releasing? After all, if you wrote a song like ‘Girl at Home’, wouldn’t you want to remix it? Even just a little bit?

The issue becomes even more prickly, however, through Swift’s refusal to acknowledge the alteration of the mattress lyric. In her announcement post for Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), the singer recognises that “the songs that came from this time of my life were marked by their brutal honesty, unfiltered diaristic confession and wild wistfulness”. She also crucially notes that the album “tells a tale of growing up, flailing, flying and crashing … and living to speak about it”. As quick as she seems to be accepting of her own shortcomings during this time of her life, this ultimately does not hold up to the reality of covering up the lyric but refusing to own up to it.

While Swift has not expressly forbidden her fans

from listening to the master versions of her discography, she has continuously stressed the importance of owning her own work. For instance, during her 2021 Seth Meyers interview, the artist stated that “when something says Taylor’s Version next to it, that means I own it”, which all but explicitly tells her listeners to stop listening to the original versions.

The fundamental question underpinning the problematics of the mattress lyric seems then to be more generally applicable: should we cover up our past mistakes or should we learn to embrace them? I’m sure you will be able to relate, dear reader, to the feeling of texting someone you shouldn’t be (find: ex, situationship that refuses to text you, old fling that won’t stop liking your stories, etc.), only to find yourself lying to your friends about it. You know you shouldn’t be doing it, which is why you bend the truth.

The only difference in Swift’s case is millions of followers and a clear paper trail, with her mistakes being broadcast on the world stage for everyone to analyse.

Much of the public perception of the singer has been clouded by an unease surrounding the perfectly curated image she publicises. For instance, in a 2013 interview with Metro, Lorde expressed her frustrations with this image, criticising the artist for being too perfect: “Taylor Swift is so flawless, and so unattainable, and I don’t think it’s breeding anything good in young girls”. But this is not the Taylor Swift that her fans knew. The 18-year-old who called out Joe Jonas on Ellen for being “the boy who broke up with me over the phone in 25 seconds” is the girl her fans fell in love with — the flawed, unlikeable female protagonist. The Taylor that fans knew misspoke, judged others harshly, messed things up and regretted it, publicly fell out with friends, had public breakups, dressed, in her own words, like a “50s housewife”. It is this Taylor that brings you comfort when you’ve embarrassed yourself in front of someone you like.

Although she has always been uncomfortable with her past self, Swift has, in recent years, gotten better at acknowledging her mistakes. Her later albums and her Red re-recording shed light on the complexities of her earlier experiences — the body image issues, the embarrassment, the ill-advised sex. With this, Swift also subverts her usual tropes and resists casting herself as the wronged party. She admits to being the ‘Anti-Hero’, “star[ing] directly at the sun but never in the mirror”, and adds a new layer to the scorned woman we first saw in ‘All Too Well’, exclaiming “and all I felt was shame” in the extended ten-minute version of the song.

Her recent albums notably also feature more references to alcohol, breaking the illusion of the perpetually well-behaved girl next door. She notably laments “They told me all of my cages were mental / So I got wasted like all my potential” in ‘This Is Me Trying’ and admits to the all-too relatable experience of post-club sloppiness in ‘Hits Different’: “I pictured you with other girls in love / Then threw up on the street”. She even goes as far as to reference the hallmark of dating in the modern age in ‘Glitch’ — the dreaded situationship — as she questions “maybe I’ll see you out some weekend / Depending on what kind of mood and situation-ship I’m in”. Swift herself is no stranger to the messy fling, her most recent of which being the 1975’s Matty Healy. Let’s face it,

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taylor swift

breaking the

illusion of the perpetually

well-behaved

girl next door

who hasn’t been there with a scrawny arts block boy who will publicly declare his love for you but won’t text you back?

This is why, to many, the lyric change in ‘Better Than Revenge’ seems like a regression from the progress Swift has made.

Swift’s earlier albums r i n g particularly true to her audience because they portray a y o u n g g i r l finding herself amidst r o m a n c e and friendship drama. The reason her audience still listens to decade-old albums is because of their deeply confessional mode. They are an ode to the messiness of being a teenage girl and a young woman trying to pave her way through the world. The re-recording of Speak Now fails to capture this chaos, as does the lyric change in ‘Better than Revenge’. The singer told her audience that she was a people-pleaser in ‘mirrorball’ and she has proven this through her lyric change.

Swift is e s s e n t i a ll y killing her old self with the modification, doing herself, and her fans a disservice by erasing t h e steps she has take n over the years.

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Lessons in Imperfection:

Lena Dunham’s Comedy of Errors Phoebe Pascoe

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I don’t want to freak you out, but I think that I may be the voice of my generation. Or at least a voice of a generation.” Who would have thought that the words uttered by Lena Dunham in the first episode of HBO’s Girls in 2012 would turn out to be correct a decade later? At least, the second part is: the TV show is currently being rewatched en masse by one generation and newly discovered by another. According to The New York Times, viewership of the series – which initially aired between 2012 and 2017 – doubled last winter compared to the months prior. A crop of podcasts devoted to rewatching and analysing the show have also found success. All this, in 2023, in spite of Girls being ‘cancelled’ about a thousand times, its writer and creator Lena Dunham even moreso, and the characters being not just unlikeable but frequently hateable.

Girls is a sort of satirical Sex and the City if Carrie and her friends lived in Brooklyn and wore jeggings.

Hannah (Dunham) is an aspiring writer, newly unsupported by her parents, running around New York with “work, and then I have a dinner thing, and then I am busy Trying To Become Who I Am”. Marnie (Alison Williams) is uptight and falling out of love with her college boyfriend: “I can feel him being nice to me and it makes me so angry”. Shoshana (Zosia Mamet), the youngest of the lot, is a student at NYU and “the least virginy-virgin ever”. She idolises her British cousin, Jessa (Jemima Kirke), a cross between an absent father and someone straight out of the Arts Block.

The pilot episode of Girls is the best start to a TV series I’ve ever seen. It makes silly young people the butt of the joke, but also the ones writing the jokes.

From there on, the show is saturated with excruciating, incredibly executed cringe: in Season 2, Marnie crashes her ex-boyfriend’s corporate party and sings a painfully sincere rendition of ‘Stronger’ by Kanye West. Even if the exact situations aren’t ones I find myself in, the experience of being in your early twenties is pretty universally embarrassing, I think.

Girls encapsulates this perfectly.

However, the show is not without its pitfalls. It is noticeably white, for one. Especially considering Girls is set in New York, the lack of diversity seems like it would be almost difficult to achieve by accident. Dunham made a flakey attempt at responding to criticism along these lines by hiring Donald Glover as a love interest for Hannah, but she also wrote him as a Republican who Hannah breaks up with within a couple of episodes because “I can’t be with someone who’s not an ally to gays and women”.

Dunham has been open about basing the characters on herself and the people she knows (in particu-

lar, Jessa is based on Jemima Kirke, who plays her).

Whilst part of the characters’ humour is how insular they are, this undoubtedly extends to the structure of the show in a way that is potentially damaging.

The show incited as much uproar for its content as it did praise for its wit. The first season won two Golden Globes and a litany of awards followed.

There is also a Twitter account called ‘Lena Dunham Apologises’, dedicated purely to satirising the showrunner’s scandals. Some of the criticism was founded (please note: I am not trying to ‘separate the art from the artist’ here), but much of it was also cruelty about Dunham’s body. There is a lot of nudity in the show. Sometimes it involves sex but often it’s characters lazing around the house, going clubbing in a mesh top with no bra, or eating a cupcake in the bath. To me, it makes sense that a show geared towards people somewhere between adolescence and real adulthood doesn’t skirt around the bodily realities of this time. If characters are figuring out their relationships to their bodies at the same time as they figure out their relationships to everything else, why would you only show the latter on screen? American radio host Howard Stern said that Dunham showing her body on TV “feels like rape”. This comment got just as much traction as the actual nuanced, considered questions about sexual assault that the show asked.

There was also criticism about how awful the characters were, as if that is not exactly the reason that Girls is so funny. In the late 2010s there were a litany of ‘unlikeable female characters’ on screen, hailed as revolutionary representation for women. The titular Girls of this show are undeniably, frequently unlikeable. They didn’t get the same response as their cinematic counterparts. What separates them from the ‘unlikeable’ female characters who were celebrated, I believe, is that they don’t have a good reason for it.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag makes plenty of mistakes, but she is also traumatised and often misunderstood.

When the characters in Girls are self-obsessed, whiny and

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The titular

Girls of this show are

undeniably, frequently

unlikeable.

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selfish in ways that negatively impact others, they don’t have a proper excuse. The show doesn’t really provide justifications for its characters behaving badly, they just are.

It is freeing and funny to see women being awful on screen for no reason other than their personalities. I hope I’m not like the characters on Girls, but I don’t doubt that I am sometimes selfish and whiny and have made a whole host of bad decisions. So many books, shows and songs currently seem to seek relatability. The characters on Girls are not immediately relatable, and frequently absurd (in the first episode, Shosanna shares that her apartment is “a great deal for Nolita. I mean, $2,100 a month – amaze”). I have a theory, though, that the Girl who annoys you the most is the one you are most like. It’s all the more humbling – and hilarious – when you suddenly see parts of yourself on the screen when they are contained in an utterly unrelatable character.

It is als a lesson, I think, in not trying to separate your mistakes from some other, unblemished definition of yourself. When the characters in Girls try to reason away their mistakes with accounts of the times they have been a good friend or person, it is unconvincing. It’s a reminder that trying to excuse our mistakes and paint ourselves as better people than they would imply is not usually the best way to move past them. For swathes of the show, the Girls move unabashedly forward despite other characters pointing out their flaws and foibles. As Hannah says: “People have been calling me a narcissist since I was three so it doesn’t really upset me, you’ve got to choose something more creative.” It is tempting to do the same as a viewer – laughing and lamenting the ignorance and incompetencies of the characters. But I think Girls continues to resonate because it doesn’t try to justify the messiness of its character.

It can make us root and cry for fictionalisations that are terribly annoying and sometimes just terrible.

Maybe this makes it easier to root for ourselves on the occasions when we’re the same.

It seems like the show is going to offer up simple answers to what being a girl in your twenties is – that there are four pathways open to you and it’s up to you (or fate) to pick. The failings of the characters and the success of the writing lie in its shirking of these anticipations. Girls is unexpected and funny and problematic and sometimes awful to watch. So is life. Perhaps that’s why it’s the only part of 2012 that people want to keep reliving.

All Punishment, No Play?

Maisie Greener uncovers the frightening truth of family vloggers.

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woman who made her living giving others parenting advice has recently had her parenting come under harsh scrutiny. Last month, a Utah mother of six was charged with six counts of felony child abuse after her twelve-year-old son escaped from her property and knocked on a neighbour’s door asking for food and water. He was malnourished and injured.

Compilations of Ruby and Kevin Franke’s extreme parenting techniques have circulated for years.

So, after hearing that the former was finally being brought to justice, much of the internet felt a collective sigh of relief. From Reddit snark threads to Change.org petitions demanding CPS investigations, the Frankes’ reputation for moralistic and overbearing parenting preceded itself and has long been a topic of conversation. But, at what point did their cringe become a crime? In a 2020 video, Ruby and Kevin’s eldest son told viewers that he had been sleeping on a beanbag for seven months, having had his bedroom confiscated as a punishment for playing a harmless prank on a sibling. Ruby also filmed herself saying that her six year old daughter ‘needed’ to go hungry after accidentally leaving her lunch at home. The 8 Passengers’ digital footprint is incredibly damning. However, for every critic of the channel, there was also a fan or at least a neutral viewer. Experts have hypothesised that family vlogging’s popularity ‘reflects a modern anxiety among parents that can lead them to seek out radical and harmful solutions’ however this cannot explain the success of more moderate and mainstream family channels. In my opinion, our human fascination

with the quotidian, propensity for nosiness and insatiable appetite for scandal contextualise the popularity of the YouTube subgenre. Jiu Chun-Lee (no pronoun preference) suspects that most people do not critically think about their consumption as ‘it’s meant to be escapist entertainment that they should be able to consume casually’. But regardless of why we watch family vloggers, the more important question is whether we should.

The allegations against Ruby Franke are the latest in a string of family vlogging scandals. Previous offenders include The Ingham Family hailing from the UK and The Shaytards who are credited as founding fathers of the phenomenon. The common denominator? Parents filming their children, for the public and for profit. Of course plenty of parents in family vlogging have pure intentions. Spending more time with their children, wanting to start a college fund or take them on more holidays - to name a few. Time Magazine even called family vlogging ‘the ultimate family business’. But where there’s money to be made, there is also potential for exploitation.

Writing for Vice in 2016, Emalie Marthe characterised the well-trodden, ill-fated trajectory of child stars as ‘cute kid stars in movies, faces horrors behind the scenes, turns to drugs, alcohol, or other unsavoury coping mechanisms to deal with waning adult celebrity, crashes and burns for the world to see’. Accompanying her observation is an admission that this course is not irrevocably assured, many stars emerge from early fame unscathed.

The first stage of Emalie’s parable, and in some cases the second also, bears a striking resemblance to the premise of family vlogging. Except the ‘cute kid’ is a daughter or son and the ‘movies’ are vlogs. Society by and large has come to accept a correlation between childhood fame and troubles in later life. This correlation has rightly begun to acquit stars such as Lindsay Lohan, Macaulay Culkin and Drew Barrymore of absolute blame and judgement and, instead, has demanded an assessment and interrogation of the unequal power structures in Hollywood which enabled these abuses on such a scale. However, similar analysis of the vlogging industry has not yet taken place - primarily due to its newness. Rolling Stone wrote that ‘the world’s oldest ‘Truman babies’ are now hitting their teens’ and there is truth to this pop culture allegory. As it stands, we do not have a sample of post-family vlogger adults from whom we can draw conclusions. Eve Smith (she/ her) expressed concerns about this unpre-

dictable factor, ‘We don’t know what we don’t know yet about the future of privacy, cyber security and the legacy of the content. There is no way of knowing what these kids might be used for in the present, or the mark it will carry for them in the future’. Roise Ryan (she/her) similarly speculated on the possible pitfalls, commenting ‘I don’t think kids should have to rely on appreciation and affirmation that is so performance dependent and unstable and coming from unknown sources’. Until child vloggers grow up, we cannot know the outcome for certain. Until then, however, we should regard the testimonies of ex-child stars as cautionary tales of the fates that could be in store for child vloggers.

Perhaps the same money-hungry parents who operated in Hollywood have now migrated to YouTube, a forum with even less regulation and restrictions.

Time and time again thumbnails tease children’s tantrums, sickness and even puberty. Embarrassing and deeply personal moments of a child’s life are broadcasted across the internet under the guise of honesty. It’s deeply disturbing that these children are not only humiliated, but are not financially compensated for their involvement either. In August of this year, Illinois passed the USA’s first law aiming to protect child influencers against exploitation by providing financial compensation for minors under sixteen who feature in any form of documentation. Until this precedent is followed, parents remain unchecked and children remain unprotected.

It is also worth reflecting on our personal participation in a diluted descendent of family vlogging, a behaviour captured by the portmanteau ‘sharenting’.

The Atlantic found that almost 25 per cent of children begin their digital lives when parents upload their sonogram scans to the internet — a habit so normalised that it’s almost a rite of passage in pregnancy. By partaking in this ostensibly harmless behaviour, parents, perhaps unknowingly, begin crafting an online identity for their child before they are even born, yet alone old enough to consent. Thanks to social media’s accessibility, the average parent now has the ability to withhold or share whatever information they see fit. Of course we trust that the majority use their best judgement, however, this cannot be guaranteed.

If there is a remotely positive outcome to be had from family vlogging channels’ wrongdoings, it is that lessons learned will manifest in watertight legislation, protecting children in the future. The industry is currently unapologetic, hiding in plain sight, and this makes those instances of crimes all the more insidious and shameless. Childhood, rightly or wrongly, has always been a profitable market and where there is profit to be made, there must be protection.

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...her

six-year-old daughter

needed to go hungry...

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The Sun Always Shines on Campus Clara Roche considers Gilmore Girls and Normal People as rare examples of students on screen.

T

elevision caters to most communities and circumstances. Families favour either Modern Family or Malcolm in the Middle, depending on how deep in denial they are about their dysfunctional dynamic. Secondary school students can look to Skins and The Inbetweneers for the simultaneous chaos and clumsiness that characterises adolescence. Girls and Sex and the City make contradictory attempts to offer a representation of the 20-something search for self-actualisation, although both friend groups have a WhatsApp chat more active than my own. Doctors, lawyers and even zombies will find their experiences reflected in the most popular TV shows of the last 20 years.

A glaring gap in the TV market, however, is the portrayal of university life. Derry Girls and Sex Education both end before we see the casts sit their A-levels, and the Gossip Girl creators’ half-hearted attempt to send the group to college was abandoned after three episodes and never addressed again. One Tree Hill and Pretty Little Liars both circumvent the college years altogether, with the characters ageing five canonical years in the space of one mid-season break.

Other programmes, like Riverdale and Euphoria, condemn their characters to a perpetual high school purgatory, even when the actual actors are married with children and old enough to run for president.

Why are writers’ rooms so hesitant to set shows in college, when around 60% of Irish and American adults now attend? Some viewers have suggested that the unavoidable nature of high school provides a stronger platform for the interaction between different cliques and characters. Others have argued that degrees are too structured and demanding to allow time for extracurricular romances or Very Special Episodes centred around Christmas parties, Paris trips and prison breaks. But if we can suspend our disbelief for long enough to watch the Friends characters balance their full-time jobs and the six hours they spend in the coffee shop every day, then it’s fair to expect writers to expand their repertoire to imaginatively cover the college years.

For many students, university offers the first foray into the world of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll (Workman’s Wednesdays). The friendship fallouts, romantic misadventures and career anxieties that seem to define this time in our lives provide perfect fodder for scriptwriters. Two of the only popular programmes to tap into this creative diamond mine are Gilmore Girls and Normal People. While both series start with the protagonists in school, the transition to third-level is handled with inevitability and grace.

Rory Gilmore plays her college cards in the first episode, when she switches to a private school to improve her chances of getting into Harvard. Similarly, Marianne and Connell’s aspirations to attend Trinity are inextricable from their relationship at the out-

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set.

But how realistic are their journeys? When these two shows are nearly unique in subject matter, it’s reasonable to question how truthfully they depict university life.

All three protagonists are portrayed as academic high achievers. Rory is the valedictorian of her prestigious WASP-y high school. Marianne’s 590 leaving certificate points are beaten only by Connell’s 600.

At Trinity, Marianne and Connell move through rigorous reading lists and endless exam seasons with ease. If they ever submitted an essay to TurnItIn at 11.59pm, or forged a LENS report to get an essay extension, we are never shown it. Both become Foundation Scholars after sitting the notoriously difficult exams off-screen. Despite having an Erasmus experience worthy of a Sylvia Plath novel, Marianne presumably passes with flying colours, as we see her progress neatly into her final year. At the end of the series, Connell is accepted into a Master’s without word of his dissertation or even a GradIreland application.

Rory, on the other hand, crashes and burns when she arrives at Yale. As a newly shrunken fish in a colossal pond, she is forced to drop a class when she can’t keep up with her peers, and later, she lashes out and crashes a boat before dropping out entirely. While Connell becomes the editor of a fictionalised Icarus in his final year, Rory is told by the in-universe Rupert Murdoch equivalent that she doesn’t have what it takes to become a journalist.

Meanwhile, Marianne fades into social obscurity. So long, Christiane Amanpour. So long, Marianne.

All three paths seem true to life.

Rory experiences what armchair psychologists have labelled “gifted kid burnout”, while Connell, free to forge his own path away from his hometown sceptics, naturally rises through the ranks of the college literary scene. Marianne, perhaps due to a lack of financial pressure to secure a KPMG internship or its imaginary counterpart, narrows her focus in her final years and levels out into a comfortable mix of studying, swimming and low-grade socialising.

The topic of mental health is where Normal People stays rooted in reality and Gilmore Girls diverges into fantasy. Both Rory and Connell access their college’s counselling services, and while Connell’s experience is authentic to the point of discomfort, Rory’s veers towards cringe comedy. In Connell’s counselling session, he discusses the suicide of a school friend and his struggle to assimilate into the college community. Marianne, and his other love interest Helen, are mentioned only in passing. Conversely, Rory’s breakdown boils down to relationship regrets.

While the premise of Normal People revolves entirely around one romantic relationship, and Gilmore Girls is ostensibly a broader coming-of-age story about Rory’s relationship with her mother, it’s the latter that evolves into a soap opera.

The divide between the real and the imagined represents the central difference between both pro-

grammes, and this separation is further accentuated by the setting of both shows. In Normal People, the rural-urban dichotomy between Dublin and Sligo informs the characters’ interactions and inner lives, and the economic and social context forms the basis for their choices and miscommunications. In contrast, while Rory’s college years aim to provide viewers with a more authentic depiction of adulthood compared to her adolescence in the fictional Stars Hollow, Yale and New Haven still appear to be taken from the pages of a fairy tale. Trinity students will feel more at home watching Normal People, filmed on location, than Yale students will with Gilmore Girls, filmed on the Warner Bros. lot.

What risks alienating the most students is perhaps the portrayal of romantic relationships as the crux of each character’s college experience. Here, Gilmore Girls is the worst offender. In Normal People, Marianne slots easily into a friend group when she arrives in Dublin, and Connell’s failure to do so is a central point of discussion. On the contrary, with the exception of a recurring character from Breaking Bad who appears in the final season, Rory is only seen socialising with her boyfriend’s friends while at university.

Nevertheless, both programmes utilise the central romances as a substitute for the characters’ inner monologues.

Through their relationships, we come to understand their anxieties, insecurities and aspirations.

Both programmes end when the characters graduate. In a subversion of Shakespeare’s declaration that “journeys end in lovers meeting”, both finales depict a breakup. Rooney’s Romeo and Juliet split when Connell decides to relocate to New York and Marianne remains in Dublin. Rory ends her long-term relationship with Logan when he proposes marriage and a move to Silicon Valley. “There are just a lot of things right now in my life that are undecided”, she says. “That used to scare me, but now I kind of like the idea that it’s all just kind of wide open. And if I married you, it just wouldn’t be.”

We all want to graduate with a five-year plan. A fully-funded master’s followed by a two-year graduate programme with a six-figure salary. A year in Paris, or maybe Berlin. We want all of our friends to come with us, and we want to make new ones along the way. In the same vein, we want to know what happens to Rory, Connell and Marianne when the screen fades to black and the credits start to roll. But graduation is about choice and compromise, and, most importantly, uncertainty. A time, perhaps the best and even only time, to leave things “wide open”.

“What they have now they can never have back again”, Rooney writes in the closing couplet of the Normal People novel. So when the credits roll and you earn your degree, stay. Or go. Sit your GAMSAT and graduate to Grey’s Anatomy, or take your FE-1s and start watching Suits. But take stock of these last four years. Treasure the tapestry of mistakes, missed opportunities, memories and milestones. Whether your time in Trinity more closely resembled the reckless glamour of Rory and Logan leaping from seven-storey scaffolding, or the quiet intimacy of Marianne and Connell brushing their teeth in their shared bathroom, cherish these moments, for they are the building blocks of whatever story you’re about to write in the chapters ahead.

“

university

offers the first foray into the world of sex, drugs and

rock ‘n’ roll

Assault Has No Gender Cleo Daly explains the importance of including male victims in conversations about sexual assault.

T

he idea for this article came to me, as all great ideas do, while sitting on the toilet in an Australian beach bar. On the back of the cubicle door there was a poster advertising the use of safe words in the bar. For those not familiar with the concept, safe words are phrases or words customers can say to staff if they are feeling unsafe or uncomfortable. Examples of this would be to “ask for Angela” or to ask for an “angel shot”. The staff will then be alerted that you are in need of help and will call you a taxi and get you safely out of the bar.

The concept is a great one, and especially necessary considering the popularity of online dating apps.

However I couldn’t help but wonder whether such services were also accessible for men. I got my poor father to have a look for posters in the mens, and the answer was no. I can understand why having the exact same posters in both the men’s and women’s bathrooms might not be a good idea, as the secrecy of the help would be blown. But I couldn’t see why a separate set of terms couldn’t have been offered to men. Of course there is the issue of the individual you are trying to escape being the same gender as you, but that would apply for both men and women.

So why are men not being offered protection in the same way that women are?

There is no denying that, statistically speaking, sexual assault is most likely to occur between a man and a woman, with the man as perpetrator and the woman the victim. However, men too are sexually assaulted both by men and women, and though the likelihood is less, it is still very much there, and we as a society should do all that is in our power to prevent all forms of sexual assault.

I remember being in a club with my friends only a few months ago when a frightened looking man approached me at the bar. At first I was hesitant to speak with him as I worried he was trying to make a move. But, sensing his distress, I leant in so that he could whisper to me without alerting the attention of those around us. He informed me that the man just beside us at the bar kept coming up to him and touching him without his consent and that he didn’t know how to leave without the man following him.

I immediately alerted my friends who proceeded to rush over to security while the others and myself stood in between the two men. Security swiftly removed the perpetrator from the club and my friends and I remained with the man until his taxi arrived to bring him home.

Looking back on that situation, I can’t help but wonder if there had been any safe word guidelines in the male bathroom as there had been in the women’s, and whether having such words would have made the situation easier for the victim. I would imagine that asking a stranger at the bar, who could have been drunk and brushed them off, or might have spoken too loudly and alerted the perpetrator would have been a frightening decision, compared to seeking out trained staff members. In this particular case, even communicating with staff members

without the use of safe words would have been a difficult task due to the positioning of the other man.

In 2022, the number of users on dating apps worldwide grew to 366 million and I think we can safely assume that this number has only increased in the last year. With online dating comes greater risks compared to that of traditional ‘organic’ dating. When you meet up in person for the first date a string of nerves usually follows in relation to how truthful they have been on the app. Individuals often tweak the truth in terms of appearance, height and personality. There are also those on such apps who have no intention of dating but instead wish to take advantage of others and commit heinous crimes.

Because of such dangers myself and my female friends take precautions when going on dates, especially with people we have only spoken to via dating apps.

We share our locations, send on details and photographs of the person we are meeting up with and explain what the plan for the date is so that others will know which locations to expect to see us in.

In the past this has led to some overreactions, such as one of my friends alerting others in a panic as my phone had shown I had spent over 20 minutes in a car park (we were eating takeaway in his car). But such blips are more than worth risking being abducted. I contacted some of my male friends, curious about if they too take precautions like these and whether the same level of fear is present in such situations. The overall answer was no, or if they were to share their location it would only be in the situation of meeting at the other person’s residence rather than a public space. There was awareness of the risks, however the overall attitude was much more relaxed than that of my female friends.

My male friends felt secure due to their builds and felt confident that they could keep themselves safe.

When it comes to men and women dating it’s understandable why a man might feel more secure, as generally speaking men often have the upper hand in relation to overpowering their partner. Yet this does not always protect men from being mistreated or abused.

I discussed with one male friend the topic of sexual assault against men, and the way in which men react to such happenings. He revealed that he had been harassed by a woman in the past, and how his friend was sexually assaulted by a female friend. He revealed that his friend hadn’t realised how wrongful the actions made against him were, and how he had felt almost like he owed it to his female friend

to let her proceed. Sexual assault against men is often downplayed and it is most definitely not spoken about enough. It is not as openly discussed among men as it is among women so there can be a lack of awareness in relation to what is or isn’t acceptable.

My friend discussed with me how men are encouraged “to be sexually aggressive” and to “appreciate all sexual advances”. In particular, he felt that assault by older women towards young men was a more common occurrence due to this misconception that younger men have a desire to be constantly sexually active.

The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN) is an anti-sexual violence organisation.

Their website discusses the sexual assault of men and boys and reactions to it. They discuss how there is often a sense of shame felt by the victims for not being “‘strong enough’ to fight off the perpetrator”, and/or a sense of doubt in relation to being a victim of sexual violence, in particular if perpetrated by a woman. In an article entitled “Male Victims of Sexual Assault: A Review of Literature”, by John C. Thomas and Jonathan Kopel, the lack of support for male sexual assault victims is heavily discussed.

They state how it is “estimated that the help and support for male victims is over 20 years behind that of female sexual assault victims,” and that “prior to 1994, the United Kingdom’s legal definition of rape was restricted to instances of forceful or unconsented vaginal penetration, thus excluding male victims.” Unconsented anal penetration fell under the term “buggery”, which had a “significantly lighter fine”.

In 2017, actor and former football player Terry Crews spoke out about being sexually assaulted by a Hollywood executive. He stated that he did not retaliate at the time due to fears of being “ostracised or sent to jail”. Crews said he had been worried about how the incident would be reported and feared seeing headlines such as “‘240 lbs. Black man stomps out Hollywood Honcho”. His concerns of being ostracised and not taken seriously became a reality when he found himself becoming the punchline for many a celebrity, including that of comedian D.L. Hughley and rapper 50 Cent. Hughley stated on VLAD TV that he couldn’t believe that Crews, “with all those muscles,” couldn’t tell his abuser “no”. Crews responded to Hughley asking if he was “implying that I ‘wanted’ to be sexually assaulted?” The reaction to Terry Crews opening up about his abuse is vile and acts as an example of why so many male victims feel uncomfortable speaking up.

Not only does sexual assault against men, as well as sexual assaunt in general, needs to be taken more seriously. The response victims receive should not differ depending on one’s gender or one’s build.

Abuse is abuse, and it should never be taken lightly.

“

this

misconception that younger men have a

desire to be constantly

sexually active

9

Anti-Travel, Or, An Ode To Staying Home

N

o course handbook prepares students for the unsaid rites of passage that characterise college life.

In your first year, you choose a society and run for class representative, so by your final year you can be the chair of that society and the president of the Students’ Union. In your second year, you secure an internship at a law firm — whether or not you study law — and you become a Foundation Scholar. Every six months you write an article for a student newspaper titled ‘Dublin, I Love You, But You’re Bringing Me Down’, and every time Mercury is in retrograde you DJ at Pav Friday.

Another covert timeline not laid out in the Comms Officer’s weekly email is the trips you’re expected to take as a student.

After your sixth year holiday in Magaluf or Ibiza, you book your first course trip to Lisbon. Once you’ve bought your Christmas presents and paid your library fines, you spend your spare change on the ski trip. In the summer after your second year, you go interrailing with 30 of your closest friends, before jetting off on Erasmus when you return. After your third year, it’s time for your J1, which you will somehow simultaneously spend in the tri-state area of Boston, Chicago and San Diego. After a quick trip to Southeast Asia, it’s back to the library to do your dissertation before you depart for your master’s. Don’t worry if you don’t get George Moore. The money will materialise.

Don’t ask me how.

With the exception of Erasmus and one regrettable summer in the Liberties, I stayed at home for my four years of college.

I was lucky enough to grow up a stone’s throw away from Trinity, in Portobello. My house, owing to its proximity to Harcourt Street and its hellish clubs, became the de facto location for pre-drinks, and I cherished the comfort of doing my makeup in my pyjamas while my friends poured in one by one, armed with vodka and gossip.

Equally, I always enjoyed the morning after the night before, when my brothers and I would lounge in the living room swapping stories and sharing leftover sweets. We were more Malcolm in the Middle than The Brady Bunch, and our house was not without its black mould or broken appliances, but it was still difficult to envy my friends

10

in house shares and the noise complaints, utility bills and legal disputes with landlords they were so often subjected to.

The summer after my second year was the first to see travel restri`ctions loosen after COVID. Friends of mine relocated to Quinta de Lago while others worked at the Edinburgh Fringe. I spent that sweltering hot summer working full-time in a factory manufacturing meal plans, and I loved every minute of it. At the time, I was reading Kids by Patti Smith, and it was easy to draw parallels between her time working for minimum wage in Manhattan and my tenure in Stillorgan Business Park. Every evening after work, my two best friends and I would sit on the grass eating pre-packaged desserts we had stolen from the factory, dissecting our recent breakups and planning our post-pandemic futures. It didn’t matter that we weren’t on a beach in Portugal or sharing a flat on the Royal Mile, because after a year of baking banana bread and Zoom pub quizzes, being together was enough.

I did go on Erasmus, but it was a trade-off.

I knew that by spending my savings on a semester in Strasbourg, I would have to live at home in my final year, and turn down tours of Europe and trips to Thailand the next summer. But I would make that decision again in a heartbeat. I made friends from Copenhagen, Cape Town and even Clontarf.

In France, my modules were much more modern and practical than those I took in Trinity. I learned about the European Court of Human Rights and the evolution of media in the 21st century, and my love for education returned. I learned how to advocate for myself through broken French and simplified English, and I learned which parts of my personality were constant and which were circumstantial.

The following summer, though, my friends went interrailing. They had drug-induced epiphanies at Sziget, bought second-hand clothes in Brussels and sunbathed at Lake Bled. One of them even had a near-death experience thanks to a pub crawl in Prague called the ‘Drunken Monkey’. I swiped through their Instagram stories and filtered through their WhatsApp messages and felt like I was falling behind. My parttime job in an ice cream shop in a rainy seaside suburb seemed to pale in comparison

to the Eat, Pray, Love expedition they had embarked upon. While I was grateful for my Erasmus experience, I began to wonder whether it was worth the sacrifice.

And then my friends returned. I learned about the reality of their overcrowded hostels and missing passports, and I received graphic retellings of the unique horrors of foreign food poisoning. While they had enjoyed the trip as a whole, I realised that it hadn’t been as picture-perfect as the postcard montage they relayed through Instagram. Even travelling comes with an opportunity cost, not to mention the financial sacrifice, and I felt a renewed gratitude for the summer I had spent at home, reconnecting with the city — and the cats — I had left behind on my semester abroad.

This summer, my Find My Friends app lit up in Vancouver, Vietnam, Barbados and Berlin. My friends and I took the road less travelled and went to Cork. My friend Ciara’s holiday house on Bere Island requires a bus, a car and a boat to get to. Netflix has not yet taken off in Castletownbere, so we watched old episodes of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and drank when we got the answers wrong — and when we got them right. We shut off our phones and played Horrible Histories Top Trumps, which incited a political debate more reminiscent of a trial at The Hague than a drunken conversation between six 22-year-old students. Remembering our week in the pouring rain, I find it hard to imagine that we could have had more fun drinking champagne on the Seine or sauvignon blanc in the south of France.

It’s not that I don’t want to travel. I do. I want to visit my friend Ciara in Paris, my friend Lauren in London and my friend Cathy in Dubai. I want to see my mam’s birthplace of Missoula, Montana, home to Mitch from Modern Family and Andie MacDowell. I want to go to New York City and see the Billboard magazine headquarters in Times Square, where my dad worked on his own J1 in 1987. I want to get turned away from Berghain in Berlin and spend the night eating a kebab on the side of the road.

I want to go to Amsterdam and Vienna and Barcelona and Copenhagen and I hope that one day I will.

But for now, I’ll take Dublin. I’ll take Pav Friday and walks on Dún Laoghaire Pier and drives to Brittas Bay. I’ll take the rainbow lights on the Millennium Bridge and Brown Thomas at Christmas and the grass outside the Arts Block on a sunny day. I’ll take chips from Charlie’s on the way home and waving from my window to my friends at the pub below my flat. As James Joyce was commissioned to paint on the electrical box on South Circular Road: “When I die, Dublin will be written in my heart.”

I Hate Fangirls

W

e all have moments in life when we stop and ask ourselves: “How the hell did I end up in this situation?” I had one of those just last week, when I found myself packing a second pair of cargo pants in case I got peed on. Even with context that sentence doesn’t get much better. Perhaps it gets even worse – I was afraid of being peed on by fangirls.

I was packing to go to Manchester and London, where I was to attend two 5 Seconds of Summer concerts back to back. For those unfamiliar, they are an all male pop/rock band from Sydney, Australia, also known as 5SOS. After twelve years as a band, with 11.4 million Instagram followers, 5SOS have gathered quite the fanbase. And this fanbase has gathered quite the reputation. Having never attended a 5SOS concert before, my experienced friends let me in on a few ‘concert traditions’. These included fans pushing, fainting, throwing up and peeing in the pit. As a qualified fangirl myself, pushing and fainting at concerts are not unfamiliar to me. However, the thought of adult women (I’m generalising because it’s true), peeing in a packed public space because they refuse to potentially lose their view of the band had me rethinking my decision to attend these concerts altogether. How is it that we have become just as bad as drunk men who piss on the street? 5SOS fans are described as crazy, insane and ruthless. And it was becoming incredibly clear to me why this is the case.

As quite a tall individual who wears platforms to concerts (no, I’m not sorry), I’ve received a fair number of complaints from those around me, as well as some particularly vulgar insults from those less loved by God. With this in mind, I was already fairly nervous of the behaviour of those around me in the pit. After discovering what else goes on, these nerves skyrocketed. My friends and I were intending on queuing from ungodly hours in Manchester in the hopes of getting a spot by the barrier. However, after some scrolling through Twitter (the day I call it ‘X’ is the day my spirit dies), we discovered that not only were fans camping, but for multiple days at that. As much as I wanted some attention and a guitar pick, my first experience of camping was not going to be in a dirty alleyway in Manchester. It is of little surprise that so many people pass out at concerts, when they haven’t seen a bed or cooked food in several days.

My friends and I pitched up at the Manchester arena at around 6.30am (still insane and we are fully aware of that) and were given the numbers 60 to 63 by those huddled up in their tents. I scanned the campers searching for those looking sickly, with the intention of not standing beside anyone who might throw up three days of packaged ham onto my shoes.

My friends and I took shifts throughout the day, al-

lowing us to pop back to our hotel room for naps, showers and to do our makeup. Whilst performing my line holding duty, I did my best to befriend those around me. I’ve found from many a queuing experience that people are less likely to trample you to death if you have already established a friendship of sorts. But there were some groups that I did not dare attempt communication with. The fans who were attending their tenth concert of the tour had a certain look (or should I say smell) that told me they would gladly crush each and every one of us in the queue for the chance to make eye contact with the members. The arms-length of tour bracelets, the chalky white dry shampoo hair strands and the stack of pot noodles gathered at their feet acted as warnings to us first-timers that we were no more than passersby on their never ending 5SOS journey.

My experience with fans during the Manchester concert itself went so much better than I could have imagined. I found myself not crushed, in the second row, with enough room to lift my arms into the air. The only drawback of my position was whenever I accidentally brushed off one of the campers in front of me – my arms became absolutely soaked with sweat and, of course, the smell was far from pleasant. However, all in all, I was pleasantly surprised and I began to wonder whether my friends had been exaggerating the chaos of the concerts. London soon showed me that not only was the chaos real, but I was soon to find myself in the midst of it.

The London concert was the following day, and therefore instead of queuing, my day was spent on a bus. My friends had tickets in a different section of the arena and I was to face the middle of the pit on my own. The concert started off smoothly. Again, I was not shoved and I had enough room to wave my arms around. I was in the sixth row, away from the campers, and I was under the false impression that I would escape any disasters.

I was horribly wrong. About halfway through the concert the girl in front of me fainted, collapsing into a heap at my feet. Myself and her friends were lifting her up, while I used my free hand to desperately signal to security that help was needed. Thankfully, it wasn’t not long until she was brought out and had regained consciousness. A song or two later, the unmistakable smell of urine wafted through the air and my internal alarm bells were blaring. I checked my clothing and the floor around me and was relieved to find that whoever had thrown away their dignity was elsewhere in the pit (but still much too close). With the smell of urine still lingering in

“

...the

unmistakable smell of urine

wafted through the air...

the air, my attention was once again pulled from the band as I heard a commotion behind me. I turned to discover that, around three rows behind me, a girl had puked all over the pit floor. I made way for the poor arena staff to clean up, and returned to staring at 5SOS, desperate to remove what I had just witnessed from my memory (it is still very much present and I can picture it more clearly than I can the members). Throughout this constant cycle of staff diving into the pit, 5SOS seemed completely unfazed and showed no reaction to the events at hand. Some might say this was inconsiderate, but I was glad as stopping the music was hardly going to stop that girl from hurling up her week of meal deals. Their relaxed demeanour to the happenings in the pit seemed to confirm that such events are common occurrences and almost expected.

But how has such behaviour become normalised?

How has spending days in a tent without showering or eating hot meals become a common practice for securing the front row at a concert? Why was I okay with queuing for twelve hours just to be four rows closer compared to when I only queued for two?

By the end of the trip, myself and my friends were beyond wrecked, and feeling fairly nasty after three days of food from 24-hour convenience stores. I don’t regret my decision to queue, however I do wish I could have had a slightly less stressful and more nutritious trip that included sitting down to eat.

I hate fangirls.

Not the individuals who identify as ‘fangirls’, but rather the culture that has been built around them.

Attending such concerts and interacting with the artists that people idolise brings so much joy. Unforgettable memories and friendships are formed during these times. However, the behaviour in relation to queuing is far from safe or healthy. I’ve met many girls who have been sleeping in alleyways by themselves with nothing more than a jacket from the age of sixteen all for barrier-adjacent positioning at concerts.

These fans go through so much to support their idols, but they disregard caring for themselves while they’re at it. When I ate my first proper meal of the week, the day after the London concert, I felt like one of those stars who has just left the jungle from I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here, with staff members trying to snatch their fifth packet of crisps before they throw it all back up. I know within the next few weeks the back pains and the smell of urine will fade from memory (I hope), and all that will be left will be the incredible photographs and videos in my camera roll (not incredible because I have skills, but due to the close proximity in which they were taken).

And before I know it, I’ll no doubt be gearing up to queue for my next concert. The cycle will continue, more poor girls will pass out from exhaustion and hunger and the weight bearing activity of fangirling will carry on, because we never really learn, do we?

Oh, how I hate fangirls.

11

Cooking Up Chaos Maria Altenrath spills the dos and don’ts of student cooking.

Omelette with porridge and a little too much salt, mixed and fried. It looked like scrambled eggs and tasted like a really salty breadish … something. Yes, that has really been made before. And yes, that was just a few weeks ago. Yes again, that was in my kitchen. I even took photographs of the process in case I was creating a culinary masterpiece and wanted to share the recipe. However, no masterpiece was made, so there is no need to include those far from appetising photographs here.

That night, I just wanted to make something quick that wouldn’t leave me with a load of dishes. I think everybody knows that struggle. I’ve since learnt that with some music and only homework waiting for you, cleaning the dishes can become quite meditating and calming, as well as a time to procrastinate.

Nevertheless, most nights many students either suffer a lack of time or motivation, sometimes also a lack of skills or experience, when it comes to cooking their own dinner after starting college. We are all in the same boat here.

I asked a student who has just started her first year of college about her cooking experiences so far while living away from home. To the question of how often she cooks dinner for herself, she replied: “I think, since I have gotten here, I’ve probably cooked dinner twice. I either just skip the meal altogether, I eat something heavy around five, or I just don’t have the time, or I go out. Otherwise, I have been getting instant noodles – really good – Or what I do is, I dehydrate some food and just add water. That is all I made for like the last two weeks. It’s not the best.”

She told me that she loves to cook pasta, as she doesn’t “have the luxury to prep for hours. Usually, it’s just whatever is quick. For me, that is usually dehydrated food or pasta … I feel like most people are just having pasta”.

I asked her if she has had a lot of instant food in her first few weeks of college and she answered: “A lot of instant food. For me, it has been the noodles, but people I know have been eating pizzas, instant macaroni and cheese. It is just convenient, I think.

Supermarkets also have that as an option for cheap.

For two euro, you get two pizzas, so why wouldn’t you do that?”

Furthermore, I asked her, if whenever she has cooked, if she enjoyed it and according to her, she definitely did. She liked cooking and eating together with friends, though she also said: “The only thing about cooking I don’t like as much is washing dishes afterwards. It is so annoying.” I can only agree with her here and I believe many can. However, she also

12

stated that cooking is “an important skill to have” and that she has “definitely learnt a lot” from it. To anyone not experienced in cooking, she would advise to “have a couple of recipes before you get here or call your mum. Get more familiar with the appliances of the kitchen. And don’t be afraid to ask for help. Otherwise, you will burn the kitchen down. Instant food is good, but try to also cook.”

Another student in her second year of college told me: “I cook every night, except for when my flat mates cook.” I asked her if she enjoys cooking and she immediately replied: “Very much. I love trying out new recipes.” And her favourite one is a Mushroom Risotto. Nevertheless, she also told me that there have been many cooking fails in her past, but she would advise people who do not enjoy cooking to “try out as many recipes as possible and don’t be

“

she doesn’t have the luxury to prep for hours sad if something goes wrong. One day it will work out and it is often cheaper than eating in town.” I definitely agree with her on this point. We are all still learning every day, and acquiring new skills can feel rewarding. Fails should not bring us down, and especially in cooking, we learn from them a lot.

Looking back at my first year of college and my first year of cooking dinner for myself, I have to admit that there definitely have been some frozen pizzas, which I really enjoyed – not in the frozen stage of course. However, there have also been many days I was looking forward to going home to make my-

self a healthy dinner. I had cooked before during secondary school, I always liked trying new recipes or attempting to create my own. I still do, as you can probably tell from the omelette-porridge story.

But, unlike it, I have also had many successes. Only a few days ago, I made myself savoury pancakes with tomatoes, parmesan and herbs on top and I loved them. They were not as good as my grandma’s, of course, but they were still very much enjoyable.

For everyone who does not know where to find the motivation or time to cook dinner for themselves, or who does not have much experience in cooking, I can only advise to look up quick and easy recipes, because there are uncountable recipes out there on the internet just waiting to be found, tried and changed to the way you like them best. Find your goto recipes!

Over the last year, I developed meals I really liked and cooked them repeatedly. That included a lot of pasta. Pasta, whether with gluten or gluten-free, is always quick to make and always tastes good. With the right sauce it can even taste unbelievably delicious and once you have cooked such a delicious pasta dish, you will not ever lack the motivation of cooking dinner for yourself again. There might still be pizza nights to come in your future, because pizza will not ever not be delicious, but most nights will be cooking nights. At least that was the case for me.

I believe that you only need your five go-to recipes, and you will enjoy cooking. Or at least the eating afterwards.

Some of my all-time favourite recipes are gnocchi with spinach sauce, tagliatelle with champignon cream sauce, a one-pot quinoa with spinach, feta, walnuts, mushrooms, tomatoes and lentils, green asparagus with potatoes and pepper sauce and a stir fry with rice. I can also recommend cooking soups like broccoli or cauliflower, which can be stored in the fridge for a few days. Preparing your dinner a few days in advance can be helpful in general for when you do not have time for cooking. Moreover, writing a shopping list or creating a dinner plan for the upcoming week can be very helpful. But most importantly, try to find the joy in cooking, and don’t see the work, but the chance to gain new skills and enjoy a healthy homemade dinner.

Learning how to cook might take some time, but it can also be fun. Experience your own omelette-porridge moments, or if you have already had them, create some more, because one day they will get you where you want to be and might turn into one of your go-to recipes.

Gnocchi with Spinach Sauce •

one pack of gnocchi • plenty of spinach • one carton of fresh cream • cherry tomatoes • garlic granules, salt, pepper, vegetable stock cubes • (a few tablespoons of cream cheese) First, you boil the gnocchi for the amount of time indicated on the package. While the water is boiling, you can wash the spinach and steam it in a separate pot.

Keep an eye on the gnocchi and take them out of the water once done. When the spinach is cooked, pour out the remaining water and add the garlic (if you are an onion fan, also an onion) to the spinach.

Next, add the cream and let it simmer for a bit. If you want to, you can also add a bit of cream cheese to the sauce and flavour with a small vegetable stock cube, salt (if still needed) and a pinch of pepper.

If you like Italian herbs, you can also add those.

Finally, cut the cherry tomatoes in half and add them to your sauce. If you like them chunky, your sauce is already ready, but if you like them a bit soft, you can let the sauce simmer for a bit longer.

Also, remember to continually stir your sauce to prevent it from burning. Enjoy!

You can of course also use any other kind of pasta or leave out the cream to make the dish a little healthier. Alternatively, or additionally, to the cream, you can add cream cheese. I can recommend the one with herbs and garlic. Also, parmesan can be a great addition. For anyone who really likes onions, they can be fried with a bit of oil in a pot and added to the spinach.

If you only cook for yourself and fear that you won’t be able to finish a pack of fresh spinach on your own, I can recommend a pack of frozen spinach. You can get gnocchi in supermarkets for just a bit more than one euro, other pasta for even less and will have the basis for more than one dinner.

Tagliatelle with Champignon Cream Sauce •

tagliatelle (usually 100-125 g per portion; two portions recommended for this recipe) • one pack of fresh champignons • vegetable oil • one pack of cream • garlic granules, pepper, salt, parsley, basil First, you need to boil the tagliatelle in salted water for as long as the instructions on the package indicate. Meanwhile, you need to wash and clean the champignons really well, before you can cut them into slices. After that, fry the champignon slices with a bit of vegetable oil in a pan. Once the tagliatelle is thoroughly cooked, drain it. The champignons become softer and smaller when they are done. If that is the case, you can add some garlic granules. After that, add the cream and let it simmer for a bit. Now, you can add the tagliatelle to the sauce and season with salt, pepper, parsley and basil if you like. Let it simmer for a bit longer and enjoy!

If you eat meat and would like to have a component of meat on your plate, most types will fit the sauce quite well. I always use two portions of noodles when I make this recipe, because that is what works the best with all the other ingredients, and then you will be able to have it for dinner twice. Made with vegan cream, this recipe could also be vegan.

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The Capital-Centric Craze Clara Potts explores how the match made in heaven between Gen Z and charity shopping might be turning hellish at the hands of influencers.

A

s a child, you were dragged to car boot sales each and every Saturday. Sometimes they were on Sundays — it depended on what the Irish weather had in store for that week. You reluctantly followed your grandparents around the disorganised stalls only on the condition that you received an ice cream. One with a flake from the marshmallow-like vans that everyone hears before seeing. Following them like a pet on a lead, zig-zagging between the assorted tables, you cradle your ice cream with two palms, protecting your prized possession — your award for perseverance. Cone in hand, you scan each stall in its entirety, hoping that some parent had decluttered their home and decided to sell their child’s Lego, which did nothing but obstruct floors in its scattered formation. You lift your gaze from the ground only to see another kid retrieve what should have been your Lego set from under a mound of old cookbooks. You’re disappointed, furious even, in the way that any child is when you have an awful day at school and arrive home only to realise your mum has made your least favourite dinner. Now you are in your twenties and realise that these outings taught you one thing: the thrill of the hunt. You have now mastered the art of scanning and searching for second-hand gems. Now, you are grinning from ear to ear, even when you are eating baked beans for dinner and drowning in JSTOR articles to read for class.

What keeps you afloat is your frequent Campus Couture features.

Admittedly, mentioning to anyone over the age of fifty that your Saturday mornings usually consist of scanning the entirety of Rathmines Vincent’s and Oxfam in search of new wardrobe additions is such a humbling experience and one that never fails to incite laughter. I guess it does make sense. It is absurd if you consider it. Swarms of Gen Z-ers dedicating their time to rummage through piles of preloved clothing, hoping to find a hidden gem in one of the many mountains of discoloured sweaters and silk nightdresses. Laughter aside, for our deal-chasing, deal-driven generation, thrifting is a game that can be mastered. One where everything can go right and nothing can go wrong. And one where much laughter and smiles are had along the way.

Often, it can feel like we are the last generation capable of rescuing our planet from further environmental deterioration. For many, second-hand shopping to inform our wardrobes is one way of reducing landfill by providing another life for garments, a way

for those who feel the pressure to protect our planet to play their part. For this reason, shopping for second-hand apparel is growing rapidly and has become a noteworthy component in the retail market, encompassing sustainability, human geography and retail geography. And where can these real gems be found? Charity shops. The home to pairs of perfectly fitting Levi’s and soft leather jackets that we all chase after.

“

thrifting is a

game that can be

Shopping for sustainable fashion has become central to many conversations within mainstream society because of an increased awareness of the damage caused by the production and consumption of fashion. In turn, this recognition has resulted in the expansion of the second-hand clothing market. Hedonistic traits and a new wave of ecoconsciousness play key roles in consumer decision-making processes both in-store and online as we search for one-of-a-kind deals. As consumers, our shopping habits are becoming more fluid, which allows “fashion with a conscience” to emerge, offering an ethical alternative to “big box” stores that previously dominated. Thoughts of visiting a charity shop to search for items to add to your wardrobe would not have

mastered

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Charity shops: supporting charities, searching for bargains and promoting environmentally friendly choices. Are we doing more harm than good?

crossed many minds in 2013, nor would it have been a choice made by many. But now, in 2023, Gen Z and charity shops seem to be a match made in heaven, and memories made from car boot sales are now also being made within the walls of second-hand clothing stores. Despite being an antidote to fast fashion, thrifting is not easy. It is a skill that requires work: patience, willingness and an open mind are characteristics of a successful thrifter, someone capable of re-imagining garments in an entirely new context.

The recreational aspects at the core of the second-hand apparel shopping experience include social contact with friendly salespeople, the entertainment of the search involved in the shopping activity and the thrill of encountering unexpected and unusual objects. Identity searching is facilitated by the thrill of the hunt and the aftermath of purchasing which can take the form of composing new outfits before creating a “haul” for friends to praise you for your findings. Put simply, we experience enjoyment both during and after charity shopping. And this is one of the many reasons why it is such a popular activity, possessing the ability to re-center, ground and encourage individuals to become present in the moment which is often so difficult in our “no time” society. As well as this, charity shops allow individuals to easily shop for garments within and between the usual sections of clothing without feeling out of place by the clothing divisions created online.

The second-hand market has long been associated with providing clothes for individuals at a lower cost.

With an increased demand for preloved garments in Dublin, you don’t have far to look. Only minutes from campus, George’s Street offers not one, but four second-hand stores bursting with clothes. From Oxfam, which stocks everything from cute rings to bridal wear and Enable Ireland to Tola Vintage and Vincent’s only a few doors away, this street is heaven for those chasing a hunt and hoping to provide an Instagram close-friends haul that is sure to get endless likes and interaction. However, as we seem to be thrifting our way to happiness and validation — and in doing so, feeding the trend — we must question whether we are doing more harm than good.

Online thrifting as individuality searching: The true cost of charity shopping is more than just the clothes we pay for.

A harmful impact of thrifting is that it is increasingly difficult to find good quality pieces for affordable prices, meaning that there are fewer pieces available for those who buy from preloved stores by necessity. Before thrifting became a trend on platform

thrift shopping

apps such as Tiktok, it wasn’t necessary to consider, nor become concerned about the overpricing of second-hand pieces. But the creation of aesthetics such as “cottagecore”, “hippie” and “Y2K” which are promoted online go hand-in-hand with rising resale prices in-store and online. So, in other words, the thrift trend is not wholly beneficial. Its damaging effects can be seen in two central ways. Firstly, it encourages impulsive purchases due to lower costs, as we are more prepared to take a risk on an item of clothing, which means there is a higher chance that it will lie unworn at the back of our wardrobes than if it were a more expensive piece. Secondly, the rise of overpriced items in turn places lower-income individuals in danger of not being able to afford clothing, which drives them towards fast fashion as a cheaper, quicker alternative.

Like much of human behaviour, our shopping decisions are not distinguished by us acting in isolation but rather are largely influenced by others.

With technological advancements, the dimensions of the perceived shopping experience have expanded online. As well as in-store, the internet culture today is home to online clothing platforms, existing as the epitome of a postmodernist lifestyle — as individuals scroll endlessly to find what will become their new “proud purchase”, a sequin tee or the perfect lowrise pants that will no doubt be applauded and spark conversation in the nightclub toilets. As the social media generation, Gen Z views themselves as part of a global community where influencer marketing is undoubtedly successful as an effective way to reach and guide consumers, meaning they are becoming the drivers of change.

quite possibly wore. When purchases are made online, various implications surface as we cannot try on clothing before making purchases. When coupled with the increasing number of stores that do not accept returns, purchases are repeatedly discarded or lie unworn in wardrobes, allowing and encouraging impulsive, unsuccessful purchases that seem to echo the damaging effects of fast fashion that we aim to avoid.

The sense of an online community fills us with hope as we trust that what we are told is good for our planet truly is. By nature, social media hugely influences relationships, which are shaped by culture — both individual values and how consumers view and dress themselves. Media attention on celebrity fashion has uncovered that role models, who for some include Michelle Obama or Kate Moss, are seen wearing vintage clothing. Moreover, series and popular movies such as The Breakfast Club (1985) encouraged the unlikely pairing of vintage athleisure with preppy accessories. Put another way, if eco-conscious consumers witness their favourite influencer promoting clothing from a new “sustainable” collection, then they have got to be purchased — right?

Social learning theory states how psychological influences impact the consumer’s decision-making process. These psychological factors emphasise the mental factors that impact the behaviour of individuals and the factors that drive them to make decisions. And this is where influencers come into it. Following a certain influencer is usually due to a shared interest, belief or style. Therefore consumers who share these characteristics are likely to support that specific influencers’ style and approve of the clothes they wear. Mimicry is an automatic behaviour, so we must question whether following influencers motivates a sustainable lifestyle or damages it. Individuality, status and satisfaction can all be achieved by consumers in the second-hand retail market, but is this individuality really so individual after all?

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the thrill

of the hunt

Compulsivity and greed are extending into, and within, the Charity shop craze.

Charity retailers have goods that are often not available elsewhere. Many high street retailers have unique products but think about those items that you cannot find elsewhere. Those one-of-a-kind, quirky tees or knitwear that your grandparents

We must fully utilise the clothing in our wardrobes by buying less and re-wearing more: two actions that

encourage a healthier and happier planet.

Despite encouraging viewers to buy local, vintage, handmade and second-hand, we must reconsider whether the advice that influencers provide can be deemed sustainable. Many of these online content creators possess wardrobes that are jam-packed with garments, functioning as tools to create endless ‘What I wore in a week’ and ‘Outfit inspiration’ videos. Can we forgive these individuals for buying excessive amounts of clothes simply because the individual garments are “greener”? Don’t these widely circulating videos encourage impulsive, excessive purchases and in some ways, echo the same damaging impacts of fast fashion that we aim to avoid?

Instead, let’s find hope in influencers who promote the “same base layer” trend, encouraging us to fully utilise the clothing in our wardrobes by buying less and re-wearing more: two actions that encourage a healthier and happier planet.

Conclusion: the cost of thrifting is damaging more than just our bank balances. We must think of others each time we step into a charity shop, or bid for clothing online.

Research indicates that the second-hand trend will continue to rise, which evidences the need for consumers to be better educated by the eco-fashion sector in ways we can respect the environment in our decision-making, purchasing, and donating processes. With over 1,000 charity shops in Ireland, social boundaries are transcended as second-hand stores adapt their offering to ensure there are various ways to shop, donate and volunteer. So, instead of continuing to shop when your wardrobe is full, why not donate or volunteer? Instead of listing every item from your wardrobe clearout online, why not give back to the charity shops that have provided you with so much enjoyment? In doing so, charity shops can remain open, and clothes can remain affordable and accessible for those in need. This will reduce the number of people who have no choice but to shop for fast fashion as a cheaper and more accessible alternative, reducing its damaging effects.

So, we must think of others and think of the environment each time we step into a charity shop or bid for a new cami top or pair of ballet flats online.

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