April 2018 by Counterpoint Magazine

COUNTERPOINT the wellesley college journal of campus life april 2018 volume 50 issue 3

ARIES “Hey have you seen my phone?” “I’ll call it.” “No that’s alright—” “♪DON’T STOP MAKE IT POP DJ BLOW MY♪”

CANCER “Well son, it appears that your cancer—” “Whoa, I have cancer?” “Whoa, I interrupt people!? Yes.”

LIBRA “Why don’t you go around and introduce yourselves?” “My name is Michael with a B and I’ve been afraid of insects for my whole—” “Stop, stop, stop. Where?” “Hmm?” “Where’s the B?” “There’s a bee?!”

CAPRICORN “Or perhaps it is the context in which words are spoken that give them the power of meaning. I LOVE YOU DOG!!!”

TAU RU S

“Well, when life gives you lemons!” *♪jingle plays♪*

LEO “Man what d’you got?” “Just this LETTER!” *some kind of laughing noise that couldn’t be transcribed* “Johnathan, I don’t love you anymore...”

SCORPIO

“Hehehehehe... haha ha...” *plops down on the couch* “RY-an!”

AQUARIUS “Later Mom. What up, me and my boys goin’ to see Uncle Cracker— Gimme my hat back Jordan! DO YOU WANNA GO SEE UNCLE CRACKER OR NO?!” *gasps as he sees his hat in the window*

BY ANONYMOUS GEMINI

“I think I—I think I know more about American Girl dolls than you do, genius.”

VIRGO

“My favorite screamo band is probably Big Time Rush.”

S AG I T TA R I U S

Dog riding a rocking horse with "Baker Street" playing in the background while girl watches proudly.

PISCES Johnny has nineteen bottles of dish soap, and he gives Jeannie—” “Wait, why does Johnny have so many soaps?” *Johnny, pouring soap into hand* “MIND YO’ BUSINESS DAVID!”

Images: Jane Hua ’21 (cover), youtube.com, LisaAlisa (left)

VINE HOROSCOPES

E D I TO R I A L S TA F F Editor-in-Chief

Olivia Funderburg ’18

Managing Editor

Francesca Gazzolo ’20

Features Editor

Rachele Byrd ’18 Kelechi Alfred-Igbokwe ’19

Staff Editors

Nina-Marie Amadeo ’18 Rachele Byrd ’18 Jasmine Kaduhodil ’18 Elena Najjab ’18 Elizabeth Taft ’18 Kelechi Alfred-Igbokwe ’19 Lydia MacKay ’19 Laura McGeary ’19 April Poole ’19 Olivia Strobl ’19 Lucia Tu ’19 Yadira Ayala ’20 Andrea Marenco ’20 Ashley Anderson ’21 Grace Callahan ’21 Marina Furbush ’21 Sabrein Gharad ’21 Samantha Lai ’21 Natalie Marshall ’21 Vanessa Ntungwanayo ’21 Seren Riggs-Davis ’21 Abby Schneider ’21 Cheryn Shin ’21 Jean Li Spencer ’21 Sage Wentzell-Brehme ’21

D E S I G N S TA F F Production Manager

Midori Yang ’19

COUNTERPOINT THE WELLESLEY COLLEGE JOURNAL OF CAMPUS LIFE APRIL 2018 Volume 50 / Issue 3

POLITICS OLIVIA FUNDERBURG

WHEN CHICKENS COME HOME TO ROOST

MISIA LERSKA

ON IDENTITY AND POLITICS

KRISTEN GASPARINI

THE ONLY WAY

A R T S & C U LT U R E FRANCESCA GAZZOLO

AN OPEN LETTER TO CHIDI ANAGONYE

ANONYMOUS

4 SURPRISING FACTS ABOUT THE MIDWEST!

SAMANTHA ENGLISH

VIRGINIA'S CURSE

CAMPUS LIFE ANONYMOUS

Layout Editors

Natassja Haught ’18 Roz Rea ’19 Jessica Maciuch ’20 Marinn Cedillo ’21 Marina Furbush ’21 Corinne Muller ’21

B U S I N E S S S TA F F Roz Rea ’19

Treasurer Publicity Chair Chief Consultant

Natassja Haught ’18 Nina-Marie Amadeo ’18

TRUSTEES Allyson Larcom ’17, Hanna Day-Tenerowicz ’16, Cecilia Nowell ’16, Oset Babur ’15, Alison Lanier ’15, Kristina Costa ’09, Kara Hadge ’08

WORKING HARD

M E N TA L H E A LT H ANONYMOUS

WAKING UP

ANONYMOUS

A GIRL WITH TRIGGER WARNINGS EXPLAINS WHY OUR TRIGGER WARNINGS ARE STUPID

Jessica Maciuch ’20

Art Director

IDENTITY JANE VAUGHAN

COMMA

SARAH SHIREEN MOINUDDEEN

RESURRECTION

F E AT U R E S COUNTERPOINT STAFF

POLL: WELLESLEY CHOP BY MAJOR

COUNTERPOINT STAFF

CROSSWORD: AVENGERS

POLITICS

antucket is a tiny island off the southeastern coast of Massachusetts. Only one hundred square miles, the island is home to about ten thousand people year-round, and thousands more who flock there in the summer. It’s a place where everyone knows everyone, a place you don’t want to leave, a place you move back to when it’s time to raise your kids. A safe haven. But on the morning of March 11th, 2018, it was no longer such a friendly place. I went online that morning and saw that someone had spray painted the nword on the front of the island’s African Meeting House. This building has stood on Nantucket since 1827. It’s been a church, a social center, and a school. Today it primarily functions as a branch of the Boston-based Museum of African American History. Though there are over eight hundred buildings on Nantucket that pre-date the Civil War, the African Meeting House is advertised as “the only public structure remaining on the island that is identifiably central to the history of the African community of the 18th and 19th centuries.” The museum “inspires all generations to embrace and interpret the authentic stories of New Englanders of African descent, and those who found common cause with them, in their quest for freedom and justice.” It “expands cultural understanding and promotes dignity and respect for all.” Freedom, justice, cultural understanding, dignity, respect— none of these things seemed to exist on Nantucket that day. I found myself feeling afraid to go home. The vandalism was not just spouting racism, it was urging us to “leave.” Someone painted the words “Nigger leave!” only five minutes from my house. I questioned whether I belonged there, page 4

counterpoint / april 2018

When Chickens Com but that seemed unfair since my dad and my brother still live there full time. Who’s going to protect them? Who’s going to protect the black kids who were strong enough to stand against the violence at school two days later? Inevitably, I found myself thinking, I can’t believe it happened here. I used the word here even though I wasn’t actually there. Being a college student provides me with physical distance. I don’t know what it felt like to see the vandalism before the Meeting House was cleaned up or to be on Nantucket in the days after it was discovered. The I can’t believe it happened here sentiment swept across social media posts by white community members, on the island and off, as they reposted an image that I would very much like not to have seen. They were shocked and horrified and outraged. They should be outraged, but should they really have been so shocked? Do I get to ask that accusatory question when one of my first reactions was shock too? I can’t believe it happened here. Nowhere is safe. I now know this for sure. I always tell people that the bad things don’t happen on Nantucket narrative is false. It’s a pretty safe place, sure, but bad things still happen. This bad thing feels different though, because I have never seen anything like it. In my thirteen years on this island, from kindergarten to my senior year, I have always felt safe. My parents didn’t talk to me about race growing up. I don’t think there’s a handbook on How to Talk to Your Biracial Daughter about Race. I never got The Talk, but maybe my brother did. My black dad would know that, as a young black man in the United States, my brother is particularly at risk. The bad things don’t happen here narrative says that we don’t need The Talk, that we don’t need to

live in fear. Only ten percent of Nantucket’s ten thousand people are black. Even though it may seem like a welcoming community where everyone knows everyone, we’re still horribly outnumbered. The day I found out about the graffiti, I laid in bed and cried. And then I dragged myself out and got the hell on with my day, because what other choice did I have? Just because it felt like my world had stopped spinning, didn’t mean the rest of the world had. I told some of my friends, but not all of them, because I didn’t want their “sorry”s. I started with just one person. She told me it was “disgusting” and asked how I was feeling. My response wasn’t pretty, but it was the truth: “Like I want to crawl in a hole and die. But unfortunately the world requires me to be a person.” Later in the day, I sat in my room in the dark and I didn’t put my glasses on— maybe if I couldn’t see clearly, I didn’t have to face the truth. I wanted to run. I wanted to run far away and never go home. I wanted to scream. I wanted to know who did this and have them spew their hate to my face instead. I wondered what Malcolm or Martin would have done. I wondered what words of wisdom Alice or Zora might have offered. I don’t know why I’m shocked. Recent United States politics have made clear that racist people are not afraid to publicly flaunt their racism. For years we’ve known black lives are disposable. This country’s racism never died, and maybe it never will, because hate and inequality are built into its foundation. But I still felt shocked because Nantucket is my home. It is the place that raised me; I thought I knew it like the back of my hand. I’m no longer fooled: just because black people have been on Nantucket since 1774 and

Images: Artemisia Luk ’21

Content warnings: racist hate speech

me Home to Roost just because the public schools were integrated a century before Brown v. Board of Education doesn’t mean that everyone is truly welcome. All I can think is at least it wasn’t someone’s home; at least it wasn’t a person who was attacked; at least this didn’t happen when my brother and I were still children, so my father didn’t have to explain to us that the world was not as kind as we believed it to be. At least. But there is no at least, not really. The police report said it “appears” to be a hate crime, and the white police chief told the Boston Globe it was likely “more mischievous” than malicious, but nothing about the situation feels mischievous to me. This feels like an insult to my existence, but more than that, it feels like a threat on my life. Everyone is shocked, horrified, and saddened. That’s all well and good, but it’s no good if no one actually does anything. If those wellmeaning white people don’t take their horror and do something about it, nothing will change, and I won’t be any safer. It shouldn’t take something like this to get people to understand that hatred can live in their own backyard and that it comes in many forms—that they too have racism to unlearn—but here we are. Six days after the vandalism, I got a text from my brother. He had a run-in with the police. When I called him to find out what happened he was practically in hysterics, seething with anger, and couldn’t slow down for long enough to tell the story. He had just been walking home. All I could think about was some armed white police officer coming after my brother, just seeing an angry black boy. After the vandalism, when I texted him to check in about what happened, he told me it “made his blood boil.” Mine was boiling when I got his text on that

BY OLIVIA FUNDERBURG

Friday, and earlier that week when I saw that the high school principal made no efforts to address the vandalism incident in his Monday message. That lack of acknowledgment felt like a blatant disregard to the black students at his school and the black residents of his community. I can’t believe it happened here. I wonder if I would think the same thing if such a crime happened in New York, where I will likely go next. When chickens come home to roost: I take these words from Malcolm X, someone whose words I have learned a lot from and think about often. He said this in response to JFK’s assassination, seeming to consider his death an instance of karma for the United States, but in this case, I think they mean something different for me. When hate reared its ugly head in a place so close to my heart, I didn’t know what to do, so I wrote. I called my dad and I told him I loved him. I had conversations with people who care about me. I found strength in solidarity with those who affirm that not only do I matter, that I do indeed belong to Nantucket.

Olivia Funderburg ’18 (ofunderb@ wellesley.edu) would not have made it to spring break without AS, SE, NA, AL, and JM, among others. She would also like to thank Dianne at Stone, a truly centering presence. counterpoint / april 2018

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POLITICS

Identity and Politics BY MISIA LERSKA

Disclaimer: Hateful rhetoric is not acceptable in any form and I hope that this article can be a step towards eradicating problematic speech in a more effective way.

n 1971’s Harold and Maude, Maude tells Harold that much of the world’s sorrow comes from people who are unique, but who allow themselves to be treated as part of a generalized group. Recently, I’ve noticed that Wellesley’s culture has turned us all into categories. You are defined by a single characteristic—White, Black, Latinx, Asian, LGBTQ, straight, progressive, conservative, white moderate, libertarian, Marxist, capitalist, kind, mean, good, or bad—instead of being a multidimensional, complex individual. While these categories cannot be ignored, we have become a campus that erases identity by clumping people together based on labels. With the intention of fighting systemic discrimination and stereotyping, we are perpetuating the very ideas that we want to eliminate. We categorize people depending on their accent, the color of their skin, or one conversation in which they might have misspoken. We create standards of behavior through these categories and lose empathy for people when they don’t fit our expected standards. Yet nobody in this world is simply good or bad; we are all both at the same time. The only difference is our upbringing and page 6

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our cultures. Plural. Given these different cultures, it is wrong to assume that most people on this campus have the same political views. Different households breed different outlooks on life; nobody is born speaking hateful rhetoric. Prejudices such as racism, sexism, transphobia, and homophobia are all learned and can be unlearned. I think most of us can safely say that we don’t hold all the same views from when we first came to Wellesley. Sadly, the way people most often change their views on this campus is through shame. What do you mean you don’t think X? If you don’t believe X, you can’t be part of this group. Anybody who doesn’t believe X feels awful about themselves because they feel that their beliefs hurt others personally. This leads to outspoken people further echoing each other, and fosters silence and shame in many who are afraid to say something wrong. This shame directly impacts our community. Those who do not fit the mold are excluded, shunned, and morally condemned. Perhaps never having had bad intentions, they hate this school because of how isolated they feel. Most of us contribute to this kind of categorization

by telling our friends I hate them so much, they’re so racist, she’s so privileged. People agree with this gossip and bond over shared hatred for others. Gossiping about people in that way perpetuates the belief that we are morally superior to others. Even if someone may have admitted they were wrong, they are left feeling bullied, depressed, and erased. I know that few people on this campus have the intention of hurting others, but if we want to call ourselves the moral activists of tomorrow, we cannot let our actions contradict this. The only way to resolve this kind of emotional gap is through open and understanding dialogue—something that is missing on our campus. We have to let go of our assumptions of others. People mirror each other’s emotions; if we act with kindness, we will likely find kindness in return. If we enter conversations ready to convince people that they’re wrong, they will probably do the same to us. We should be seeking truth and justice, not self-righteousness. Let’s reevaluate our goal. If our goal is to attack people we disagree with, fine. But if it is to convince people to be on our side, we need a different approach. There is a tough conversation to be

Images: cis.org.au

“MAUDE: I should like to change into a sunflower most of all. They are so tall and simple. What flower would you like to be? HAROLD: I don’t know. One of these maybe? MAUDE: Why do you say that? HAROLD: Because they are all alike. MAUDE: Oooh, but they are not. Look. See—some are smaller, some are fatter, some grow to the left, some to the right, some even have lost some petals—all kinds of observable differences. You see, Harold, I feel that much of the world’s sorrow comes from people who are this, and allow themselves to be treated as that… Each person is different, never existed before and never to exist again. Just like this daisy—an individual…”

had that does not need to be rooted in anger. Even though some might be more stubborn than others, it does not make them evil. We are all at school, we are all learning, and we should all be allowed to make mistakes. Let’s stop resorting to passive aggressive actions through emails and social media. Let’s write articles and make art. Let’s speak directly to those we disagree with. Let’s let go of the crippling fear that we might be wrong. Let’s expect the best from people and from ourselves. In writing this, I do not excuse racist, homophobic, transphobic, and otherwise hateful speech. Such things are never acceptable and I cannot hold marginalized people responsible for teaching others why certain language and actions are problematic. The point of this article is to give people the benefit of the doubt and realize that everyone is capable of learning and bettering themselves. When I look back on who I was even four years ago, I hardly recognize that person. By my senior year, I’m sure I’ll look back at first-year Misia in embarrassment. But I shouldn’t hate her. And I shouldn’t treat

her the way Wellesley has treated so many students who have made mistakes and held unpopular views. I acknowledge where my privilege lies and admit that I can never fully understand another person’s experiences nor how their identity impacts those experiences. What I am saying is that everybody deserves exactly that: the benefit of the doubt. Nobody knows what it’s like to be someone else, so let’s stop comparing our pain. We all experience our own hardships, and it should not be controversial to say that everybody deserves respect. There will always be a “what if?” An accent means you’re foreign, but what if this foreigner went to American schools while growing up abroad? White signifies privilege, but what if this white person grew up in a low-income neighborhood? Nobody is the same. You can never dismiss a person’s experience based on external factors. Generalizations never work, so don’t judge anyone until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes. I write this article to make one point:

stop judging and start caring. About everyone. We should not tolerate hate, but that does not mean we must become hateful people ourselves. It may be difficult to bear this responsibility because responding to hate with kindness feels unnatural, especially if we are dealing with systemic oppression. But if we react to hate with more hate, then what does that make us? Misia Lerska ’20 (mlerska@wellesley.edu) was tempted to make this piece anonymous to avoid potential backlash, but that would have defeated the purpose. If you disagree, please reach out to Misia!

counterpoint / april 2018

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POLITICS

Content warnings: reflections on depression and death This is a piece I performed at the Mental Health Open Mic at the Hoop, on March 16th. The aim of it is to show how psychological suffering is becoming an intrinsic part of life in a sick capitalist system and to share my own story within this picture. Hopefully this also gives some context as to why I am taking action, and why it is necessary to come together to achieve true change. come from a village of a hundred people in the middle of the Italian countryside. My brothers, my mother, and I were the only black people around for miles, and we learned to accept our racistyet-loving neighbors. The unity and love of my parents, who come from low-income backgrounds, defy all odds: all they ever did was fight for us and teach us to be kind and free. I was sometimes sad that I couldn’t have all the things the other kids had, but I loved life in our little paradise: cherries in the summer, chestnuts in the fall, kale in the winter, a library full of donated books, and the time to sing, dance, and dream. In 2012, the economic crisis, engineered by bankers in the United States, hit Italy hard. Taxes rose, my father lost his job benefits, and my mother got sick, but we couldn’t afford her medicine.

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We weren’t told this until more recently, because Dad didn’t want us to worry more than we already did: since we couldn’t pay the mortgage, the bank had threatened to take away our lovely home, our everything. That was also when, after a year of heavily-medicated depression and panic attacks, I ran for president of my high school as a sophomore and won against two senior boys running together. I then got a scholarship for United World College, and at the same time my brother saved our family financially by signing a contract to play baseball in the US. It was truly a miracle. I was always an idealistic kid: I worried about war and peace, about racism and, fervently and for a long time, about education. I was also always obnoxious, making cartoons of my professors in middle school and giving unwarranted, long speeches about “the meaning of friendship” to my confused classmates. I often look back and cringe. But I am learning to love that kid—pimples, crooked teeth and all—because her voice brought me to where I am today. Before coming to Wellesley, I took a year off and went independently to South America. I lived between Colombia and Ecuador for nine months with almost no money, and I started doing the most learning I have done in my lifetime:

United World College had left me with the bittersweet taste that you get when you understand that something is furthering its brand before its mission, and the world looked like a very scary place with Trump (... and Hillary) rising, atomic bombs multiplying, and all that is beautiful being destroyed and turned into money. I started understanding money. Money doesn’t only decide whether and where you go to college and how many hours a week of work you can withstand trying to pay for it before you face utter exhaustion. Money doesn’t only decide whether you’ll be able to follow your childhood dreams, or whether you’ll settle for the safest job on the market because you have to support your family. Money is the reason for almost all wars that have ever been fought, including the ones we witness today. Money perpetuates the discriminations we despise, because those in control benefit from the masses squabbling amongst each other instead of uniting against the bourgeoisie. Money makes it impossible for the environment to win and for equality to prevail because of the very foundations upon which the deluded global economic theory is founded. Schools like Wellesley indoctrinate young people into this world order, making them cognitive prisoners of a lie and faithful servants of the machine.

Images: pxhere.com

Y A W Y L N O E TH

BY KRISTEN GASPARINI Money is becoming embedded into our psyche and poisoning our humanity. And when enough hurt seeps in, life stops making sense. As I realized this, during my first semester here at Wellesley, I felt like being here was useless. I was getting an elite education in order to blossom into my holy individuality, get a job, maybe have a family, pay taxes, earn credit scores, go shopping, have “fun,” pay bills, and die. Sure, I could become a decent person, maybe even someone who is invited to give a talk here someday. But to me it was very clear that the path of humanity is going downhill, and that, unless radical change happens, we just have to hope we see the tipping point before we’re already bored with life. I felt fake and powerless. I could not be content with being comfortable knowing that my comfort comes at the expense of the suffering of so many, and at the cost of trading the uncompromising fight for utopia with the surrogate of “enough” peace and justice. I know that the way we are currently doing things, we are not nearly going to get to “enough” peace or justice. And so I fell into the pit. One night, during winter break, while lying in my bed, I felt my chest become a black hole. I was being pulled towards this one dark point, where all I wanted was to vanish

and not exist anymore, but the abyss never stopped sucking me in. It was the most pain I have ever felt. I understood why people want to not live, and I had no blame in my heart. Just an empty, hyperrational space, showing me that after all, everything is an illusion. Yes, Kristen. Humans are selfish and lazy, and when they’re not it’s either a performance or a rarity that won’t create any real change. Stop being naïve, surrender, and accept that you will have to learn to ignore the voice of your child self. I escaped that hole, but only after months of trying with discipline and patience. Get outta bed. Go to lecture. Eat. Try to fall asleep without crying. Meanwhile, I started thinking even more. No. I was not gonna fake it. I was not gonna settle. I was not gonna surrender. It was a matter of staying sane. Sitting in the dining hall, I saw the same pain on so many faces: women trying to enter this man-made system by often undergoing the torture of sleep deprivation, competition, self-blaming for failure, grade deflation, and the learned practice of mutual suspicion. For what? To feel jaded half the time, when we’re not taking a break from papers or watching Netflix or getting drunk? To live with the almost certainty that we’re gonna feel jaded pretty damn soon anyway? To

watch as those who hoard money and build themselves paradises away from poverty and deserts plan the next war, or the next financial crisis, which will hurt the dreaming kid who, for one reason or the other, will not get into glossy United World College or Wellesley? Sometimes, I just want to give that sad, tired student sitting alone in the dining hall a long, silent hug. Would that be inappropriate? We’re all different, and so are the sources of our suffering. But our million colors are all drawn on this same big canvas that is our planet—and ultimately, our life in this universe. A thread unites us and makes our suffering shared. The immense size of the challenge requires us to do what is hardest, and that is to come together. To go beyond our individualities and begin seeing where this system hurts everyone—even the tyrants. Let us take our child selves by the hand, praise them for their courage and their dreams, and bring them with us wherever we go. They truly know best. Because we still want to hope, because change is possible, and because it is the only way. Kristen Gasparini ’20 (kgaspari@wellesley. edu) is looking for ways to unite Wellesley's community to fight the deeper roots of global problems, and is open to any and all conversation. counterpoint / april 2018

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ARTS & CULTURE

AN OPEN LETTER TO CHIDI ANAGONYE

ear Chidi, In all my time on this good green Earth, I have never found someone like you. My two decades of media consumption have led me to Hermione Grangers, Scout Finches, Jane Eyres, Kurt Hummels, Willow Rosenbergs, Ygrittes, Eowyns, Ben Wyatts, and Pam Beeslys—a vast array of colorful characters who are wonderfully and lovingly crafted, like me in some ways and so very different in others. But you, Chidi, are something else. I knew we were soulmates—not in the romantic sense, but in the I-amyou sense—when you were giving an ethics lesson to Michael, a demon who had never confronted his own impermanence. Attempting to teach him moral philosophy was a bold move, but we both love to lecture people, don’t we? You told him that “moral strength is defined by how we behave in times of stress,” not merely in times of calm or certainty. Michael asked, “Has anyone ever told you what a drag you are?” You said, “Everyone.” Me too, buddy. Of course, we have our differences. You are a Senegalese professor of moral philosophy, and I am an American twenty-year-old whose only published works are in the pages of this magazine. One of your defining traits is your indecisiveness. I am not initially indecisive—I am usually the one to make the “judgment call” in a group because I can’t stand the page 10

counterpoint / april 2018

BY FRANCESCA GAZZOLO waffling back and forth. The indecision comes later. The indecision comes after the decision, when I second-guess myself, replaying the events in my head into the wee hours of the morning until the obnoxious white numbers on my lock screen tell me I have five hours before my alarm. It’s bad enough when I’m merely thinking over a text conversation I had with my crush. It’s worse when I’m thinking about anything that has remotely ethical consequences. But then again, isn’t every decision an ethical one? This semester I decided to take an ethics class. I grew up with philosophical terms being thrown around the house: my mother is a narrative therapist with a Ph.D. in feminist theory, and my father is just a very smart man. But it wasn’t until this class that I realized there was a whole discipline out there, a field of study that focused on that beautiful, maddening, eternal question that plagues my every waking moment: what does it mean to be good?

When Eleanor confesses her love for you, you ask her if she knows what it sounds like when you put a fork in the garbage disposal. You tell her that is what your brain sounds like all the time. Chidi, my man! I wanted to hug you through the screen of my MacBook Air. How can you possibly commit to anything in this wide world when you have a thousand different ethical trains of thought going a million miles a minute, reviewing every possible scenario and every possible outcome of that scenario, in order to determine what is the right path? Sometimes the fork stays in the garbage disposal. Sometimes the bits and pieces explode outward like some sort of reverse black hole, shrapnel piercing the forearms of the poor soul cleaning the sink. Sometimes I just start babbling, throwing around questions like the aforementioned shrapnel: what is the ethical decision? In this case or in all cases? Based on what theories? Utilitarianism? Situationalism? Moral relativism? Fuck-everything-ism? And those sinkcleaners inevitably leave me, for a few hours or for forever,

Images: Cail Bruich, Sketchup.com (left), mehmetcetinsozler.com (right)

WARNING: Spoilers for The Good Place.

seeking a person with less anxiety about their moral standing. I can’t blame them. It’s selfish. You learn that too, when Eleanor discovers that you, she, Tahani, and Jason are all in the Bad Place instead of the Good Place. You initially believe that the Judge sent you there because you put almond milk in your coffee despite knowing that it was bad for the environment. (Incidentally, I now have an existential crisis whenever I ask for almond milk at Starbucks.) But Michael calls you a dummy and says no, it was your moral rigidity that made everyone around you miserable. In your quest to be a good person, you threw your emotional baggage like a stress ball filled with thumbtacks at everyone you met. Me too, buddy.

I do not try to be good because I believe there is some grand reward at the end—some “moral dessert,” as Michael says. I do it—we do it—because we owe it to each other. As you say in the Season 2 finale, “We choose to be good because of our bonds with other people, and our innate desire to treat them with dignity. Simply put, we are not in this alone.” (Ayn Rand might vehemently disagree with you, but your utter rejection of teleological egoism is right up my alley.) You learned that your moral inflexibility and indecisiveness put you in the Bad Place. I am trying to learn the same before I end up in the Bad Place— or, more in line with my worldview, before the people around me all feel like my presence is some form of Bad Place torture. This is quite the ethical quandary:

if you worry about how to be good all the time, are you really being good? In order to be good, must we sometimes do the unforgivable and “forget about ethics”—forget about Kant and Socrates and Kierkegaard and Confucius and Jesus Christ and just live a little? I’ll try. And not to impose my values on you, but I think you should try too. In reluctant but loving solidarity, Cseca

Francesca Gazzolo ’20 (fgazzolo@wellesley. edu) once had an existential crisis over what time to eat lunch.

4 Surprising Facts About the Midwest!

he Midwest is a wonderful region to enjoy with a copy of The New Yorker and a Sprite at 36,000 feet. New Englanders visiting the Midwest are full of stereotypical sayings, such as, “This is a shit ton of corn,” “A person on the street said, ‘How’s your day?’ and I’m shook,” “Toto, are we still in the middle of nowhere?” and “Watch where you tread, ‘cuz this state voted red.” Here are four facts you might have missed about this glorious region: 1. A prehistoric sea once covered the Midwest. Translation: we used to have a coast. But having a coast did not make us superior. Because being on a coast does not make anyone superior. Being on Lake Superior, now that’s up for debate. 2. Boarding schools, crew, and Connecticut are not things in the

BY ANONYMOUS Midwest. We were surprised when we arrived at Wellesley and found that things we had only read about in books were alive and well, living like little dodo birds nestled in New England. 3. If you want to visit Lebanon, California, and Mexico, come to Missouri. These lovely towns are just waiting for you to get out of that airplane and experience their people, food, and culture. Do I hear a gasp? The Midwest has culture?! Boy oh boy, there’s another surprising fact! But this is only a four-fact article, so you’ll just have to remember that one. 4. Wellesley students from the Midwest don’t appreciate it when you put down our home. We hear enough about this New England nonsense—it’s mighty well time you learn about our home. So if you don’t have time to pull up Wikipedia—

just listen to our stories and insights. Who knows? You might end up at some startup in Des Moines and you’ll need to know the difference between Arkansas the state and Arkansas the river. You New Englanders thought you had a monopoly on idiosyncratic pronunciations, but you’re wrong. You forgot the Midwest. You forget the Midwest a lot. Now there you have it! You know four facts about the Midwest. Now you’ll look intelligent when your friend says, “I’m from Ohio, or Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, or Kansas.” For information about articles published anonymously, please contact the Editor-inChief (ofunderb@wellesley.edu). counterpoint / april 2018

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ARTS & CULTURE

Virginia’s Curse D on’t—no matter what anyone tells you—go to St. Ives in a snowstorm. Don’t get me wrong—it’s beautiful. And, as residents told me, it rarely happens. One woman remarked that I was “lucky” to see snowfall in Cornwall— the westernmost area of Britain. “St. Ives hasn’t had snow since 1984. There are some children who have never seen this,” she added. “They’ll be talking about this for years.” Storm Emma was certainly something to talk about. A cold front, the “Beast from the East” as it was so lovingly named, collided with storm Emma one Thursday this past February, causing complete mayhem around Britain. Among school closings, fallen trees, a broken seawall, and four inches of snow, the major railways in England saw hundreds of cancelled journeys that weekend, leaving commuters and naïve study abroad students without a way to get home. I had decided to visit St. Ives in the winter as a sort of literary pilgrimage. In my class on Virginia Woolf, we were reading To the Lighthouse, a novel heavily inspired by Woolf ’s childhood summers in Cornwall. Illustrious and beautiful, To the Lighthouse enchanted me when I first read it as a high school senior, resulting in an intense adoration for Woolf long before I read her other novels. I knew I wanted to visit St. Ives when I first made plans to study abroad in England, but I figured that I’d try to go in May or June, as Woolf had. However, I soon learned from my tutors that St. Ives was extremely overcrowded in the summer and that an early spring visit might suit page 12

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me better. When conducting my own research, I found that the Tate St. Ives, a branch of famous art museums in Britain, was putting on a show inspired by Woolf and her work. However, the exhibition would close in April. While I was on the phone with my mother, who had been thinking for weeks that I was wasting my study abroad experience by not traveling all the time, I impulsively decided to go. I saw no issue in going to St. Ives for two nights during the first few days in March. I figured it would be romantic. I would see the Woolf exhibition. I would walk the shores of St. Ives, listening to the sound of the waves that influenced so much of Woolf ’s work. I would read To the Lighthouse by a fire at a local pub and work on my first Woolf essay at a seaside cafe. Most importantly, I would go to Godrevy Lighthouse, the structural plot point around which To the Lighthouse revolves. Needless to say, things did not go as planned. St. Ives, like most of England, was practically a ghost town on Thursday morning. After I walked down hazardous stairs and icy roads, I arrived at the Tate St. Ives to find that it was closed due to the weather, as were many of the cafés and pubs. The coast, of course, was open, but it was frozen, desolate, and foreboding in the dim winter light. Though there were old couples and children, travelers and dogs in winter parkas, I felt cripplingly alone, coughing from a cold I had caught before I arrived. Due to the clouds, I could not see the Lighthouse. As I walked past abandoned art galleries and dark storefronts to my

whitewashed lodgings, I felt like Virginia had cursed me. Where was the happiness in this? Where was the creativity here, in this stark, canvaslike room? In my temporary home, overcome by its strong smell of paint, I found I could not write or read. I was stifled and sick. I stared, in panic, at my computer screen, trying desperately to find an early ride home, only to watch as train after train was cancelled. I was stranded. Why did I come here, I remarked bitterly, crying. What an idiot American was I, trying to travel to the edge of the country all alone. The blank TV, the clogged toilet, the harsh vibrating of the dehumidifier going swoosh, swoosh, swoosh, seemed to be Virginia screaming from beyond the grave, you don’t belong here. When I woke up on Friday morning, something had shifted. My train was still cancelled, but it wasn’t snowing outside. In fact, when I opened the door, it was comparatively warm. I no longer felt like I was going to slip as I walked down the stairs and streets of the town. Stores that had been dark the day before had their lights on. Awake from its hibernation, St. Ives was moving again. The Tate St. Ives was open. As I walked through the Virginia Woolf exhibition, looking at Vanessa Bell’s window still lives and Laura Knight’s watery landscapes, I remembered a visit to a different Land’s End. San Francisco, standing on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, had been my birthplace. Two years earlier,

Images: Samantha English ’19 (left), drawingskill.com, vectorstock.com (right(

BY SAMANTHA ENGLISH

when I was standing on a cliffside for the first time in years, I had thought about Woolf ’s character Cam all grown up, returning to her childhood summer home at the end of the novel. As she approaches the Lighthouse with her father and brother, she reflects on her family’s history. “About here,” she says, dipping her fingers into the Atlantic, “a ship had sunk, and she murmured, dreamily half asleep, how we perished, each alone.” Each alone, I echoed, knowing then that Virginia hadn’t cursed me. This was her space, but she was dead. Her St. Ives wasn’t my story to tell. I wasn’t about to walk in her literal footsteps. As a significant Modernist novel, To the Lighthouse represents the death of the gloomy past, abandoned for the sake of the future. Of course I couldn’t see the

Lighthouse. I wasn’t supposed to. Should I have gone to St. Ives in a snowstorm? Probably not, but I went, braving the Cornish winter winds, seeing the beaches in a way I’m almost certain Virginia Woolf never saw, hearing the waves as she certainly never heard them. I made my own memories, as beautiful and horrendous as they are, out of St. Ives. I abandoned my own stories on its ghostly shores.

Despite her first semi-disastrous literary pilgrimage, Samantha English ’19 (senglis2@wellesley.edu) is still going to the Brontë Parsonage later this month.

ARTS & CULTURE CAMPUS LIFE

Working Hard W hat is wrong with some people? I was on the escort van some weeks ago, and I don’t understand why some students on the shuttle thought it was okay to say that “driving the shuttle is so embarrassing,” and that they are so glad they don’t have to do it for money. Okay. I’m glad for you too. Aren’t you lucky. But let me help you understand that not everyone is privileged enough not to need a job. And are the shuttle drivers stealing your money? No. They’re earning an honest living. What could be more dignified than the act of a person who works to cater for their needs? And to you who thinks working in the dining hall is shameful. Try being an immigrant in a country that despises the

very essence of your being. When your intellectual capacity means nothing because you hail from a “developing country” (which by the way is most likely underdeveloped at the hand of the US). From the students who work there: we don’t do it because we enjoy it. It’s a necessity. We need to sustain ourselves, and, for some of us, we need to offer support to our families. What is your $70,000 education good for if at the end of it all, you spew the same ignorant vitriol that supposedly uneducated, unexposed, hateful people thrive on? When did working hard become something to be ashamed of? Also, you might be shocked to know

BY ANONYMOUS that obscene amounts of wealth may buy many things, but never genuine love, friendships, or acceptance; things we can afford to have with our minimum wage jobs, and things that you constantly pursue as well. To all of us students on work study (whether we enjoy it or not), working hard is a virtue. But more than that, none of us chose to be in a position where we have to work to stay in college. Nevertheless, forever hold your head high knowing that you’re not allowing any obstacle to come in the way of your goals. For information about articles published anonymously, please contact the Editor-inChief (ofunderb@wellesley.edu).

counterpoint / april 2018

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MENTAL HEALTH

Waking Up 7

A.M. My first of five alarms go off. I instinctively press snooze. 7:52 A.M. My roommate is getting ready. My alarm goes off again. I go back to sleep. 8:35 A.M. I wake up with a pang of guilt. I’m late for class again. I try to forget about it and I go back to sleep. 8:58 A.M. I wake up and have a conversation with myself. One part of me begs myself to move and just do something, the other part convinces myself it’s not worth the effort—I’m late anyway. Five minutes of contemplation gets me out of bed. 9:16 A.M. I have my teeth brushed, face washed. I get dressed. I’m ready to leave for my 8:30. But I don’t leave. I don’t go to my 8:30 because one look from my professor and the stares from my classmates are enough to send me into another downward spiral, another depressive episode. It could ruin my day, my week, or even my month. But I can’t risk it because I have a quiz in my 9:50, and I’m far too busy to feel depressed for more than a minute. Every time I walk into that classroom late, I can’t help but ridicule myself for my laziness, my lack of self-determination and willpower. How hard is it really to get out of bed? For me, it feels like the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do—and I have to do it every morning. I’ve always struggled with getting out of bed. This is usually a result of lack of sleep the night before, but more recently, I know that hasn’t been the case. I’m getting at least seven or eight hours of sleep every page 14

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night to try to combat the problem. I pray before I go to bed that I’ll wake up in the morning—I ask God to help me, just to nudge my feet because I know I don’t have the strength or mental capacity to do this on my own. I set multiple alarms in the morning just to make sure I will hear the ring. I’m not sleep deprived, so what the hell is wrong with me? “Laziness” is the only diagnosis I can fathom. But I’m not lazy. Laziness is defined as the “unwillingness to work or use energy.” I know I’m not lazy because I do have a desire to change my behavior. I don’t want to be the student who misses class, turns in assignments past their due dates, and scores poorly on tests. And I know I’m not lazy because I can finish and produce quality work, I score well on tests and assignments, and I actually like doing my classwork. And outside of my academic life, I have enough energy to go to yoga, go to parties, show up for work and org meetings, and keep up with daily chores. I think I’m lazy because, where I’m from, this is how we label people who don’t seem to function at a “satisfactory level” of efficiency. “Lazy” is what we called my sister when she nearly didn’t graduate high school on three separate occasions. My hometown is hyper-conservative, and these conservative views are reflected in the beliefs and words of both my family and friends back home. Most people in my hometown don’t believe in mental illness, which sounds outrageous now that I’m looking at the situation from

BY ANONYMOUS the other side of the country. How can someone not believe that there could be a chemical imbalance in the brain that can deeply disrupt a person’s life, or that it’s possible to be so anxious that the worry is out of a person’s control? How did I, as a kid, ever believe that mental illness was just an excuse, a fallacy? And how did I never think that it could happen to me, especially considering that my mother has both bipolar disorder and severe ADD? My father doesn’t believe in mental illness—or at least he doesn’t believe that mental illness can be chronic, let alone incurable. To him, mental illness (like my twin sister’s gayness) is just a “phase” or a “choice.” Last week, he told me he was proud of me for wanting to “fight against” any kind of mental illness, as opposed to “giving into the spiral of darkness” like my sister. My sister was recently diagnosed with severe ADD, clinical depression, anxiety, and narcissism. She is on her second of two counselor-mandated 72-hour suicide watches this month. Yesterday, she withdrew from school for the semester. It doesn’t take a genius to know that she isn’t choosing this lifestyle, and after two years, this issue goes way beyond classification as just a “phase.” My father doesn’t believe what he doesn’t understand, or more accurately, what he refuses to understand. Regrettably, I’ve lived the majority of my life mimicking my father’s flawed mindset. This is only now beginning to change as I seek explanations for both my past and present behaviors. Like why, for example, does it

Images: iidacon.info

Content warnings: depression, suicide, bipolar, anxiety, physical abuse

take me over an hour to fold my laundry when it should only take me 15 minutes? And what caused me, in my senior year of high school, to have four or five mental breakdowns in a typical week? It’s hard for me to come to terms with the fact that I do have mental health issues, the most prominent of which is anxiety, because I am afraid of the reaction from my family. I saw the way that my family acted when my sister started taking Adderall and already I have to sit and listen to the jokes my dad constantly makes about mental illness and my “crazy” mother. In my family, my sister is now seen as someone with problems, she’s seen as something to be fixed, and she is treated differently because of it. For my entire life, I’ve struggled to gain my father’s respect by working hard in school, playing by the rules, and pursuing an education he would be proud of. Admitting to anyone in my family that there is a problem—especially if I were to be medicated—could undo all of the work I did for years trying to earn his respect. The second reason I’m having a hard time is because of my mother’s history with mental illness. Since high school, my mother and I have had a strained

relationship. My sophomore year of high school, my mother abused me because she was angry one night—she apologized to me the next morning and told me through tears that it happened because she ran out of her medication the day before. Then she pleaded with me to forgive her because what happened the night before was “not her.” The only example of mental illness that I grew up with was not a positive experience. My mother did not manage her temper well, she lashed out constantly, and I was always tiptoeing around her to make sure I wouldn’t set her off. My parents split before I was born, so for my entire life, my dad has called her crazy and made fun of her lack of control over her emotions. All this being said, I know I don’t want to be medicated—I’ve seen what a reliance on medication has done to my mother, and I don’t want that to happen to me. I don’t want to look back on a mistake I’ve made due to a lack of medication and convince myself that it was “not me.” I’m afraid medication will turn me into a person I am not, just like it did to my mother. At the end of the day, I am afraid. I am afraid that if I admit I have a problem, people will start to see me differently.

More importantly, I am afraid I’ll see myself differently. I am not my mental illness—I should know that by now. Here at Wellesley, this fact seems obvious, but back at home it isn’t. And though I absolutely don’t see other people in terms of their mental illnesses, I am afraid I’ll start to see myself as someone who is broken. I know I am not broken. I am ambitious and honest and compassionate and intelligent and whole. And I know I am not my mental illness, and that I never will be—but every night before I turn the lights off and go to bed, I can’t help but wonder if tomorrow I’ll be able to wake up to my alarm, walk to class, and decide to be more than my mental illness. God willing, I’ll see in the morning. For information about articles published anonymously, please contact the Editor-inChief (ofunderb@wellesley.edu)

counterpoint / april 2018

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MENTAL HEALTH

A Girl with Triggers Explains Why Our Trigger Warnings are Stupid

ontent warnings: real life. Mornings are as much of a chore for me as they are for any other perpetually exhausted college student. I wake up to the alarm, stumble out of bed to the bathroom, and create something presentable out of my face and hair. The only major difference between us is this—when brushing my hair and teeth, I look in the mirror, and I am reminded. Standing before the dresser, shirtless, sifting through a stack of thinning gray clothes, I am reminded. On the rare occasions that I raise my arm to pose or answer a question in class, I am reminded, yet again, of the violence I exacted on myself last year, at the lowest point of my depression. And there it is: the content warning word. Allow me to backtrack a bit and explain to you my earliest memories of being “triggered.” At my last school, the majority demographic was white, heterosexual, cisgender, and male. On a near-daily basis, I would remind my two closest friends that their playful jokes

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BY ANONYMOUS

were, in fact, microaggressions. We agreed that they needed to be constantly aware of their privileged existence in dealing with others and cognizant of the potentially triggering effect their words could have on marginalized groups. And then we would spend the next five minutes in stitches, laughing as we sarcastically tried to one-up each other with irreverent and non-PC remarks. I mention this because I want you to understand the difference between true and imagined victimhood; nothing about their words or existences harmed me. Fast-forward to my time in the hospital and immediately after my discharge. I spent a ridiculous amount of time in group therapy processing the many symptoms of my illness and learning to cope in healthy ways. Triggers were a frequent point of discussion. I learned that, when suffering from a persistent, traumatic memory or severe anxiety, becoming aware of your triggers essentially means knowing what people, things, smells, or other experiences will increase your discomfort

enough to push you toward unhealthy coping mechanisms or cause immediate damage. Triggers are not things that you do not like simply because they challenge your worldview or because you imagine that they cause discomfort to others; they are things that can put your life and health in danger. The word “trigger,” as used in Wellesley’s pseudo-psychological lexicon, has been thoroughly ruined for me. The cheapening of that word is due to both the aforementioned jesting among friends and the time I have spent around people whining about non-existent problems. I could barely hide my snickering when therapists and other patients used the word within the legitimate setting of mental health treatment, so to hear it thrown around so frequently and insincerely by my peers now is beyond laughable. I know that I have what professionals call “triggers,” but I work to distinguish them from simple annoyances. I cannot very well ask people to stop getting henna on their forearms, to stop writing reminders

Images: Tiffany Sharma ’21 (left), pinterest.com (right)

Content warnings: self harm, suicide attempt

on their hands, or to stop making jokes about their college-student-angst desire to die. As much as those things annoy me, they are not triggers. I cannot demand that the world compensate for my discomfort; I do not want to. I do demand the following. If you do not suffer from a chronic illness or a trauma—if you do not face legitimate obstacles in your everyday living because of mental or physical limitations—then learn how to cope with normal life without misusing triggers. Learn how to exist within the inevitable discomfort of reality, whether that annoyance for you is heterosexuality, whiteness, maleness, conservative political viewpoints, or anything else that is not inherently malicious. I expand this challenge and ask that you think critically about both

comma

irst, it came for my lungs, delicate balloons swelling and emptying purposefully, a whoosh of air spreading throughout my body. It attacked the fine threads of my airways. Lungs rattling, raspy air forcing its way through, trying to extract a full, clean breath. My chest constricts tightly. Then, it came for my intestines, snaking in among the coils, wrapping around and squeezing certain loops. A narrowing, a hard, tight stone, a stab in the gut. It puffed its breath into me, blowing up my belly like a balloon. I vomit and curl into a comma on the couch. Then, it came for my skin, my entire outer layer, my largest organ. It spread its shriveled fingers over me, digging in. I am a monster, a creature, my once-smooth skin consumed. It’s an adventure, looking into the mirror each day and seeing what new discoloration will have appeared on my surface. I am made of imperfections,

historical and contemporary attitudes that are malicious or violent—explore them, understand their danger, and refute them logically rather than emotionally. Do not avoid them. The solipsistic victimhood so frequently seen on this and other campuses is beyond infuriating. Wellesley’s bubble of soft, secure safe-spaces will not extend into your future. You are not doing anyone any favors by exhibiting insincere sensitivity and distress. In fact, you are harming yourself by denying an idea or word that is merely a challenge to your viewpoints. Again, other aspects of reality, which mark an experience different than your own, should not be avoided. Do not hinder your own growth, especially with tuition this high. Let me close with this: a meme on a meme page is not an attack on your

IDENTITY

personhood or ideology. Do not enter a place of satire and irony and complain when you fail to see the humor. These exhaustive attempts to include everyone by policing language and expression, while theoretically admirable, are abused by parties who do not require or benefit from them. They conflate unacceptable malice with thought-provoking art or, more simply, crass entertainment. In the same way that I cannot escape the horizontal scars that run up and down my forearms—and believe me, I have tried— you cannot escape that which deviates from the existence you desire. For information about articles published anonymously, please contact the Editor-inChief (ofunderb@wellesley.edu)

B Y J A N E VA U G H A N

Content warnings: description of judgmental attitudes about chronic illness itchy and spotted, cracked and flaking. Deep purple stretch marks snake up my legs and hips like ivy. I cannot look anywhere on my body without seeing something that does not belong. It continues: my nerves, my kidneys, my blood vessels. This is my life: doctor’s appointments and carefully following orders and taking medications and more doctor’s appointments and remaining optimistic and nothing ever changing. Doctors’ jaws drop when they examine me. They say, “Wow, that’s not typical.” They say, “We’ll call in a new prescription.” They say, “I’m so sorry this is happening to you.” Why, thank you. I know I am lucky, considering. But it’s still hard not to hate these diseases that control my life.

Tonight I cried so hard in the shower that I almost threw up. People see my bloated belly, assume I’m pregnant, and give me small, knowing smiles. They glance sideways, eyes downcast, at my speckled, bandaged legs, then avert their eyes when I look up. I can see you staring, wondering what’s wrong with me. Life is unfair. So it goes. I am no pity case to feel sorry for, no exhibit to be gawked at, no science experiment to be examined. People see my skin and cry, “Oh my God! What happened?” Nothing “happened.” This is who I am.

Jane Vaughan ’18 (jvaughan@wellesley.edu) wishes that she had joined Counterpoint. counterpoint / april 2018

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Resurrection

Content warnings: description of eating disorder thoughts, blood he first time you get your period, it is filled with cramps and questions, tears of unknown origin, and rushed explanations. You have lost your innocence. You are afraid your body will become a warm rest stop—you are a cast-away from your mother’s womb once again. We are not privileged enough to escape life’s red essence—crimson is the pattern we adorn. The second-first time you get your period, it is filled with the divine, as sacred as any blessing from a celestial being. A stray droplet of fire on laminate tiling, almost missed, arouses tears of understanding. Fear overwhelmed by catharsis—you claim greater purification than your yesteryear. The color of an Indian sunset, there is enough to dip your fingers into the magic and paint a future in which you are whole. If we give each other the allowance to admit we are slowly murdering ourselves, that our sanctuaries are learning to suffocate us into submission, we may deliver one another with the resistance to live.

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BY SARAH SHIREEN MOINUDDEEN

Give me permission to say this skinny will never be enough, that ribs are meant to protect, not cage your breath, that dawn air, no matter how crisp, will never fill my chest. No matter that I am running away from a haunting consciousness. No matter that the hunger is not residing in my stomach, but rather in my groaning soul learning inconvenient habits. Give me testimony, recognize my war in your bedroom mirror, understand. Provide each other a reason to fight for the feeling of being full with life. You must be patient with yourself. Realize it is necessary to avoid mirrors. Reflective surfaces cannot know the journey you took to arrive right here, whole. In this moment, the mountains you are forever climbing to escape an unforgiving place are your secrets alone. Accept that your body cannot be a battlefield upon which men go to war with their mothers. The hills and sunken valleys, the inviting rivers and cold caves breed a life all their own. Do not allow them to go extinct at the will of others less dazzling. Recognize that losing can be good, a passenger carried so close to your jugular it was able to steal your voice and hide it

in a foreign land. Abandonment has never tasted so sweet. Acknowledge that the gray zone is where everything is alright but nothing is alright. Losing yourself is inevitable— you only choose whether you sink into its depths or take flight to leave behind the purgatory. I am an ocean filled with the origins of existence; life itself learned to live in my breasts. These fingers molded your laughter, do not be ungrateful. Do not command me to be small. Do not let my shrinking waves confuse you; I am no puddle. I have only forgotten how to dance with the moon. Watch: the tide is rising, it will consume your stories of inadequacy, your contempt for blooming hips that will bear your children, your glares of jealousy at brown thighs swaying like sea surfs on crashing shores. And you will never forgive yourself for forgetting the supernatural beast that lives within my womb. She will not be starved. She will be born a God. Sarah Shireen Moinuddeen ’19 (smoinudd@ wellesley.edu) is an accomplished gulab jamun eating champion.

Images: drawingfit.com, nakedayeart.com(left), regalhaircolor.com (right)

IDENTITY

POLL

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Hypotheses for majors that chopped the most: WGST (Interdisciplinary), Math & Science, Humanities, Arts, Computer Science Hypotheses for majors that chopped the least: Econ, Math, Physics (Math & Science)

counterpoint / april 2018

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DOWN 2. Do you even lift brah? 3. Salt and ____. 4. Known for saying “So you like cats?” and being an all-star best friend/sidekick. (Someone should have clapped back at him with, “So you like birds?) 7. The Marvel movie with the best soundtrack, hottest characters, and is the highest-grossing superhero movie of all time. 9. Got major plastic surgery between Iron Man and Iron Man 2. 11. Where you go to commune with your dead loved ones. 12. The bad guys from Pokémon, but in raccoon form. 14. Finally getting her own goddamn movie. But likely ripped off by Red Sparrow. 16. He STANKS. Wants to save everyone, also has overwhelming anxiety and probably should be on medication, but he doesn’t want to talk about it. 17. Steve Rogers’ boyfriend. 19. You might call this Black Panther character a humanist. 21. Possibly a furry. 22. The best Marvel villain ever created. No question. 23. Is she one of the Avengers? One of the X-Men? Who knows. 24. She got on David Tennant’s bad side. 26. This new Spider-Man character better make an appearance in the MCU within the next three years or we’re suing. 28. A people, not a place. 34. A vegetarian. 36. Purple Joss Whedon.

Images: m.blog.hu

ACROSS 1. The Marvel movie with T.I. 5. She is not a love interest. 6. Believe it or not, _____ is Nebula’s sister. 8. This actor has a frog in his mouth. 10. The MCU’s youngest film director. 13. Helped Tony Stark create a murder-bot. 15. This mini-series deserves another season. 18. “You got heart kid, where ya from?” “Queens.” “_____.” 20. Not related to Alex from Wizards of Waverly Place. 25. Irrelevant colonizer. 27. Sounds like a cool all-powerful being, but turns out to just be an asshole dad. 29. This very serious man is NOT a babysitter. Former Forehead of Security. 30. Many MCU fans pretend that this movie doesn’t exist. 31. This actor’s Marvel movie starts off surprisingly similar to an episode of Grey’s Anatomy. 32. The best day of the week but the lesser of the interfaces. 33. “Hey Sparkles, here's the deal: you want to get back to assplace, ass-berg?” 35. Actually a buff Andy Dwyer. 37. Karen 1.0. May he rest in peace. 38. Smartest character in the MCU. Killer sneaker collection.

avengers