What The F Issue 23

University of Michigan

December 2021

WHAT THE F Your Irregular Periodical Issue 23

Staff Arie Shaw Jessica Burkle Cielle Waters-Umfleet Melissa Dash Natalia Szura Michelle Wu Elizabeth Schriner Huda Shulaiba Jacob Flaherty Maria Wuerker Sam Auperlee Elya Kaplan Jamy Lee Emily Blumberg Claire Gallagher Tess Beiter Hayleigh Proskin Camden Treiber Calin Firlit Hanna Smith Eva Ji Lucy Bernstein Olivia Noff Lila MacKinnon Kendall Lauber Livvy Hintz Lily Jankowiak Molly Kraine Elizabeth Wolfe Julia Goldish Nia Saxon Jess Yaffa Dylan Wade

Co-President Co-President Editor-In-Chief Assistant Editor Assistant Editor Assistant Editor Staff Writer Staff Writer Staff Writer Staff Writer Staff Writer Staff Writer Staff Writer Staff Writer Staff Writer Staff Writer

Isabel Clayter Ella Kocher Lucia Perrone Aayana Anand Claire Emch Payton Aper Dimitra Colovos

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Claire Blestas Lena Schramm Anushka Raheja Grace Fisher Sana Hashmi Ella Hook

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Lindsey Smiles Ana Gerson

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is a non-partisan, non-profit publication operated by students at the University of Michigan. What the F’s purpose is to encourage discussion on significant issues of campus, national, and world interest. The magazine, the executive board, and our sponsors do not endorse the ideas presented by the writers. We do, however, support and encourage different ideas in our community and in campus discussion.

WTF

Issue 23 December 2021

01 02 04 06 07 09 12 13 14 16 17 18 20 22 24 26 28 31 34 35

Letter from the Editor Sh*t I’m Afraid to Ask My Doctor Beauty Standards, Self-Identity, and Being Asian American Persist Holy None of Us Are “That Girl” (And That’s Okay) A Gallery of Women in Sculpture Visceral Musicality Beauty inVisibility To Be in Style Pierce The Nip The Unattainable Nature of Beauty Only Time Will Tell Mended And Beautiful The Search For Beauty Portrait of The End of The World I’m Sorry, Lucy Liu The 24-Hour Convenience Store Ode To Girlhood funny, fresh, Credits

fierce, feminist, fuck!

Letter from the Editor

Welcome to What The F, your feminist periodical!

Dear Reader, First of all, can I just say how gorgeous you are? Wow. The dazzling twinkle in your eyes, the adorable upturn of your smile...Zoom doesn’t do you justice. And how lucky are we to be in your hands right now? Honestly, I’m flattered. But don’t worry, babes, I promise this issue will deliver.

Casual flirtation aside (follow us on IG, maybe?), it’s no secret that the world and we little creatures who happen to live here have faced a lot of ugliness since our last in-person issue was released in February 2020. I find, which I’m sure you can understand, that it’s really hard to reflect on everything we as a society have lived through in the past two years when we have no way of knowing how much longer we have left of going through it. And I’m not just talking about the pandemic, either. Spending less time out and about has allowed people to bring grave injustices to light, all of which our society needs to answer for, or even just acknowledge.

Through all that, what never fails to inspire me is the sheer resilience of the human spirit. Instead of allowing ourselves to break, we rise. Even on our campus, we see the hope and determination of the marginalized to push back against hideous wrongs and make a better community. What could be more powerful than the survivors of Dr. Anderson and their supporters braving late-fall Michigan weather to demand change from one of the state’s largest institutions?

The fact that people continuously fight for beauty, for peace, for justice even when it seems hopeless is what gives me strength to endure ugliness. Here within these pages (real, printed pages!!!) are stories of discovering and coming to terms with the beauty in ourselves and the world around us. Sometimes it’s not obvious. Sometimes, we have to work to create it. And sometimes, we have to change our thinking to see what was always there.

To close, I want to thank you, Reader, you beautiful thing! It’s been rough these last few semesters, and we’ve missed you. Thanks to your support, your willingness to take a chance on a magazine with a mildly inappropriate name and sensual imagery on the cover, and then to keep coming back for more, our efforts to publish top-notch art and writing have been well worth it. So cheers to you, Reader! May you find beauty waiting for you around every corner, as I know you’ll find beauty waiting within these pages.

Much love,

Cielle Waters-Umfleet Editor-in-Chief

1

SH*T I’M AFRIAD TO ASK MY DOCTOR

labiaplasty

by Ariana Shaw

In discussing beauty and ugliness, one subject that doesn’t get talked about enough is the beauty of the vulva. Every one is unique, with different layers and folds, sizes and shapes, hair and colors. Some are innies, some are outies. Many people with vaginas have wondered at some point in their lives if their vulva is normal or even thought about what it would be like to change it. They may deal with confidence issues in the size of the labia (vaginal lips), or experience discomfort from the labia for a variety of reasons. For some vulva owners, labiaplasty is an answer. Let’s get into the nitty-gritty and talk about labiaplasty, otherwise known as vulval surgery.

Sources: Kassel, G. (2020, January 29). Everything you need to know about labiaplasty. Healthline. Retrieved November 20, 2021, from https://www.healthline.com/health/labiaplasty.

Kimberly Singh, M. D. (2020, February 11). What is a labiaplasty and what does it involve? American Society of Plastic Surgeons.

Retrieved November 20, 2021, from https://www.plasticsurgery. org/news/blog/what-is-a-labiaplasty-and-what-does-it-involve.

Miller, K. (2017, December 17). Here’s the only time you actually need labia surgery. SELF. Retrieved November 20, 2021, from https://www.self.com/story/labia-surgery-facts.

NHS. (2019, September 19). Labiaplasty (vulval surgery). NHS choices. Retrieved November 20, 2021, from https://www.nhs.uk/ conditions/cosmetic-procedures/labiaplasty/.

what is it?

Labiaplasty is surgery to reduce the size of the labia minora (inner lips of the vulva) or labia majora (outer lips), typically for aesthetic reasons and/or increasing selfconfidence during sex. It’s considered plastic surgery most of the time. Other reasons a labiaplasty may be performed include if the labia chafe painfully or cause discomfort during sex, repairing tears after childbirth, repairing abnormal labia minora, or to remove cancerous skin from the vulva.

Labiaplasty can be performed by either a trim procedure or a wedge procedure. The trim procedure is the most common. It involves literally trimming the length of the labia and stitching it together to heal. A wedge procedure is less common. During a wedge procedure, a wedge of fatty material is removed from the labia to make it thinner, which preserves the exterior texture, length, and look of the vulva. During any labiaplasty, the patient is put under either general or local anesthesia, and the procedure typically takes under one hour to complete.

An important note is that labiaplasty is not the same as gender-affirming bottom surgery, which many trans women get to relieve body dysmorphia. It is done on people who already have vulvas, who want or need a change in the appearance or shape of the vulva.

what are the benefits of labiaplasty?

If labiaplasty is performed for a medical reason, it can be potentially life-saving. The procedure can remove cancer or repair tears in the vulva, stopping bleeding or serious scarring. Frequently people get them after they’ve given birth, if that’s in their plan. This is because birthing can cause stretching and tears of the vulva, so if they get labiaplasty beforehand, it could be a waste of time and money. Labiaplasty also is useful to repair stretching and tears after birth. It can also be life-saving in other ways!

Labiaplasty can be gender-affirming in and of itself, even for cisgender women. If the labia are causing any body dysmorphia, labiaplasty can function to solve that and allow the vulva-owner to be the most confident version of themselves. After all, we want you to have as much selfconfidence as possible, in all parts of your body!

how to prepare for labiaplasty: It can be easy to get approval for the procedure if the patient goes through a plastic surgeon. General doctors or gynecologists typically only approve labiaplasty for

medical reasons, or with a consultation from a plastic surgeon or therapist. Doctors recommend that patients be in good health and without any pre-existing, unmanaged, chronic illnesses. The patient should also be in a good space psychologically. Anyone seeking a labiaplasty with a specific vulva in mind will likely be disappointed with the results of the surgery. Afterward, labiaplasty typically requires two weeks off of work, as well as tending to stitches as they heal. Vaginal sex is also off-limits for four weeks post-surgery, and so is using tampons. But some discomfort in the short term is often worth the benefits in the long term!

potential risks: Any surgery has associated risks. Labiaplasty is no different. Associated risks include but are not limited to, decreased vulvar sensitivity, chronic dryness, numbness, scarring that results in painful vaginal sex, infection, or bleeding. The inner labia can also end up too small, therefore preventing them from doing their job: protecting the vagina. This could result in more vaginal infections later, such as UTI’s.

so, should you get one?

We aim to provide all of the necessary information about labiaplasties we can and a sprinkle of advice. If you have been having pain as a result of the size of your labia or if you are deeply unhappy with the appearance of your vulva, then the general advice is to consult your general doctor or gynecologist about solutions. There are a number of associated costs and risks with labiaplasty, so a doctor may encourage you to try other solutions before turning to surgery. Or if surgery is the best option, you’ll one day be grateful for taking that step! Either way, your doctor can help you make the best decision for your body, mind, and life.

conclusion: As always, we would like to reiterate that all vulvas are beautiful and worthy of pleasure, and unless there is a medical issue, no one should pressure you into getting labiaplasty. Vulvas come in all shapes and sizes, and it’s completely normal for your labia to look different than others you’ve seen. If your labia are truly interfering with your daily life, ask a doctor for their advice! We want you to feel the best in your skin that you can, and if that means labiaplasty is the solution for you, then we’re happy to have shed some light on the subject!

3

“It’s okay you’re not pretty on the outside, you’re pretty on the inside.”

St a n d a rd s, y t u a Be

It was one sentence that would become ingrained in memory. In the seventh grade, a boy I had considered a friend reassured me that I was a nice person, so it was fine that I wasn’t pretty. I was smart and kind. I was helpful and a good friend. But beautiful? Nah. I turned away to stop myself from crying. I had never considered myself one of the pretty, popular girls, but there was something unsettling about having those insecurities confirmed. More than sadness or shock, I felt embarrassed. He hadn’t meant it maliciously and genuinely felt bad once he saw my reaction, but somehow that made it worse. The damage was done. From then on, I realized how I was treated differently than my prettier, more popular friends. The boys would whistle as they walked by, and the girls would vie for their friendship.

I never wanted that kind of attention from the middle school boys, but when they asked me to help them get dates with my best friends, I couldn’t help but feel like Bianca’s character in The DUFF, who learns that her classmates refer to her as the ugly companion of her prettier and more popular friends.

Self-Identity, and n a i s A Being n a c i mer

A

by Elizabeth Schriner

Throughout middle and high school, I never truly believed I was ugly, but I didn’t think I was beautiful, either. There have been various traits I’ve been unhappy with or wished to change over the years: my nose, being short, needing glasses. It wasn’t so much that I viewed these characteristics as ugly but rather that I wished to be more like the influencers on Instagram who seemed to define the beauty standards. I’ve wished to have a set of straight, pearly white teeth like you see on TV more times than I can count. Later in my life when I was diagnosed with a chronic illness and underwent drastic weight changes both up and down, weight became a concern, particularly in my face and the prevalence of medication-induced rounded cheeks. Hair, too, when I lost it to chemo. But among all the comparisons I made in my head with my “more beautiful” peers, one thing kept popping up: my Asian traits. Face shape, skin tone, and eye color were several things that I noticed might have been influenced by my Asian genes. And of course, eye shape.

I didn’t fit the mold of a tall, blue-eyed, and blonde-haired beauty, but it was okay because some of my prettier friends weren’t blonde or blue-eyed either. They weren’t, however, Asian, with small eyes that kissed in the corners like mine. They hold the same narrow shape as my mother’s, common among East Asians. As a young girl, I didn’t realize that my eyes were different from my peers until someone pointed out the fact.

Suddenly, I felt like I was an outsider or just not “normal.” My mother told me that during my first week of kindergarten, I ran into her outstretched arms in tears, lamenting being called “the Chinese girl.” It was the first of numerous experiences where I was labeled as “different” due to being Asian. I was told to open my eyes wider on picture day, complimented on how quickly my skin tanned, and often asked about where I was from.

When I switched to a public school in my hometown in the seventh grade, starting over meant having to explain myself and my identity. No, I wasn’t adopted.

Yes, I’ve actually lived in Olivet all my life. No, I don’t

eat cats. Yes, I’m Chinese, but I’m also Filipino. I was a mixed-race girl with a ChineseFilipino mother who had immigrated from the Philippines. Being the only Asian in my grade at each of the predominantly white schools I attended set me apart from my peers despite often growing up in the same town and having similar interests. While the divide between me and my classmates generally went away once they got to know me, there was always a seed of doubt in my mind, a feeling of being “other.”

If I ever needed a reminder, I simply had to look in the mirror.

My Asian characteristics became scapegoats for my insecurities. My eyes, for example, have been an indicator that I am different for the majority of my life. That I am foreign, even though I am not. I hated the way my eyes crinkle when I laugh and therefore hated the pictures that captured me during my happiest moments. With eyes smaller than my peers’, I was self-conscious when applying makeup during sleepovers and cried over Asian jokes that my classmates made. My ideas about eyes like mine were fraught with centuriesold concerns about attractiveness, enveloped in juvenile comparisons to my friends’ “prettier” eyes. I didn’t have monolids like many other East Asians, but they were still slanted and narrower than those of my white companions.

When I looked in the mirror, I felt animosity towards a physical characteristic that was beyond my control.

Beauty standards in Asia have always been more complex than they’ve been given credit for. It’s harmful to say that all beauty standards are owed to Westernization and colonialism, as it trivializes the nuances between Asian cultures and dismisses the beauty standards held before Europeans arrived. It’s also ignorant, however, to pretend that Western ideals haven’t been incredibly impactful. The media and fashion industries in industrialized countries are largely dictated by white ideals, and the globalization of these ideals can influence how people discern standards of beauty. The blend of Western culture into mainstream media in some parts of Asia creates unrealistic standards for pale skin, double eyelids, and large eyes. Thus, Western beauty standards affect how young Asian and Asian-American women view themselves and their physical appearances. On the matter, sociologist C.N. Le notes in “The Homogenization of Asian Beauty” that “within the U.S., Asian Americans are a visible racial minority group, and particularly young people and those who live outside Asian-majority enclaves and cities, feel palpable pressure to ‘blend in,’ to avoid being seen as physically or culturally different.”

Looking back, my insecurities were in conjunction with these indoctrinated ideals, in which I desired to assimilate with my white peers. Research has shown that there are negative consequences to internalizing such beauty standards, and they aren’t just limited to the eyes, impacting perceptions on body shape, nose shape, and skin color. That’s not to say there aren’t harmful Eastern beauty standards, either. My mother used to compliment my double eyelids, something she longed for when she was younger. Whenever we visited family back home in the Philippines, saleswomen would compliment my paler skin tone, and there were lotions and soaps for bleaching or whitening the skin at every department store. At home, papaya bleaching soap and suntan lotion sat on the same shelf. If anything, these differences in beauty standards only confused me more when thinking about who I am and what I should aspire to be.

As someone mixed, I didn’t fit in with anyone anywhere, whether in the Philippines or the United States.

I had small East Asian eyes but lacked my mother’s jet-black hair. I was petite like the “ideal” Asian but too curvy and not skinny enough. My complexion, clothes, and facial features—of which were a mix of my parents’— set me apart from my Filipino family members. Whenever we were in the Philippines, people stared at me, especially if I was with my white father.

The amalgamation of cultures, physical traits, and identities weighed on me. The concept of physical beauty reflected the inner turmoil I faced of never being “white enough” or “Asian enough” to belong anywhere. It didn’t help that I rarely saw any representation of mixed Asian Americans in the media growing up. The only way to find peace was to accept myself for who I was and embrace the beauty in not only being Asian but in being mixed-race.

Since leaving the confines of my small hometown, I’ve met more people who are Asian or mixed-race like me. There will always be high, often unattainable beauty standards no matter where you are, but I’ve been working on confronting my internalized ideals of beauty, and, in the process, have developed an appreciation for the way I am. When my boyfriend or friends call me beautiful, I still don’t believe it, but I’m slowly getting there. I’m learning to love myself and be happy with who I am, and that makes me more beautiful.

5

persist

by Tess Beiter the taste of burnt coffee lies thick on my tongue and the cold wind slices through the sweatshirt i’ve worn for five days straight. i haven’t had the energy to shower in days, so i bundle up and brave the outside world because it’s all i know how to do. the staring people, the pressing expectations, and the dizziness of it all overwhelms me; i blink and suddenly i’m in class, i blink again and i’m done for the day. life is no longer a journey, but a stumble, a monotonous and sleep-deprived haze. the girl in front of me in the dining hall line has long glossy hair. she laughs into the phone, and i can’t help but invent stories for her, wistful tales in an attempt to explain who she could be calling. it’s her long-distance partner, reminiscing over the awkward way she first asked them out; or maybe it’s her mother, gently chiding her over not calling sooner; or maybe it’s her older sister, reaching out to check in on her freshman year; or maybe, or maybe, or maybe. i’ve noticed a pattern— since i don’t have the energy to create memories myself, i invent them for others and fervently wish i had what they do, a vicious cycle of longing for the fictional perfection of others. life is supposed to be beautiful; this is what i’m told, but have long lost the ability to comprehend. the light in my eyes has dwindled to a dull flicker and i fear the dark circles beneath them will consume me, erasing every trace of who I used to be. life wasn’t always like this, i’m sure, but it’s getting increasingly hard to remember a time when it felt different, bright and joyful rather than ugly and dim. i live suspended between glimpses of beauty, sustained by occasional scraps of joy. a cloudless blue sky in winter a deep, stomach-aching laugh with friends the comforting warmth of a spiced chai latte the smile of a passing stranger on my way to class a sudden desire to dance alone in my room the nostalgia of an unexpectedly beautiful sunset these are the moments i live for— sprays of blood-red flowers against a snowy backdrop, a rare glimpse of beauty in an otherwise numb existence. they stun me, sustaining but not satiating, so that I always crave more. the hunger they instill gnaws at me, whittling me down to my bones, a constant and intense reminder that life should be more than the dreamlike state i’m existing in. but i’m stubborn, strong-willed, persistent, and can cling to these moments during the intermittent and ravenous haze. one day i’ll uncurl from this dream, like a flower turning towards the sun; but until then, i will persist. it’s all i know how to do.

H These stories are mostly lies but You don’t know the half of it They are also mostly true

L Y

by Sam Aupperlee

I’ve spent nights kneeling in front of my mirror on my hands and knees in something like a prayer (although not exactly that) Diagnosing the inches of my body that were still bare Which is to say that When I was in the eighth grade, a boy A foot taller and with half of a beard although Like me Still a boy Confided in me “It’s a jungle down there” Looking me in the eyes and pointing at his belt with a vigor which I could only assume implied pubic hair so fierce he had trouble containing it And without going into detail and to avoid delving back into middle school vernacular For me, it was not “A jungle down there” Which is to say that I used to imagine one day I would come to class and begin to feel an itch under my left arm It would start slowly And spread and spread and I would have to run out of class to the bewilderment of my teacher And finally in the bathroom mirror I could lift my shirt to find For the first time Hair Beneath my left arm and perhaps my right Holy

Which is to say that My body was mean when I went to public pools Elbows sharp and hands tucked away in a gesture Designed by me To hide what was not there on my chest or under my arms And one day in an act I still consider revolutionary One of the other boys lifted his shirt to swim Revealing arms and a chest as bare as mine skin and nothing else smiling thinking nothing of it a sort of confession (a kindness) Which is to say that in a moment (fierce) And in a rejection of beauty and of ugliness his body became my body and mine, his A melting together born of the sheer relief that comes from knowing that owning this human body is something like owning a blank canvas A knowledge that we have each entered a confessional or knelt down in front of ourselves Which is to say That I have learned to delight in the human body and how often we share our colors with each other, how often without knowing it, my body is the body of someone else How often, without knowing it, I am the skin and fingernails and teeth and, yes, hair, of those around me How often this sameness produces something not quite like love but maybe sisterhood

57

33

None of us are “that girl” (and that’s okay)

by Mara Logan TW: Eating disorders and mental health challenges.

Trapped in the Algorithm Our generation is good at mental health. More than that, we are self-care experts: girlboss, gaslight, gatekeep, seven-step skincare routine. Repeat.

We are experts at the illusionary.

“Who doesn’t fetishize being a glamorous, productive, perfect version of themselves?” journalist Ruchira Sharma asks. And who doesn’t? I certainly did.

I graduated highschool in May of 2019, and in the summer months that followed, I fell into the algorithm of the Instagram explore page. For years I’d wavered on the brink of the chasm— diet propaganda posts popping up here and there on my feed—but this time I went over the edge. I saved a meal prep post, liked an influencer’s photo, and soon my explore page was inundated with thinspo content showing the calorie counts on different-sized bowls of carrots.

Social media in that form was a critical part of pushing me to develop bulimia and orthorexia.

The first time I purged, I told myself that this was my wakeup call. I realized I had pushed myself (my body) too far; I took a step back. The calorie counting, Fitbit obsession, and diet account worship didn’t stop all at once, but I became more conscious of “bad” behaviors. When I saw calorie counts and workout videos displayed shamelessly on my explore page, I intentionally avoided them, desperately trying to cultivate a social media experience that didn’t fuel my eating disorder.

A month later, in September of 2019, I began my first month of college.

For the better part of a year I purged “only” occasionally; I told myself I was okay.

And then COVID. The pandemic hit and I was trapped in my

house, my room, with only my phone and social media. But my Instagram explore page looked different, and I believed I had outsmarted my disease.

Still, my mindset, my self image, how I defined my worth—that was all the same as it had been six months earlier. My disease hadn’t disappeared; it had just adapted.

I started spending hours each day on social media—sometimes Instagram, but mostly Pinterest. I created board after board depicting the ideal that I sought. Not just images of thin bodies, but a life and lifestyle that I imagined was perfect but could only be lived by people who looked like that.

It was at this point that my bulimia reached its peak. I was isolated by the pandemic and my own behavior, and I convinced myself that I would come out of this experience new, different, and better.

I see my journey through my eating disorder as a microcosm of the larger battle between our generation, social media, and mental health.

It’s not a routine, it’s a lifestyle When editing this article, one of my friends pointed out something to me—the language I used when talking about my disease inherently placed blame upon me. I made Pinterest boards. I consumed content. I purged, again and again.

It’s true, these are all actions that I took. But this is also the lie that social media tells us. It is the excuse frequently used by companies like Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest when they are forced to defend themselves against horrifying statistics like the one published in WSJ’s recent whistleblower piece1: “thirtytwo percent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse.” The line from social companies again and again is that “consumers can tailor their own content”, but this ignores the reality of these platforms’ algorithms and the reality of consumers’ limited agency.

1 Wells, G., Horwitz, J., & Seetharaman, D. (2021, September 14). Facebook knows Instagram is toxic for teen girls, company documents show. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved November 21, 2021, from https://www.wsj.com/articles/ facebook-knows-instagram-is-toxic-for-teen-girls-company-documents-show-11631620739?mod=article_inline.

9

“That’s the most harmful part about the That Girl trend: the way its content masquerades as health.”

Refinery29 author Ruchira Sharma begins her article on the routine3 by sharing a brief but horrifying tweet from Dahyuni, a young teen who writes: “All that the ‘that girl’ trend did to me is give me an eating disorder and made me hate my life.”

Sharma continues, describing the videos as “blending classic wellness tropes like avocado on toast and early morning yoga with self-optimisation and hustle porn. In these videos, thin, predominantly white women wake up, work out, eat, write their goals for the day and drink an iced coffee, all before 7am.

Crucially, they make it look beautiful and serene. Everything – from the depiction of meals to the perfectly laid out workout set – has a minimalist aesthetic, resembling a moving Pinterest board.”

In her article4 “Why the ‘That Girl’ routine is more sinister than it seems,” Jasmine Wallis explains, “While the That Girl trend isn’t as obviously damaging, it’s only because of our recent awareness around mental health that this content is marketed as aspirational ‘self-care’ rather than toxic thinspo content.”

To make a choice about the content we consume, we have to understand what we’re consuming.

Consumer agency is the lie that social media tells us and the lie we tell ourselves. As consumers, we often fail to recognize how so much of the content on our feed caters to the racist, fatphobic, and misogynistic structure of our society. When I use Pinterest, I have to fight to find images of women who are not white and thin because that is the platform’s default.

These toxic standards are still pervasive in the newest avenue for diet culture marketing: the “That Girl” trend, a TikTok and IG trend that focuses on self care and “being your best self”, supposedly through building a health-centered routine.

On her blog Lifestyle by Stephanie2, Stephanie shares with her followers: “I want to become ‘that girl’. The girl who prioritizes her health and well being. Do you want to as well? I’m a true believer in that we should just get started. Stop talking about it. Start doing. So let’s start with optimizing our morning routine.”

She goes on to share a routine that begins with waking up an hour earlier than usual and is followed by drinking water, exercise, showering, meditation, and breakfast. Stephanie concludes her post as chipper as she begins it: “Get to work, studying, or whatever thing you’d like to accomplish. I hope you’re feeling great.”

On the surface the “that girl” trend is focused on taking care of all aspects of yourself, designed to help you reach a higher level of productivity and happiness. But in reality, the trend is marketing the same thing diet culture has been promising women for the last hundred years: the perfect life, made possible by the perfect body.

The bottom line? Gen Z recognizes the toxicity of the diets sold on the covers of magazines in the grocery store checkout lines, but we fail to realize that new content that’s replaced them is really selling more of the same—it just perpetuates the same harm in a prettier, clickable package. And the algorithms used by socials like Instagram, TikTok, VSCO, and Pinterest are aggressive in filling our feeds with either—or both—streams of toxic content.

I went from seeing social media feeds filled with blatant diet culture propaganda to Pinterest boards filled with thin, white women. Although the latter may appear less harmful on the surface, in both cases, my eating disorder was fueled by the content I consumed.

We have exchanged the glaring for the subtle by creating an illusion of acceptance, positivity, and healing. But the same structural problems—diet culture, racism, misogyny, classism— are still integral to upholding that illusion. We’ve just hidden these problems in a new, more aesthetic form, all the more malicious for the guise it wears.

The Social Media Paradox I have come a long way in my ED recovery. In terms of body image, I’m in an infinitely better place than I was two years ago, or even last year. I haven’t purged in a year and a half, and I’m proud of that. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t thought about it; it doesn’t mean I haven’t wanted to. The thoughts I used to entertain openly still lurk and occasionally make an appearance. I have to be careful, conscious about the food I eat, the method and frequency of my exercise, and the social media content I consume.

But the most difficult part about avoiding or navigating social media is that it feels inescapable. There are two social pressures:

² Lifestylebystephanieroth. (2021, October 24). That girl - healthy & productive morning routine. Stephanie. Retrieved November 21, 2021, from https://lifestylebystephanie.com/2021/07/11/that-girl-morning-routine/. ³ Sharma, R. (n.d.). Who is ‘that girl’ & why is TikTok obsessed with her? Who Is ‘That Girl’ And Why Is TikTok Obsessed With Her? Retrieved November 21, 2021, from https://www.refi ery29.com/en-gb/2021/07/10551994/tiktokobsession-with-that-girl. ⁴ Why the ‘that girl’ TikTok trend is more sinister than it seems. Fashion Journal. (2021, June 25 Retrieved November 21, 2021, from https://fashionjournal.com.au/life/tiktok-trend-that-girl-sinister/.

the pressure to use platforms like Instagram and Pinterest and, once you’re on the platforms, the pressure to consume aestheticized content and become the ideal you see on your page.

The truth is, I’m not going to stop using social media; for all its toxicity, I like it. The post-high school world is big, and for better or worse, social media can make it feel smaller. As social companies preach, and as Instagram stated in response to WSJ’s recent whistleblowing, social media isn’t good or bad, it’s both. The question is, does one outweigh the other? And that’s something every individual has to decide for themselves.

A second truth: As long as I’m on social media, some of that toxicity will continue to manifest in my feed.

“Consuming it is unavoidable, so what I strive to do—not always successfully—is be conscious of the toxicity that does exist.”

I’m writing about the That Girl routine now because although it wasn’t the original trigger for my eating disorders, seeing videos earlier this year sparked feelings and consumption habits that felt dangerous. Because on the surface, what the That Girl routine promotes isn’t an eating disorder, it’s “health”, presented in its most aesthetic form.

That terrifies me because what allowed me to stay engaged with my eating disorder for so long was the belief that I was ultimately helping myself. I thought I was making myself healthier.

What finally allowed me to stop engaging was witnessing the negative effects that purging began to have on my body: acid reflux, cavities. It was only then that I was able to recognize I was harming rather than helping my body.

mental health struggles implies that individuals who aren’t able to overcome their challenges through this method are inherently flawed, when in reality the flaws are with the routine, social media and its algorithms, and our pervasive diet culture.

Essentially, “health regimens” may contribute to and drive, rather than fix, disordered eating, low self-esteem, and negative mental health.

What we need to do, what I need to do, what social media companies need to do is stop placing the blame on individual consumers, whether ourselves or others. Our problem is a collective one: Through social media trends like That Girl, consumers pressure each other to be perfect. But when those pressures inevitably lead to negative effects like EDs, platforms refuse to take responsibility for promoting toxic content, placing the blame on the consumer. Ultimately, we end up harmed and isolated, simultaneously hating ourselves, and blaming ourselves for the hatred.

By now it is well established that social platforms’ promotion of diet culture drives the development of eating disorders and damages mental health. It’s time to recognize that its replacement with the supposedly health-oriented That Girl routine is only more of the same—it is diet culture in a new and perhaps more dangerous manifestation.

Instead of buying into another destructive social media trend, we need to stop hating ourselves and lying to each other. None of us are That Girl, no matter how much we may want to be, no matter how much we may pretend. I like romanticizing my life as much as the next person, but now it’s critical to acknowledge the realities of all of our days: the exhaustion, the body dysmorphia, the chaos, the imperfection.

“None of us are That Girl. And that’s okay.”

A few weeks ago, I saw a TikTok of a girl in a university dorm, captioned “when you get ‘that girl’ as a roommate”, followed by clips of her roommate doing yoga on their dorm room floor. The comments were almost exclusively from other girls instructing the maker of the video to join her roommate in the That Girl routine, thereby fixing her life and saving her mental health.

The content out there scares me because it’s dangerous. Videos and algorithms tell children, teens, and adults that the way to be healthy, to solve your physical insecurities and mental health challenges, is to subscribe to a “health” regimen. But in today’s social media culture, “health regimen” or “health routine” are just coded words for a diet, and they have the same negative impacts.

Although a routine may be what some individuals need, it isn’t a secret fix for serious mental health challenges like depression or anxiety. Worse, presenting routines as a viable avenue to solve

11

A Gallery of Women in S c u l p t u r e

The crowd poured in to see the female exhibit; a sea of men, each head a wave in Noah's flood.

A lady, whose skin was marble, fair of face and drapings sparse, listened, as did all these statues in silent contemplation.

The low baritones sounded a key change, major to minor; words, both muddy and honey-glazed, danced around the room— They pinched her features and slapped at her skin.

They twisted her visage from one form to another; all at once, she was a whore and a pig, Aphrodite and Medusa.

Was she being kissed or cut?

Were these hands groping or shoving, loving or destroying?

She felt herself rise from her pedestal, but couldn't tell if she was being carried away or toppled to the ground.

by Elizabeth Wolfe

Visceral Musicality

Songs that give me what I would call tarab:

by Elya Kaplan

The other day I was scrolling through my Spotify, curating my playlists and brainstorming creative—if verbose—titles and descriptions, when I came across one particular playlist I hadn’t listened to in a while. A five-hour long listen, this playlist, aptly named “hey! stop squeezing my heart” (yes, I’m cringing a little, too) is a product of last year’s fall-induced ennui and melancholia and is a collection of all the songs that cause me that ineffable ache that music so singularly imparts. There are songs of all genres within this compilation, and they vary in tempo, key, emotion, and just about every other defining feature a song can have; they make me happy and sad, lonely and rapturous, and yet somehow, they each have a similar internal impact on me as a listener. The songs bring me back to the contexts in which I heard them or the people who shared them with me—like smell, music seems to evoke powerful memories and leaves me painfully nostalgic, but if I were to place the feeling viscerally it would sit smack dab in the middle of my chest. It’s a swelling in my chest, like my lungs are filled to capacity and I’ve finally caught a deep breath. It’s a deep thundering of my heart and a zinging down my arms, a classic “giving me chills” moment. So what makes music beautiful to me, to us?

Stumbling upon this playlist again, I was reminded of a concept a professor of mine recently introduced to me. Knowing I’ve been studying Arabic this semester, she asked me if I knew the word for “singer.” Despite her generous appraisal of my skills, I reminded her that I’ve merely begun the learning process, so she told me that of the various words with that definition, one is ‫رطم‬ (mutrib), which shares its grammatical root with the word ‫رط‬ (tarab). Now that I’ve got you sufficiently confused, I’ll go on.

Without diving too deeply into the grammatical structure of the Arabic language, the shared root of these two words indicates their intrinsic association, and along with being a word for “singer,” mutrib also translates to “one who causes tarab.” Tautological as it is, this still does not define tarab, and the word does not have a direct English translation, making it an exceptionally difficult concept to describe.

Upon hearing my professor’s explanation of the term, I was so invested that I decided to do some research of my own. I found that “in Arabic, tarab refers linguistically to a state of heightened emotionality, often translated as ‘rapture,’ ‘ecstasy,’ or ‘enchantment’ but can also indicate sadness as well as joy” (74). It is also associated with certain styles of music and musical

Easy - Commodores Pink Moon - Nick Drake Volare - Gypsy Kings Suzanne - Leonard Cohen Monsoon - Amber Mark Between the Bars - Elliott Smith Layla - Acoustic - Eric Clapton What’s Up - 4 Non Blondes Kettering - The Antlers Photographs and Memories - Jim Croce Tunnel of Love - Dire Straits Brother - Bonjah Rosemary - Suzanne Vega I’ve Wanted You - First Aid Kit Aging out of the 20th Century - Trash Panda Paranoia Purple - Yebba Child in Time - Deep Purple Cold Little Heart - Michael Kiwanuka Hideaway - Jacob Collier

performance that evoke various emotional states, and it describes “a type of aesthetic bliss or rapture with respect to an art object” (74). I was floored.

Finally, not only did I have a word for what I thought was an inexplicable and immensely individual emotional reaction to certain music, but I also found that it is a wonderfully universal experience which some associate with mysticism, spirituality, and emotional rapture. Regardless of the differences in what we find beautiful, our experience of beauty in music can look and feel fascinatingly similar.

While I find tarab to be impeccably applicable to my personal music-listening experience, it’s vital to recognize that the word and its connotations exist primarily within the Arab world where it serves as “an important and highly contested metaphor for what many…artists, intellectuals, and patrons understand to be a realm of cultural difference from the West–one infused with what they call ‘oriental spirit’ (rûh sharqiyya)” (74). Growing up on the periphery of Arab culture as an Ashkenazi Jew in IsraelPalestine, I was vaguely aware of Arabic music and art, but I am still only beginning to understand its breadth and magnitude.

Acknowledging the origin of tarab as a cultural concept and recognizing its role in raising questions of self, community, and national identity—as we all know music, art, and culture have the power to do—is illuminating the impact and significance of tarab both within its context and as a beautiful phenomenon that many can relate to. So does Western music have tarab? Is tarab in Arabic music exclusively felt and experienced by Arab listeners? I am certainly not qualified to expand on these questions; however, I feel like the ecstasy and rapture that I personally experience when listening to Western music—though monumental and beautiful—do not have the same cultural, communal, or national significance. So perhaps what I’m feeling cannot be considered tarab, and yet if we decided to name that ineffable feeling we respectively get when we listen to music, perhaps it would lend a sense of both personal and communal significance to us. After all, music brings people closer together, and if you’ve got a moment, listen to some of the songs on my playlist and see if you get that feeling too.

Shannon, Jonathan H. “Emotion, Performance, and Temporality in Arab Music: Reflections on Tarab.” Cultural Anthropology, vol. 18, no. 1, 2003, pp. 72–98., https://doi.org/10.1525/ can.2003.18.1.72.

13

Beauty inVisibility

by Huda Shulaiba REQUIRED PREREADING (it’s not homework. Just Google it.): DuBois’s theory of doubleconsciousness.

Look into the racial disparities in schizophrenia diagnoses while you’re at it. All of that is to say: no, I am not being paranoid or dramatic or overreacting.

V

isibility is peculiar in its distribution. It’s one of those things in our lives that we take for granted, not realizing we have it until it’s gone, or vice versa. I think about visibility a lot these days, walking around a city that feels imbued with visibility, more opaque than the squat-proof Lululemon leggings I hear so much about. It’s a luxury afforded only to certain subsets of people. If you need me to enumerate to you which ones, my required reading list was way too short.

I recognize what I don’t have in short bursts before my mind makes the executive decision to go blank, turning to selective amnesia to protect itself from a constant state of despair. I don’t get to have random small interactions around here. Sometimes I think the fabric wrapped around my head

makes people think I’m a robot, capable of nothing more than a routine greeting and occasional class discussion post. Back home, I’m average. I love being average.

Being average means I don’t have to question my existence every time I walk to class alone. Here, no one even sees me. I’m not asking for hello or anything, but it’d be nice for them to at least try to acknowledge my presence just long enough to avoid running into me on the sidewalk.

When the guy standing in front of me waiting to get tested for COVID turned back to talk and joke in the interim, I had to grapple with the sudden awareness that he was the first person who had spoken to me like a real person since I’d moved back in. I had forgotten what it was like to be treated like a person and not a houseplant. To be casually spoken to and acknowledged

and looked at rather than looked through. Let that sink in for a moment. I completely forgot what it was like to be casually spoken to, even greeted. We spoke for two minutes. Though we were prematurely interrupted when his name was called, it was the most enriching exchange I’d had with a stranger in months.

I notice other things, too. For one, no one says bless you when I sneeze in class. I thought I was being sensitive when I first suspected it, but I paid attention long enough to see every other sneeze in our small class of 23 was getting blessed. If I were going just off that class alone, I’d guess the only sneezes allowed to be blessed had to come from faces that pass the paper bag test.

Even common courtesy was like a far-flung fantasy to me 50 pounds

ago. I had to lose 50 pounds just for someone to hold a door open instead of letting it shut in my face. Apparently, weight loss is the price you have to pay for everyday kindness.

People are caught off-guard by my jokes, my mean streak, my intellect. Every detail I reveal about myself is met with surprise as if being fat or brown or Muslim makes me incapable of sneaking into ice rinks and installing tile flooring in a neighbor’s shiny new green kitchen. Or, you know, just being a normal person.

I could go on about my mini moments of uncomfortably heightened consciousness, but you get it. The thing about invisibility is that no matter who you are or what you’ve done, you will always be denied the opportunity to even be assessed as a person. If anything, some are offered a cheap imitation of acknowledgment in the form of stereotypical role assignments, never given the option to be seen as human or whole, only as scraps of cherry-picked characteristics and warped-but-idealized traits.

I’m tired of my humanity being tied to a potty mouth. I don’t love the stink.

This isn’t a pity party, and it’s not anything new. It just is. Those of us who fall on the wrong end of the visibility spectrum work around it. One method I’ve found to be particularly effective (if a bit disheartening) is to sprinkle in a “fuck” or two upon first meeting.

The shock of hearing curse words come out of my mouth usually does the trick when it comes to reinstating my humanity in a

peer’s eyes. I’m working on finding a better one. I’m kind of tired of my humanity being tied to a potty mouth. I don’t love the stink.

So. We have our workarounds.

We assert ourselves into others’ lines of sight. We deal with it. The real effort lies in dealing with the image formed in the wake of our newfound visibility.

Eurocentric whitewashed beauty standards contribute to and uphold the invisibility of people like me.

It’s something we’re all aware of on some level, some more cognizant of it than others. The sky is blue, the grass is green, and the average white woman has a better chance of being considered “beautiful” than most. For others, a ridiculous amount of effort is required to simply be acknowledged.

Conventional beauty is one thing, but the standards bleed into every aspect of our lives, whether we like it or not.

We’ve all seen TikTok trends glorifying tiny, upturned noses or treating light-colored eyes like a Nobel Peace Prize or emphasizing how much better life is postweight loss. We’ve seen the same outfits being praised on models get ridiculed when put on bigger bodies. We all know the bar is lower for skinny white people to be seen as beautiful because they are the standard. It’s not hard to pass an exam written directly from your notes.

Nothing is absolute, of course, and there are plenty of exceptions, but the overwhelming pattern, especially for women of color, is that looking how you look is not enough. If we could quantify beauty in the eyes of society, beautiful women of color would be on the same tier as the average white blonde. (No offense intended

to the average blonde, of course.

You’re beautiful. It just sucks that your version of beautiful is the only kind allowed.) Ask around. If you get honest answers, you’ll see how common it is for women of color to fear being used for their “otherness” before being tossed aside for the first white girl who’ll glance at their significant other.

Eurocentric whitewashed beauty standards contribute to and uphold the invisibility of people like me. It’s something we’re all aware of on some level.

If you pay attention, you’ll easily notice how the key to being celebrated as “attractive” as a woman of color is either having white features or looking incredibly “exotic,” striking in a way that tears through our transparency. One lends itself to erasure, the other to fetishization and dehumanization.

Both lead to the same conclusion.

I don’t care to be considered “beautiful,” I truly don’t. It’d be nice, I suppose, but it’s the least of my worries. I would like to be treated like a normal person, though. To be seen in the most literal sense of the word.

I don’t know what we’re supposed to do with all this. I know what I’m doing with it, even if I can’t exactly verbalize it. Obviously, it’d be cool to move towards a future where this isn’t a thing (or, even better, one where physical beauty has minimal weight) but for now, we live with it. We work with it. We try to see what we can do to use it in our favor. We keep it moving.

15

The lights are on me, I try my best to smile, I know I’m shining in this moment Cool. Chic. I’m bathed in compliments and smiles I feel myself stretch and I become pliant, soft, snug with constant love until suddenly My arms are tucked in and my stomach folded, heading towards a darkness that I’ve never been in and I wait and wait But oh, how long has it been?

Why am I still here?

Wasn’t I the most beautiful?

When I’ve finally accepted that I’ve been forgotten, I’m pulled out into the world again, but one where factories clone me until thousands of new versions of me line up the stores and I question: Do I shine brighter with them or am I drowned out by their novelty This time around it starts making sense and I’m hit with a rush of Jealousy of my timeless friends: Miss Little Black Dress, Miss Seductive Black Pumps, Miss Classic Blazer, and even Miss Cute Jeans.

We used to travel together.

Hit the rooftop bars of New York, fly to different cities, run to classes, relax at coffee shops.

But as I’m deemed old and boring again, I am sent back so I wait in the shadows again until someone decides I’m cool enough to wear again

To Be In Style

by Michelle Wu

The best thing I’ve ever done for myself, and I say this with absolute certainty, was to push a 16-gauge needle through my boobs. That’s right—nipple piercings changed my life.

Pierce The Nip

For my first 20 years on Earth, I was insecure about my nipples. It didn’t take long for me to figure out that mine varied drastically from the apparently culturally agreed upon “perfect nipple” (which also, what?). Whereas others’ were pink, mine were brown-ish. While some boasted small, perfectly circular areolas, mine were larger and lacked any particular shape. While it seemed like almost all the hottest tits had protruding nipples that struck the ideal chord between understated and sexy and had men drooling, mine were… inverted.

My insecurity was deep-rooted and constant, but as I got older, its specifics shifted. In middle school, when I became aware of the real logistics of chestfeeding, I feared that I wouldn’t be able to pull it off. Soon, I was fretting that if I couldn’t even feed my hypothetical child, what was I doing to fulfill my biological purpose as a woman? Forget that I didn’t (and still don’t) want children—by age 13, I had internalized that perfectly functioning, perfectly formed breasts were essential to my value as a person.

As I got older, my friends and I all continued to change outfits in front of each other, even as our bodies were developing.

Puberty sparks bodily insecurity for everyone, and I learned I wasn’t alone in my nipple-specific anxiety.

My friends were worried about whether their boobs looked normal, too, but none of them shared my inverted nipples. If they think theirs are weird… they better not see mine, I thought while I huddled in the corner and changed my shirt. Even though these conversations amongst my friends could’ve served as an affirming outlet, I was so worried that none of them would even understand what inverted nipples were (shoutout to American sex ed!), much less quell my concerns, that I kept to myself.

While I hardly loved being the only one uncomfortable about being topless amongst friends, I loved the idea of letting the world see my boobs even less.

All through high school, my insecurity festered. Once I started hooking up with people, my fear escalated. If I thought my nipples looked weird, my partner definitely would, too. Surely, they’d never seen boobs like mine in porn, movies, and certainly not sex ed and biology textbooks. I worried about having to answer questions about my nipples, or even worse, watching confusion and disappointment wash over my partner’s face after taking off my bra. Even though none of my worries ever came to fruition, I never moved past my insecurity—and the casual hookup culture I encountered once I got to college only added to my anxiety. Each time I was with a new partner, I not only had pre-hookup jitters, but also will-they-think-my-nipples-areweird-are-they-weird-I-don’t-know jitters. It was not a fun way to live.

by Claire Bletsas

Possibly because of my niche insecurity, I always kept an eye on the nipple-piercing trend. The concept of people being so confident in their nipples that they chose to actively draw attention to them was foreign and enticing to me. I longed to be like Kendall Jenner in the pages of People magazine, bravely going braless and flaunting her jewelry. Nipple piercings always seemed, to me, like a powerful statement on bodily autonomy and sexuality. When I got a message in my inbox from my favorite Ann Arbor piercing studio about discounted prices to help a piercing apprentice gain experience, I realized my time had come. I was ready to join the ranks of the barbelled-up celebrities I’d been admiring for years. I quickly booked my appointment for my very own nipple piercings.

For obvious reasons, getting the actual piercings was one of the most nerve-wracking things I’ve ever done. Not only was I finally face-to-face with the seemingly huge needle that would be piercing me, but before that, I had to let my piercer and apprentice examine my ta-tas to make sure they were able to pierce me in the healthiest way possible. While both the piercer and the apprentice were professionals who had done this (and far racier piercings) hundreds of times, I worried that I would earn the title of “Weirdest Nips Ever”, even if only behind closed doors. I nervously revealed my chest to my piercer, who nonchalantly explained to his apprentice that my nipples were inverted, so the piercing process would have a couple additional steps. For once, instead of being ashamed of my body, I actually felt like it was normalized. Not only was my piercer knowledgeable about my anatomy, but he confidently reassured me that it wasn’t better or worse than the “norm” in any way. I was ready to tackle the challenge ahead.

The piercing hurt like a bitch, but afterwards, I felt on top of the world. For the first time in my twenty years, I was completely confident in my body; I actually wanted people to notice my nipples. The weeks following my piercing, I spent what felt like hours standing in front of the mirror, admiring the tiny titanium barbells and giving myself the body-positive love and praise that I should have all along. I was so excited about my new jewelry and thought I looked so badass that suddenly, I couldn’t even fathom feeling insecure about taking off my shirt in front of a partner. Instead, I actually looked forward to it! I started going braless more often not just for comfort or convenience, but as a deliberate stylistic choice.

To this day, they’re my favorite accessory—and an ever-present reminder to myself that if I could survive a needle through my nips, I can do anything.

17

The

Unattainable

T

he little girl in the adjoining dressing room could not have been older than eleven. Her features reminded me of my own when I was that age, wide-eyed with unbrushed hair and rosy cheeks. And she possessed the precious combination of short and stout, unique to prepubescent girls. She was shopping for her upcoming birthday party, and I watched her pupils expand as the sales associate placed a training bra and bedazzled purple dress into her palms. She ripped the items off the hanger, eager to embrace her princess fairy tale and threw the dressing room curtains together. Suddenly invested in her personal fashion show, I waited to see her smile widen as she stepped out from behind the drapes.

Yet the look of pure joy never came. Her wide eyes spilled silent tears that streamed down her face to her quivering upper lip.

And as she threw herself into the comfort of her mother’s arms she explained how the mirror humiliated her, screaming how she looked fat in her party dress. Between gasps for air she asked, “Why don’t I look like the girls on TikTok?” My heart broke at this moment.

To witness the contrast between trying on a training bra and the pressures of imposed beauty standards felt immoral. Even at a young age, the impact of an ideal body image is not only present, but life-altering. While heightened by the emergence of social media, this pressure to conform to a particular beauty standard is not a novel concept.

Beginning our journey through history, ancient Greece (500300 B.C.E.) demonstrates an emphasis on imposed beauty ideals. Statue remnants depict full-bodied figures, with weight typically signifying wealth and a well-fed stomach—an

Nature of beauty unattainable look for the vast majority during this time period. Interestingly, ancient Grecians cared little for the female form, worshiping male bodies above all else. Female bodies were under pressure to appear increasingly masculine, an early example of how the male sex has historically played a role in shaping the ideal feminine form.

In addition to bodily proportions, facial symmetry was of the utmost importance in terms of beauty. The ancient Greeks emphasized the Golden Ratio, a specific geometric formula considered the most pleasing to the eye. While this formula was initially utilized in Greek architecture, the concept of perfection in balance and symmetry materialized in human faces.

Due to this, unibrows were considered an image of lust, so much so that women who were unable to grow their brows would apply black powder to create the appearance of one. Ancient Greece marks a period on this historical timeline in which elements of female beauty, including body and face structure, are solely determined by external forces.

by Melissa Dash

Artifacts from ancient Greece also demonstrate the belief that fair-skinned women were considered more beautiful.

This racist distinction, however, did not begin nor end in 500 B.C.E. Roughly at the turn of the 15th century, European colonizers began traveling around the world, introducing the notion of white supremacy in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Lighter skin was associated with high class distinctions, for only rich women could afford not to work outside in the sun. This led to the cosmetic procedure of skin lightening or skin bleaching, which reduces the concentration of melanin in the skin. Some women would even poison themselves in the name of beauty, using arsenic to lighten their complexion and mercury and lead for eye makeup.

Moving far ahead into the Victorian Era (1837-1901), the superiority of light skin and symmetry prevailed. This time period marked the height of female oppression. Manifesting in fashion, the corset became one of the most notable examples of how the female body has been tortured and contorted in the name of beauty. Corsets bruised the ribcage, squeezing internal organs in an attempt to achieve a slim silhouette beneath luxurious gowns. Skeletal remains indicate the deformity of ribs and misaligned spines. As the fascination with slim waists emerged, beauty industries profited immensely, advertising social status above comfort. While boned corsets were eventually abandoned due to ever-changing body ideals, the obsession with an hourglass figure migrated to the United States, and its influence has pervaded the present day.

At the turn of the 20th century, body image ideals began changing at a rapid pace. Each decade introduced something new in beauty and fashion trends, and so the ideal womanly shape changed from year to year. The roaring ‘20s

little as a decade, preferring their original figures instead.

Modern culture has also led to deceptive editing on social media. Applications such as Photoshop and FaceTune allow individuals to digitally alter their appearance, allowing room for the dangerous beauty standards of the ‘90s to emerge again. Social media platforms such as Snapchat, Instagram, and TikTok have even incorporated unrealistic ‘beauty filters’ into their apps, giving users instant face lifts, nose jobs, and lip fillers. As a result, little girls as young as that elevenyear-old are left with a damaged selfesteem and questions of self-worth.

advertised a boyish figure and flat chest, and just as quickly as it began, the desire for slim silhouette was replaced by the full figures of the Golden Age of Hollywood.

From the 1930s to the 1950s, the aspiration for an hourglass figure returned, which is most prevalently seen in 1950s and ‘60s America with sex symbol Marilyn Monroe.

Momentarily, proportional and voluptuous bodies were plastered across movie screens, and women strived to replicate the look of their entertainment icons.

This time period also marked the height of American capitalism, and beauty industries made a killing off the changing economic system. Businesses modeled their frameworks off exclusionary colonialist ideals, profiting off female insecurities and discrimination. In the ‘90s, when the ideal body shifted toward women who looked extremely thin, starvation diets were glorified in mainstream media.

Diet culture became responsible for an increase in eating disorders and body dysmorphia, and the fashion industry wasted no time capitalizing upon this new trend. The ‘90s marked the beginning of a deeply unhealthy and harmful beauty standard, valuing underweight models and extreme weight loss tactics. The ‘90s glamorized drugs, smoking, and starvation, with addiction becoming the poster of fashion. The “heroin chic” trend created a skeletal-thin ideal, and the media ran with these unrealistic standards. As a result, consumers replicated the behaviors of their

favorite models, starving their bodies and pushing a healthy lifestyle to the backseat.

While it did not take long for the tides to swing again toward a new beauty ideal, the practice of beauty at the expense of bodily harm remained prevalent. Kim Kardashian, along with thousands of mainstream media influencers, has altered the face of beauty in 21st-century America.

The prevailing Western image of beauty has been replaced by a new unattainable standard. Women are expected to be bronzed but not too dark, skinny but not too thin, and curvy, but only in the right places. This surgically crafted blend of physical attributes leaves most women feeling lackluster in comparison to the faces plastered on their television screens and magazine covers. This has led women to extreme—and sometimes life threatening—cosmetic and surgical procedures to keep up with dynamic standards. Driven by influencer culture and social media, thousands of women worldwide are undergoing a new popular cosmetic procedure. For $15,000, women can get a Brazilian Butt Lift, a surgery where fat is liposuctioned from various parts of the body and injected into the buttocks. Despite strong concerns over the procedure’s high mortality rate, women are still electing to undertake the risk, all to achieve a “Kardashian body.” However, since beauty ideals change so frequently, those who harm their bodies to look a certain way may regret this choice in as

The irony rests in the constantly changing picture for what is considered beautiful.

From 10,000 BCE to 2021, the ideal image of beauty has rapidly changed. Each decade has represented a new standard for women, one usually impossible to healthily achieve, and one carefully curated by external influences. In the present day, the fast fashion industry and prevalence of influencer culture has only sped up this process, resulting in high turnover rates of popular styles and trends. Just as one forces themselves to fit the narrow image of societal beauty, it seemingly disappears—transforming into an entirely new standard to achieve. The nature of this cycle leaves individuals, particularly vulnerable, young girls, with a negative view of themselves and residual feelings of marketable insecurities.

If I had been born in ancient Greece, I would have no desire to pluck the hairs between my brows. If instead I lived in The Old Stone Age, I would embrace my stomach rolls and thick thighs as beautiful rather than shameful. And if Kim Kardashian weren’t the image of my generation, perhaps I would feel comfortable in the skin I was born with.

That being said, I remain hopeful. The emerging body positivity movement has challenged present-day beauty standards, advocating for the acceptance of all bodies, regardless of size, shape, skin tone, gender, and physical abilities.

Whether performative or genuine, brands have taken a stand against the narrow confines of societal beauty. Inclusive clothing, makeup products, models, and advertisements have represented positive change in America.

I hope for a future where no child will ever allow the mirror to determine their selfworth, and will forever feel comfortable in a party dress, regardless of a culture that tells them otherwise.

19

Only Time Will Tell

by Tess Beiter

Growing up is hard enough without a sexuality crisis to top it off.

Unfortunately, in my particular situation, the environment I was raised in was not one that fostered the exploration of sexuality. Rather, my childhood was painfully heteronormative.

For years, I was left stranded, adrift at sea, convinced that I was completely and utterly alone in my “deviant” thoughts. The faith I was raised in and the parents I was raised by could not, in any sense of the word, be called approving of the LGBTQ+ community. As a result, I was not even aware that gay people existed until I was eleven years old.

Shocking, I know. It angers me that a key part of my identity was stifled and suppressed for far too long, locked in a prison of ignorance. Looking back on my childhood, it’s almost comical how obvious it was that I’m not, nor ever have been, straight. But hindsight, as they say, is 20/20. And despite how clear the signs may seem to me now, they were nothing but confusing for the young girl I once was.

At age five, I couldn’t grasp why I simultaneously wanted to be a princess and the one to rescue her from danger. My young mind couldn’t comprehend why it was strange to others that I wanted both.

Why can’t I also pretend to sweep her off her feet?

At seven, I was ecstatic when an older boy told me that girls could marry girls in Hawaii. Never mind that this wasn’t true; the more telling part is how overjoyed I was. My mind immediately jumped to how much I wanted to spend the rest of my life with my closest friend.

Elle! Do you want to run away to Hawaii with me?

At ten, I furrowed my brows when everyone else only argued over Jack Sparrow and Will Turner. Was I the only one who also dreamily watched Elizabeth Swan?

I blushed and averted my gaze when she graced the screen, afraid of the apparent strangeness of my thoughts.

You truly don’t find her as pretty as I do?

At eleven, I listened from another room as my parents heatedly discussed the 2015 Supreme Court case that legalized gay marriage. My parents were furious over the ruling, and that terrified me. This was the first time I’d heard the word “gay” defined as “same-sex attraction”, and it hit me as sharply as a slap across the face. I reasoned that I couldn’t possibly be gay; after all, I’d had crushes on boys, too, so I must be conflating my attraction to girls with something else.

If being gay is such an abomination, then...what does that make me?

I lived in this constant state of denial for years, and in retrospect, I now realize how miserable and isolating it was. I was constantly torn between my identity, who I truly wanted to be, and the parents and faith that I trusted. For people who were not raised religious, it may be nearly impossible to understand the battle that raged within me, but bear in mind that my parents and the faith they instilled in me were all I had ever known. However, the hypocrisy of the beliefs they preached became glaringly obvious once I knew to look. How can anyone declare that it’s our duty to love everyone while simultaneously condemning those who love differently than them? If their idea of love is discrimination and elitism masked by facetious sympathy, then I want no part of it.

It takes an immense amount of courage and strength of will to finally deny and leave behind the ideals you were raised with. It was a process that may have taken years, but rest assured, I was not alone. And once it was complete, an immense weight was lifted off my shoulders.

At sixteen, my biology lab partner asked me to tie back her platinum-blonde hair for her; she was occupied with the vials of enzymes we were studying, and strands were escaping her loose bun. My hands shook as I did so, and from there on, I found myself asking the question I had asked a hundred times before.

Do I like her, or do I just want to be like her?

As it turns out, only time could answer that question. While this was not my first crush on a girl, it was the first that I seriously entertained after beginning to think that I might be bisexual.

She was popular but down-to-earth, incredibly smart and quick-witted, and her beauty enthralled me. I began to see her everywhere— not only catching glimpses of her in class or the hallway, but also seeing her in the simple moments of everyday life. The color of the cloudy morning sky would remind me of her eyes, or a barista’s voice wishing me a good morning would sound exactly like hers. She would come to mind whenever I saw a border collie, her favorite dog breed, and there were a thousand similar moments that brought her to my mind and a smile to my face. Most of all, I found myself wishing I had the courage to tell her so.

There was a time when another woman’s beauty would cripple me, both with insecurity about my own appearance and shame stemming from my attraction to her. But another woman’s beauty does not detract from my own, nor is it something to fear.

No, it is something to respect, something to admire, something to revere. There is an enchanting, oftentimes sad story behind every woman, and denying the draw of it is an insult to all the struggles she’s faced and overcome.

While I may regret all the years I spent afraid of my own feelings, I have let go of the bitterness I once held towards my younger self. She was confused and scared, and it’s unfair to be angry with her for the ignorance that trapped her. For better or for worse, every choice she made has led me to where I am now, and I admire her for that. I have vowed to look to the future and make the most of who I am now, and that is enough.

Frankly, this terrified me. I had long since abandoned the close-minded ideals I was raised with, but the last step remained: doing away with my internalized prejudices and accepting that I was biseuxal. There isn’t one definitive moment I can pinpoint where this happened, but rather, it was a slow, calm embracing of my identity. While this was decidedly less dramatic than the classic “confession in the rain” movie scene, it was beautiful nonetheless.

No longer am I compelled by shame to hide my sexuality, and no longer am I held back by the prejudiced views that once trapped me. I’ve broken out of the prison that was simultaneously of my own making and out of my control, and the freedom that has accompanied it is indescribable.

21 15

and

Mended Beautiful

by Maria Wuerker

One of the most impactful museum exhibits that I have ever attended was at the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, featuring pieces of pottery repaired through kintsugi—a practice that emphasizes imperfections in pottery pieces by outlining cracks in gold lacquer in order to highlight the individual beauty of their lives as objects of use. The idea that a broken thing can become both whole again and more beautiful due to its breaking is one that resonates with me. Particularly in a society where perfection is valued so highly, there is comfort to be found in objects that are made all the more special by their long lives. Similarly, people go through life brushing against each other, leaving residual traces.

How many little things do we do every day because of a person who has touched our lives in some way? These traces can be positive or negative, long forgotten remnants of old friendships swept away in the tides of life or reactions tinged by past hurts. It is easy to want to erase the negatives, to forget loss or betrayal or heartache, but when we take the time to learn from them, they, too, can become golden parts of who we are.

Kintsugi is a Japanese method for repairing broken vessels. The practice is said to have originated in the 15th century, at the very end of the medieval period. As legend has it, the Japanese emperor at the time broke his favorite tea bowl and sent it to China to be repaired. When his bowl was returned, it had been repaired with metal staples, which he found to ruin the aesthetic nature of the piece. He commissioned his craftsmen to develop a process that would preserve the beauty of a piece whilst repairing it in a way that would allow it to still be of use. From this, the practice of kintsugi was developed and was considered to not only preserve the beauty and functionality of a piece, but also added to its aesthetic appeal. The process consists of a piece of pottery being repaired first with lacquer, and then once the lacquer sets, the crack is outlined with gold. This practice is thought to be an extension of the concept of Wabi Sabi, which preaches appreciation of the beauty of imperfect, impermanent, incomplete, modest, and humble objects. Kintsugi reached the height of its popularity during the 16th and 17th centuries and soon became regarded not only as a method of repair, but also as an art medium that added to the visual beauty of any piece. Some artisans began breaking pieces on purpose in order to perform kintsugi on them and sell them as a more valuable work of art.

From a modern lens, this practice might seem strange, especially in that an emperor would feel the need to fix a ceramic vessel rather than simply replacing it. However, the Japanese prioritized the value of the individual object more emphatically at the time, and it was not uncommon for someone of his status to seek to repair an object that was of great artistic merit. Wabi Sabi as an ideology rejects perfection and instead elevates the value of authenticity and imperfection. This differs greatly from the values that are most prevalent in our (Western) culture today, most of which are a direct result of the rise of capitalism and the concept of disposable possessions. We have developed a culture that idealizes perfection and often seems to accept nothing less from both items and people and often marginalizes and even demonizes

individuals who are seen as “broken”. But what have we lost in adopting such a harsh philosophy? What can we learn from a philosophy that provides room for an object or individual’s history and finds value in it? Utilizing the ideology of Wabi Sabi allows us to view something breaking not as an end, but rather as a part of its story that can only add to its beauty and value. It is a more forgiving philosophy that allows for individuals or objects to change over the course of their lifetimes and for a broken thing (or person) to maintain its beauty and integrity in its new state of mend.

Why is it that we feel the need to erase certain parts of ourselves, hide our bruises and soften our jagged edges? Why do we feel that our old hurts may be too much for others to handle, something that detracts from our appeal as a friend or a lover rather than something that we have learned from and which has made us all the wiser? To me, an important aspect of this is our culture’s unfounded expectation of perfection whilst also allowing us little time to prioritize ourselves. From this, we can see the ways that society pushes us to excel in portraying outer beauty rather than inner—makeup is marketable. Personal growth? Not so much.

Society has taught us that we need to buy things in order to make ourselves more appealing. It has also taught us that we are our output. Thus, we turn outward instead of inward, attempting to create facades that will invite the least criticism and will allow us to appear as close to perfect as we can. We hide our blemishes, we hide our hurts, we act like somebody we are not. Why are our looks, our personalities, and our experiences objects for mass consumption? What would happen if we spent the energy we put towards acting “perfect” into fully healing ourselves, learning to love the whole of who we are not in spite of but through our past experiences?

There is a lovely parallel to be found in the practice of kintsugi and the practice of life itself. One of the scariest parts of being alive (and one of the most rewarding) is the act of opening yourself up to others, leaving yourself vulnerable. Loving people means you can get hurt by people, but it also means that you are allowing yourself to be open and to change. Losing people, whether a death, a breakup, or a falling out with a friend, leaves us with cracks. The process of healing is about learning to love those cracks, filling them with all of the lessons you’ve learned from that person. All of the experiences they brought into your life, all of the songs you sang together that you’ll sing again someday without feeling so sad, all of the games you played and the laughs you shared will one day be a shining golden part of who you are. Whether it be from positive or negative experiences, when we allow ourselves the space to heal properly our scars can become our greatest achievements, our most important lessons in who we want to be and how we treat others and ourselves. When we accept our cracks, we allow ourselves to be more whole.

23 17

The Search for Beauty beautiful (adjective) beau·​ti·​ful | \ ˈbyü-ti-fəl \ 1: very attractive in a physical way 2: giving pleasure to the mind or the senses

by Michelle Wu

— Merriam Webster Dictionary

I remember the time when the most magical part of every day was waking up early in the morning with no clue of what would happen later in the day. Before my internal clock reached puberty and got all fucked up, I would be up at 7 AM—even on weekends and holidays, much to the dismay and exhaustion of my parents—ready for the adventure that awaited me. What made every single day so goshdarn beautiful back then?

Perhaps it was the promise that there was going to be something that I had never experienced before since there were fewer days to compare the new ones to. Some of the loveliest things from my childhood were my old textbooks and notebooks covered with my doodles, my ratchet rock collection, worms, and flowers.

I remember when I was much younger, around seven years old, I had an empty egg carton filled with the rocks that I collected while on walks or hikes with my family.

The yellow foam of the egg carton was scratched up and dirty from the growing collection of rocks, but I wouldn’t let my parents throw it out and replace it. Sure, I loved

Beauty is but a vain and doubtful good; A shining gloss that fadeth suddenly; A flower that dies when first it ‘gins to bud; A brittle that’s broken presently; A doubtful good, a gloss, a glass, a flower, Lost, vaded, broken, dead within an hour.

— William Shakespeare

my smooth “egg rock” and the large lumpy one with crystals embedded in it, but I thought that the carton made the collection stunning.

Was it objectively beautiful for anyone else seeing it?

Probably not. My parents hated the carton with a burning passion. I guess the beat-up sides and the broken lid didn’t fit the cleanliness of the house. But for me, the beauty was derived from the satisfaction of seeing how well-loved the carton looked.

My notebooks were well-loved with my bored, daydreaming mind scribbling art everywhere. I thought it was so beautiful to revisit later, even though it was a mess of spirals and eyes and intricate flowers. And bugs.

I hate bugs now, but I used to think their colorful bodies and thin, crooked legs made them look so delicate. I thought worms were beautiful because they were squishy and fun to play with. Dandelions were my favorite flowers. I would always have to fight the urge to pick one that was bright yellow, just so I could impatiently wait until the end of the season to blow the fluffy white seeds into the air.

As people grow older the innocent beauty of everyday life fades into mundanity. But when does something lose its beauty? Is it when the excitement fades into normalcy? I don’t remember when, but I do know that one day, the new doodle in my notebook suddenly looked messy compared to the neat blue lines and the words kept strictly in between the margins. The doodle was no longer a beautiful product of my creative (and extremely distracted) mind. It became a blemish on the paper, and I stared at it until I decided to erase it from the page.

This is still something I notice while in class. The habit of doodling when bored in class hasn’t disappeared, but the more I stare at the once-clean margins of my page, the more I feel an urge to remove it. The appreciation for

whatever my distant mind created in those moments is gone.

Similarly, when I was younger, each new rock, park, worm, whatever it was I encountered while outside playing or on walks was shiny and new. But after more than a decade of seeing rocks while walking, each new one doesn’t spark the same excitement that it once did. Maybe it’s not that the beauty of the world fades, but rather that we just develop an immunity to it.

“Sometimes when you feel ugly, remind yourself that you’ve just gotten used to your own beauty” — @loveydoveythoughts on TikTok

If something is truly beautiful, can you actually become tired of it? Or “immune” to it? Does that become the new standard? Do you become restless for more? Or for something else? It seems that people constantly move on from one shiny trinket to the next.

evoked so many times over that it becomes unnecessary to feel that emotion at all when regarding the stimulus. The diminished emotional responsiveness could be negative, positive, or aversive. Does the same thing happen with beauty?

The cycle of beauty reminds me of the news. Each headline is more shocking than the one before. Companies fight to sensationalize their stories, and the general public just becomes increasingly desensitized with each article.

Desensitization occurs when an emotional response is

This nagging question leads to fear. I am terrified of commitment to people, to places, and to things. Because what if my shiny qualities are diminished over time? Or even worse, what if I wake up one day and the beauty that I used to see is gone?

“One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.” ­— Sigmund Freud

But what is beautiful now, if I’ve outgrown the beauty that comes with childhood innocence, where the world looks sweet and saturated with my rose-colored glasses? Is there beauty in pain? In defeat? In having those bad days? I find that as an adult, I can confidently say that there is beauty in all those aforementioned items. Pain, something that I would avoid at all costs as a child, I can now welcome with a hesitant embrace. Even when something hurts me, I know that I will heal and become that much stronger. And the depth of the pain only reflects how much I am able to feel and how vulnerable I can allow myself to be. Defeats. Rejections. There is always a sting when you see an email start off with “Unfortunately” or “We’re sorry to…”, but I find it beautiful that my triumphs and successes uplift me that much more. And having bad days.

Oh, I remember how I would wish every day would be a good day. I even came up with a theory that if the day started out good, it would end badly and vice versa. But now I see it differently. Isn’t it pretty to know that if a day was bad, that you were able to get through it?

If you asked me if there is beauty in the chaos and messiness that I loved as a child, I would say there still is. But now there is beauty in the structure and schedules that I despised back then. This is probably because of the stress of the responsibilities that come with maturing.

Suddenly you’re responsible for yourself in the world, and you don’t live in a small little bubble without many consequences. Even though we develop a fear of the unknown as we grow older, there is still beauty in trying new things as if we are forever young.

25

Portrait of the End of the World

by Cielle Waters-Umfleet

What the climatologists failed to factor into their doomsday calculations was how Instagrammable the end of the world would be. Every other mark, they’ve hit or are hurtling toward at meteoric speed—sea level rise, stronger oceanic storms, glacial retreat, deadly heat waves—but they never predicted that the devastating wildfires in British Columbia would cast a rosy haze over the Midwest, gilding the sky with all-day sunset lighting. While the Pacific Coast sweltered and burned, I put my feet up in my suburban backyard in West Michigan, enjoying a sweet July and pondering in awe all the circumstances that had to align for the sky to turn into its own photo filter.

Of all the places to be during a global catastrophe, Michigan has got to be near the top of the list. Nothing much can touch us here.

Imagine a dangerous, ticking-time-bomb geographical feature, any one you want, and chances are we don’t have it. Volcanoes, fault lines, ice sheets—honestly, I’m not even sure where the nearest ones are. We do have tides, little Peewee League champs that push the shoreline back two yards. We also have earthquakes, due to the stress of being the center of a basin, but they’re mere Jell-O jiggles compared to the major seismic zones of the planet. (Fun fact: I have lived through at least three perceptible earthquakes in Michigan and have not felt any of them.) Even our wildlife struggles to inflict serious damage, as long as you leave it alone and refrain from eating it. All in all, we’re pretty snug in North America’s peninsular grasp.

And one threat that barely registers here is climate change. We get the same news as everybody else here. We gawk at the same videos of cities flooding and the oceans burning, read the same startling headlines about rivers running dry and deserts creeping beyond their range. The difference is that we have the distinct privilege of scrolling past those stories as wildfire smoke floats dreamily overhead instead of living the nightmare right outside one’s front door. Our planet’s imminent climate doom rattles me to the core, but in Michigan, it’s pretty hard to view milder winters and extended summers as anything close to catastrophic.

If I had to guess, which for the sake of the argument I will, I would say that that’s a major reason why people around me squeeze their eyes shut and plug their ears, why they’re able to, to protect their cloistered worldview bubbles from the naysaying climatologists. A friendly acquaintance from high school, whom I will affectionately call Phil, burst my bubble in thinking that people who listened to and understood the science would care when we struck an argument over church youth group Oreos and lemonade.

Being a notorious feminist, atheist, and left-winger in a largely conservative school, such inane arguments were exhaustingly commonplace, but Phil proved to be a stubborn opponent. No matter what facts and figures I threw his way, no matter what thought experiments I tried, no matter how well I rebutted the melting ice cube argument, Phil stonewalled me on every point. Just as I was about to chalk him up as a lost cause, he asked: “Okay, but how will it affect me?”

I was at a loss for words. That didn’t happen often, as long as there was a listening ear nearby. “What do you mean?”

“How will this affect me? Like, what should I have to worry about? So what if this happens?”

I couldn’t answer. I didn’t know. At the time, climate scientists could only project what might happen in the coming decades, and a prediction is never as convincing a narrative as reality. Even still, the most apocalyptic of their predictions would skip Michigan entirely.

Extreme landscapes like the poles and deserts would witness the effects first, and likely most drastically, and from there, the changes would sweep toward temperate zones until every part of the Earth had been battered by our own actions, or rather, our inaction. Even in the short 21 years I’ve been here, I’ve seen a serious reduction in the amount of snowfall every year, and this past summer persisted until the end of October. But located precisely halfway between the Equator and the North Pole and insulated by mini-oceans that could never drum up a hurricane, where on Earth is more temperate, less volatile than Michigan? The Anthropocene is passing us literally and figuratively overhead, us, Michigan, the land of saltless seas, the American wet dream of industry and unspoiled nature, the upturned, outstretched palms of Mother Earth.

So to your point, Phil, how will it affect us?

Well, for one, picturesque as it is, the sky is not meant to be sepiatoned in the early afternoon. The angelic dust that wafted through the state over the summer was the product of unstoppable forest fires rampaging through previously low-risk forests thousands of miles away. Our continuous supply of freshwater flowing in every corner of the state is a blissful anomaly, not the norm. (But also, because the Great Lakes are the remnants of melted glaciers, if that water ever leaves the basin, it’s irreplaceable.) And our winters, as brutal as they can be, are a necessary phase in the yearly cycle upon which life in our area has grown to depend. They’re miserable to us but imperative for keeping the internal clocks of our flora and fauna accurately wound.

So yes, Michigan, climate change looks good on you. For now. But this is the beginning of the end for the world as we know it. I won’t pretend to know when Michigan’s climate will change to the point of being unrecognizable. After all, I’m not a scientist. I don’t dig ice cores or examine satellite images. I’m just a woman going about her life with eyes wide open. I’m just a writer who breathes meaning, context, connection into the piles of diagrams and data tables. I’m just a human, vulnerable and weak, terrified and fully at the mercy of our planet’s wrath, trembling in my snow boots at what will become of us when the mittens close their fists and say no more.

To all the Phils out there, all I can truthfully say is, I don’t know. I really have no clue how this will affect us in the long term. Our planet is so complex that I doubt anyone will really know until it happens.

All I know is that the hideous seeds of change have been planted, and the beauty of the first young flowers disguise the thorny, gnarled vine that’s coming for us. Nip it. Nip it now in the bud. We have no way of knowing how deep the roots go.

We still have time to save our only home, but that window is closing fast. And “save” isn’t really the word, but rather, “mitigate the damage and maintain a habitable and comfortable world for human life.” The action extends far beyond individuals and involves reinventing our whole system for living, overhauling our faith in the permanence of the world as-is. For us, the ones of us who live separate from it all, let us not become lulled by a false sense of security, intoxicated by the sheer beauty of shifting weather patterns.

Instead, let’s put out the fire before the smoke smothers us all.

19 27

I’m Sorry, Lucy Liu

by Claire Gallagher I HAVE A THING FOR WASIAN GIRLS

You’re Really Pretty For a Chinese Girl

I can’t remember the first time I heard the phrase “yellow fever,” only that it filled me with a misguided sense of pride in the way that childhood ignorance often does. I felt special and precious, a welcome relief from my typical feeling of otherness in my predominantly white middle school. I had heard the boys in my classes profess their preference for blondes or for brunettes, for big tits or big asses, for princesses or for cool girls, but these conversations followed an unspoken rule: White girls were a common denominator amongst their “types.”

My sophomore year, my hair started falling out from excessive use of the drugstore hair-lightener Sun-In. My hairdresser told me that with the damage I had done, attempting to bleach my hair could quite literally start a fire. So I waited patiently and went back in months later for blonde highlights. I progressed to lighter and lighter hair until I was fully light blonde going into my freshman year at Michigan. My guy friends loved it, telling me I looked best with light hair, a backhanded compliment that told me I looked better when I looked whiter.

I fell in love with a boy in high school who loved to tell me that I was exactly his type: He had a thing for Wasian girls. I breathed a sigh of relief the first time I heard him proclaim that my race was something that attracted him rather than turned him away, and I pretended not to care when I was reminded of my resemblance to his ex-girlfriend because I knew our similarities began and ended with our ethnic makeup. I swooned when he told me he thought I was the hottest girl in my class because I wasn’t “basic-looking.” I was different. He could replace one ex-“something different” with me, a new “something different.”

My older sister used to complain that I had taken all the good genes. She preferred my double eyelids to her monolids, freckles to her milky skin, my nose bridge to her own. I had always thought my sister was beautiful, and I envied (still envy) that everyone used to remark on her resemblance to our mother, while I was said to look like our father.

OUR KIDS WOULD BE SO CUTE, SUCH A GOOD MIX

I pranced through identity hoops. I grew up distant from my father and my father’s side of the family, but I never lacked familial love.

I was raised by my mother and my mother’s mother and my A Yí. I spent my afterschool time in A Yí’s kitchen or A Yí’s sister’s kitchen or in the Asian supermarket with A Yí’s friends. Always someone asking me if I had eaten yet, always someone’s leg to cling onto.

I found my love for ballet in my grandmother’s living room. My mother encouraged my writing. I had twenty aunties and ten uncles. I grew up on star anises and ginger chunks and bamboo slivers and handmade dumplings and soup noodles. I learned how to cook huoguō (hot pot) before I learned to ride a bike. I looked forward to Chinese New Year more than I looked forward to Christmas. I remembered how to ask my mother if I could have some xīguā, but could not remember the English translation of watermelon. This is all to say that I was raised Chinese. I felt Chinese—I feel Chinese. So I was jealous that my sister was compared to my mom more than I was, but I was not oblivious to the pointed praise that I received from people, regardless of race, for resembling my white father more than my sister did.

*said to me by a boy while in the shower, prompting me to remember that my white father dated a young Chinese girl before marrying my mother.

It took us many years to realize that the features my sister and I obsessed over, the differences in how our parents’ DNA played out on my sister’s face versus my own, represented our obsession with Eurocentric beauty standards. I’ve been told I am white-passing, and I’ve also been told I look fully Chinese. I still feel a certain

He was flighty with his feelings toward me, to say the least, so I learned to intensify the parts of myself that he liked most and to conceal the parts that bored him. He liked that I always wanted to have sex, but with him, specifically; the mention of intimacy with other guys was a turn-off, but how hot was I on my knees for him?

He loved that I was a model student, a model dancer, a model daughter: pure and pearly and quiet, good in the kitchen and good with the baby I nannied. Who needs a complex when you can have both Madonna and Whore?

While writing this, I tried to remember when my first thought in response to a man showing sexual or romantic interest in me started being, “I wonder if he has an Asian fetish.” I drew a blank.

Our Kids would be so Cute, such a good mix

pang in my chest when I hear the latter, followed by intense shame and guilt for feeling that pang.

I try to reconcile my thoughts: I want to look just like my mother, lovely and perfect and breathtaking—I fear that being Chinese makes me undesirable—I relish in and grow nauseated at the feeling of being fetishized—he wants me because of my two halves—he doesn’t want me because of my two halves—he loves me, he loves me not—he loves me, he loves me not—he loves me, he loves me nothelovesmehelovesmenothelovesmehelovesmenothelovesme helovesmenot.

You give me really-crazy-in-bed Vibes

YOU GIVE ME REALLY-CRAZY-IN-BED VIBES. *based off of my Instagram profile

Me so horny. Me Love you Long time.

ME SO HORNY. ME LOVE YOU LONG TIME.

Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket was nominated for eleven awards, taking home five of those accolades. For context, here is a piece of dialogue from the American war classic for your enjoyment, held between a Vietnamese prostitute and two US soldiers stationed in Vietnam, Joker and Rafterman.

Hooker: Hey, baby, you got girlfriend Vietnam?

Joker: Not just this minute.

Hooker: Well, baby, me so horny, me so horny. Me love you long time. You party?

Joker: Yeah, we might party. How much?

Hooker: Fifteen dolla.

Joker: Fifteen dollars for both of us?

Hooker: No. Each you fifteen dolla. Me love you long time. Me so horny.

Joker: Fifteen dollar too boo-coo. Five dollars each.

Hooker: Me suckee-suckee. Me love you too much.

Joker: Five dollars is all my mom allows me to spend.

Hooker: Okay! Ten dolla each.

Joker: What do we get for ten dollars?

Hooker: Everything you want.

— Joker: You know, half these gook1 whores are serving officers in the Viet Cong. The other half have got T.B. Make sure you only fuck the ones that cough.

I knew the phrases “me so horny” and “me love you long time” long before I was even aware of Full Metal Jacket. I heard it in TV shows, saw it in puns created to name restaurants, and was asked

to say it, just once, because “it would be so funny.” According to him, the Asian woman is desperate for the white man. The Asian woman is there to be mocked. The Asian woman is comedic relief.

The Asian woman is eye candy. The Asian woman will give you everything for the price of ten dollars.

Asian women made their first appearance in American porn after the Korean war as romanticized war brides following their men to America as the perfect American wife: sexually submissive, domestically superior.2 A study in 2013 found that white men and other races deemed Asian women to be the most “desirable” racial group.2

If you haven’t seen Full Metal Jacket, perhaps you’ve seen Lucy Liu in Kill Bill or in Ally McBeal: seductive, cold, mysterious, exotic, fearsome—the epitome of one of American media’s favorite tropes for Asian women, the Dragon Lady. Or maybe you know Miss Saigon and the ever-devoted Kim: helpless, innocent (but somehow still hypersexual), submissive, passive—the antithesis to the Dragon Lady is found in the Lotus Blossom.

Lotus Blossom or Dragon Lady? Sex object either way.

I’VE never fucked an asian before *a subtle and chivalrous slide into my dm’s

Eliminate his temptations // Not quite The Happy Ending They were Expecting On March 16th of this year, Robert Aaron Long shot and killed eight people in the Atlanta area, six of whom were Asian women: Soon Chung Park, Hyun Jung Grant, Suncha Kim, Yong Yue, Xiaojie Tan, Dayou Feng. Targeting massage parlors, Long was quoted to be motivated by the desire to “eliminate his temptations,”2 a feat he evidently saw as achievable through the murders of Asian women. One Twitter user took this opportunity to display their comedic genius with the tweet, “Not quite the happy ending they were expecting,”3 because even sexualizing and stereotyping victims of murder can be funny if those victims are Asian women.

Less than 24 hours after the shooting, the Atlanta police captain told the public that Long was just “pretty much fed up and kind of at the end of his rope, and yesterday was a really bad day for him.”4 Because murderous sprees are a typical method to wind down

1 A slur against people of Asian descent originating from US marines during the Philippine-American war and gaining popularity during the Vietnam War 2 https://www.vox.com/22338807/asian-fetish-racism-atlanta-shooting 3 https://www.shondaland.com/act/a36052580/we-need-to-defetishize-our-view-of-asian-women/ 4 https://gen.medium.com/the-u-s-militarys-long-history-of-anti-asian-dehumanization-f1a8fe320e7a

29

after a rough day.

What is the Asian woman’s body worth in America?

Predating the infamous Chinese Exclusion Act was the Page Act of 1875, federal legislation passed to prohibit the immigration of laborers from “China, Japan, or any Oriental country.”5 More disturbingly, the act was careful to highlight its ban on “the importation of women for the purposes of prostitution,”5 illustrating America’s efforts to “systematically prevent Chinese women from immigrating to the US.”6 Asian women had to be confined to the East, where they could not taint American values and where their hypersexuality could not be a “temptation.”

World War II, the Vietnam War, the Korean War, and the Philippine-American War cultivated the idea of Asian women as a sexual otherness, an object of white lust and desire whose sexuality could not be contained. After condemning imperial Japan’s use of “comfort women,” women from Japanese-occupied areas, particularly Korea, forced into sexual slavery for soldiers, America founded their own military brothels for American soldiers during the Korean War. In 1965, a survey revealed a striking 85% of GIs reported having “been with” or “been out with” a prostitute during the Korean war.7 The stereotypes of Asian women as hypersexual and subservient followed American soldiers home, where they nestled comfortably in the collective American understanding.

A culture of violence against Asian women sprang from the hips of US legislation and military activity; this culture prevails today, rearing its ugly head in Atlanta massage parlors, on street corners, in middle schools, and at gas pumps. It weaves itself seamlessly into the fabric of Asian women’s lives until beauty can no longer be separated from exotic, and until appreciation and fetishization can no longer be distinguished.

I can’t yet anchor the flutter of validation I get from hearing that my specific skin moves somebody to crave me. But I have long shed my 5 https://www.history.com/news/chinese-immigration-page-act-women 6 https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/17/us/asian-women-misogyny-spa-shootings-trnd/index.html 7 https://gen.medium.com/the-u-s-militarys-long-history-of-anti-asian-dehumanization-f1a8fe320e7a

blissful belief that this desire holds any substance to be proud of.

I had accepted that white girls were the standard, so white girls were to be judged and chosen based on their hair length, breast size, nose shape, intelligence level, people skills, ambition, and values. They were judged and chosen based on, no matter how shallow a level to examine, themselves. I had also accepted that not being the standard meant the possibility of being judged and chosen based on an idea, an illusive concept of a lotus or a dragon that I represented and was expected to satisfy. I would like to take back this acceptance. I should not settle for being wanted for the wrong reasons simply for the purposes of being wanted.

I should not feel butterflies at attention that is conditional and unspecific. I should not attempt to fit a mold created years ago, but perpetuated today. America’s history of fetishizing Asian women is long and impossible to erase completely from the American consciousness, but checking one’s own implicit biases and stereotypical generalizations shows a proactive effort to combat this consciousness. I accept only being wanted for the standard— being wanted for myself.

e r e St o

2

by E

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Conv

The store is exactly as it sounds.

Day in, day out, every Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s, its bright fluorescent lights illuminate the bleak city block it calls home. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, it is open and ready for business.

The quiet pervasiveness of the humming light fixtures echoes off the walls. It is a small space, packed to the brim with every variation of manufactured enjoyment. Alarmingly orange crackers, wine stored in cardboard, candy whose packaging boasts its questionably legitimate fruit flavoring, the whole nine yards.

This is, after all, a place of convenience. It is primarily built on availability, not quality.

The cashier stands dormantly, dusty elbow leaning on a suspiciously sticky countertop. She’s barely entered high school and needed a summer job. Daydreams float behind her eyes through her perpetual eight-hour shifts.

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there are far more pleasing shopping experiences in this town. The green neon sign above this forgettable bodega’s door is no match to the glowing Starbucks logo across the street.

And yet, on this quiet July night, he decides to come inside. The familiar little bell above the door jingles a warning cry.

Really? the cashier thinks. It’s almost three-thirty. What’s this guy up to?

The boy, no older than the average college student, has come here alone. He is not looking for anything specific—or so he believes.

He flashes his most awkward, compulsory smile at the young girl half-asleep at the counter and begins to browse. His eyes dart from one product to the next, the pretzels and chocolate and gummy bears twinkling at the prospect of his fleeting attention.

At the very end of the aisle, he notices a small bin of produce, presumably the excess from a long day of customers.

Although it is always open, it’s rare for a living, breathing customer to come into the store this late at night.

Tonight is a nice night, he thinks. No harm in treating myself.

Among the organic grocery stores and high-end candy emporiums,

No harm, he says. I would like you to remember that he said that.

31

“no harm” At the bottom of the bin, I lie smushed underneath a banana covered in spots reminiscent of the city’s polluted night sky.

Grayish-brown, I thought. How pleasing.

An apple could be nice, he supposes, dipping his young hands into the bin, feeling around for the inevitable bruises and spots on each piece of fruit. Or maybe a pear. Aren’t those in season right now? he wonders. Who ever really knows what’s “in season,” anyway?

But the pears and the apples do not suffice. He needs something sweeter, something with character. He reaches his hand through the depths of the bin, shoving my fellow produce out of his way, and so it begins.

Ooh, a peach sounds amazing, he argues. I hadn’t even been thinking of peaches as an option! Those, I know, are best in the summer.

His hands are not of the idealized softness I had been hoping for; rather they are coated in a grainy dryness. I let it slide, because I know the delicate fuzz on my skin will make up for his rugged extremities.

After all, what am I supposed to do, anyway? Run away? That would be quite ridiculous, for I am only a peach.

His childlike, innocent fingertips peruse my body, searching for imperfections that escaped his eyes. All clear! he internally exclaims! And thank god, I sigh.

He waltzes up to the cashier, my flesh fixed in his grasp. The cashier knows I have been waiting for this moment, I bet. And I bet she is wishing for a moment like this of her own.

“Will that be all?” she asks, distanced yet vaguely interested in my journey. Her eyes peer down at my dainty skin peeking through his grasp.

“Yes.” He smiles. “I only need this.” He places me down onto the counter, covering my sides with the gummy grime of the linoleum countertop. I have watched

other pieces of fruit sit right where I am. Berries, oranges, plums. They never seemed to mind the stickiness of this junky surface. They always seemed happy, even bright-eyed. They seemed unconcerned with the inevitability of what comes next.

I always thought their joy looked pretty silly. We all know how this stuff goes, and it is usually not so joyful, not for us. And yet here I am, with the same innocence in my soul. I have been wiped clean, and I cannot seem to remember what was so deranged about those who came before me. But I will remember soon.

“That’ll be one-fifty, please. Would you like a bag?”

“Um, yeah, sure, thanks.”

I am engulfed in a white grocery bag, lightly suffocating me into a sweet submission. If he’s having any doubts about his choice of me, I can’t feel it from the depths of this plastic purgatory.

Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you, the bag reads. And have a nice day!

That is how I feel. I feel the familiar warmth of being grateful that I have been chosen. I feel like saying “thank you” over and over again.

I wonder if the bag’s signature smiley face is grinning with me or at me.

He strolls back outside, stuffing his disintegrating wallet back into the roomy pockets of his shorts. He holds the tip of the grocery bag tightly, keeping the busy city streets out of my view.

I don’t really blame him, though; he doesn’t want to lose me, and that is more important than whatever the outside world has to offer. I am comfortable in my makeshift cocoon.

Click! goes the key to his apartment. It smells of past homecooked dinners and body wash and love; the smells of my other, distant lives. It is intoxicatingly, beautifully ordinary. He places me gently onto a well-loved kitchen table, right next to a flyer for an organic farmstand downtown. The flyer boasts its supply of locally grown fruit, including peaches that look almost identical to me. I wonder if he knows that my origins are not as becoming as theirs must be.

I am flown to the sink, where I am rinsed in a peaceful, refreshing shower. He makes sure to reach every bit of my skin, washing away all the pain and frustration that have led up to this very moment.

” I am dried off with a worn dish towel. Interestingly, I notice, its pattern consists of red and green apples. They look very different from me and have evidently been here for far longer.

I brush it off, because, who really cares who came before me?

They’re not even real fruit! and enjoy basking in the cloth’s warm embrace.

He picks me up, firmly gripping my wounded body with his tense fingers. It feels much different than when he held me gently not so long ago. But I still thought, somehow, that I stood a chance. I thought he would abruptly change his mind, or realize my worth, or some other redeeming action that I am not sure he has ever been capable of anyways.

Now there is no hiding the spectacle that comes next. He is intoxicated, mouth watering at the prospect of sickly sweet juice flowing down his scratchy throat. He shoves the towel deep into a nearby drawer, because he feels no need to even look at caricatures of apples anymore. Now he has me, and me alone.

Maybe he is taking me to his fridge; maybe I am something worth saving for later.

The tattered leather couch sinks down to account for his heavy presence. He opens his mouth wide, and I am on my way to becoming a piece of him, rather than a whole of myself. He takes a large, irreversible, almost violent bite, and I say see you soon to the first chunk of flesh. It hurts, for lack of a better term, like a bitch. A stinging invasion of my hidden, sacred center. This bite is a slow, persistent burn that he cannot take back. I think of the women, years and years ago, who died in inescapable fires due to the thoughtless designs of arrogant men. I feel like one of them, in a way.

I think of the possibilities, the wonders he could be transporting me to; until I am sent falling into a basket that wreaks of abandonment and exhaustion. As it turns out, I am garbage. I don’t know if I have always been garbage, or if I have recently developed into garbage, or if he has misplaced me entirely.

Nonetheless, I know, at the very least, that that is how he sees me: disposable, unwanted, forgotten.

Some part of me understands the severity of what I am experiencing. Another is simply grateful to have been chosen for something, anything.

Juice runs down his chin, dripping onto the mesh material of his unfortunately ugly shorts. I am in pain, I realize, as he wipes off his thighs. But again, I cannot run. He wants a peach, and I am one, and I will let him consume me because that is what peaches are for.

At least, I thought that was what he wanted. And I thought that was what I wanted to do. Or had to do. The distinction is difficult.

Suddenly, his face twists into a sour grimace. He shoves his short fingernail in between his two front teeth, pulling out a dying piece of my fragile skin and flicking it into the abyss. He does not respect me enough to face the remnants of his choices and swallow them.

I remain calm, ready for him to take another juicy, fulfilling bite. But instead, he places me onto his coffee table and begins to wipe his face with a paper towel. The marble feels cold on my exposed, shredded flesh.

Now, I suppose, was when I should have begun to worry.

Or maybe he is baking me into a pie or a pastry, elevating my delicious qualities.

I will rot away here in another, more hopeless, white plastic bag, and he will never have to watch. He will not have to see my skin turn wrinkly and gray until it crumbles to dust. He will never watch me slowly but painfully rot away into a revolting shell of my former glory. His life will continue on in its mediocre monotony, and he will not think of the rotting peach in his kitchen’s overflowing garbage can. There is so much to think about on the beautiful surface of this planet that even if he did decide to remember something long lost, it would not be me.

There is hope, though, in this abandonment. I force myself to remember that, repeating it over and over until it sticks like that janky bodega countertop.

You will be okay.

You will be okay.

You will be okay.

Maybe someday, after my flesh has decomposed and died, there is a chance for growth once again. It is scary, reuniting with the wholesome earth I thought myself to be superior to.

Someday, somewhere, I will rot into oblivion. And the second I fully disappear will be the second I begin to grow. And maybe, in my next life, I won’t spend 24 hours a day waiting for someone else to grab me out of a moldy produce bin.

33

Ode to The first day you turn pretty is the day a man in the milk aisle decides you are: a minimum shoe size reached, a body softened.

He follows steps behind and steals glances each time you scan the store for your face in another.

When your mother finds you, you ask her, what is the difference between wanting and being wanted? *Try to remember the rules in between keeping your hands to yourself and following the leader: skirt below your fingertips and always watch your drink.

Who was it that told you boys are for doing and girls are for being done to?

You wish to be older the way that construction workers’ whistles signal that you are.

His sweet song forces your chest to close, and you can feel soupy mud inch its fingers and toes up to tickle you in the throat— bile threatening to split your tight-lipped gratitude.

Something is burning, Or something is dancing.

What does it really mean to have butterflies?

You trace the new knots in your neck, the ones that seem to multiply with each hyperextension.

You’ve checked the leathered backseat twice now— place your keys in the ignition.

Memorize the new knots in your neck, the way you memorized the knots in the tree trunk where first crushes shoved sweaty palms beneath your shirt.

Bark burning your back as he rhythmically pecked chicken feed from your lips.

A giggle bubbled by your gums.

Bile or Butterflies? *Read through the rules again.

Look for a way to win.

Realize you’ve been given a broken piece to play with.

When does a girl become a woman?

Is it beneath a dorm ceiling, while too drunk to remember, after cherry popped, blood-stained sheets, blood down your legs, blood on your tongue, salt, dirty salt, you taste salt, you taste dirty salt, once your lips are bitten raw, breasts!

You swear you are not a child anymore.

All right then, says the milk aisle man, the construction worker, your first crush, the drugstore cashier, the boy across the hall, and your friend’s father, why don’t you prove how grown up you really are?

l

by Claire Gallagher

COVER

Keep the conversation going!

Art by Hayleigh Proskin

whatthefmagazine.com

stand-alone art piece

WhatTheFMagazine

Art by Eva Ji

WhatTheFMag WhatTheFMag

labiaplasty Art by Jessica Burkle

Beauty Standards, self-identity, and being asian american Art by Catherine Hwang

persist Art by Eva Ji

holy

Art by Lila MacKinnon

stand-alone art piece Art by Olivia Nolff

None of us are “that girl” (and that’s okay) Art by Sivan Ellman

a gallery of women in sculpture Art by Lucy Bernstein

visceral musicality

Art by Cammie Treiber

beauty invisibility

Art by Sivan Ellman

the unattainable nature of beauty Art by Olivia Nolff

only time will tell Art by Lila MacKinnon

mended and beautiful Art by Calin Firlit

the search for beauty Art by Hanna Smith

portrait of the end of the world Art by Autumn Zwiernik

im sorry, Lucy Liu Art by Eleanor Durkee

the 24-hour convenience store Art by Hanna Smith

Ode to girlhood Art by Lucy Bernstein

to be in style

Art by Gabriella Sierra

pierce the nip

Art by Olivia Nolff

35

funny fresh fierce feminist fuck!