University of Michigan
February 2018
WHAT THE F Your Irregular Periodical Issue 13
Staff Molly Munsell Paige Wilson Natalie Brennan Lia Baldori Stina Perkins Anna Herscher Claire Abdo Emily Cutting Lindsay Calka Srishti Gupta Andi Chakrabarty Chase Chapman Adrianna Kusmierczyk Alexandra Niforos Emily Spilman Sophia Jacobs Caylin Luebeck Katie Slajus Sadie Quinn
Co-President Co-President Editor in Chief Assistant Editor Assistant Editor Assistant Art Director Design Manager Assistant Design Manager Assistant Design Manager Assistant Design Manager Finance Director Assistant Finance Director Social Media Coordinator Asisstant Social Media Coordinator Campus Coordinator Event Coordinator Event Coordinator Event Coordinator Blog Editor
What the F 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 into our community and into campus discussion.
Staff Columnists: Sabrina Deutsch, Ilina Krishen, Ally Owens, Maya Reyes, & Bhavya Sukhavasi Staff Artists: Thomas Callahan, Destiny Franks, Elizabeth Feldbruegge, Kate Johnson, & Maggie McConnell
All writings are real, found in bathrooms on campus, because sometimes we just need to talk to each other.
February 2018 Your Irregular Periodical Issue 13 01 02 04 08 10 12 14 16 18 19 20 22 27
FUNNY, FRESH, FEMINIST, FIERCE, & FUCK
Keep the conversation going online! Visit our website at WhatTheFMagazine.wix.com/umich Like our Facebook page at Facebook.com/WhatTheFMag Follow us on Twitter @WhatTheFMag and on Instagram @ WhatTheFMagazine Find our Tumblr at WhatTheFMag.tumblr.com
Letter from the Editor Sh*t I’m Afraid to Ask My Doctor The Ladies’ Room You + I + We Read Me Scars The Tour Guides Lied to Us: Part 2 How to Make a Ghost Voices From the Shadows A Mother’s Father Plus Your Own Father The Politices of Vulnerability The Letter I Wish I Got: To My Little Sister Sources and Sponsors
Letter from the Editors
Welcome to What The F, your feminist periodical! We sent out a call for Issue 13 pitches stating that while there was no concrete “theme,” we were in part looking for pieces that discussed sex, sexuality, and sexual assault. Though these are three distinct categories, they are tangled together in uncomfortable and disheartening and mostly problematic ways. But we also recognize that our readers, like us, may be exhausted. Exhausted by conversations of sexual assault that miss the nuance, miss the cultural shift, focus on legality but never on vulnerability. The media brands this content as “new” as we turn to each other with rolling eyes because this has been part of our dialogue about sex as long as we’ve been dialoguing about sex. And so we were faced with a difficult decision: how do we approach these discussions when much of our audience is already well-versed in these issues? In Issue 13, we strove for balance. We put ourselves in conversation with the larger national discussion while using our blog for more immediate responses to these issues. We published poems about family and nationality and fame and tangentially related gems that make a poem a poem. Poems that ask the tough questions: light on the eyes but tough on the gut. We explored the evergreen coming of age topics of childhood gendering and freshman year expectations. We published a piece that explores how difficult it is to make a ghost out of an ex because you can’t remind yourself to forget. We also printed a personal narrative of assault. And progress and empowerment and the complicated and cyclical journey healing takes. But at its root: assault. We grappled with this discomfort, but believe there is power in this pain. These stories need to be told. We chose to tell them with gaps and content warnings and reminders for self-care. We chose to publish these stories because we believe that the recurrence of these accounts stems from a lack of empathy. Maybe reading incites empathy. We looked at how family intertwines with nationality intertwines with patriarchy intertwines with personal experience intertwines with
power relations intertwines with vulnerability. Vulnerability. Much of this issue is about vulnerability. We politicized vulnerability, complicating the relationship between personal and public consumptions of pain. But we also wrote about self-love—and how some scars are wonderful, complicated pieces of us to be read, too. And, because it’s February, we asked the question you’re too afraid to ask your doctor: what’s up with sex toys? You don’t need a Valentine, but you deserve some pleasure, too. We sprinkled in lighter fares of friendship narratives that read like love poems because what is more special than a relationship that teaches you to love and support yourself? We had writers publish their ongoing explorations of words written in bathroom stalls and point out the powerful support that exists in the least expected places. We hope to remind our readers that women empowering other women is important always, but especially now. In committed solidarity,
The Editing Staff: Natalie Brennan, Editor in Chief Stina Perkins, Assistant Editor Lia Baldori, Assistant Editor
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Sh*T I’m Afraid to ask my doctor By Sabrina Deutsch
Toys Toys Toys
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hether used solo or with a partner, ‘adult’ toys can be regular participants in a healthy sex life. Unfortunately, the subtitle of this article could just as well be: “Stigma Stigma Stigma.” Prime example: four twenty-one-year-old, sexually active women, squirming with simultaneous guilt and giddiness as they visit Babeland.com for the first time (source: my living room last Tuesday night). If we’ve learned anything over the course of the past year, it’s that self-care (in all of its many forms) is paramount. 2018 is for reclamation and reparations. So, if Babeland.com is calling your name, we’re in the age of communication, pick up the phone. Using sex toys can be both pleasurable and empowering, but there are still important considerations to keep in mind to make your experience as safe as possible. Before you get to playing, let's get to the questions you may be too afraid* to ask anyone else. *Note: fear around discussing sex toys arises out of social stigma around sexual bodies. Ask away, break the stigma.
What are the do’s and don’ts when it comes to choosing sex toys? Sex toys come in a remarkable number of shapes, sizes, materials, and functions. One of the most important considerations when purchasing a sex toy, especially if you plan on using it with a partner(s), is the material. Certain materials, like most soft plastics and even some hard plastics, are porous. This means that they can harbor dirt and bacteria within the microscopic pores of the material. Consequently, porous materials are difficult to disinfect and increase the risk of transmitting infections. This is not to say that you should stay away from plastics altogether. ABS is a type of hard plastic that is non-porous and sanitizable. If softer (or squishier) plastics are more your speed, there’s no need to rule them out entirely. It is best, however, to reserve these toys for solo-play or for use with a monogamous partner. If you’re looking for something softer that can still be used with a partner, you’ll want to check out silicone products. Silicone is nonporous, easy to sanitize, and tends to have good heat transfer. With proper care these products last longer than most others, but as with all good things, there’s a catch. In order to maintain the integrity of even the best silicone toys, you’ll need to care for them properly. For example, silicone is degraded by oil lubricants and soaps. Don’t be afraid to check out a variety of materials to determine which properties are best suited to your needs. Though we tend to think of those bright, colorful, silicone and plastic products, sex toys are also made from glass, metal, and wood. Glass and metal tend to be easy to sanitize, and wood can even be specially treated to make it nonporous. At the end of the day, you’ll want to do your research about the product you’re buying, keeping in mind how and with whom you intend to use it.
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How do I clean them? Sex toys should be cleaned after every use, but how you go about cleaning them will depend on both function and material. For example, motorized toys should never be totally submerged for cleaning. Washing your toys is not only necessary for safety purposes, but it actually helps them last longer. Think: vagina = acidic environment. Most nonporous toys can be washed with mild soap and water. With silicone, just make sure that this is not an oilbased soap (i.e. castile oil soap). Alternatively, many nonporous toys can even be placed in the dishwasher, as long as they’re not motorized or sensitive to extreme temperatures. Porous toys tend to be heat sensitive so you’ll want to wash them by hand. Mild soap and warm water will do the trick here as well.
Can STIs be transmitted from person to sex toy (and vice versa)? Yes, yes they can! This is why we cannot place enough emphasis on knowing your toys, buying from reputable sources, and using condoms with them when engaging with partner(s). Porous materials can harbor infection-causing bacteria in their pores and cannot be totally sanitized. The first step, as mentioned above, is to consider whether or not you intend to use the toy with a partner when deciding which type to buy. Next step, condoms-- they’re versatile! Whether you’re uncertain of your toy’s material or intend to use it with multiple partners, you should always use a condom on the toy. Important to keep in mind with this is that you should never use a condom with silicone-based lubricant on a silicone toy as you can also run into issues of material breakdown here. Condoms significantly lower the risk of transmitting infection, but they’re not perfect and there’s always a risk that a toy may have been exposed to infection-causing bacteria despite condom use. As with all matters of sex and sexuality, if a partner suggests bringing toys into the bedroom, remember that you have agency to decide whether or not you’re comfortable bringing sex toys into your sex life.
Is it safe to buy sex toys online? Due to persistent stigma, many people prefer the anonymity of buying sex toys online. While we absolutely need to dismantle that stigma, know that shopping online is a legitimate option. This can be done safely, as long as you do your research and buy from a reputable company. One thing to look out for when vetting options is the company’s return policy. A reputable company will not allow returns of sex toys, given the nature of their use. According to Bedsider.com, Babeland and Good Vibrations are both well respected and provide supportive environments for people looking to begin exploring this potentially unfamiliar world. So go forth and have fun folks! ‘Toys, they’re not just for kids anymore.”
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The Ladies’ Room By Sophia Kaufman
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“I am not afraid of storms for I am learning to sail my ship.” ~ Louisa May Alcott, Angell Hall bathroom stall “I’ll be your guide on stormy waters until your bravery takes the rudder, Little Poseidon, the sea is only yours.” ~ Anonymous response to Louisa May Alcott, Angell Hall bathroom stall
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y memories of the girls’ bathroom transcending its literal use started with Marshmallow. My best friend in second grade, Amy, was a redheaded pipsqueak with innocent blue eyes and an impish grin that could melt the hearts of the toughest nuns at Saint Ignatius Loyola School. I called her Marshmallow, for no reason other than that she called me Cookie. I can’t remember how that started. Amy moved from Manhattan to Staten Island the summer after third grade without a warning, leaving me with a bendable six-inch ruler from McDonald’s, a secret, and probably abandonment issues I haven’t fully worked through, but I digress. Amy and I became inseparable the day she knocked out my front tooth. We were lined up on the staircase, and she was on the step below me. Straightening up from retrieving a dropped pencil case, her head collided with my chin. She escorted me to the girls’ bathroom by the cafeteria, me bloody and she teary-eyed but both of us enjoying the attention of other kids, and the kind of hard and fast friendship that can only come out of such an experience was born. We became infamous for passing notes in class, but soon decided it was too risky under the jealous noses of other kids or the hawkish eyes of teachers who would make us read our words aloud. We convened one day in December in our spot, freezing our butts off on the ledge by the open window inside the girls’ bathroom. Amy stood up on the windowsill and began pushing on the ceiling tiles above us, which she had realized could be loosened enough to slip a folded piece of paper under them. There was no way to tell the note was there unless you knew to look. We were thrilled. Amy was a genius, and I had my first shared secret.
I’m sure there were other places Amy and I could’ve hidden notes, but we never questioned our choice—that bathroom made sense. Whenever a girl wanted to tell a friend a secret during lunch, the only time of communion we had out of class, she’d stage whisper, “come to the bathroom with me,” and they’d get up and walk to the bathroom, giggling the whole way. Throughout the thirty minutes of lunchtime, there would be a steady stream of groups of girls walking self-importantly up the five stairs to the little hallway with the bathroom doors. The following conversations were often about drama: Anna liked Dennis, who danced with Caity at the social last Friday, who still had a crush on Steven, who was ignoring Sharon, who wasn’t speaking to me but that’s beside the point, which is that Patricia wasn’t talking to Anna because she liked Dennis too. You’re beautiful and you don’t need a man to complete you I’ll take a woman, though ^ Same ~Mason Hall bathroom That girls’ bathroom in Saint Ignatius saw a lot of shit go down, no pun intended. While memories of those dramatic bathroom conversations are perfectly preserved in my mind, sometimes they meant more than that, especially when they were one-on-one. In seventh grade at a school social, while I was hiding in the bathroom during a slow song, pretending I needed cool air from the window but really just avoiding the awkwardness of no one wanting to dance with me, my friend Clara joined me for the same reason. Clara and I weren’t close; we sang in the church choir together, but ran in different social circles. She was the nerd who everyone knew would be valedictorian and who kept to herself; I was the nerd on the lowest rung of the cool girl ladder. She made a joke about how boys never liked us because we were ugly. I was twelve and I believed her. I was short and wore glasses and had too-long brown hair and bad skin and unplucked eyebrows and a bit of an overbite.
I didn’t wear makeup, telling people disdainfully that I didn’t believe in it but secretly terrified that even makeup wouldn’t salvage the awkward mess I avoided looking at in mirrors. It wasn’t even so much that I believed her; I just knew she was right. You’re so beautiful! Even when I’m taking a shit? Yes even then. :) Everything women do is beautiful, even voiding their bowels. ~Mason Hall bathroom The bathroom was more of an escape in high school than it had been in middle school—because we didn’t have to ask permission to excuse ourselves, because most of us kept our phones in our plaid skirt pockets, because we had free periods that we could fill how we pleased, because we were older and better at manipulating the adults around us. The bathroom on the third floor was in the middle of all of our lockers and classrooms. I had a lot of tense, whispered conversations in there about selfharm, which most of my close friends and I struggled with.
We’ve all talked about it since then. None of us can remember how it started, although we all agree it was the most insidious form of peer pressure we’ve ever encountered. But it was more than just a copycat situation—something drew us all to it to begin with. Maybe it was a way of getting emotions out when we felt like we couldn’t actually change anything. We each thought it would help, that it would feel like release, when we started. It never did, but somehow, that wasn’t enough to stop. We were stuck in a limbo where we all wanted to talk to each other about it, but were worried that telling someone would make them feel like it was okay to do it themselves. When we needed to talk about it at school, we called it “falling in the shower.” Every time Amanda wore her jacket all day, or Victoria avoided eye contact with me during English class, or Sam didn’t answer my texts during math, I knew. Falling in the shower became something of an epidemic sophomore year. The bathroom was the only place we could talk about it where there was no possibility of a teacher hearing us. Located in the middle of the whirlwind that was AP classes and SAT prep and auditions for musicals and fundraisers for charities and letter-writing campaigns and sports games and the tossing of tampons
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over each other’s heads and the wild speculation of what our math teachers did in their free time and stressful parents and incompetent college advisors and a terrible school psychologist who made everyone feel worse—the bathroom was the one private place we could go where we wouldn’t feel so alone. Fuck you. This school is built on entitlement, exclusion, and a loud facade. yes! thank you! Psst: you don’t have to be here! College isn’t compulsory! ~ Mason Hall bathroom Almost subconsciously, while writing a mockumentary film with my best friend about how kind drunk girls are in bathrooms, I started paying more attention to what was happening in women’s bathrooms around campus. That’s how I found myself spending a football Saturday—I specify “football Saturday” not because I care about football but because it might help paint a picture of me in a gray sweatshirt swimming through a sea of maize and blue—wandering in and out of women’s bathrooms on campus, looking at all the graffiti I could find scribbled on stall doors, etched into walls, even carved onto the toilet paper dispensers, trying to understand this
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lexicon so I could write about this new obsession for an essay. Bathroom graffiti has always been an amusing distraction while otherwise engaged in a restroom, but I had never thought to look at it as its own kind of cumulative communication. The more I thought about it, the more I started to see it as a kind of language that all of us know how to read and write—a simultaneously learned and instinctive form of communication. Some of what I saw I recognized from friends’ posts on Snapchat, Instagram, or Twitter. Some of the conversations or exchanges were surprisingly poetic. Some made me smile, others made me cringe; one made my stomach drop. In one bathroom, faintly scratched into the side of the stall underneath the toilet paper dispenser so you could barely see it, was: Campus rapists. A single name was listed in the same handwriting. There was no way to know how long that name has been there. Despite all the resources for survivors on campus, there is no other space for this kind of urgent, protective, raw warning from women to women. It wouldn’t be allowed anywhere else. I went home after seeing that one, and immediately took a shower. The graffiti included stick-figure doodles, messages to women in abusive relationships urging them to seek
help, the validity of trans and nonbinary identities and fluid sexual orientations, the reality of a God, the climate crisis, the pain of unrequited love, arguments about the validity of anger, full paragraphs about things like the pros and cons of spending fifty thousand dollars on a university education, even full Bibles verses complete with citations. I felt like I had found an intellectual space in the least likely of places. Love who loves you back ^ okay, but just because someone loves you doesn’t mean you have to love them You are what you love, not who loves you <3 ~ Mason hall bathroom And so I want other people to understand what felt so clear to me. I spent so long hating myself and feeling like other women hated me; so did a lot of my friends. There’s so much cultural knowledge about girls hating each other. Everyone just keeps telling us. Now, here I am surrounded by the truth and strength of women loving each other, and it feels like no one is talking about it. But the messages in the stalls tell me it’s all real, and it’s threatening to spill out. Rise UP! Down with the PATRIARCHY! YASS QUEEN ~Angell Hall bathroom
room to tell her something—in class, both of us trying to be inconspicuous even as the GSI glares, or at a restaurant, or party, or business meeting. I’m going to keep taking ridiculous pictures of my roommate when she’s using a Neti pot over a sink. I will probably hold some freshman’s hair back as she’s puking and make sure she has a safe ride home, and excuse myself from brunch to fake an emergency call to a friend who needs to escape a bad date. I know I’m not finished dancing to ancient Avril Lavigne anthems in my pajamas with my housemates. I will still run the shower when I need to cry at home so my mom can’t hear, and give and get compliments from drunk girls at concerts and house parties, and read the graffiti that someone else has written, and maybe reply with some of my own. Every time I’m on my way out for a fun Friday night with my friends, I still check the bathroom mirror one last time before I turn out all the lights and follow them out the door. Sometimes I just check my clothes and hair, not making real eye contact with myself; I’m busy. Sometimes I see what I feel like I’m starting to be—a woman learning to take up space. And sometimes I catch a glimpse of a short, solemn little girl with thick round glasses and mousey brown hair blinking back at me, both of us startled by what we see. We both have questions that haven’t been answered, but I think she’d like the way I’m looking for them.
So maybe I’m done with leaving notes in the bathroom ceiling tiles, and eating lunch sitting on the windowsill, and listening to people tell me I’m ugly, and hiding from boys who maybe would want to dance with me if I made eye contact with them. Thank God I’m done with holding my best friend’s hands, covered by crisp buttoned sleeves because she doesn’t want anyone to see her wrists, both of us blinking away tears because we only have five minutes to talk by the sinks before we have to go to our AP World History. But I’m always going to drag a friend to the bath-
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u o y
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ast year, you were my valentine Last year, I was my valentine Can’t decide if we took each other out or if we each took ourselves out in the same place at the
same time
You wrote me a card with all the times I’ve been there for you in it
Last week, I texted you more than was necessary asking for a little bit of sympathy and a lot of guidance You’ve done it too! You are sometimes my north star and I am sometimes yours
I told you that you and I are perfect and that our friends are bright lights in a dark 2017 You agreed We didn’t wonder why there was no one good enough—nothing’s better than the best They, and you, taught me I should never apologize for the light I radiate—not even to the people squinting in my direction The first time I could feel you there for me, we were reading each other our deepest fears and greatest questions, and I didn’t even know your hometown, but now I know it Your childhood bedroom is bright freaking orange We like the same songs and the same Mission St. taquerias You follow my spotify playlists I’ll follow you anywhere! I share what I make with you We draw pictures of each other I drew you into a coat with big shoulders because you might be little but you’re still big
By
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You make me make more things and share the things I make
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bought you a cactus succulent last Valentine’s day You photoshopped your face onto it, and two middle fingers stemming from its arms I gave it to you with a note that said we didn’t need someone to water us to grow
We both knew we deserved more attention and sunlight than $6 plants. All three of us grew that year You kept listening for an honorable amount of time You deserve an award for best “Listener Who Brings a Fun and Artistic Flair to Heartbreak and Also You Can Sleep in My Bed Tonight If You Need.” Or maybe they should make it a minor We decided that we know a lot of creative women with big dreams and also the ability to empathize Not just “I understand, that sounds tough” but bravely emulate love and comfort It’s not inherently because they are women but a lot of them are and it feels nice to not have to teach them what I need Sometimes we are teaching but mostly we are climbing We built this friendship on a mountain And when we no longer lived in a valley of peaks We built new ones compiled of radical self-love, productive vulnerability and ice cream I don’t even really like ice cream that much and anyway I’m lactose intolerant but I’d brave a February storm for Having Blank Slate With You You painted me on the computer, and gave me a cloak of words as a coat: “You Freaking Wish.” You captioned it “One for this lady who knows the power of aggressive self love n’ is not to be messed with” I was honored that you think of me that way because I think of you that way You thinking of yourself that way helped me think of me that way
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am learning every day from my best friends You lead by example—never take less than you deserve I learned that my own love for me made me a better friend for you You taught me how to get there We built a we, two yous, and a really strong sense of “I”
Read Me By Hannah Clague
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hen I was young, I made myself a retainer out of spearmint-flavored Orbit gum. The inside of me couldn’t yet be read on the outside, so I pressed the wet, sticky glob to my bottom teeth, using the underside of my tongue to mold it into the shape of my crooked, under-bitten smile. I let it sit there, imagining the sugar-free substance hardening into the glittery plastic I’d seen in other kids’ mouths. I was never able to tell they had bad teeth until they showed up to school with sparkling underbites. No one knew something was wrong until we could see it; nothing seemed imperfect until classmates were crowded around them, eagerly watching them pop the hard plastic free with their tongues then click it back down again, over and over. The other kids also gathered around me, sometimes. When I came back to school after my daily smorgasbord of doctor’s appointments, my classmates peered at me curiously from their squeaky plastic desk chairs until—upon encouragement from the ever-empathetic Mrs. Bradley—they rushed toward me with arms open, smushing me into a Hannah Sandwich. I squirmed, and they let go easily. They never knew quite where I’d been or why they were hugging me—other than Mrs. Bradley’s warmly nonnegotiable urging—and their squeezes were a little halfhearted. As I wiggled free, I longed to be able to open my mouth and show them some glistening new orthodontia as if to say, “Here it is! Here’s the problem.” I wanted to come back baring a toothy surprise instead of nothing. I wanted them to look at me and know me; I wanted whatever secret sickness was hiding inside my body to be written on the outside of it. One evening when my mom was working late, I crept across her squeaky bedroom floorboards and stole her nighttime bite guard case off the bedside table. (“No, Mom, I dunno— maybe the puppy got it and chewed it all up or—something?”) I placed my precious gummy creation gingerly inside and smuggled it into my school desk, wedging it safely between the pencil case and the book of Everyday Math HomeLinks I never completed. After lunch, I carefully pried it from the case, stuck it securely against my teeth, and paraded around Mrs. Bradley’s third grade, proudly convincing my friends that, this time, I’d been to visit the orthodontist. My best friend Helen peered inside my mouth. “Cool,” she said. “Does it hurt?” Emboldened, I snuck into the little closet of a bathroom that was attached to our classroom and leaned over the childsized toilet to peer at my reflection, a xanthous image that was barely visible in the one bulb’s musty yellow light. My face was pasty, pale, and all one color; it was not like Helen’s: dark, defined, and alive. I looked like nothing. The thing the doctors were trying to find looked like nothing. I opened my mouth wide, watching my tongue pace back and forth along the gum stuck there. I had a story to show my classmates when I got back from Mott Children’s Hospital. It wasn’t real, but I could touch it—I could hold it in my hands. They could see it; it was a reason for them to make a Hannah Sandwich out of me.
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I wanted my disease to be visible on my body—to be readable. When it wasn’t, I settled for the fake correction of my overbite. I was slightly shocked that Helen had fallen for it, and not completely convinced that she had. *** “Hey, what’s that there?” Cassie reached out, her fingers almost skimming the freshly healed, raised red line on my leg as I jerked hastily away. I scrunched up on the far side of the couch, blood rushing to color my ears, and turned only my mouth back toward her. I took a deep breath and spit it out: “Uh. No—nothing.” Of course, my babysitter already knew exactly where I’d been that past weekend. She already knew my mom and I had taken a little diagnostic road trip to the Cleveland Clinic. She already knew that I’d returned without the little sliver of quadricep the doctors had taken. Cassie had personally handed me my absence note that morning, reminding me to take it straight to my fourth-grade teacher when I got to school. But in that moment, I didn’t want her to see my scar. I understood that if anyone saw it, they’d know something was wrong with me. They’d know the doctors had cut into me in an attempt to find it. Now that my covert illness had been found, it had changed—I wanted it to stay hidden. It made me imperfect and I was ashamed of it; I did not want it to be seen. I did not want to be a Hannah Sandwich. I did not want anyone to be able to read the sickness on my skin. I stood up, pulled my terrycloth shorts back down securely over my thighs, and hurried off to find my sister and her toy chemistry set, leaving Cassie alone on the couch and cartoons blaring blandly from the TV. *** On my back on the musty, mottled carpet, I gaze up at the pipes crisscrossing the ceiling of my mom’s basement as I count repetitions. One, two; shoulder blades lift higher. Nine, ten, forehead to knees. With each crunch, I will my stretch marks to sink into me, begging my stomach to absorb its faults as though it had never torn in the first place. I’m only twenty; I shouldn’t already be marred. Twenty, twenty-one, keep breathing. I know that biology doesn’t work like that: even if you shrink, scars don’t go away. They will belie your healthiness always. But I imagine that if my stomach were flatter, more concave, maybe the shadow of my rib cage would hide its ignominious imperfections from the light. Thirty-nine, forty, keep going. I want people to be able to read my body and know me. I am afraid what they’ll find written there. I work hard to erase the ugly part of my story from my skin. Fifty. Other side. One. *** I’m on a first date, curled up cross-legged on the narrow booth of Ashley’s Bar. My freshly-minted, horizontal driver’s license smiles at his I.D. lying next to it in the middle of the table. We’ve just compared them, pressing the two cards close together to see whether Maryland’s crab or Michigan’s
bridge better coordinates with the plastic-y, DMV-like vibe. His face looks younger in his picture; seventeen-year-old Matt isn’t quite the same as the man who sits across from me now, lofting witticisms and whimsy into the space between us. My beer grows warmer in my hands—I keep forgetting to stop talking in order to take a sip from it. As the conversation ping-pongs easily back and forth between us, I find myself trying to find the words to tell him the secret stories he may find written on my body later. I’m starting to trust him in this dim, warmly lit bar. I want him to read me and know me, to understand the context my body gives me. But I’m afraid that as the night progresses—when we’re out from under the softening glow of Ashley’s neon sign—he won’t like what he sees. I try to slip little hints into the conversation like tiny red warning signs: “Yeah, I guess I was kinda having a rough time physically at the end of high school—What? Yeah, I mean like I was sick. But coming here just sort of snapped me out of it, ya know?” I’m not making much sense, only stringing halfway hidden details together into under-baked sentiments, but I don’t know how to say what I mean: Something happened to me that stretched my skin so much it tore. I can’t explain to you how it felt or exactly what happened, but look—you can see it on me. “No, no—I’m fine now! I ran that half marathon and everything—yeah, I’m good. It’s—it’s all good.” I sit there, starting to squirm and struggling to tell him the things that have already been written on me. This night is reinforcing what I already almost knew: my scars tell about a time that is too inextricably integrated into my cells to transcribe into words. Eventually, at a loss and too worried that he won’t take the time to read the truth on my body, I come right out and say it: “I have a mitochondrial disorder.” There’s a beat of silence, and I finally take a sip of my beer. It’s too sweet; I try not to contort my face as I swallow. He squints at me, gently, and I know he doesn’t quite understand— it’s an unfamiliar word, and its clunkiness distracts from the truth of it. I should’ve let my body speak for me. Read me, I think. Look at me. See my story written on my body. Don’t make me tell you the truths that are already there, if you only look hard enough. *** “Hey,” I call across the shadowy living room. “Come feel this.” “Yeah—one sec.” My senior year roommate Emily clunks the last of the clean dishes into the cabinets and traipse over to the couch where I’ve been sprawled, building up my courage.
I point at the biopsy scar on my leg, looking away as I await her verdict. I am surprised when she says she can see it. The scar has lightened with the years; it’s small and flat now and almost blends into my skin. If you brush your fingers across it, it almost feels like nothing. But it is just slightly sunken into me, and it has a different sheen. It catches the light slightly differently than the rest of me. I wear short shorts on purpose now, daring people to look at my thighs and see me. The scar there is almost imperceptible, but I know there’s some small chance that if people look at me hard enough, they will find my past written on my body. Somehow, they’ll know about the road trip to Cleveland, and about Cassie reaching toward me on the couch. They’ll understand—immediately, innately—without me having to find a way to tell them. They’ll know that someone had been willing to sacrifice the epidermic innocence of a nine-year-old on the off-chance that, when the results were read, they would have some truth about me hidden within them. Emily has to turn the lamp on above my head to find it, but I am relieved she knows it’s there. I was worried she wouldn’t, that she’d lie—or worse, be telling the truth—and say, “Nope, your skin is clear; you’re beautiful,” like she has before. I exhale, releasing the breath I’d stored up to explain it to her. She can see my memoirs engraved in my skin; I don’t have to use words to prove they’re there. *** I am standing in front of the mirror in my apartment, running my fingers lightly across the small, soft ridges on the stretch of exposed skin on my stomach. I am getting ready to go on a trip, one that will feature a boy I haven’t seen in a long time. I knew him before I was marked, and I am afraid that my tight pink crop top will pull away from my high-waisted skirt and show him what’s happened to me since the last time we stayed up late, separately together, texting until 3:00 a.m. In the safety of my bedroom, in this crop top, my past is visible. Out in the world, people can read my history on my skin. It’s almost a relief. Maybe, if he sees it, we can restart our relationship from somewhere closer to the truth. I look myself up and down one more time, smack my lips together to smear my lip balm onto the top one, and head straight out the door. I am apparently not that afraid. A powerful part of me wants the story of my body to be a beautiful one. It wants to pull my skirt down, absorb my scars back into my skin. Another part, slowing growing, just longs for it to be true. Let my skin tell you my story. I want to be read.
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This piece requires a content
warning
for explicit descriptions of sexual assault,
violence, and rape. The complete piece, which details the author’s experience more fully,
can be found online at whatthefmagazine. wordpress.com.
told, though we are conscious of the emotional
Scars
readers to take care of themselves.
By anonymous
WTF believes that these stories need to be
distress it may cause readers. We remind our
1. Just focus on the lines. Stay in the lines. 5. His laugh becomes a menacing echo in my ears. I try to focus on my breathing. It’s too quiet. Way too quiet. I crank up the radio, barely noticing that all I’m listening to is the empty static between stations. 6. If you make it home, you can forget all about this night. It will just be a regular old work day in the back of your mind and – SHIT. 7. I jerk the wheel to the left and narrowly avoid drifting onto the sidewalk. 9. 5:30 a.m. I’m home. Too bad I have to be up in three hours. What if he’s there tomorrow? I collapse into bed and clutch my pillow to my stomach where my insides are clenched and quivering as if preparing for a gut punch. 12. I should have screamed. 14. But he’s my boss – my forty-something, married boss. What the hell am I supposed to do? 21. I pretend everything is alright. And everyone around me believes it. I plaster on my best smile and keep moving. The few people who know the story check up on me occasionally, and I simply respond, “I’m fine; I mean this stuff just happens I guess.” It shouldn’t be so easy to put up this happy front. 23. I wish I could say that incident was the first and only time I’d ever felt this emptiness and confusion that lingered in the back of my head before. I wish I could, but I can’t. 28. Nothing happened; you’re fine; nothing happened. 33. I distractedly reach for the hand-blown glass bong coated with glimmering colors swirling in psychedelic
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patterns that sits next to my bed and take a hit. Or five. The smoke clouds my room in the same way it clouds my head. Maybe I appeared easy; maybe it seemed as though I were asking for it – Each puff pushes me further into oblivion, further from that first time. From that second time. I slowly drift to sleep. 34. It’s your fault. 35. My hands are sweating so profusely I can barely hold onto my phone. I glance down at the notes I’ve quickly typed out on the glaring white screen. Fuck it. I put my phone down and step up to the microphone. I clear my throat and start to talk. My voice is shaking but I push through it. 36. I proceed to tell an audience of a hundred strangers about my rape. About the boy who took my innocence and smashed it into a million pieces. About the impossibility of forgetting as I am forced to walk by his house every. single. day. About how every time I see his dingy moped leaning up against the worn-stone porch, my heart beats a little faster and my hands get a little clammier. About how I never even found out his name, but his face is branded in my memory. About the questions that have swirled around and around in my head for the past five months. What did I do wrong? Why do I feel like I have to justify every action of that night when I tell the story to my closest and extremely supportive friends? Why did I just ignore it for so long? 37. Maybe the numbness was all I could handle. Feeling nothing was easier than exposing myself to the depth of my pain. 38. I gaze out into the crowd, suddenly struck by a feeling of awe. So many people showed up to my organization’s “Speak Out” event. So many people came just to listen to and support the ungodly number of sexual assault survivors on campus. The strength of
the people that have spoken before me empowers me. I didn’t even expect to speak at this event, but they lit a fire inside me. I couldn’t keep quiet anymore. Suddenly, just as I am about to leave the stage, I realize I need to say something. I take a deep breath. 39. “For the longest time, I thought this was all my fault. And no one should ever have to think that. That burden is not yours to bear; it belongs to the coward who assaulted you. It is never your fault.” 40. I walk to my seat in shock. I’ve never even thought those words, let alone spoke them out loud. Is it easier to tell other people what I’m not yet ready to internalize myself? I make a decision: this moment, five months after the night of my rape, is when I will begin healing. 41. And for a long time, I did heal. For the remainder of my sophomore year and into the early months of the summer following my junior year, I learned the therapeutic power of sharing my experience with others. I became an eager helper for people who simply wanted to tell their story or who wanted advice. I made progress. I confronted the issue and worked on coping with it, rather than just ignoring it. 42. I learned how to better manage my anxiety and gradually got less nervous being alone with men. Instead of withdrawing into myself, I opened up. I was determined to turn my pain to strength. Things were looking up. 43. But then the night of the Adult Party came around. 46. We sat in her room for hours, talking and crying. I felt like I could trust her because she had been through the same horrific experience. It was like we shared some sick bond – a sinister sisterhood. For some reason, being in that sisterhood helped me relax and chipped away at my hard shell of an exterior. It’s why I joined the sexual assault group; it’s why I welcome others to share their stories with me. I reminded myself that it’s okay to feel. 47. I let my body flood with emotion. It floods with pain. It floods with despair. It floods with anger. I can feel the scar on my hand pulsing, as if my insides are reliving the moment that my blood glided across my skin, burning as the chlorine filled the wound. 48. What if he does it to someone else? 51. I’m still tired.
52. The men who raped me have never had to witness the emotional turmoil that wreaked havoc on my social, mental, and physical health following their coldhearted actions. Every time I run my fingers over the smooth heart on my hand, I’m reminded of the two strangers who never faced consequences for their actions, who never had to think about the destruction they caused in my life. 53. I don’t really think I’ll ever be able to forget what has happened to me; I’ll have to learn how to live with it. Instead of letting these men take over my life, I’m determined to turn their destruction into empowerment. Some sniveling coward who resorts to force to get sex is not going to ruin my life. 54. The scars will stay with me, but I will not let them define me.
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How to make a ghost
By Brooks Eisenbise
Take his favorite record. Not the one he got last week that he has been listening to on repeat, nor the one that always skips five minutes and thirty-three seconds in because it is old and scratched and loved. Take the dustiest, crispest one from its untouched plastic slipcover, smell its lack of mildew, notice the absence of fingerprints on its flawless vinyl surface. Cover it with your fingers, breathe clouds of hot air, spit, lick its ridges. It is yours now, no need to be gentle. Protect it. Hold it to your chest like a shield, like a suit of armor, you are Joan of Arc and he is the fire licking at your heels, but you can still run. So run. Go to all the places youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve walked together, sat together, stared down at the ground and poked at the dirt together. From each place take a small rock. Clench them all in one fist, feel how they strike each other. Do not interrupt, it is impolite to interrupt, let them bicker and wail, you will be home soon.
When you arrive, put your record on. Remember that it is your record now, it is yours and ghosts have no interest in records. Light a candle, a tall candle, one that will burn for a long long time, and around it place your sweaty stones and a bit of amethyst you keep in your pocket. Remember that amethyst has healing properties, it helps with grief, it will help you now. You will not grieve, for you have lost nothing. Remember that. This is a time to remember it all, every conversation, every glance, every almost, every never. Write them down, spell it out. Write what you wanted to say the night he refused to look you in the eye. Write down everything he will never understand, everything you will never know. Burn it all in the candleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s faltering fire. Hold it close, let the flames kiss your hand if you must, be certain only ashes remain and let them settle amongst the stones. It is over it is done. When the music goes quiet and the world finally feels still, extinguish the flame. Watch as the smoke rises, imagine it is a ghost and listen when it whispers to you. You have not taken a life, always remember, you have created a ghost. This is not the end: he will appear in line at the grocery store, ordering coffee, walking across the street. Remind yourself that he cannot see you, he is a ghost, he is not here, he is at peace. Remember and be at peace.
*WTF is proud to announce this poem was part of a collection that won the the Roy W. Cowden Fellowship for the Hopwood Writing Awards.
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Voices from the shadows By Ilina Krishen
T
here is a particular phrase in Hindi that I grew up hearing in various types of Indian media—“pati parmeshwar hai.” Husband is God. Though never said directly to my face, the concept of patriarchal power structure still rings true in equalizing the man’s influence in the family to that of God. Interactions with my closest relatives have consistently reinforced the idea that the man has to be at the head of the family and at the center of the woman's universe. At various family get-togethers, I noticed that wives were encouraged to be their respective husband’s shadow, often being talked over and expected to remain silent to satisfy the egos of their partners. Female cousins were often overlooked and over-burdened with the expectation to complete household chores as their brothers relaxed and played video games. My sister and I did not face the discrimination that our cousins with male siblings did. However, when we were placed in that environment, we were stunned at the sudden authoritative role our father attempted to take, as well as the expectation that we were not to express our opinions as blatantly as the older men expressed theirs. My male (and sometimes female relatives) saw me as too independent, too outspoken, and too “opinionated.” The irony of being criticized for being outspoken and opinionated by men who were outspoken and opinionated is not lost on me. This perspective is not unique to the Indian subcontinent. However, I am specifically speaking to my experiences as an Indian-American woman for the purpose of this piece. Writing about the treatment of male-female power relations and handling of sexual assault within the South Asian community is difficult, as I do not want to seem as if I am solely blaming South Asian culture for the horrific treatment of women worldwide. Rather, I want to give my personal perspective regarding power relations and sexual assault that is rooted in experience. My struggle with expressing my thoughts about this issue within my community is difficult, as I do not want to further vilify a community that is already marginalized by racial and casteist power structures. I do, however, want to speak to a universal truth within my own experience and identity. I am not speaking for the entire South Asian community—I recognize that each person holds a unique perspective influenced by experience and personal identifications. My grandmother instructed me as a young girl that Indian women are the spine of the family structure. Without them, the family simply would not be able to function. As the spine, the woman is able to ensure that the head and
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shoulders of the family (the older men) are able to stand straight in society, while at the same time ensuring that the legs (the younger men) are able to keep moving forward. Women are essentially the “honor” that maintains a family’s reputation, as well as the ones responsible for maintaining their so-called standing in society. If a husband cheats or is unhappy, it is the wife’s fault. If a child misbehaves, it is the mother’s fault. The notion that “Husband is God” has continuously prevented women from speaking out against sexual assault. When a woman has been continuously socialized to believe that the men in her life are to make her choices for her and that her husband is to be considered God, how does one expect her to speak out against everything she has been forced to believe? With such responsibilities thrust on to women’s shoulders at a young age, combined with the idea that they must worship and/or obey the men in their family, women are limited in their agency to seek justice for sexual abuse and assault perpetrated by family members. When this is the culture, or at least the culture that I have been socialized with, I can only imagine that women would be victim-blamed and ostracized from society, as well as required to shoulder the familial blame of “the house falling apart”—“aapane ghar tod dia.” This doesn’t even account for the legal expenses, transportation, housing, and job problems that come with speaking out against their families. Even if women have the courage to speak out, it is important that we think about that next step: what will come of it? Will she have the access to resources to assist her during and after the legal proceedings? Patriarchal power structures are an ugly truth that dominate American, Indian, and Indian-American families. With the #MeToo movement, more and more women are speaking out against sexual assault and the power structures that enable abusers to maintain their public positions of influence. However, we need to remember that these same structures are maintained within the home as well, shaping our way of thinking and viewing the world as we grow up. The #MeToo movement has done an excellent job of ripping off the societal blind regarding sexual assault in the public sphere. But for survivor’s voices to to be heard—fully, empathetically, and with weight—we must first create the spaces for these accusations to be compassionately witnessed and understood. In order to truly ensure that no other person has to say “Me Too,” we need to think critically about the everyday ideas that continuously reinforce these power structures.
A MOTHER’S FATHER PLUS YOUR OWN FATHER
By Tarik Dobbs
I cannot help but wonder if his silence would be better than my lies I cannot pretend for my father just as my mother could not pretend her father my uncle still swelling inside of her mother her mother burying her father Ya amar, she’d say, haram my most beautiful, my moon My mother’s mother wears black for forty days and goes back to the place with lebne and olive trees and unhomogenized goat milk and nowadays known for refugees, plastic surgery, hezbollah, etc, etc My grandmother’s brothers carry my mother to and from the planes They fly from Detroit to Philly to France to Beirut My mother leans in closer She’d give anything for ten more minutes with her father Baba, you are only 34, she’d say she turns from his ashes to me Sit down with jido, grandfather Her father, a romantic and a professor and a radical What he would say and if only she could recall yallah, habibti, come sit, come eat, come learn, come, listen, my dear, sit, eat, learn, my baby, hurry, come, my love, hurry, come, etc, etc *WTF is proud to announce Tarik’s collection “Men from Mankind Who Sought Refuge in Men from the Jinn” won the Roy W. Cowden Fellowship for the Hopwood Writing Awards. This poem, along with “Diaspora Boy,” published in our last issue, are included in the winning anthology.
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content warning for explicit descriptions of gendered and racialized violence.
THE POLITICS OF VULNERABILITY By Stina Perkins
T
here’s a woman in the front of the room. She’s twenty— your age—and her eyes gather crow’s feet like bouquets. It’s remarkable: survivor of human trafficking, survivor of domestic violence, and her eyes gather crow’s feet like bouquets. She tells her story in a language you never cared to understand. You knew her name once, but you swallowed it, like you do most things. There are thirty of you, writing and blinking and staring and coughing. Not entirely disrespectful—just sitting there, consuming more air than you need. Mosquitoes fly through slats of wood. You worry about malaria. She cries more strength than you’ve ever known. You don’t know how to write the curvature of her sobs. She pauses. The interpreter pauses. You scribble: “Pain is painfully translated.” A Nepali slam poet translates herself in front of several hundred strangers. “My waist is a bed that mothers more weeds than flowers,” she says. “I’m used to taking apart parts of my body and bartering them for self-worth.” A refugee family registers the birth of their son with a Jordanian UNHCR volunteer. The infant’s eyelashes are so long you’d think they could reach Syria, touch the soil of the place he’ll never know. A Pinochet survivor gives a tour of the place she was tortured for years. Flowers grow in the absence of the disappeared. We tell our own histories, our backs aching into metal chairs. It’s Study Abroad Day Two. “Our stories always have to be sadder,” a student of color says. “As if we have to prove our own humanity through our pain.”
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Myles E. Johnson, Black activist, lives images of pain. He writes in The Establishment about the “American tradition of consuming black grief,” about how protests have become “politicized public funerals,” about how white photographers make spectacles of Black death. He concludes: “There is most assuredly a market for our pain.” There is most assuredly a market for their pain, and I’ve called it “education.” I suppose I always assumed that to be vulnerable is to be empathetic, that sharing pain with others breeds trust and warmth and agency. But I never considered the cost. Who (consistently) expends the most emotional labor in the wake of vulnerability, and for whose benefit? Who consumes whose pain?
Susan Sontag, white activist, made her living on images of pain. She wrote them, photographed them, filmed them. And she criticized her role in (re)producing these images, explaining how they dress Voyeurism in Charity’s clothing, sell neo-imperialist service trips, stoke the self-righteousness of White Saviors. “The imaginary proximity to the suffering inflicted on others that is granted by images suggests a link between the faraway sufferers… and the privileged viewer that is simply untrue, that is yet one more mystification of our real relations to power,” she writes in Regarding the Pain of Others. “So long as we feel sympathy, we feel we are not accomplices to what caused the suffering. Our sympathy proclaims our innocence as well as our impotence.” Here, situated amongst these images, Sontag writes against her innocence. Taking photos of violence is not an innocent act. Writing articles on pain is not an innocent act. Witnessing the vulnerability of others is not an innocent act. This is not apolitical; emotions are the broth of politics. Meanwhile, the headlines read one dead in Ferguson, fifty dead in Orlando, four hundred thousand dead in Syria, and we know violence like we know song lyrics. Somewhere between Emmett’s glass-topped casket, between videos of Black bodies gasping on street corners, between #MeToo and you too and us too, the drums of vulnerability beat on. “Viral” has never felt so apt. This numbness is contagious. And if our hearts callous, and if others’ tears roll off our backs like sweat, we become eager consumers of normalized violence. (Have you ever felt your heart callous? Your hands, certainly. Those half-moon scars etched years ago— you wanted to see how abuse calcifies. Those cracked knuckles on that cold car window— your uncle jumped into the Bay. Those hangnails jagged like ribcage— you forgot how the therapist told you to breathe. Anxious girl, don’t worry so much. The world is your oyster, haven’t they told you.) I must write against my innocence. It’s easy to preach empathy without acknowledging that we enter vulnerable relationships unevenly. Like everything, vulnerability is rooted in the politics of its context: vulnerability between mother and daughter is not the same as vulnerability between student and teacher is not the same as vulnerability between white peer
and Black peer, white protester and Black protester, white photographer and Black griever. Marginalized communities have been violently forced into places of vulnerability for centuries; their grief has been made public commodity; their anger has been invalidated; their tears have been normalized. And what a mark of privilege it is to observe the vulnerability of others in service of my own “human rights” education. But this is neither cause for defeatism nor excuse for disengagement: action is as urgent as it is complicated. “Compassion is an unstable emotion,” Sontag writes. “It needs to be translated into action, or it withers.” In the bumpy landscape of vulnerability, what constitutes action? I first think “awareness”: the knowledge that vulnerable acts are products of difficult—sometimes unwanted, sometimes circumstantial, always painful—experience. And yet “awareness” feels like one of those squishy, nebulous answers that allows selfproclaimed allies to claim a whole lot of social justice capital while doing a whole lot of nothing. I’ve been one of those “allies,” I’ve done a whole lot of nothing, and I know that passively observing
pain does not constitute “awareness.” Grief is not mine to witness. Vulnerability, even as it twinges my compassion, does not pardon my complicity in systems of oppression. Nor should it. I don’t need to be “pardoned.” I need to show up. But maybe there’s a beginning here, something that raises the stakes of “showing up.” Maybe mitigating the unevenness of relationship building and relationship holding requires first conceptualizing vulnerability as a two-way street: witnessing, watching, observing, and listening must all be reciprocated with self-education. Maybe “observation” is not an isolated event but a continual process—one that politicizes vulnerability, allowing us to magnify the headlines and see the way we wield violence inconsequentially. See how edifies of power structure the ways we share and legitimate pain. See how the Spectacle obscures the Everyday. And here, at the intersections of pain (un)recognized, maybe “awareness” is the vehicle that accelerates observation into conversation into ideological change. This is my call to action.
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The Letter I Wish I Got: To My little Sis By Maya Reyes
Hey,
If you want to be a scientist, Mari, you need to push it to the limit. It’s brutal out here. You have to work harder than any guy—it’s not fair, but that’s the truth. You won’t be included in business conversations until you prove you are worthy of handling such information. And people will say that you’re dramatic and emotional for speaking your mind. Whatever. Don’t listen to that. Let your seven-year-old self just continue to filter out every negative comment without reason for now, because I’ll force you to take a Women’s Studies class when you’re older and then you’ll understand the reasoning behind it. Mom knows what she’s doing. While I have my fair share of flaws, I’m not a bad first prototype. Life is messy, so take what she says to heart. Even if it hurts, take it to heart and let it sit with you. She speaks truthfully. She knows it’s hard for women in the world, but she wants nothing but the best for her daughters. So she will tell you the truth, even if it’s upsetting. When the teachers say the word “feminist” should be censored from a yearbook, remember there is nothing dirty about believing that women should not be second class citizens. Remember that there are little girls across the world, just like you, that can’t go to school simply because they are girls. We should advocate feminism in our yearbooks. Maybe if a larger portion of girls became more comfortable identifying themselves as feminists before college, the stigma would break. And if you ever find yourself in Mrs. Delafave’s class, (God, I hope not. She’ll be what… 200?) talk about Lord of The Flies all you want honey, because it’ll get you prepared for those brutal 9am discussion sections where participation is mandatory. She’s cranky as hell and will probably prefer the students who don’t say much. But who cares. You’ll see much worse and you need to be armed for it.
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Take advantage of the City. You can become way more cultured than I was in high school by spending more time there. It’ll build character. Go walking, look at the stores, explore on your own. Find spots you like. Work on developing a positive mindset. Try to become more conscious. Value the conversations that matter. New York holds the world at its fingertips because there are so many different kinds of people that aren’t afraid to be loud. Get used it. Speaking loud and honest is okay. I don’t know precisely the qualities it takes to be remembered. The historic figures our culture values are mostly men. Mari, images of men in leadership will be shoved down your throat to the point where you even begin to internalize these examples as truths. I find I’m still figuring out what about strong women makes them strong women because we spend too much time learning why strong men are strong men. Above all else Mari, you can be a scientist. You can be anything you want in the world if you want to try. Don’t make too many long term plans because they will always change. Instead of planning minute details, take that energy and go full force into things that intrigue you. If you can persist, you can do it.
Love, Maya
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The Tour Guides Lied To Us: Part 2 By Ally Owens
M
ore often than not, the media does a terrible job of presenting reality. This is particularly true when it comes to the high school dramas we grew up on—where actors in their mid-twenties are passed off as sophomores, characters study maybe once per season, and student-teacher affairs are trivialized. Less discussed is the pattern of inaccuracy permeating into depictions of college life. My intensive background in media studies—also known as ten consecutive summer “staycations” consisting solely of binge-watching television—has led me to formulate the conclusion that there are two ways that the media tends to portray college, and thus, two fantasies that we are expected to compare our own college experience to. There are the “bro” movies that portray college as a Caligula-esque, four-year sex party. Everyone is constantly dartying outside in great weather, the women are all inexplicably hot and bikini-clad, and the villain (male or female) will most likely be blonde, preppy, and the head of a Greek organization. Billy Idol’s “Dancing with Myself” will definitely be played in the trailer, and someone, at some point, will proclaim that “these are the best years of our lives!” The alternative to this depiction is the more “serious” college life, where college students act as though they are fully-fledged adults with their shit together. Guys aren’t as interested in casual sex as they are in proposing to their longterm girlfriends (a la Cory and Topanga from Boy Meets World or Whitney and Dwayne from A Different World). People wear glasses and turtlenecks and have Serious Adult Conversations™. Even recent shows are still committing the same fraud, just in different ways: when the protagonist of Grown-ish, Zoe, found her friend group within an episode, I cackled in disbelief at that wild of an idea being presented as truth for the youths watching. Even a semester into college, if someone approached me and asked if I had found my niche, I’d laugh them off; if someone asked me after a week I’d probably have burst into tears. After becoming a college student, I began to question even more heavily the realism of media portrayals—where are the shows that at least make reference to the days when a good forty percent is spent in internal monologue, those days when social contact seems to be a distant memory? Of course, I understand that no one would ever watch a show or movie with the boring realism of watching paint dry, but COME ON. A SOLID GROUP OF NEW FRIENDS IN A WEEK? Don’t insult me, Freeform. I am here today to talk about what happens when your own lived experiences don’t quite match up with what you have seen, and the disillusionment that occurs in attempting to reconcile the feeling that something is missing because real life is not a scripted, perfect reality. Ally, how about instead of critiquing shows, you go out and actually make friends? How about you stop complaining and actually do something? First of all, “stop complaining” is not in my vocabulary. Second of all, shut up and let me finish. Though we like to deny it, we cannot ignore how much we are influenced by the ideas set forth in television shows and movies. Growing up, I would use what I saw on television and movies to fill in the gaps of my lived experiences. Despite the very real fact that I would laugh someone out of the room if they openly admitted they
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believed college was going to be exactly like how it was depicted in Legally Blonde or Animal House, spending those first few weeks of college alone forced me to come to terms with just how often I, too, subconsciously compared myself to the lifestyles I saw on screen. I am not exaggerating when I say I felt as though something was missing from my life because it didn’t parallel the first act of a college comedy or the pilot episode of a sitcom, where easy friendships are made in .75 seconds, there are no moments of awkward silence, and you see the guy of your dreams at the first party you go to.
I truly believed this belated realization that everything I had seen was a lie was my penance for wasting my childhood in front of a TV rather than, I don’t know, riding a bike or something. What was I doing wrong? It’d been a week, why didn’t I already have a supportive friend group that knew everything about me, shared all my opinions, and would casually take a bullet for me (kidding…kind of)? Deep down, I knew that I would eventually make friends, but like most things in my life, I sought immediate gratification—after all, that is what happens on screen. Considerably worse than the general feeling of loneliness is the feeling that you are the only one going though such isolation. After about a month of bottling up my emotions and putting on a good show of being “happy,” I had finally had it. When I was forthright with my emotions with people that I had consistent contact with, I expected to lose friends before I had even made them. Who would want to be friends with the girl that committed both cardinal sins of oversharing and oversharing about very heavy stuff? I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a tad relieved when the group of girls admitted that they were feeling a lot of the same things, but were all too afraid that no one would understand to speak on them. However, the momentary relief I felt about not being the only one was replaced with worry for that exact same reason: for the first few months here, everyone had acted as though they were completely fine. Everyone did as convincing a job performing the façade as I had. This conversation left me questioning what was making us feel as though we had to be pretend to be “ok” when, in reality, none of us were?
We’ve been conditioned to believe that college has to be a non-stop good time. I’ve never seen the mental healthcentric episode of Blue Mountain State, and even on the more serious shows, characters can still find solace in their core group, no matter the conflict. Worse, for every show pushing the cliché, there are older friends, siblings, and parents rehashing the same platitude. Maybe they’ve already found their place, maybe they’re just nostalgic for a time when they didn’t have to pay bills—either way, as a freshman who is new to pretty much everything, these sentiments heighten your desire to capture this good feeling as fast as possible. On top of these aforementioned expectations, I realized that I also contributed to the pressure. As a senior, I idealized college fervently. I placed college on a pedestal as a way to compensate the shortcomings of my high school experience. To say the least (and to avoid slander lawsuits), my high school was extremely clique-y. Groups of friends (regardless of gender) labelled themselves with group names they, themselves, created. You read that correctly: group names were created independently and un-ironically. College was exhilarating for me because: A. It was not my high school B. I truly believed that a three-month gap between graduation and college would be enough time for people to mature out of their high school, social-climbing ways (in hindsight, was I asking a lot? Of course. Did I do it anyways? Youuuuu betcha.) And of course, who fantasizes about college without including the trite sentiment of “more freedom”? I sought autonomy in terms of academics (no more science for this humanities gal) and socializing (what’s my mom going to do from ten hours away if I’m out at 2am?). Of course, everything was not as rosy as it was made out to be. If I truly had the academic free reign every visiting older friend raved about, why am I writing this article in an ANTHROBIOLOGY class???? Also, in theory, while I could go wherever I wanted, whenever I wanted, the freedom didn’t quite have the same appeal when I had no friends, no sense of direction on campus, and too much free time. In fact, freedom began to feel like emptiness. Despite spending my Welcome Week with an ever-changing rotation of people, all I had to show for it were blisters, beat up shoes, and exhaustion. No friends. I’d wake up the morning after a party, convince myself that I wasn’t doing enough to have “fun,” and repeat the cycle. Everyone overdoes Welcome Week, but where it gets tricky is identifying why we all constantly need to prove to one another that we are having fun? Weeks passed, and my time from 8am to 5pm was still spent in solitude. I knew these things took time, but seriously? Tour guides, orientation leaders, and anyone else in a position of authority that wears Chacos all spew the same lie that you’re bound to make fast friends once the school year starts. In hindsight, I should’ve known this was a lie when the same person also told me there was only a marginal chance I’d get housed on North Campus (Greetings from Baits II!). For me, the three avenues to make friends (classes, clubs, hallmates) ended up being a bust, and I could not take another day trying to force conversations in lecture halls. If you excuse my veering into the personal, you can see the point I’m trying to make: the acclimation process cannot be simplified into a three-minute scene or a three-step process. Why we constantly oversimplify things, and then act shocked when it doesn’t turn out to be that easy, is a phenomenon I’ll never understand.
It’s been six months since move-in day. Since then, I wouldn’t say that I’ve gone through a substantial, epiphany-like change. In that time, I’ve had fantastic days where I felt one hundred percent that this was my place, and I’ve had shitty days where I wanted to pack my bags and leave in dramatic reality show fashion. What I have realized, though, is that I need to stop treating sadness as something that needs to be immediately suppressed and regulated. My happiness felt performative; in trying so hard to ignore sadness, I ended up feeling worse. The grand irony of this whole situation is that even though the media solely focuses on the social aspect of college, health-related attention primarily serves academic pressures; consequences from social pressures fall to the wayside. Just as clubs and community service are utilized to make a candidate appear to be a “good hire” for a job, it is unmistakable the way that people use previous social experiences to make themselves seem (I don’t know) normal? You’ll be expected to tell how many friends you had, what sorority you were in, how you met your lifelong besties. You’ll be expected to have a rolodex of fun and wacky stories to tell, and if you can’t keep up with the production of these milestones in the moment, then you’ll be severely affected down the line. And even worse, this unhealthy Hungry, Hungry Hippos approach to socialization (gotta gobble up the most memories as fast as possible!) is so normalized that, even though no one seems to be cool with it, no one EVER talks about it. PEOPLE. I know it is so much easier than done, but how about in 2018 (New Year’s Resolutions don’t take effect until February anyway—January is the trial), we focus on our own self-care and mental stability rather than worrying about what everyone thinks of us? Rather than chasing an unattainable ideal (life isn’t going to be The House Bunny), focus on things you can control. As much as the planner in me hates to admit it, finding your niche, friends, and place in the world cannot be scheduled or arranged. Let it happen. Relax. Movies and television shows have running times—a meager 22 to 90 minutes. You, on the other hand, have your whole life to live. So live it well. Speak out and tell someone when you don’t feel up to something, take the time you need to relax, maybe go outside (I, personally, will pass on this one), and please, above all else, take care of yourself.
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Cover,
The Letter I Wish I Got: To My Little Sis, pg. 22-23,
Adrianna Kusmierczyk
Illustration by Miles Honey
List of Staff,
The Tour Guides Lied To Us: Part 2, pg. 24-25,
Illustrations by Adrianna Kusmierczyk
Illustration by Una Koh
Bathroom Confessional,
Illustrations, pg. 26-7,
Illustration by Kate Johnson
Illustrations by Anna Herscher
Letter from the Editors, pg. 1,
Back Cover,
Illustration by Adrianna Kusmierczyk
Illustration by Adrianna Kusmierczyk
Sh*t I’m afraid to ask My Doctor, pg. 2-3, Illustration by Anna Herscher
The Ladies’ Room, pg. 4-7, Illustration by Kate Johnson
You + I + We, pg. 8-9, Illustration by Katie Beukema
Read Me, pg. 10-11, Illustration by Maggie McConnell
Scars, pg. 12-13, Illustration by Perry O’Toole
Photo Illustration, pg.14-15, Photo Illustration by Kate Johnson and Claire Abdo
How to Make a Ghost, pg. 16, Illustration by Brooks Eisenbise
Collage, pg. 17, Collage by Tessa Rose
Voices From the Shadows, pg. 18, Illustration by Srishti Gupta
A Mother’s Father Plus Your Own Father, pg. 19, Illustration by Adrianna Kusmierczyk
The Politics of Vulnerability, pg. 20-21, Illustration by Casey Jong
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