Much can be said regarding the state of academics, their worth, and what it means to pursue knowledge in the Trumpist, post-truth era. The talking head of college not being “worth it” anymore rings everywhere you look, whether it’s within lecture halls or congressional chambers full of some of the nation’s most highly educated. Not long ago, however, intellectualism was everywhere.

Largely argued to have begun in relation to the onset of mass media like cable television and highly circulated newspapers, public intellectualism saw a “golden age” in the mid-1930s through the early 1970s. Especially with the conclusion of the Second World War, intellectuals were viewed as vital guardians of public conscience, and were unafraid to wade into politics, social critique, and philosophy. They debated on late-night television, founded archival and academic institutions, and advocated for the endowment of both the humanities and newly emerging sciences. Even with the privatization of knowledge within universities in the early 1980s, education programming and scholastic engagement persisted, so where did all the public intellectuals go?

Two major thinkers wrote of the public’s intellectual: Ralph Waldo Emerson and Edward Said. In his 1837 essay “The American Scholar,” Emerson argued that while the intellectual is enriched by the past, they are not bound by books. In other words, their most important activity is action, inaction is cowardice. Further, he believed that the scholar acted not out of obligation to their society, but out of obligation to themselves. Public action is part of being the “one man,” the whole person. Said’s intellectual, on the other hand, was a more political interpretation— as influenced by his upbringing in British-occupied Palestine. He suggested, via a series of lectures at Columbia University, that an intellectual’s mission in life is to advance human freedom and knowledge. Said’s intellectual is constantly balancing the private and the public, with their private, personal commitment to an ideal providing necessary force, and that the ideal have revelance for society.

The mere act of sharing knowledge with the masses without a paywall or entry requirement is a revelation towards progress, so it’s no surprise then that tyrannical powers seek to limit the act through defunding their suppliers— think the Public Broadcasting Service or National Public Radio. If we wish to bounce back from the slope towards fascism, we must first treat learning as an extracurricular rather than as a requirement.

Lectures & Interviews

• Joan Didion Reads "On Keeping a Notebook" With Her Own Voice | One of her best essays in Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Didion provides context for the purposes of recording a personal account.

• A 1988 Discussion between Mavis Nicholson and American Author Toni Morrison | Following the publication of The Bluest Eye, Morrison makes the case for writing out of necessity. Creating simply because it’s a story she wanted to read but couldn’t find anywhere else. Even more, the novelist advocates for forgiving oneself through “called grace,” while it still requires going through the fire of true shame and self-loathing rather than hiding behind useless guilt.

• David Lynch on his lifelong devotion to artmaking for ArtForum | In anaylzing the impact of his upbringing on his career, Lynch discloses that his mother refused to give him coloring books— believing they would restrict his natural creativity. With nature as his teacher, the director perfected the capturing of evolution, growth, and decay. A masterclass in finding a passion for filmmaking

• First Amendment Center's Speaking Freely: Bell Hooks | Hooks discusses the paradox of the First Amendment in modern society, pointing out that while dissenting voices are often repressed, people are deeply "hungry for provocative voices." She argued that the initial positive thrust of political correctness was simply being mindful and respectful of who you are talking to, rather than confronting real issues.

• Donna Tartt Interview (1992) | On the nose of her debut novel The Secret History, Charlie Rose converses Tartt on everything from southern storytelling to structuring suspense.

• Margaret Atwood’s Top 5 Writing Tips | In an interview for the National Center for Writing, Atwood details her five writing essentials— capturing fleeting ideas, reading critically, protecting physical health, and embracing revision. As one of the leading creative minds of the 20th century, Atwood creates intergenerational bridges for the love of writing.

• Maya Angelou & James Baldwin in Conversation | Two of the greatest American minds in one setting, what a gift! The 1975 televised conversation between Angelou and Baldwin on PBS's Assignment America is a vital cultural artifact, most specifically in their philosophical stance that love is an unavoidable, courageous necessity rather than a negotiable choice.

• Angela Davis: Frameworks of Radical Feminism | In arguing that gender equality must directly dismantle white supremacy, capitalism, and state violence, Davis moves past mainstream, single-issue narratives to demand holistic structural transformation rather than simple inclusion.

Free Documentaries

• Natchez | Directed and produced by documentarian Suzannah Herbert, the feature explores Natchez, a city in southern Mississippi that relies almost entirely on antebellum tourism to survive, and its reckoning with its inseperable role in the chattle slavery economy. Arguably one of the best documentations of modern American sociology produced this century.

• The Vietnam War | The best of Ken Burns’s work at PBS. 10 episodes with nearly 18 hours of testimony and archival footage surrounfing one of the most divisive events in American history, with side quests into specific causes, battles, and lasting social divisions. Unlike most recounts of the proxy-war, Burns covers all sides— with interviews from American soldiers, anti-war protesters, policymakers, alongside North and South Vietnamese soldiers and civilians.

• DOLORES | Examines the life and work of Dolores Huerta, a legendary unionized labor leader and feminist icon who co-founded the United Farm Workers (UFW) and coined the famous rallying cry “Sí, se puede,” later used by presidential candidate Barack Obama as “Yes, we can." Especially following the revelation of the of Cesar Chavez’s violence against women, including Huerta, it’s more important than ever to recognize the real heroes of immigration and farmworkers’ justice.

• Paris is Burning | Arguably the most important documentation of LGBTQIA+ American life, Jennie Livingston chronicles nearly a decade of ballroom culture in New York City and the African-American, Latino, gay and transgender communities involved in it. It’ll break you’re heart, and mend it back together all in one go.

• I Am Not Your Negro | Based on James Baldwin’s unfinished manuscript Remember This House, Raoul Peck’s social critique film essay features a narration by Samuel L. Jackson and explores the history of racism in the United States through Baldwin's recollections of civil rights movement leaders such as Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr..

• The Times of Harvey Milk | The story behind America’s first openly-gay elected official, preserving the vital history of early LGBTQ+ political mobilization. Director Rob Epstein captures a community's response to tragic political assassinations, and serves up a masterclass in social movement documentary and eye-witness preservation.

• Poison Ground | An installation of PBS’s American Experience series, Poison Ground: The Tragedy at Love Canal is a microscope on the American government’s failings to protect working class communities from industrial contamination, and the subsequent grassroots organizing that followed suite in the late 1970s.

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Articles

• “Beyond Settler and Native as Political Identities: Overcoming the Political Legacy of Colonialism” by Mahmood Mamdani | Mamdani (yes, father of NYC’s golden mayor) explores the political legacy of colonialism in Africa, with a focus on how colonial institutions shaped political identities distinct from economic and cultural identities. In aiming to understand nonrevolutionary political violence and critiques the tendency to view ethnicity as the primary cause of conflict, the longtime post-colonial scholar argues for a rethinking of political identities. When we emphasize the need to address the institutional legacy of colonial rule rather than merely redrawing boundaries or reverting to ethnic divisions, societies transgress opressive structures.

• “Men Explain Things to Me” by Rebecca Solnit | Before there was mansplaining, there was Solnit’s 2008 critique of male arrogance. At it’s publication, the article exposed how systemic overconfidence silences female credibility while connecting everyday condescension to broader patterns of gender power dynamics and violence.

• “Changing the World: Faces of Rebellion in Suzanne Collins's Hunger Games Trilogy” by Caroline E. Jones | In the Hunger Games trilogy, Suzanne Collins has created an unlikely hero who must draw from those around her in her heroic development. Drawing on dystopian and ideological theory, Jones explores the importance of community even in acts of individual heroism, and considers the role of hope in providing impetus in effecting societal and political change. An article that has greatly shaped my deep appreciation for the science fiction genre.

• “Standing OUT/Fitting IN: Identity, Appearance, and Authenticity in Gay and Lesbian Communities” by David Hutson | Hutson examines the historical connection between appearance and gay or lesbian identity. Nonetheless, as the social landscape for lesbian women and gay men has shifted, little research has documented how such changes influence gay and lesbian individuals' appearance choices as they form, manage, and maintain their identities. A sociological study of queer expression and outward-facing cultural identity.

• “White America Facing Its Ghosts: The Slow Unraveling of a Nation’s Suburbs” by Benjamin Harold | Herold’s article for Literary Hub argues that postwar suburbs acted as a discriminatory "Ponzi scheme," eventually creating systemic racial inequities and crumbling infrastructure. By challenging the nostalgic, "lily-white" narratives of a fading white middle-class, we see modern suburban decline as the result of deliberate historical exclusion. A must read in understanding the growth in white resentment towards progressivism.

• “From Penelope to Winnie Mandela— Women Who Waited” by Betine Van Zyl Smit | Academic Van Zyl Smit examines the depiction of Penelope, the faithful wife in Homer's Odyssey, and her everlasting influence on modern Western literature. Whereas the epic focuses on the eponymous hero, these works, which all draw on the Odyssey, move Penelope to the foreground and the adventure story becomes the backdrop for a different kind of adventure that is played out in the marital home.

Stripped of every ounce of sisterhood or female connection by a nation keen on the subjugation of the sexes, the girls of Aunt Lydia’s school for commanders’ wives are the forebearers of the fight against the Republic of Gilead. Not only can The Testaments provide insight into its origin text, The Handmaid’s Tale, but it’s also a lesson in the significance of identifying literary context in relation to our own socio-political state.

In May, U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz stood behind President Trump in declaring that “1 in 3 American women are underbabied.” In saying the quiet part out loud, a resurgence in the American right’s propagation of puritanical pronatalism suggests that the adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s return to Gilead comes at a crucial time.

Gilead, a totalitarian theocracy created by a Christian nationalist movement to suppress women through extreme patriarchy to combat a global fertility crisis, is seen differently now than through the eyes of a Handmaid. Where the masses of American women suffer clear physical and societal torture, the gilded cages of the commanders’ daughters develop a psychological layer to the effects of fundamentalism. Unlike its predecessor and its account of June Osborne, The Testaments, set in the cage of another class of Gileadian women (in this case, girls), finds its revolution in relationships. Both the novel and the television adaptation follow three narrators: June’s biological daughter, Hannah, now Agnes McKenzie, Daisy, an imposter sent into Gilead to spy for the rebellion, and Aunt Lydia, perhaps the most divisive character in Atwood’s dystopian universe.

Girls like Agnes and her close circle of classmates —Becka, Hulda, and Shunammite —are essentially prized cattle—nourished and protected, but eventually sold to the highest bidder for slaughter.

Teenage girls are all but absent from the original novel, leaving a gap in the transitional period for women in a society that imposes draconian limitations on women’s roles. It’s within the cracks, however, that we get the clearest view of the teenage psyche. And where friendship is actively shunned in hopes of keeping Gilead’s prized possessions isolated from one another, they form nonetheless.

Every desire, intent, or snap is its own rebellion. Where lust spans any thought of romantic want, crushes become points of shame, let alone a punishable offense that could result in any number of capital punishments. It’s desire, then, that haunts many of Aunt Lydia’s girls: whether it’s Becka’s crushing feelings for her best friend, or Agnes’s girlish crush on her guardian, Garth. Relationships define women and girls against, and subjugate them under; therefore, any autonomous connection is inherently revolutionary.

Painting a realistic picture of young women under authoritarianism, our heroines mirror that of girls inhabiting the Epstein Era, the fall of the American Empire, and the emergence of fourth-wave feminism all at once. In Susan Faludi’s book Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, she writes of the very cultural conundrum that allows dystopias like Gilead to exist in the public psyche in the first place:

“It must be all that equality that's causing all that pain. Women are unhappy precisely because they are free. Women are enslaved by their own liberation. They have grabbed at the gold ring of independence, only to miss the one ring that really matters. They have gained control of their fertility, only to destroy it […] The women's movement, as we are told time and again, has proved women's own worst enemy.”

It’s this misconstrued belief, whether spoken aloud or not, that continues to tie young female audiences to Atwood’s stories of women under attack. Where Agnes and her confidants have all graduated from the “Pinks” (little girls) to the “Plums” (young women), they are sitting ducks to the “blessing” of starting their menstrual cycles to be married off to powerful, unmarried men decades older than them. And while girls in America today aren’t necessarily being forced into child marriage, the reconstruction of purity culture juxtaposed to increasing hostility towards female autonomy leaves many to see their bodies as instruments of the devil designed to compel men to commit lustful acts— a lamb preened for malling.

Purity culture is a double-edged sword and, by its very nature, ironic. Girls in Gilead are not allowed to read or write to soften their godly role, but are taught to coolly bear witness to public executions and accept torture as the inevitable consequence of breaking expectations. They wish for women to remain untouched, but violently exploit their bodies at the whim of patriarchal power. Likewise, the insurgence of fundamentalist Christian leadership within the federal government at the hands of figures like Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz and Senior Advisor to the White House Faith Office Paula White-Cain bears a stark resemblance to pronatalism, as coined by psychologist Leta Stetter Hollingworth in 1916. As defined in a recent article in The Guardian:

“Pronatalism could be defined as the belief that having children is good. It could also be defined as the belief that having children is important to the greater good and that people should have babies on behalf of the state, because declining birth rates are a threat to its economic and social future. Perhaps most importantly, pronatalism could be defined as the belief that government policy should encourage people to give birth.”

And while these could be understandable belief systems on a more abstract scale, the United States has a particularly oppressive history with the ideology. Pronatalism, and the policy that often follows, has often coincided with anxiety over changing gender norms and demographics— such was the case in the 1920s when women gained the right to vote, and many worried about women working and wielding power outside the home. Like the actions of Atwood’s Gilead, American pronatalism more often than not correlates to an interest in eugenics, with many devout followers of the ideology wishing to engineer the “mass production of genetically selected humans.” Where Commanders chose to systematically execute or exile women they deemed unfit to carry the children of the new nation under God, some believe only certain American women are worthy of motherhood in the first place.

In reality, the “fertility crisis” perpetuated by tech oligarchs and evangelical megachurches alike is all but a myth. According to a 2022 study published in Human Reproduction Open (one of Oxford academic journals), birth rates aren’t dropping because infertility is skyrocketing, but rather being delayed by economic uncertainty, gender inequality, and changing aspirations. The infamous 2:1 replacement rate? Also misleading. To use 2.1 as a “magic number” for population stability is faulty, considering that even when fertility is below that number, the population can still grow for several decades because many people are still in their reproductive years. As explained by academic Nandita Bajaj,

“This focus on raising birthrates is based on the expectation that economies must always grow, which is delusional on a finite and ecologically fragile planet.”

All this to say, much of the argumental basis for pronatalism, and therefore the economic control of female bodies as means of bettering a government’s economy, is based in much of the same “Great Replacement Theory” bullshit that has skyrocketed fearmongering into the political zeitgeist in recent years.

It’s here that both American purity and pronatalism intersect both fictionally and in modern America. Both require control, and both utilize physical or psychological violence to get there. In recent years, both movements have become relatively successful in encouraging the notion that unconditional reproduction simply feeds the greater good of the American nation— solidifying its influence in soft-power spheres like the trade-wife phenomenon and increased interest in the perceived safety of the nuclear family. Gilead, too, promised such returns, but at the price of free will— exposing the ugly truth behind the capitalist intentions that drive the need for new labor.

It would be naive to suggest that ideology solely needed to combat both the purity complex and a rise in free market eugenics, but feminism does indeed play a foundational role in how we interact with the subjugation of the female body. As writer Rebecca Solnit puts it,

“It was feminism that insisted that women were people endowed with rights, that sex, as distinct from rape, had to be something both parties desired, that consent had to be active and conscious, that all human interactions involve power and that the vast power differential between adult men and children meant that no such consent was possible. It was feminism that exposed the ubiquity of child abuse, rape, sexual harassment and domestic violence, that denormalized these abuses that were so much a part of patriarchal society.”

The women of The Testaments, while largely disillusioned with what a world outside of their Christian-nationalist patriarchy looks like, find revolution in bond-building, in deepened connection with the women around them. The Elon Musks and RFKs of the world want the average woman to feed the illusion that counteracting mass-scale fundamentalism through everyday conversation isn’t sustainable, when in reality, it’s our only hope. As has been the guidebook for the subjugation of women for generations, the ability to choose in every aspect of one’s life far exceeds the need for positive economic reporting or puritanical family structure.

As long as I can remember, I’ve always dreaded dressing for the summer. Sweat, chafing, and cellulite always left me preoccupied, and I had little to no time to actually experiment with my warm-weather style. It wasn’t until quite recently that I decided to stop worshipping layers year-round and instead embrace styles that exert creativity and personal expression without fear of perception.

With an emphasis on vintage and second-hand pieces, I wanted to create a digital lookbook of fashion that is inspiring me to keep exploring. In a time when cultural conservatism goes hand in hand with an increased desire to conform, it’s more important than ever to find style inspiration in those who already kindle love for the arts— thus, this list is a cultivation of ladies who are constantly at the forefront of my mind!

Rama Duwaji

Rama Duwaji may be the first lady of New York City, but she’s also an incredibly talented artist and illustrator. And while I cannot pull off her signature bob (a fact that keeps me up at night), her clothes are to die for.

Maximalist, downtown-punk with elements of timeless glamour. Utilizing black, greys, and navy blues, color blocking is key to a lot of Duwaji’s outfits. Above all, her style is authentically representative of a broader cause— like her ability to champion independent creatives like Palestinian-Jordanian designer Zeid Hijazi and jeweler Eddie Borgo. Conveying cause through clothing is as old as time, but doing it in a way that appeals directly to the aesthetics of a generation is a talent.

As NYC’s first lady, she has single-handedly killed the sheath dress: a long-time staple of politicians’ wives who wished to matriculate into their spouse’s ambitions. Boxy, rigid, and monotone, the sheath is a worn symbol of conformism to a dying standard of political heteronormtivity. Instead of performing power, she expresses it.

Lucy Dacus

I’ve been a fan of Lucy Dacus since I was 13, a fact that has drastically affected both my taste in music and my means of self-expression. It also helps that we have very similar body types— tall, soft romantics with a knack for feminine embellishments. On top of clothing, her love of a red lip has rubbed off on me after years of rejecting statement lipstick choices.

Her dichotomy is one I try to emulate: one day she’s at Paris Fashion Week or on stage in the most beautiful gown you’ve ever seen, the next she’s in a tailored pinstripe number. Like Duwaji, much of her “coolness” comes down simply to authentic expressions of creative interests. A lack of necessity to conform emboldens the most monumental style icons. In a 2026 interview with Bricks Magazine, Dacus describes her fashion duality:

"I'll wake up every day either needing to look masculine or wanting to indulge in my feminine side, so I try to keep my wardrobe flexible.”

Linda Ronstadt

Linda Ronstadt is, in my mind, one of the most underrated Americana musicians of all time. Folk, rock, country, you name it, she’s sung it. Not only that, but her clothes defined the late folk revival movement with their ability to blend both Californian "laid-back chic" and romantic bohemian, leading the tumultuous 1960s into the new decade.

Before the popularization of shopping “vintage,” Ronstadt was a vocal proponent of a secondhand wardrobe, opting to find her tour outfits on the road in different cities. A Mexican-American, she often also incorporated traditional Sonoran textiles, a concha belt made by her father in Arizona, and turquoise jewelry. When asked in an interview with Allure about her style icons in the beginning of her career, Ronstadt said:

"I remember one night I was at the Troubadour club in West Hollywood with Janis Joplin, and we were talking about how much we loved Maria Muldaur's blouse. It was also a Betsey Johnson, and it had a scoop neck and long peasant sleeves. We got it from Maria, took it apart, and shared the pattern with each other. I think Bonnie Raitt also had it at one point."

Defined by necessity over excess, her look came to be widely received by folky ladies everywhere. Even within the progression of 15 years, her fashion evolves with her musical focus as if they were seasons: long hair, flowing earth tones, and hoop earrings for her folk roots later transitioned into denim, peasant blouses, and layers for her rock albums.

Isa Briones

Probably the nichest pick for a list about style icons, but my head is still spinning in The Pitt, and Isa Briones is one of its shining stars! Plus, her hair is to die for.

Vintage-focused, Briones is the epitome of the Gen Z take on '90s-inspired minimalism, while still embracing playfulness. Often styled by Kat Typaldos (who I adore), she mixes archival pieces (like a 2026 SAG Awards coral Cavali slip) with low-rise jeans, baggy trousers, and blazers. In a world where many reject good tailoring, her structured tops are legendary on my Pinterest.

And now that she’s on Broadway in the revival of Just in Time, the inner theater kid in me fawns over her camp stage-door looks. Capris are something I never thought I’d get on board with, but she proves that matched with a blazer or 00’s badazelled tank with kitten heels, they can be incredibly chic— so I stand incredibly corrected!

Solange

As I’ve grown up, I’ve begun looking for style outlets that reflect that I’ve indeed gotten older. Not less creative, colorful, or expressive, simply more sophisticated and sure in the body I possess. With decades of wardrobe to pull from, Solange Knowles is a perfect outlet for this thirst.

With a multifaceted career, Solange’s style is a reflection of architectural influence. Defined by striking silhouettes, bold color choices, and natural textures. And while most of us cannot request pieces from fashion houses as she can, the foundations are strong enough that similar elements are easily replicated through secondhand and vintage outlets.

Vogue’s Christian Allaire describes the artist’s style best when he categorizes it as “intentional.” In a world where trends cycle in and out of fast fashion brands faster than the resources needed, curating a structure with intention that can withstand aestheticism is key. While some might choose to call it “quiet luxury,” I see it as an embrace of timeless artisanism.

80s Screen Queens

I’ve been enamored by the 1980s and the women who defined it since my mom showed me Ferris Bueller’s Day Off for the first time at the ripe age of eight. Since then, I’ve never stopped yearning for Sloane’s cropped fringe jacket, but I digress. In many ways, the 80s are a mirror image of much of our own cultural zeitgeist: cultural conservatism is mainstream, subculture blossoms among marginalized groups, and maximalism is in. Over the years, I’ve curated a catalog of films for fashion inspiration. Spanning early decade nods to the late 1970s all the way to early grunge expressions, Gen X knew what they were doing.

Valley Girl (1983) is a campy portrayal of early preppy culture in the San Fernando Valley. It’s here that the Victorian influences upon the decade are extremely clear, with Deborah Foreman rocking shirtwaists with high-rise jeans and one of the dreamiest prom dresses the movie theater has ever seen. The use of pastels and the color palettes that would later become stereotypically feminine are also era-defining. And while the film isn’t by any means peak cinema, it’s really fun moodboard inspiration.m

Pretty in Pink (1986), one of my top four on Letterboxd, is Molly Ringwald’s most fashionable role by far. Like Valley Girl, it conveys the major split in the decade’s cultural impact that falls predominantly along class lines—the yuppie, preppy elite and the emergence of punk and alternative subcultures. Despite this, Ringwald’s Andie stays herself uniquely: becoming the epitome of layering and pattern royalty with the best accessories. You just have to watch it, because I cannot properly convey my love in words.

Mystic Pizza (1988) is the perfect segway between the late 80s and early 90s in New England. In many ways, it feels almost like a really good Lands End catalog that your mom has had since 1992. With lots of big cable-knit sweaters and high-waisted denim, you get the perfect “sister’s skirt with grandma’s cardi” look. It’s also how I imagine my own Mom dressed at the time, and she’s one of the most stylish women I know.

EmmyLou Harris

Another folksy woman enters the list with Emmylou Harris, and now more than ever, I think I channel her love of maxi skirts and country charm in every outfit I put together. Like Ronstadt, Harris’s musical style translated to her individual style, rooted in country tropes like fringe accents, faded denim, embroidered rodeo shirts, and cowboy boots.

When she found her popularity in the mid-1970s, long, gauzy, floaty, bohemian dresses and off-the-shoulder tops were everywhere— becoming a key part of her image as an everywoman’s singer. Most of all, I adore her love of improvised accessories. A ribbon around her neck, braided belts, and anklets picked from artists’ markets on her tour around the country. Americana at its finest, and done to absolute perfection.

Fashion is best when it’s an accumulation of the things you love, the people that inspire you, and the media that shaped your outlook on the world. Looking past the societal expectations around what’s “flattering” or “trendy,” it’s not hard to find self-expression everywhere you go. Screw standards, create your own style lookbook. Happy Summer!

“To all of you down there on Earth, we love you from the Moon.”

For all womankind, braids enter deep space. The last time NASA sent astronauts on a lunar mission, women couldn’t open a credit card without a cosignature from their husbands. Hell, women still ran the risk of being legally terminated for getting pregnant, and marital rape wouldn’t be criminalized for another 20 years. On April 6th, a woman looked down upon me from space, and not just me, but all of Earth’s women.

The oldest known documentation of hair braiding goes back 30,000 years to the Venus of Willendorf, a 4.4 inch figurine of a woman defined estimated to have been made in modern-day Austria. Her braids persist in everyday life— spanning cultures, faiths, and ages— intertwining the very existence of self expression. Braids later became a means of communication, a social art destinguished for the commitment of time.

In a world full of sectarian divisions on long-drawn political separations, the act of braiding is universal. African women, those of the Yoruba, Maasai, and Himba peoples, use braids as an offering to the afterlife of for safe passage. And the Lakota of America’s plains see interwoven hair as a symbol of strength: a single strand of hair is weak, but when interlaced into a braid, it becomes strong— transcending the hardship inflicted by the gods and the colonizer alike. In Mongolia, it’s traditionally believed that the human soul resides in the hair, not unlike the the significance reflected in Jamaica and Punjab.

My own braids, still astray with crooked pattern, came to me by the hands of mothers, camp counselors, and kindred spirits. In each sore arm, a prayer.

One of the oldest forms of identification, now above us where few have ever dared to venture beyond the stars. Christina Koch’s braid floats freely around her as she gazes upon the home that birthed her. From a cave, with images of celebration, the hunt of Artemis herself and memorium, to beyond the moon— we’ve come so far. Our spaceship Earth, in all her glory, braids its grass in hopes of connection just as a mother prepares her daughter for her first day of school.

It came to me at a brasserie in Paris. My futile attempts thus far to culminate my reflections of being an American abroad had left me restless, but the writer is never wrong when they tell you that such a city will liberate your mind. And while my French is broken, and my laugh carries far too loftily to assimilate, it’s the first time I truly felt like a stranger in a new land— though I had been one for nearly two months. Perhaps it’s because my strangeness isn’t volatile or maybe for its temporality: either way, one cannot avoid reflection forever.

The modern fascination with collegiate study abroad is a remnant of the ‘Grand Tour’ — a practice of young aristocratic men, primarily from Great Britain, traveling the continent as an educational rite of passage. I am neither a young man of high rank nor a Brit, and yet I find myself living in a castle in rural Holland: a fate that is still not quite digestible. Between weeks of educational coursework on everything from 20th-century conflict history to music in the jazz age, my friends and I are in a new city, immersed in what nearly half my country will never get the chance to experience. So in some ways, I guess it’s not too different from the foxtrotting nobleman’s escapades.

When I left Logan Airport for Schiphol Amsterdam in mid-January, it felt like I was fleeing a country in distress. I knew I’d be back, of course, nothing could dissociate my psyche from the news that plagued my Gmail inbox, and yet some part of me felt guilty. I'm not running away from the ills of my homeland, but rather looking for solutions in nations centuries older than my own. It was within the first weeks of my time abroad that I finished James Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son, a collection of essays compiled from the writer’s early years in Harlem and settlement in Paris.

“A lot of young Americans, white or black, rich or poor, have wanted to get away, as a means of getting closer to themselves. For me, France was the beginning of a writing life; I wrote ‘Go Tell It on the Mountain’ there. It was there I began the struggle with words.” -James Baldwin, July 1977

His meditations on a life outside of America lulled my anxieties, or at least as much as it could considering the intersectional differences in our identities and time periods. In Baldwin’s essay Equal in Paris, “I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” My friends and I discuss the near impossibility of tuning out your country when it simultaneously affects the entirety of the geopolitical landscape over bowls of Phở. Home is everywhere and nowhere all at once, and dissocation is ineffective to say the least.

Yearning to be unknown: that’s all I wanted really. You cannot outrun a reputation that you’re born with, one that retained its notoriety decades before you were bestowed it. You can, however, learn to exist alongside it.

Sobrieties exist in wandering the winding streets of the 17th arrondissement, finding yourself on the Seine and questioning what such a river has seen in the nearly millennia-long human experiment that is Paris. Or getting lost in the Musée d’Orsay and ending up at the painting you wrote your final paper on for Modern Art History of Europe and North America, a couple of semesters ago. Experiencing food through empathy, saying thank you as much as humanely possible, and smiling until your face hurts because it’s enough to be young and alive and traveling.

The grand tourists of the old world often returned home with chests full of books, works of art, and cultural artifacts— I return to my own midwestern palace with paper sleeves of postcards, a crate’s worth of disposable cameras, and a journal with observations for every day spent on the continent across the sea. It’s beyond my time to know exactly how my heart will remember this Winter into Spring, but the intimacy of strangerhood will never go unnoticed again.

“When we are at a loss amid the hypocrisy and the casual violence of certain individuals and institutions, we will punch some people in the face when they seek to destroy the weak and the disenfranchised and the marginalized. We will do it all with soul, with heart, and with joy.” -David Harbour, 2017 SAG Awards

Following the release of the final episode of Stranger Things, creators Matt and Ross Duffer, for the first time in the show’s nearly decade-long run, went on record to deny that Will Byers was ever meant to end up with his central love interest and subsequent best friend, Mike Wheeler. The brothers went on to claim that they had to “drown out the noise” of the fandom to write “the story they always wanted to tell.” What Matt and Ross fail to understand, however, are the repercussions of a generations-long stagnated queer storyline, and the message it sends not only to the show’s general audience, but the freaks, outcasts, and queer kids it swore to protect in the first place.

I was ten years old when I fell in love with Stranger Things, twelve when I found solace for my own loneliness in a show about kids who also struggled to find their place, and thirteen when Robin Buckley’s coming-out scene allowed me to accept myself. Needless to say, much of my adolescent ideological development revolved around the seasons of a television show. It’s a rare occurrence when a piece of media almost perfectly coincides with one’s childhood, and I was lucky enough to experience that. However, it’s not my experience that I reflect on now, but rather the loss of what could’ve been a foundational rebuttal to our current age of conservative psychosis and the harassment of those who don’t fit its vision.

It’s queer stories, like that of Will Byers, that shape the backbone of what makes a show like Stranger Things special, whether a general audience of tens of millions realizes it or not. And with the release of the series finale, it’s not hard to reconcile that queerbaiting is most definitely at play. For reference,

Queerbaiting /ˈkwirˌbādiNG/: the incorporation of apparently LGBTQ characters or relationships into a film, television show, etc., as a means of appealing to LGBTQ audiences while maintaining ambiguity about the characters' sexuality to secure a broader appeal.

One thing is for certain: a titular queer love story, in a show full of the supernatural and extraterrestrial, was deemed “unrealistic.” Beyond the fact that years of narrative arc-building and parallels to other canonical couples were used to entice queer fans— a fact solidified by confirmations from multiple cast and crew members— Will and Mike’s relationship beyond romance was all but buried, adding nails to an already rotting coffin.

Moments after Will comes out to the entire ensemble cast in the preultimate episode, another choice I have my gripes with, the creators dismiss seemingly the entire dynamism of their relationship in a 30-second clip— “Can we still be friends?” asks Will, “No… best friends,” Mike responds— and they are never discussed again. And with the conclusion of the season’s run, Noah Schnapp even admitted that he had to personally ask the Duffers to put some kind of closure on their relationship— implying they hadn’t even considered addressing Will’s developed feelings for his best friend, and consequential mistreatment, at all.

Not only that, but Mike is physically unable to touch Will again following his confession, even though he had no issue engaging before the scene. Whether this was simply lazy writing or an intentional choice, it only further perpetuates the dangerous notion set forth about gay men in the 1980s: get so much as near them, and they’ll give you the “gay disease.” HIV/AIDS, a severe immune system disease that devastated the queer community and killed nearly 20,000 people by the events of the fifth season, would’ve been at the forefront of social conversation in a small, conservative town like Hawkins. So not only does the fallout of a long-built tension end in a shallow confession with no insight into how Mike possibly could’ve felt, but also the subconscious implication that their friendship might not have been as monumental as the writers had stressed for nearly ten years.

To me, at least, the act of queerbaiting in popular media isn’t a deprivation of queerness, but rather the action of stuffing your characters back into the closet while the audience bears witness. I’ve been Will Byers— closeted and hopeless, in love with a close friend and overwhelmed by my reality— but I am lucky enough to have never been Mike Wheeler, someone who, according to his creators, never stood a chance at acceptance.

I’m evidently haunted by the wasted potential for what could’ve been one of the most important queer love stories of our time, but one scene has sat particularly sour in my mouth now that the show’s run has concluded. In season 3, while both Mike and Lucas are consumed by relationship drama, Will is finally able to express his frustration with the reality that they simply don’t do anything but talk about girls. As he storms out of the Wheelers’ basement, Mike follows, confronting him about why he would be so angry. The argument concludes with a blaring comment from Mike alluding to Will’s queerness, a comment that drives a stake through any confusion the audience might’ve had about his identity. I bring this scene up not because it only further’s my earlier hypothesis: in the absence of Mike’s true feelings, or even a substantial explanation, he is simply cruel.

It’s in the epilogue that we are alluded to where both characters might end up in the future, although nothing is either confirmed or denied as per the Duffers’ “creative vision.” Will ventures to New York, imagined in a gay bar with a nameless lover who would never know what he went through to reach his current state. And while the rest of the party are given a journey beyond the shared trauma of their hometown, Mike is seemingly left to narrate the progress of everyone. He remains trapped in his own grief, alone, and devoid of the connection that a canonical manifestation of his relationship with Will could’ve been. Both boys have an ending that fails to assure young queer audiences that there is a way to both find self-acceptance and love.

It will never be absurd for queer audiences to want to be noticed as potential for equally compelling love stories, and it’s not delusional to hope that the characters meant to reflect our same struggle are given endings where love and light are reachable. Beyond that, I am tired of force-feeding queer characters the idea that you have to “learn to love yourself because no one will love you.” Cruel realism, a relic of decades of failed representation, shouldn’t go on as a tolerated factor when queer love stories have always found a way to exist between the lines of societal alienation. The Mikes of the world deserve an ending that shows that courage is everyman’s right, and the Wills deserve an ending unwarranted by societal cruelty.

The facts remain, and they speak only to add fuel to an already harsh fire. An estimated 83% of the world’s queer or trans individuals will never come out to loved ones in their lifetime. 85% of LGBTQ+ youth have reported feeling immensely isolated and lonely. Nearly half of all queer individuals are estranged from family, even if they can come out. Generation Z often drastically underestimates the role that popular media can play in the changing attitudes of once-taboo social issues, just as shows like Modern Family and Glee were able to when gay marriage was nationally legalized in 2015. And considering our current climate reinstates a suspension of the only national LGBTQ+ hotline, sweeping anti-trans legislation, and a president not afraid to say the bigoted aloud, a queer storyline not afraid to examine the shame but have their characters flourish by the end could’ve been colossal.

Stranger Things was meant to be a rebuttal—it constantly rewrote the 80s tropes that define adolescent media, and rebuked the social policies that still hurt marginalized people today. Every relationship built was a stigma set straight: Nancy and Jonathan’s bridge of the Reaganite class divide, Max and Lucas’s challenge to 80s socio-segregation so often seen in the middle-American landscape, and, of course, the inclusion of Robin and Vickie, a sapphic couple that find space for their love to flourish. But by subverting Will, whose development has centered around bodily and emotional suffering at the whim of the Mind Flayer and closeted queerness, to a deprivation of romantic connection in favor of a hollow self-acceptance plot, this trend was broken.

At this given political moment, where gay marriage can be challenged by SCOTUS after a mere 10 years and studios falter to a new lavender scare, the canonical manifestation of a ship like #byler would’ve been far deeper than people could’ve possibly given it credit for. Here are two kids, both raised in rural, conservative Indiana at the height of both the Reagan administration and the AIDS crisis, who, despite societal and magical roadblocks alike, could’ve been together.

A decent amount of time has passed since my initial watch, and I wasn’t necessarily sure how to formulate exactly what I wanted the ethos, or derivative, of this editorial to be. I knew that I wanted to stray from whining or complaining into the void about the cruel unfairness of a beloved ship, but I didn’t know what the call to action was. What I came up with is this: write your own stories when what you see fails to nourish you. It’s up to us to write the stories that will continue to get us through casual violence and repression. Fan fiction is important, one-act plays that you write for your drama class are important, and the stories we see ourselves in won’t write themselves.

It’s easy to be disheartened by the fate of such a beloved show’s queer characters, those who seemingly mirror our own growth as young people. Nevertheless, let this be a reminder: your arc doesn’t end when the camera stops rolling— because what happened to you in high school doesn’t remotely dictate the rest of your life. Did queer audiences deserve to see a proper resolution? Yes, but what you saw was not the end of the story for those characters, and it’s not the end of the story for you, either. The alien narrations of straight men who know nothing of you will never be able to dictate who you get to be. There is still time.

“To return to love, to get the love we always wanted but never had, to have the love we want but are not prepared to give, we seek romantic relationships. We believe these relationships, more than any other, will rescue and redeem us. True love does have the power to redeem, but only if we are ready for redemption. Love saves us only if we want to be saved.”
― Bell Hooks, All About Love: New Visions

My stomach contracts in excruciating pain at the thought of actually living romance, and yet it’s all I ever think about. I’m equal parts revolted by the idea of putting myself into a vulnerable situation, as I am thrilled to be finally seen as romantically qualified. There are vignettes of the social connections a girl like me is supposed to have— an occasional first date from a dating app or an interaction at a party with subtle hints of flirtation— and yet pathways are soon to fade.

This is no ‘Modern Love’ column or entry in Brigit Jones’s diary pre-Mark Darcy, rather a meditation of the Aurelian sort. I wish not to preoccupy myself with the qualms of self-pity; I am, after all, nineteen, because I know that my inability to live a romantically fulfilling young adulthood isn’t necessarily all my fault, nor is it that of the beings around me. I write because I want to understand the disconnect, or rather the fact that so many struggle to build meaningful relationships in a time when we’re already so interconnected that it’s suffocating. Was it really just easier in a pre-Internet atmosphere full of school dances and house phone calls, or is there some secret third thing that I just never got the memo about?

This meditation accounts for realizations, or situational epiphanies, that have led to my current state. In writing this, they’ve come from journal entries and scraps of school notebooks to be more fulfilling pieces of literary work. To cite inspiration for this piece, I want to highlight both Dolly Alderton’s Everything I Know About Love and Bell Hooks’ All About Love: New Visions. This, alongside a conversation recently had between Robin Buckley and Will Byers in Stranger Things, shoutout.

1. I came out as queer when I was fifteen— a fact that I assured myself was temporary as I was convinced I was a lesbian with few heteronormative tendencies (this coming to my attention following an encounter with Maya Hawke as an ice-cream slinging sapphic and a severe crush on a close friend). It came out the way it usually does: one burst of emotion, a confession mumbled on my childhood bed with my mom adjacent.

2. With little navigation built in, I often caught myself looking for elements of queer validation in the people I saw myself in, or, more realistically, in the ones I wanted to be with. It was the fantasy alone that persevered in the identity I still couldn’t imagine for myself. Whether they were queer themselves, it didn’t matter.

3. I lived, for a long time, by proxy through those who asserted the assurance I had craved. It didn’t take long until it became evident that this behavior was a self-destructive one, and not a sustainable philosophy.

4. My feelings for women felt, as they often do today, much deeper than those concerning men. And while many elements of my sexuality confused me, that fact wasn’t one of them.

5. In understanding that my queerness wasn’t a name on a badge permanently sewn to the lapel of my denim jacket, I think a part of me opened myself up to a far vaster array of love.

6. Community was then found in friend circles, and I eventually acquired a decent array of queer friends—all of whom shared similar feelings of disturbance in our monolithic suburban high school. These people are still the biggest manifestations of queer love in my life today.

   It was the community that got queer America through the Hays Code, the bar raids, and the AIDS crisis. Friendship is a lifeline, a bridge to connection beyond body aesthetics and failed dialogues.

7. Social voyeurism became my window into gaining experience. I observed my friends enter and exit relationships, fall for new people, and develop feelings in a nonlinear fashion.

   Seneca once penned an entire letter on the Gladiator Games, declaring, “There is nothing so ruinous to good character as to idle away one’s time at some spectacle,” so my practice has been criticized by the brains for eons. My passivity aside, an argument for a different time allowed me to maintain in-depth understandings, but none of which I knew how to utilize.

8. The life I was living in high school wasn’t my own. Marcus Aurelius also noted, “Even if you live three thousand — or thirty thousand—years, you should remember this: You cannot lose any other life than the one you are living now.”

   

9. Seventeen was a vengeful, confusing age.

10. And for the first time in my nearly two decades on this planet, I was confronted with the reality that my teenagehood wouldn’t, in fact, culminate in the high school lovers’ epic or ceremonial passing of the torch. And of the few romantic encounters that did cross my path, none culminated in the scenes that rolled before my eyes as I fell asleep.

    It’s not surprising then that I became incredibly bitter, souring at the smallest implication of companionship and finding little solace in the media that meant the world to me and my personal developments. I started to hate the way I expressed myself, the way my torso looked in jeans.

11. Simultaneously, seventeen was a turning point. In the timeline in which I align the loves, or lesser versions of such, of my life, this is one of the few times I felt truly apart from the desires I’ve become characteristic of.

    It was seventeen when I stopped fearing love as an action and started fearing love as a promise. My writing improved, I fell in love with music, and cut my hair. I started to ponder what love was destined to be for me.

12. Love is never a matter of if, and always a matter of when. Some people will inevitably meet their person too late, or too early, or with poor luck all in one, but they exist.

13. Entering university was a whirlwind. I lay on my lofted twin XL, surrounded by band posters and a Frida Kahlo print, and decided I would be a slut. Profiles were made on Tinder and Hinge, the ones I knew people my age were capable of navigating, pictures added in calculated bliss.

14. It doesn’t take very long to realize that no person on a mobile dating app under the age of 25 knows what they want, a fate that isn’t totally unreciprocated. Plethoras of late-night coos for intimacy and uninterested introductions were shared, and few physical manifestations transpired. This was the end of my ‘slut’ era. A mundanely sad conclusion, I know.

15. Slutiness is a virtue that I don’t maintain, I’m far too chalant. This is a label I don’t necessarily mourn, but the time does come and go.

16. The first (mutually-assured) date I ever went on with a woman, I couldn’t feel my feet and feared I had spent my entire life faking my gayness, an anxiety that has inevitably haunted me in being truly able to ‘see the TV light glow.’

17. The first (mutually-assured) date I ever went on with a man, I nearly threw up on the green line route to Heath Street. After unsuccessfully attempting to finish my mandatory class reading, I was confined to the doomscrolling of Tumblr (sigh).

18. Bell Hooks taught me the premise that love is something you have to practice, it’s not just something you say, and not just something you feel.

19. “If love is an action, what is that action?”

    a. Love is salvaging the family photos from the dusted trunk in the corner of your grandmother’s basement.

    b. Love is guiding your friend to the train station on the way home from the club, bag on the arm and all.

    c. Love is singing in the car with the people who got you through high school, driving around your hometown with windows ablaze.

    d. Love is listening sincerely and answering with curiosity.

    e. Love is every motivator that drives you to do good.

20. The right person won’t think you’re too much. They won’t submit to the casualties of nonchalance and defy your interests, and that person is out there somewhere. It never fails to baffle me that while there are nearly 8.3 billion people on this planet, most of us still feel as if our odds at love are entirely out of our hands. The world is so much wider than the anxieties creep in at 10 pm on a Sunday and vacate after an Instagram post does well.

21. I write because I love, and I love in hopes that I can continue to write.

“The idea of becoming sick in order to look healthy or beautiful speaks to how profoundly consumptive beauty ideals still shape the world we share.”
― John Green, Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection

The women in my phone look more terminally-ill by the day, and yet it’s not an actual health risk— rather an aesthetic choice not alien to the standards of Western beauty. It has taken me weeks to make sense of a trend entirely foreign to the overly-bronzed, smokey eye-epoch of my mid-to-late-2010’s adolescence. Like all cultural movements, however, there’s more to the appearance than what meets the eye. A disease that kills approximately 1.25 million people a year in predominantly-impoverished nations, and yet women in Western societies flaunt a mused-state of decomposition: a trend that took root nearly 200 years ago.

Tuberculosis, TB, consumption, phthisis— whatever you choose to call it— has been around for more than three million years. Its victims are immortalized in Ancient Egypt, Imperial China and the Hebrew Bible. It’s unlike any other infectious disease, laying latent within the body of every one in four humans but only evolving into “active” tuberculosis in about 5-10%. The kicker? The progression of the disease can be linked to malnutrition, lack of access to medical care, crowded housing conditions, and a severely compromised immune system, especially in cases of untreated HIV infection— all commonly found in the alienated Global South.

For much of human history, classically-titled consumption remained a stigmatized illness contracted by those who committed moral or social failings. In the European context, those who fell to the “white plague” were factory laborers, migrants, slaves, and sex workers— being labeled, and you cannot make this up, “invalids” by early medical and academic circles. But alas, disease knows no caste, and figures akin to President Andrew Jackson, King Alfonso XII, Lord Byron and John Keats soon also fell to the rapidly growing infection. Consumption soon became a romanticized disease— an illness of beauty, refinement, and intellectual sophistication. All this to say, romanticization and stigmatization are, in this case at least, complementary strategies.

The rise of Victorian-led ideals, like our own era of heightened cultural conservatism, gives way to standards of beauty that quite literally encourage women to dramatically change their appearance to present weaker, sicker, and more dependent. Classicists, those who study the Greco-Roman tradition, viewed the belief of romanticism as consistent with what ancient physicians often called the spes phthisica—an earnest hope of recovery from tuberculosis that drove heightened sensitivity and great creativity despite overwhelming illness, but that of which mainly men could overcome.

Resembling the likes of Alexander Dumas and Victor Hugo, illness as fleeting beauty can be seen as an indicator of a society in crisis. Not only did the romantic-era theory of spes phthisica alienate the women of the movement, but entirely neglected people of color. White statisticians, up until the enforcement of vaccination in the late 1950s, often presented the high death rate of Black Americans from tuberculosis as evidence of the race’s intellectual, moral, and physical inferiority. In comparison to the current efforts of acting Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr., who has on more than one occasion presented falsified data akin to eugenics, the historical parallels to the disproportionate level of romanticized white supremacy cannot go unnoticed.

When tuberculosis appears more like an offering than an affliction, a gift bestowed upon the divine, supremacy is far from out of the question— and the 2020s are by no means the first repetition of such an ideology. When so-called “heroin chic” took over Western media in the mid-1990s, consumption-aligned symptoms of stomachs flattened, shoulders sloped and shoulder blades protruding like wings became desired once again. A persistent fever resulted in translucent skin, rosy cheeks, and dilated pupils— alike to the models who became the faces of Calvin Klein, Dior and Alexander McQueen.

Not only are women appearing sicker, but they’re dressing sicker, too. No longer are fashion trends defined by the hyper-individualistic, rebellious styles of the Obama era— so often driven by the desire to stand out. Since Covid-19, trading one disease-based atrocity for another, home-centered fashions remain the hot ticket: think prairie dresses, heightened necklines and lower hems.

All is not lost, for we know that cultural-history is an ever-swinging pendulum of shifting cultural attitudes. Following the Romantic era of diseased beauty and Consumptive chic came the roaring twenties: an era still defined by pushing women’s societal beauty and presence to a level never seen in the Western world. Women cut their hair, showed their knees for the first time in millennia, and garnered a revolution that remains in Chanel’s little black dress. Who’s to say what lies ahead for humanity in the Anthropocene, but one thing’s for sure— it’s never too late to beat the curve.

Sources

1. Green, John. Everything is Tuberculosis. Penguin Books, 2025.

2. The National Library of Medicine | Romanticism, Mycobacterium, and the Myth of the Muse

3. The Collector | Romanticizing Death: Art in the Age of Tuberculosis

4. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention | Latent TB Infection and TB Disease

5. Day, Carolyn A. Consumptive Chic: A History of Beauty, Fashion, and Disease. Bloomsbury Academic, 2017.

6. Literary Hub | The Prettiest Way to Die

7. Clark University | “The White Plague Seems to Love the Black Victim:” The Racialization of Tuberculosis in the Anti-Tuberculosis Campaign and Black Resistance to the “Negro Tuberculosis Problem,” 1870- 1930

8. English Heritage | Victorians: Power and Politics

9. Cultured | The Era of ‘Tuberculosis Chic’

10. The Week | Trends in Beauty Standards Signal a Right-Wing Swing

“When nothing else subsists from the past, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered...the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls...bearing resiliently, on tiny and almost impalpable drops of their essence, the immense edifice of memory” ―Marcel Proust

I’ve been enamored by the fragrance hobby as of late. It didn’t come out of nowhere— I can recite my scent from every era of my adolescence with precision and was always interested in cosmetic storytelling— but something changed in the way I absorb what scent represents. In the following weeks, I proceeded to fall down a deep rabbit hole of niche Fragrantica charts matched to historical figures and television shows alike, later caving and creating my own catalog.

Discovering what you do and do not like in a perfume is a pivotal part of this process, and I thought I’d share my scent profile as of late. For one, I don’t like overtly-vanilla or strong florals. And as I’ve come to find out, almost all of the fragrances I’m drawn to are sweet in some capacity.

Describing fragrances is like describing literature— they’re tied to memories, emotions, medias and people— with each scent interpreting differently for each individual and attaches itself forever. Talking about perfumes is almost like the sensory form of analyzing a book.

Here are some of my favorite sweet-girl perfumes in my rotation as of late!

PEARFAT PARFUM bread + roses

Bread + Roses is one of those scents that sprays on one way and sits on your skin entirely differently. Your first impression is overwhelmingly rose, but after a few minutes on your neck or wrist and it becomes a light gourmand with hints of yeasted bread and spiced orange. It quickly dries down into a beautifully soft, sweet rose with dusty cocoa undertones and a little spice that's not sharp, just warm. Baking spices. It's a gorgeous, comforting scent.

This scent was my first from Pearfat— a woman-owned, Chicago-based perfume house— and I almost immediately ordered the sample (I’ll Never Learn) in a travel size. This to say, I’m obsessed.

GLOSSIER rêve

Glossier You’s sweeter, more fruity younger sister— Rêve is everything I yearned for in the beauty brand’s original fragrance. Unlike You which only sits right on my skin in the colder months, Rêve is a true all-year scent and lasts incredibly long on clothes. Very warm with a subtle, non-offensive spice. The plum and sandalwood are the stars!

Lately, this has also been my nightly scent that I spritz on after a warm shower and comfy pajamas.

DEDCOOL mochi milk

While I wasn’t a big fan of DedCool’s Xtramilk— Mochi Milk is a softer, girlier alternative that warrants everyday wear. And while I’m usually a detester of any perfume even slightly resembling a vanilla scent, it works here to uplift the more prominent notes of lactose, peach, and amber. Like most of DedCool’s perfumes, it’s a pretty intimate scent— meaning it isn’t very detectable for those around you more so for your own enjoyment— but that shouldn’t stop you from purchasing. Definitely the most milk-heavy of these scents, but not overpowering at all!

LUSH chelsea morning

If I was a fragrance, I think I would more likely than not be Chelsea Morning. When you first spritz it, the perfume is overwhelmingly toffee-gourmand— but the longer it sits the more the citrus and spice notes come out to play. It’s a simple scent really, resembling a lovechild of both Lush’s Super Milk and Sticky Dates lines. Definitely more attuned for the warmer months, but I’ve caught myself more than once reaching for it on a rainy summer day or dewy spring morning.

MARISSA ZAPPAS flaming creature

Flaming Creature is by far the strangest of the sweet scents in my collection. I’m a sucker for a weird but wearable fragrance, and this perfume by Marissa Zappas is the perfect balance. In many ways, it reminds me of the 2024 film I Saw The TV Glow— mysterious, off-putting, but endearing in a way only accessible through childhood nostalgia.

Inspired and named for Jack Smith’s 1963 film Flaming Creatures, a film that follows an ensemble of drag performers in New York City and was subsequently banned for “indecency,” it’s smokey, floral and powdery. I’m counting down the days until I can upgrade my travel size to a full bottle.

DS & DURGA steamed rainbow

Steamed Rainbow has to be the most interesting scent my nose has smelled in a while. The notes on paper wouldn’t suggest it, but the fragrance sprays on exactly what a sprinkler in your childhood backyard garden would smell. It’s clean but nostalgia— making it personal without being overbearing.

Fun fact! The perfumer behind the scent wanted to find one ingredient for every color of the rainbow, going down a list of available components to find a good composition.

LUSH rose jam

Rose Jam was the first Lush scent I ever really loved. It smells like if jam on fresh bread, your grandma’s rose garden and lemon load cake had a baby.

The middle of the perfume is my favorite part. It’s comforting and all-enveloping, the spice like the kitchen of your favorite bakery or a warm hug meant to be smeared onto bread, sticking to your lips and teeth. It’s also the longest lasting on this list, sticking to your clothes and hair for days!

My Current Wishlist!

• GABAR, balu (dates, blackcurrant, and condensed milk)

• SARAH BAKER, peach’s revenge (peach, caramel, amaretto)

• LABORATOIRE DES ENDORPHINES, pâinea lui dumnezeu (strawberry, butter, hazelnut and praline)

• LOLITA LEMPICKA, original (bergamot, licorice, tonka bean)

• MAISON EAU DE COUTURE, baklava al sultan (pistachio, baklava, orange blossom)

“We love our superheroes because they refuse to give up on us. We can analyze them out of existence, kill them, ban them, mock them, and still they return, patiently reminding us of who we are and what we wish we could be.”
— Grant Morrison

There was a time where my love for the superhero genre was unbearable. Fourteen or so, as so many are when they fall in love with fictional characters for the first time, I was fascinated by the world building and angst-ridden relationships found in the expanding Marvel Cinematic Universe. I dragged my loved ones to screenings, built a portfolio of cringe-worthy fanart and contributed to the constant feedback loop of fan circles online at a time when my desire for escapism was at an all time high. In the midst of Covid-19 and suddenly transplanted to a new city 300 miles from home, it’s no wonder the only solace that stuck was fantastical good-and-evil.

Recently, I’ve fallen back into my old habits of hero-mania— and for the first time since 2021, I’ve gone to the theaters for multiple opening weekends (James Gunn’s Superman, Fantastic 4: First Steps, and Thunderbolts* respectively). Driving home from the theater, it hit me that I hadn’t been this excited for a superhero film since I was fifteen: a realization that made me shutter at first, but dispersed into genuine intrigue. What was different, if anything? Was it the stories themselves or the product of an environment?

The psychology of superheroes is something widely studied by sociologists and cultural historians alike. In a world where a single individual has the power to change global conflict, media, and geo-politics, what is the basis of morality and how is it balanced with basic human phenomenons? In Peter Beagle’s The Last Unicorn, a fantasy novel in which a unicorn, upon learning that she is the last of her kind, embarks to find others like her, I found much of my answer.

“Robin Hood is a good myth,” Captain Cully said nervously, “a classic example of the heroic folk-figure synthesized out of need. John Henry is another. Men have to have heroes, but no man can ever be as big as the need, and so a legend grows around a grain of truth, like a pearl…” (p. 67)

Synthesized out of a need… for what? I believe that the answer changes every couple of years. Characters like Captain America and Superman were created at the cusp of the Second World War— a testament to the broader desire for a pure force of good against the clear threat of real world evil— and heroes akin to Spiderman and Black Panther originating the 1960s to fill a representation gap that was growing across the American media landscape. Not unlike said origin stories, the superhero tales that succeed with 21st century film audiences are those who maintain a strong sense of humanity to counteract the digital age’s tendency to objectivize the personal. Above all else, superheroes are the basis of cultural myth, or an idea so fantastically dispersed that it lives with liminality in the greater social consciousness. They are everything humanity desires— at least on paper.

There is, however, a strange irony in their sociology— anyone can be a hero, but not everyone will end up a martyr. Stan Lee was the one to coin the phrase “Anyone can wear the mask,” unbeknownst to the idea that what makes Spiderman special is the sheer chance that he was given the power to possess such a role.

My love for the characters never really dissipated, but something had shifted in my consumption of the genre. It’s not lost on me that the heroes that have stuck with me through the test of time are the ones who weren’t really “super”heroes at all— rather the anti-hero, slightly-corny, or love-driven characters. Usually maintaining some tragic circumstances determined in the foreground of their arc, psychologist Dr. Robin Rosenberg argues that origin stories show us not how to become super but how to be heroes, choosing altruism over the pursuit of wealth and power. Rather than some mystical test of strength, the best superheroes are seemingly the ones who are able to transform their losses and traumas into a fight worth persisting for by channeling those same emotions into action.

This is where stoicism as an ideology for the super-human comes into play. The Athenian philosopher Zeno coined the school of thought as the ability to live in harmony with divine reason while being indifferent to the fortune of pleasure and pain— in other words, enduring pain or hardship without the display of feelings and without complaint. And while Zeno prefers to emphasize the dichotomy of control: those things we control and those things we do not control, he completely ignores the things on the continuum of what we can influence— therefore undervaluing the power of the individual and their own morality.

You may be asking: “Where do superheroes enter this equation?” This answer, too, changes. Since the spring of the super-human franchisement, filmmakers have tried to create the ideal leader. This ambition has translated into an array of installments— many good, but also many mediocre in their attempt to capture the essence of such a prominent cultural myth. And while all genre films revel in the iconography of self-sacrifice, few expand upon the psychology itself, or the real-world implications of the media they’re creating.

Stoicism is a privileged man’s game— an individualist’s wet dream of a world where you don’t owe anyone, well, anything. American society has long undermined the impact of the superhero genre on the broader global media atmosphere, and the way that it projects the national psyche at any given time. Not unlike the inspiration of the individual, our heroes inspire the upkeep of bedrock American principles like justice for all, defending the defenseless, helping those in need and looking out for the little guy— principles all too often undermined by the Trumpist movement of late-stage cyber-capitalism. Even James Gunn’s 2025 Lex Luther is a caveat of a one Jeff Bezos or Stephen Miller: an insecure, destruction-wielding purist of the tech-bro variety.

Today, the simplicity of morality is as good as gold for the superhero genre. And while I’ve highlighted Gunn’s Superman at length, Marvel’s Thunderbolts* shares a similar message. While mainstream stoicism, close to the ideologies of a pre-Socratic Zeno, vies for little to no reliance in fears that it will interfere with the “greater purpose,” the MCU’s New Avengers directly contradicts the isolationist notion. The promise of purpose is enough to turn any hero against their very own morals.

No person is an island: nothing done well has ever been accomplished without love—and there is no love without loss. And while there isn’t a heroic external savior coming to rescue us from the horrors of our own humanity, there is nothing stopping you from being the caretaker of your own community. If our beloved superheroes are to survive another day in a world desensitized to emotional reaction, they must first confront pressure to remain stoic.

Hi All! It’s been a minute, but A (Dorm)Room of One’s Own is back in business for the school year! Over the last month(ish), I’ve been working hard to both slate ideas for my beloved publication and succeed at my summer internship and cafe job— and what a summer it’s been. Great things are just around the corner and I cannot wait to share them with you :)

Love, A <3

In a world saturated with commercialized pop ballads and sanitized indie wannabes, there is Ethel Cain. I first discovered “nettles” as a staticky demo on Soundcloud (as did many other daughters of Cain I may add) via one of my dear friends. It was short, just around two minutes with little to no production and Hayden’s bare vocals, but it soon echoed in my head for days on end.

The haunting of Ethel’s one true, pure love bellows throughout Preachers Daughter, and Willoughby Tucker is seemingly there to greet her in her ascent when she meets her dire end at the end of the album, but not much is known about the mysterious boy that got away. There are many theories in bottomless fan forums about the fate of dear Willoughby— some think he took his own life, others that he died in war or tragic accident, or simply a bad breakup in which he ran away from their small town. One thing is for certain however, Ethel’s role as an often unreliable narrator leaves his disappearance disorienting and foggy. In her reflection dedicated to her lover, “House in Nebraska,” Ethel mournfully admits “And it hurts to miss you, but it’s worse to know // That I’m the reason you won’t come home.” Without closure, we enter a new storyline with little to go on but yearning remembrance.

After nearly 200 streams in the days since the single’s release, I wanted to organize my thoughts and analysis into one piece that includes the Preacher’s Daughter timeline, imagery and foreshadowing, and the inner psychology of a love that was seemingly lost too soon. And since I’m impatient for August, this is the first installment of a later series about the album as a whole!

One of my favorite easter eggs from the released version of “Nettles” is the story behind much of the production— specifically the synths. After watching a video of Twin Peaks composer Angelo Badalamenti explaining how he created the infamous “Laura Palmer’s Theme” (a moody instrumental that featured prominently in the show by interpreting scenes described out loud by David Lynch on the keyboard), Hayden tracked down the very same synths used on its soundtrack to feature on the album.

Since my most recent rewatch of Twin Peaks following Lynch’s death, I’ve come to realize just how many parallels there are between the album’s protagonist and the likes of Laura Palmer. For one, both beautiful young women thought to be known and beloved in their respective communities: a source of purity taken too soon. Both Ethel and Laura are secretly hiding a secret double life of trauma and duality, leading to them being lured by a predatory force (Ethel's Isaiah and Laura's BOB) to a gruesome demise. Preacher’s Daughter’s eighth track, “Gibson Girl,” could practically be Laura describing her time working at the Velvet Room/One Eyed Jack's, with passages in her diary that read very similarly to some of the lines in that song, but I digress!

A decent amount of my analysis will be influenced by Hayden’s wonderful Genius annotations, so I wanted to start from the beginning and work my way through each verse.

“Life’s a race,” a phrase abused by many to dismiss hardship, is a metaphor used to describe one’s life as an existential competition. To think ahead to your next move is to still be slow in the game of life. Both Ethel and Willoughby are innocents on the brink of a community that can offer them little solace, so the “race” to grow up is the only protection that both souls hold and initially bonds them together. To the intellect of Hayden’s remarks, Ethel and Willoughby were constantly pushing forward, prematurely aging themselves under the weight of their circumstances.

“This yearning is ironic in nature; by rushing into adulthood, they bypass the security and care that might have saved them; trauma accelerates time and robs people of the slowness that growing up should be. For Willoughby especially, this race ends in disaster; foreshadowed by his injury mentioned in the following line.”

It’s also important to note that the two seemingly grew up together, rather than meeting as teenagers or young adults, meaning they were friends/ classmates/ playmates before they were ever lovers.

This is where reflections of Ethel’s anticipatory grief begin to surface. Throughout the song, she is constantly reliving scenarios of losing Willoughby to a force foreign to herself— as if she’s bargaining that it was the cruel world that took her love, not her own action. One of these cinematic scenes is Willoughby returning home drastically injured from some far off war— with references to bullet shrapnel and the presence of a trauma doctor. The specificity of “shrapnel” and “slowing” is representative of just how deeply entrenched she is in these catastrophic thoughts; it’s her grief rehearsing itself before anything has even happened.

A thread from Tumblr that I recently came across also drew parallels to Preacher’s Daughter’s “Thoroughfare,” in which for the first time, Ethel has hope that a future is possible without Willoughby’s companionship, and yet Ethel ends up being brutalized by yet another man who saw her as an object of twisted salvation. The parallel with these lines is obvious: just when sunlight seemed to slither through, it got shut out of the story right away.

The romanticization of violence against women and girls in the name of ‘love’ or ‘desire’ are not unfounded even upon young, isolated Ethel. Unlike sanitized depictions of pretty crying and rescued damsels, Ethel’s reality is brutal and unvarnished: something that cannot be prettified or softened for an audience that has already seen so much of her dehumanization in previous work.

Raised in a deeply religious, conservative and Southern environment, Ethel’s trauma is not only intensely personal but also systemic; the “movies” itself may represent the idealized narratives of suffering she might have been taught to accept or aspire to and such false narratives of redemption and beauty that her background tends to offer; yet her lived reality is far grimmer. To be a devotee of Christ is to accept suffering as an element of God’s plan, and his will for your repentance. The abuse that Ethel will bear witness to her entire life is internalized as an accepted part of the relationship to the divine power.

It’s clear that Ethel’s anticipatory grief had an effect on Willoughby. In my mind, the most realistic theory into his absence is that Ethel simply becomes too much for him: only adding the weight that lies upon him to escape the environment that has suppressed him for so long. In a way, this line can also parallel the outro of another song, “Hard Times.” The overlay of her talking to herself is extremely reminiscent with echos assurance that may never actually materialize: “Tell me a story about how it ends // Where you’re still the good guy, I’ll make pretend.”

To say that someone is “a half of you” is to believe that you are not a whole person, rather a reaction to the thoughts and actions of someone who you co-dependently rely on for a peaceful existence. Whatever is left of Ethel is inextricably tied to Willoughby’s being— losing him means losing a part of herself. She is probably also deeply depressed, relying on her lover to have the will to wake up in the morning at all. Whether from her enduring abuse or her deepening fears of losing the only person who ever understood her, Ethel is a caged bird unable to sing.

“Nettles” as a single ties thematically heavily to another beloved unreleased demo titled “Dust Bowl.” Unlike the latter however, “Nettles” is a representation of soft and vulnerable organisms, evolved to be outwardly painful in self-protection, attempting to grow and survive in a place that makes this difficult: not unlike its namesake plant that commonly grows beneath bellowing trees. More specifically, “where the greenery stings” is a reference to the plant Urtica Dioica (known commonly as the stinging nettle) which produces a painful stinging sensation on contact with the leaves— possibly referencing the lovers’ defense tactics used to protect one another from the oppressive environment they are forced to inhabit in their childhood.

“To love me is to suffer me” has become the line of the entire song, in many ways encompassing the entirety of Ethel’s mindset towards the fleeting love she once held dear. She believes truly that her love is a death sentence to Willoughby, inevitably becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy to a chain reaction of Ethel’s demise and surrender to a predatory mystery. Like the stinging nettles, Ethel worries that if Willoughby gets too close, he will hurt himself in the process.

The so-called ‘auld lang room’ comes from the Scottish phrase “Auld Lang Syne” commonly sung internationally as a New Years hymn, translating loosely to “old long since” or “for old times’ sake.” Not unlike their ‘house in Nebraska,’ Ethel now finds herself lying next to Willoughby, yet she still feels hollow or emotionally mismatched. The second line of the stanza refers to Willoughby’s efforts to tell Ethel that he is okay, he is safe, he is alive, happy and not in pain following his injury. Ethel, knowing that these are lies he makes up to keep her from worrying about him.

My favorite line in the song, however, is “You’ll go fight a war, I’ll go missing.” A direct foreshadow, Ethel acknowledges, in part self-destructively, that their love had been doomed from the start. Willoughby, a boy at the end of the twentieth century on his way to becoming a man, will handle his pain the way he believes men should. He’ll go out into the world and fight his battles, confronting his demons by force in a way that Ethel could never afford. Hayden’s previous album Preacher’s Daughter takes place five years later to the events of the song setting it in 1991, possibly implying that Willoughby went off to fight in the Gulf War as a way of escaping both Ethel and his overall predicament.

Shifting partially to Willoughby’s psyche, it’s evident that he fears becoming like the men that have hurt Ethel: more generally the kind of violent, tortured men that he is too often exposed to within his own family and community. He is perhaps violent, broken or emotionally distant; yet that resemblance is undeniable — no matter how much he tries to avoid becoming that person, the cycle of generational trauma is closing in. Even the National Institute of Health has done extensive research on religious trauma survivors and their behavior involving that of domestic abuse, with strong correlations often found among evangelical, rural Christian communities. Additionally, military-related trauma is heavily alluded to in “Dust Bowl” with references to a portrait of Willoughby’s father: “Smoking that shit your daddy smoked in Vietnam.”

The role of gender envy within Ethel’s reflections of Willoughby come into play in the next couple of lines, with her yearning to be able to express her anger in pain in the the perceived emotional clarity and physical freedom boys are often allowed when expressing distress through anger or violence. She sees the same feelings in her lover, but knows that unlike Willoughby, her expressions of her trauma are culturally-expected to be hidden away and bottled. Ethel doesn’t necessarily yearn to be a boy, but instead wants to be valued for her intense reaction in a manner that her community perceives her as strong rather than broken. In her annotations, Hayden writes:

“Gendered envy is seen here, not of being a boy, per se, but rather to access the same privileges of suffering: Ethel yearns for the right to be visibly angry, reckless, or damaged without it being pathologized or romanticized; wanting to bleed and hurt the way boys do alludes to her craving to feel raw and seen; rather than quietly suffer under the burden of emotional repression.”

Even among their gendered differences, the world outside their little bubble weighs heavily on both of them. While Willoughby is obviously struck with the burden of knowing the life that awaits them post-graduation, Ethel is more than eager to shut it out and not acknowledge it in favor of her own fantasies.

A nearly repeat in its first half, the chorus then strays into the fantasies that Ethel still bargains will come one day— in life or in death. She sees Willoughby as her only way out, even in death, and as an escape from everything in her life that’s led up to her finding him again. Like many little girls, she imagines the day they are married and have their own piece of paradise, far from the rest of the world, where she will finally feel safe in a way that ensures her security.

Like earlier, any glimmer of sunshine is broken by the reality of their situation: whether this song is set in the present of adolescence or as a reflection in the later event of Preacher’s Daughter where Ethel seeks escape from a far-darker reality. From Ethel’s perspective, when we are trapped in broken dreams we inherit, in a house built by others, with their rules, their prayers, their punishments. And when pain becomes routine, silence becomes a cradle.

As the song closes at just around eight and a half minutes, Ethel envisions her and her lover newly-wed, at home in the house that is only theirs, surrounded by the same feelings of countless stories relayed onto them of when their own parents were young in love. She imagines having that kind of love, where emotional unavailabilities and insecurities are a thing of the past. In the end, Ethel’s perpetual state of anticipatory grief overshadows her mere desire to be at peace with the only person who was ever close enough to pass the nettles without retreating or flinching— unconditionally.

When it comes to the Western remembrance of history, the Roman Empire and the era that it embodies has long been at the forefront of cultural memetic happenings since its rise to prominence in the mid 200s BCE. From the formation of an entire linguistic tree around the empire’s mother tongue, Latin, to laying the foundations for modern concepts of law and justice, to the creation of the world’s first sewage system, one could argue that the Romans’ are the ultimate grandfathers of memetic patterns. In August of 2023 however, the entity in question quickly gained a new connotation among Generation Z and subsequently the broader span of pop culture.

Beginning with a thread of Instagram reels from Swedish historical reenactor Artur Hulu, known as Gaius Flavius, who urged women to ask their partners how often they think about ancient Rome, saying: “Ladies, many of you do not realize how often men think about the Roman Empire. Ask your husband/boyfriend/father — you will be surprised by their answer,” the trend quickly took over the internet. From hundreds of thousands of videos tagged under #romanempire, answers varied from “three times a day” to “probably every other day.” For many, such a phenomenon was shocking and in many ways comical, but what can be said about the gendered nature of both the trend itself and the history that lies behind it?

For one, when asked further why they think about the Roman Empire seemingly so often, most young men responded with answers usually mentioning gladiators, violent colosseum games, and images of masculinity and victory displayed in films like Ridley Scott’s Gladiator and Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus that have largely defined Rome’s pop cultural legacy. Such findings are heavily backed by sociological studies surrounding the ways that Western societies have historically overemphasized the aspects of Roman history that can be commonly associated with hypermasculinity. According to Hannah Cornwell, a historian of ancient European civilizations at the United Kingdom’s Birmingham University in conversation with the Washington Post, “the first thing that comes to mind for many is an image of the Roman legions, the imperial eagle and that sort of military aspect— along with gladiators, which has a long association with masculinity and its relationship with power.”

Since the 19th century, which oversaw the rise of British imperial efforts to excavate ancient historical sites and bring their findings to the public in settings like the Worlds’ Fair and other products of the Industrial Revolution, historians have tended to portray ancient Rome and its’ contributions to the modern world through a prism of of politics, warfare, and military superiority. This hypermasculinization of foundational Western history is more often than not detrimental to the historical literacy of subsequent generations. In the words of the classicist Mary Beard in her book SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, “It is a dangerous myth that we are better historians than our predecessors. We are not.” Of course, this trend in historical literacy, or lack thereof, has its roots deeply embedded in the foundations of how and why we are taught to remember certain aspects of history. Referring back to the work of Mary Beard, one cannot easily fit women into a structure that is already coded as male; you have to change the structure. And what does that entail exactly? Thinking about power differently and decoupling it from public prestige.

To get a better understanding of why the broader society associates the Roman Empire with masculinity and victory so heavily, one must first look at what aspects of Rome have been mulled over in the past two centuries. For one, the basis of Rome’s growth and success often profited off the abduction and rape of women, both Roman and those of neighboring peoples. One primary example is the rape of the Sabine women in early legendary history, in which the

King Romulus ordered his men to abduct women from a neighboring village and take them as wives by force in order to populate their new city. Most of the empire’s most famous historians, such as Ovid and Cicero, often wrote out this event or outright defended the actions as the only probable way of building their city. Similar themes can be found in the rape of Roman noblewoman Lucretia, who was raped by King Sextus Tarquinius resulting in her subsequent suicide and a rebellion that would overthrow the Roman monarchy. From there, the destruction of a royal line spanning 250 years would result in a massive transformation of Rome’s government from a kingdom to a republic. Both events are prime examples of the fact that the Republic and the Empire’s success were simultaneously built off the exploitation of female bodies and the suppression of Roman women’s voices.

With terms like succubus, harlot, and witch, all continually used to this very day to describe socially undesirable women, being coined by Roman orators, one must also shed light on how Rome’s biographers shaped the cultural understanding of the role in women foundational to critical Western structures. And like the painting above, Pablo Picasso’s 1962 painting The Abductions of Sabines, the tales passed down by Roman biographers still ripple through both artistic and cultural remembrance. And though Roman women often appeared in public at gladiatorial shows, acted as highly respected Vestal Virgins, worshiped at shrines and public rituals, owned property and could choose to divorce whenever they saw fit— Roman society regarded them primarily as reproductive commodities for populating the great empire. It should then come as no surprise that many of Rome’s greatest minds echoed such sentiments in their renditions of critical historical accounts that would then serve as eye witness accounts for the next two millennia. Tactius, often considered the greatest historian of his time, felt that a woman was nothing without a man, and that without a man, a woman in Rome would not survive. Similarly, the great poet Ovid saw women as vain, frail, and inconstant creatures whose main goal in life was to deceive men and be deceived by them. Now imagine what inconsistencies of historical accords must lie beneath the surface when the narrators of the only surviving accounts of a time that has come and gone come from those who do not see women as equals.

Even with the end of the republic and the rise of the empire, the Roman ability to succeed on the backs of feminine bodies persisted and even rose as Rome’s all-powerful emperors took a tyrannical shift. In turn, the empire saw a spike in domestic violence and femicide as common ground for an increasingly unstable political and cultural climate. While we might not have many first hand accounts of the everyday lives of women in Rome and beyond, we do however have the stories of Rome’s empresses. For instance, Emperor Nero’s wives both met violent, man-made deaths— his first wife Octavia being murdered by the Praetorian Guard on her husband’s orders, and his second wife Poppaea Sabina being kicked to death while pregnant with his heir. Saint John Chrysostom even wrote of the nightly shrieks of women echoing through the streets of Antioch, a predominant city in the eastern Roman Empire. Much of this crisis cannot be construed to just Rome, but most of the power imbalances found in Europe's family structures directly derive from that of the Italian peninsula. The head of the Roman household, the pater familias, was famously powerful. According to historical and archeological research conducted by the University of Melbourne, his power included the so-called ‘power of life and death‘ and ownership of the property of even adult children within his control. His wife might exercise violence and coercion (for instance against slaves, lovers, or children) and be its victim.

With a society-wide belief in correctional education, children were also often victims of violence. There is also scattered evidence for elder abuse and the routine sexual and physical abuse of slaves.

Of course, one cannot entirely rule ancient Rome as solely patriarchal and violent, because it was also an immensely diverse place, with numerous forms of masculinity, multiple gender expressions with room for fluidity, and various sexualities that were widely accepted by high society. Similarly, Emperor Elagabalus who ruled for several years in the 200s AD, frequently presented himself in ancient sources as experimenting with cross dressing in the garments of feminine goddesses. That being said, the cultural overemphasis on masculine violence in reference to the entirety of the Roman landscape not only harms women and the broader memetic culture of historical literacy, but also different expressions of what masculinity can be for different people.

But after uncovering some context, let us return to the memetic echoes of 2023 again. After nearly a month of women asking the men in their lives about how often they think about Rome, the cultural framing began to shift. Like much of history, women were able to adapt a memetic trend to then center around female interests. Over the weeks following the height of the original trend, women and girls, primarily on platforms like TikTok, were discussing their own “Roman Empires.” With responses covering both comical and academic grounds, women were able to express themselves and their academic and cultural interests freely. While this might not necessarily be a large step towards gender equity or inclusion, there are vital takeaways from the gendered nature in which both men and women think about historical events.

While this shift in one specific memetic event surrounds a small aspect of pop culture, there are wider representations of gender disparities within academic fields that focus on history, archeology, and sociology. While women have caught up and in many places succeeded men in earning higher learning degrees, there is still a large gap in the amount of female academics in historical fields. In 2008, only about 35% of all history PhD and Masters students were women, and then disparity only grew in the transition period from university to the job market. Nevertheless, progress should be given credit where credit is due— with the rise of a diversified academic community, there has also been a rise in those choosing to study women’s history among other specialties like the history of family structures, LGBTQ+ individuals, and broader scale social happenings. Further analysis by the National Library of Medicine into the diversifying researcher demographics in the United States demonstrates that while women pioneered topics such as gender and women’s history or the history of sexuality, these topics broaden over time to become methodological frameworks that historians widely embraced and that changed in interesting ways as men engaged with them. To put it simply, when there are more female academics, the field of history becomes more diverse in perspectives, with a greater focus on the experiences of historically underrepresented groups and previously neglected aspects of history— leading to a richer understanding of those who came before us with a fuller narrative.

This leads to one question and one question only: what is your Roman Empire? While the overemphasis of patriarchal violence in the history of Rome is culturally rooted in our memetic cultures, that is not to say that those ripples cannot be fixed to serve the broader population. Everyone deserves to have authentic historical literacy, and the ways that our culture frames who gets to have such interests is far from unrepairable.

Sources + Citations

Beard, Mary. Women & Power: A Manifesto . Liveright Publishing, 2017.

Beard, Mary. SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome . Liveright Publishing, 2016.

Discentes. “A Compilation of Important Women From Roman History.” Discentes, 5 Nov. 2023, https://web.sas.upenn.edu/discentes/2023/11/05/a-compilation-of-important-women-from-roman-history/.

Domestic Violence and the Law in Ancient Rome | Forum. 1 June 2022, https://blogs.unimelb.edu.au/shaps-research/2022/06/01/domestic-violence-and-the-law-in-ancient-rome/.

Gender Distribution of Degrees in History | American Academy of Arts and Sciences. https://www.amacad.org/humanities-indicators/higher-education/gender-distribution-degrees-history.

“Internet Trend: Some Men Think about Ancient Rome a Lot.” The World from PRX, 15 Sept. 2023, https://api.theworld.org/segments/2024/04/04/internet-trend-some-men-think-about-ancient-rome-a-lot.

Lindsay, Kate. “Why Is Every Internet Trend About Men or ‘Girls’?” GQ, 20 Sep. 2023, https://www.gq.com/story/men-roman-empire-trend.

Mallan, C. T. “THE RAPE OF LUCRETIA IN CASSIUS DIO’S.” The Classical Quarterly, vol. 64, no. 2, Dec. 2014, pp. 758–71. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0009838814000251.

Swindle , Jenifer. A Rhetorical Use of Women in Tacitus’ Annales . 2003. Brigham Young University , https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1150&context=studiaantiqua#:~:text=Clearly%2C%20Tacitus%20feels%20that%20a,wield%20great%20power%20and%20influence.&text=A%20man%20may%20rule%20the,a%20good%20woman%20behind%20him.

“Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society’s definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference – those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are Black, who are older – know that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause with those others identified as outside the structures in order to define and seek a world in which we can all flourish. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths.”

-Audre Lorde, The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House

Growing up both fat and gay, scaling my own desirability was almost always at the forefront of my evolving mind. I often worried that I wasn’t enhancing myself to meet the gaze of the men around me, or that perhaps everyone was seemingly determining my worth by the way I carried myself. This cycle was constant until I started university, where for the first time in my life, I didn’t feel an existential sense of dread in attempting to mask self expression for social appeasements.

Recently on TikTok, there has been an unnecessarily large amount of discourse surrounding Bella Ramsey and their return to season two of The Last of Us as Ellie Williams. As a long time fan of not only the story, but Bella themself, it was in many ways shocking to exit the bubble of queer fandom space I frequent online and enter one where authentic representation of lesbian identity and a realistic depiction of the character’s circumstances wasn’t good enough.

The argument always goes something like this: Bella “isn’t attractive enough” to play Ellie, and/or “they look like they’re 12 years old.” More common though are faceless men commenting any number of crude or ableist jabs targeting the actor’s recent public autism-spectrum diagnosis or their outwardly queer-presenting appearance. Their replacement of choice, mainly Cailee Spaeny: a 26-year-old, straight actress most famous for her role in Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla.

By no means am I the first to stand on a pedestal and preach about how desire actively shapes systems of power and marginalization, leaving those who don’t fit the cookie-cutter mold of what our patriarchal society deems “in high demand” on the fringes of the media conversation. In television and film specifically, the concerted erasure of marginalized people and the centering of those generally deemed attractive to the heterosexual, white eye creates an image of beauty superiority.

I’m not here to argue what should or shouldn’t define someone’s attractiveness, let alone Bella Ramsey (while I am quite fond of them), because the entire concept is shaped around the subjective perception of beauty. Instead, a lot of the judgements that media audiences hold to creatives comes back to the idea of desirability politics— a hierarchy of existence that determines who deserves love, care, and appreciation for their contributions to society based on individualistic “preferences” that are rooted in biases.

There is also a clear shift in the male gaze of it all. In the game, Ellie is able to be perceived as desirable by male players— with them even being able to change her outfits and actions. And when men aren’t able to sexualize a being into their image, they often resort to cruel rejection to mask their disappointment in the lack of authority they hold over the person, as is the case for HBO’s Ellie.

In a patriarchal society like ours, the capital for women is beauty, and the capital for men is women. In turn, all women, no matter their sexual orientation or autonomous desire, are expected to showcase their worth through their ability to present themselves as outwardly worth pursuing. Lesbianism has long been a threat to the heteronormative way of life, and actively undermines the very structures that the male-centered construct of desirability revolves around.

Ellie’s identity as a lesbian is often overshadowed even in fandom spaces, with her masc or butch presenting appearance yet another threat to the male perception of her desirability. There is such a deeply-rooted diversity problem in the way lesbians are depicted on television that when an actual androgynous queer person takes on the role of one, the response was one of disappointment.

The prolific representation of lesbians in modern media as skinny, white ‘hot’ women, who are as straight passing and are as appealing to the male gaze as possible is nothing new. The butch woman or gender nonconforming lesbian— who appears far less frequently on screen in positive representations— has historically been constructed as a “wrong” woman and something that heteronormative women should be wary of idolizing. Anti-butch notions don’t just exist in “normative” communities, as terf-affiliated “feminist” communities have also criticized butch presentations for “bringing undesirable masculine behavior into a community meant to be a haven from the patriarchy, masculinity, and men.” All of this to say, the distorted representations of on-screen butches manifest because of a fear of people who exist outside the male-centered gender binary. Unlike the numerous fancasts of straight, feminized actresses, Bella Ramsey is a representation of the eternal and dynamic nature of what queerness can be.

Television queerness has always been a performance. Even in the first installment, many were outraged at the behind-the-scenes comment about how Bella chose to wear a gender-affirming binder— an addition that shouldn’t even matter considering that Ellie is supposed to be only around 14 years old in the first game. The entire “debate” surrounding Ellie’s portrayal is structured not around her character arch and experience with trauma, but her ability to fit the fantasies of male audiences.

Queer audiences deserve better, and the creatives working to portray authentic stories are worth more than their scaled artificial desirability. In an article for Everyday Feminism, author Hari Ziyad writes that “all oppression relies heavily on our belief that power discrepancies are just the natural way of things.” Societal structures want us to believe preference is innate and irrefutable because if we don’t question it, we won’t challenge it. The truth is, it’s entirely bullshit.

When I think back on my own experience with the politics of desire, regaining a sense of desire in oneself regardless of heteronormative standards seems to be the only way for queer individuals, like you and me, to learn to exist as liberated beings. The entire narrative of existing outside of the binary is to embrace imperfection, oddness and self-expression— so why not reject the realities in the media that inspires us?

“The Eye of Paris” was born Gyula Hálasz in the Transylvania Region of present-day Romania to Hungarian and Armenian parents. Brassaï had an eye for the elusive, and in capturing photographs of France’s capital at night, he was able to document the universal nature of queer desire.

Eager to penetrate the world stuck in the shadowed back-alleys of the inner arrondissements, Brassaï saw himself in the tumultuous lives of prostitutes, mobsters, gamblers, showgirls, drag performers, addicts, and queer folk. His portraits a trenchant study of individuals who chose to live by their own rules, but only in the spaces that welcomed them in from the rigid outside. The lone photographer felt at home in the underground, a realm of the alien and the alienated, because he, too, was an outcast.

Not unlike the work of his predecessor Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Brassaï found his subjects in the realm of entertainment: boudoirs, jazz clubs, bars, and cabarets. Unlike the painter however, the photographer was welcomed into his spaces as a fellow traveler— gaining a far more personal lens on the individuals who captivated him. Not a gawker, but a confidant. As if his work is a dimly-lit medieval chapel, his fellow outcasts are the saints that adorn the mantels as the only light source for the onward viewer.

The artists at the center of the Paris Surrealist project wanted the ordinary defamiliarized, with poet Andre Breton calling it ‘defamiliarization depaysement’— translated from French as “estrangement.” In pointing out that “strangeness” in the French language is almost always connotated with a foreign entity, the word estrange has the same root as etrangere: foreigner. The queer folks of Brassaï’s portfolio were the “others” of Parisian society, holding no entity of personalization outside the spaces they frequented in the evenings away from their day jobs, families, and class constraints.

Even among the liberal circles of free-thinking artists like that of the western surrealists, homosexuality laid no parallel to the idealized heterosexual attraction (l’amour fou) so easily portrayed in the movement. The surrealists' later 1928 'investigation' into questions concerning sexuality was one more manifestation of the interest in and the threat posed by “deviant” sexuality— even Breton infamously pronounced his repugnance for homosexuality.

Queerness as a practice, then, was deemed unacceptable; this intolerance often attributed to the rise of Nazi sympathizing parties throughout occupied Europe. Nazism was so unapologetically pro-male and pro-masculinity, that even French and German left-wing anti-fascists accused National Socialists of homosexuality. As a result of this aversion to queerness even among the surrealists, they worked to deconstruct not so much the body and sexuality of man, but rather, the body and sexuality of woman as subversive object.

Brassaï understood the allure of queer desire— a force not yet touched by many creatives of his time. “Night does not show things, it suggests them,” the photographer once said. ‘It disturbs and surprises us with its strangeness. It liberates forces within us which are dominated by our reason during the daytime.” There is nothing to hide within his portraiture: no force curating your lens and no aversion of eye contact. If you dare to confront the very human need for gratification, what is left but a sense of relief? Before there was Goodbye to Berlin and Cabaret, there was “Paris at Night:” a constant reminder that humanity desires expression even in times of social repression.

When Edward Hopper first exhibited his work in 1920, viewers at the Whitney Studio Club rejected his projections of employed solitude. Aloneness is the artist’s great theme— transcending all subject matter— symbolizing the American psyche: insecure selfhoods in a nation mended together by a neutrally-destructive pact to survive the five day work week. Ben Stiller’s Severance has become a phenomenon not only for its humor, production, and drama, but for its ability to capture, in it’s own rite, the many ways that the average working person is able to disassociate from their very being.

Silence has the ability to talk to us. Deprived of nature, chaos, messiness, and change, and yet those on the severed floor learn to exist just as complexly as their outdoor counterparts— Hopper would find humor in this idea. The day is like every other with the sameness driving the mad to the unimaginable bargainings of a caged bird, and yet we continue on in hopes of finding a common purpose. Singular beings look out into the world and nobody dares to return their acknowledgment.

The American realist is often attributed to the quote “Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist…” but what is Hopper’s inner life? Akin to the innies of Lumon as an entirely different being or simply a reflection of mental stability? Hopper was adamant about his inability to answer this question, and the same inquiry is persistent in the morals of Severance.

O’Doherty: “Are your paintings reflective of the isolation of modern life?”
Hopper: “It may be true. It may not be true.”

O’Doherty: “What draws you to the dark landscapes you paint?”
Hopper: “I suppose it’s just me.”

Just as Hopper’s subjects are stuck in the confines of their simply-built wooden frames, Mark, Helly, Irving, and Dylan are contained in the endless halls of Lumon Industries hacking away at figures they don’t understand. In silence there is pain, and grief, and longing— feelings we are taught not to attend to in risk of breaking the sterile nature of our sanity. Every person allows their silence to be eroded by isolation, and the world we don’t know shapes our ability to cope with it all. It’s no wonder the refiners grew restless of their environment.

In one of his final interviews before his death with journalist Katharine Kuh, Hopper addressed himself as the lonely one. A reflection of his own mind and nothing more, he painted from a state of his own eye, daring us to see what he sees. At the end of the day, what are we if not voyeurs on the happenings of those around us? Surveillance, while not always as literal as seen in the very minds of Lumon’s Macrodata Refinement team, haunts our every movement.

The presence of architecture is a silent observer, with buildings, walls, and windows assuming their role as passive witnesses to the passage of time. Even though the glorious founder Keir cannot forgo his metaphysical position as all-seeing leader, the bluntly hung portraits of his likeness and childhood home haunt the very foundation of Lumon’s severance program. Hopper remained fascinated with the juxtaposition of old and new, prevalent and desolate. Train tracks stagger through a piece of time mirroring the displacement of old cultural forms by modernity. Haunted by the lens of history, silence gains a new weight when trying to alter the quo.

“The inner life of a human being is a vast and varied realm and does not concern itself alone with stimulating arrangements of color, form and design.” -Edward Hopper

Severance begs us to stand with the protagonists through the silence just as Hopper demanded his audience bare witness. We have no reason to be consuming these individuals’ lives, but here we are. It’s almost like we’ve been caught right-handed examining something we shouldn’t. None of the show’s characters break the fourth wall, neither do Hopper’s paintings of solitude. Even when we’re the only ones watching, there is still a force much larger and more important than us.

The strength of corporate power is found through observation, and both Mark and Helly find their footing for rebellion in their ability to detect shifts in management— utilizing the presence of artificial silence to bite back at surveillance.

There is, however, something far more haunting than isolation in itself: shared loneliness. The figures looming the severed floor are all haunted by grief, seeking to escape to a mindless labyrinth in some way or another— Mark with the loss of his wife Gemma, Irving’s life-long loneliness, Dylan’s search for purpose, and Helly’s need to define herself away from her counterpart. Completely alien from any defining identity, they are left to reconstruct the ways we view them; not unlike the figures avoiding our gaze in Hopper’s paintings of immense contemplation.

We are all just trying to find a way to break the silence. Not merely an absence of some undefined stimuli, but much more than a lack of sound. It is the privacy that we are asked to violate. To be ‘Hopperesque’ is to weaponize the presence of a third eye— distorting the very reality that you find yourself trapped in. It’s not that any of these individuals are existentially lonely, just vying for a way to fill the void.

Over the last couple of weeks, my beloved blog has toped 65 subscribers, and I am so eternally grateful! As I know some of you are unfamiliar with yours truly, I wanted to take a minute to reintroduce myself in a creative way with a bit of cool cultural lore.

Popularized by French author and literary critic Marcel Proust, the so-called “Proust Questionnaire” is a set of 35 questions that would be passed around like a parlor game when guests visited the author’s Paris home. In the game, Proust believed that, in answering the prompts, an individual reveals their true nature. Apart from shallow ice breakers, I too think these questions are a unique way to peak into my brain :)

1. What is your idea of perfect happiness?

Sitting in a bustling café with a matcha latte (honey added), dinner with my mother on a Saturday night, mornings in Door County, evenings in southern France.

2. What is your greatest fear?

Existing with no purpose or motive— never allowing myself to fall in love and dying without a smile on my face.

3. What is the trait you most deplore about yourself?

My envy and inability to separate my worth from that of others.

4. What is the trait you most deplore in others?

A lack of drive to learn about the world around them— ignorance in short.

5. Which living person do you most admire?

My mother and father, Joan Baez, Angela Y. Davis, and all women fighting for liberation, equality, and progress.

6. What is your greatest extravagance?

My tattoos, vintage clothing, art supplies, and vinyl collection.

7. What is your current state of mind?

Anticipatory of the fate ahead of me and my country, anxious about where our future lies, and determined to move through it no matter the state.

8. What do you consider the most overrated virtue?

Self control & reservedness— don’t hold yourself back or filter your being from your true self.

9. On what occasion do you lie?

When it’s necessary for the mental or physical well being of myself or others, never with intent to harm either factors.

10. What do you most dislike about your appearance?

The cellulite in my arms and my rolled stomach, however I have learned to embrace/love my stretch marks (nicknamed my tiger stripes).

11. Which living person do you most despise?

Donald Trump and the people who boost or support his rhetoric, plain and simple!

12. What is the quality you most like in a man?

Gentleness, kindness, tenderness, and humility.

13. What is the quality you most like in a woman?

Empathy, intuitiveness, ambition, and loyalty.

14. Which words or phrases do you most overuse?

There is a long list, but my common are “gagged,” “omfg,” “welp,” “go off,” “ok diva,” and “period.” I know I’m forgetting something obvious but I cannot for the life of me remember more.

15. What or who is the greatest love of your life?

I don’t know if I have yet met said person, but as for a cause, I consider my dedication to advocating for women’s rights and feminist policy in politics my purpose in life!

16. When and where were you happiest?

Surrounded by loved ones in the warmth of the sun or the comfort of a home when there was a world raging outside but it doesn’t matter.

17. Which talent would you most like to have?

Flirting abilities, but also being able to play an instrument really well (preferably guitar or piano) or being good at math.

18. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

Maybe how much I compare myself to others or how much I can overthink decisions that I should just trust my gut instinct on.

19. What do you consider your greatest achievement?

Helping pass safe storage and red flag gun laws in Michigan and getting to attend the signing in 2022. Also, starting this blog!

20. If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?

I wouldn’t come back as a person, but I think I would be a very good fat house cat.

21. Where would you most like to live?

Edinburgh, Scotland.

22. What is your most treasured possession?

My journals, vinyl collection, vintage pin buttons, and this blog :)

23. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

Being filed with hate simply because someone refuses to understand or learn about different perspectives / social issues / ways of life.

24. What is your favorite occupation?

Cafe owner, essayist, studio artist, museum educator, movie composer, park ranger, civil rights lawyer, children’s author.

25. What is your most marked characteristic?

The carnation and boot spur tattoos on my left arm above my inner elbow based off of woodcut stamps.

26. What do you most value in your friends?

Wonder, kindness, humor, honesty, and curiosity!

27. Who are your favorite writers?

Joan Didion, Anne Sexton, Adrienne Rich, Bell Hooks, Sally Rooney, Suzanne Collins, and Toni Morrison.

28. Who is your hero of fiction?

Katniss Everdeen of The Hunger Games.

29. Which historical figure do you most identify with?

Joan of Arc or Hildegard of Bingen, but it’s impossibly to even pick two!

30. Who are your heroes in real life?

My momma.

31. What are your favorite names?

I’ve had a list since I was twelve, so it’s necessary for me to shorten the list significantly. For girls: Joan, Lucy, Phoebe, Francis, Elliot, and Iris. For Boys: Elio, Kit, Laurie, Beau, River, and Arlo.

32. What is it that you most dislike?

Eggs, bigotry, chewing with your mouth open, slow walkers, no curiosity, anti-intellectualism, any kinds of bean.

33. What is your greatest regret?

Not saying “I love you” when I should’ve (I know say it as much as I can).

34. How would you like to die?

In my bed, with my life partner, surrounded by memories of a life well lived soaked in love.

35. What is your motto?

“Let everything happen to you.

Beauty and terror.

Just keep going.

No feeling is final.”

-Austrian poet, Rainer Maria Rilke

“—But to surrender who you are and live without belief is more terrible than dying— even more terrible than dying young.” -Saint Joan of Arc

Everything that was once in her is now instilled in me. Oh prophet girl, how your life was once changed when destiny was bestowed down upon you that fateful night. In the same rite, I was given a journey, too.

Joan wasn’t at a crossroads, no, unlike the pessimism of Tolstoy and the indifference of Nietzsche as noticed by Mr. Chesterton, she embraced a singular calling of passage. The image of our warrior girl burning from the souls of her feet instilled in me like a new religion entirely. Her eyes plastered to the sky in search of further guidance, her faith strapped to her chest like several pounds of dynamite, and always her father repeated in her head.

She was sentenced to death in a stranger’s clothes— long removed from the garments of steel that had embraced her divine message. In the dawn of summer, Joan dressed in men’s clothes, questioned by her captors as to why she continue if she dare come face to face with death. She replied simply that she presented herself as god had mad her: at the will of her mission in the presence of a higher power. Of her accord scribbled in medieval prison logs, “only through fear of the fire that I would rather do penance by dying, than bear any longer the agony of imprisonment— never meaning to revoke anything.”

Male martyrs don’t lend themselves to explanation. In their glory, they’re constantly adorned by their mothers, nurses, angels Biblically accurate or not. Those unlucky to be murdered in the Earthly body of an aged woman or young girl appear tattered, covered in scars, ripped at the bodice missing any such element of autonomy. Even in death, there is no escaping the perilous nature of womanhood.

You will not find Joan in the Bible, nor your local Catholic resource store. She is nowhere and everywhere and everything that exists in the spite of courage. Stranger than scripture and a labyrinth of Christian mythology, she haunts the very narrative of god’s path for us all. She waits for the prayers of wronged women, of ambitious girls, of misbehaved pariahs. And even on days where the alien Abraham barely crosses my brain, I still find myself entwined in hand sending a telegraph of prayer to my warrior in the sky.

I’m a daughter of corn fields and automotive factories alike. Public school teachers and military men shipped off to a foreign land. Devout traditions and community gatherings. I was raised in the grey area— not quite mountainous but not nearly coastal— but all of the sprawling valleys that lie between. There is a reason why the Midwest is commonly referred to as the American Heartland.

People are quick to make assumptions about so-called flyover country. Coastal arrogance is abundant in the monolithic identity often forced upon those who inhabit middle America. People from the industrial rust belt are blue-collar drug addicts that live in crime-centric, crumbling metropolises and farmers from the plains are close-minded religious fanatics. If these stereotypes have taught me anything, it’s that the online age has failed to connect our nation in the way it promised, and some people have never experienced a hot summer day by the lake.

When you ask a midwesterner to describe their hometown, more often than not they’ll respond with some list of contradictions, like: “oh it’s in the middle of nowhere but everyone knows each other like a family.” A land of contradictions, and yet most people will agree that their communities, more often than not divided by partisan politics, are filled with hard working, humble-hearted people who hold a dedication to the land they inhabit. Our labor fuels the mighty steel, transportation, and electronics industries and feeds the masses with its grain, produce, and dairy. The spacing between the average middle American road is exactly one mile, and unless you’re highly familiar with 19th century cartography, wouldn’t know that a public schoolhouse was placed at the intersection of every two country blocks so that every child in the heartland could attend primary school.

The midwest is actually fairly written about, but almost always in a way that disclaims the possibility that it has ever been written or thought about before. And that is why, when asked in my intercultural sociology class to examine a “proverb” attached to an identity of mine, my brain went to Bob Dylan’s With God On Our Side: “The country I come from is called the midwest / I’s taught and brought up here, the laws to abide / and that the land that I live in has god on its side.” Dylan was a product of the mid-century, working family he was raised in: taught in a society where to be a hard working, law abiding citizen was the only right way for an American to go about their life. The American folk revival period in which the proverbial song lyric was coined stems from the rural, working class story-telling generation that near-biblical figures like Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, and Joan Baez were raised to inherit. For midwesterners, the region is nearly a country in itself, with cities like Chicago, Detroit, and Minneapolis as our capitals and the Great Lakes and National Forests our vacationing destinations. Our god, whether Abrahamic in nature or simply an abstract concept, is a force worth listening to— because to be spiritual about one’s purpose is often seen as the only way to go about life.

Before there were red hats and cultic chants of “America first!” there were summer barbecues and union proud signs on chaotically arranged lawns. And suddenly, it can become hard to recognize the environment you were raised in. But in between the cracks, it’s not hard to find clusters of queer community, gatherings at the public library or mutual aid drives at the Methodist church that adorns a Black Lives Matter flag. Even within a region enveloped in an identity crisis, the outline of unadulterated pride can be found.

My 5th grade spiral notebook was chalked full of “Mrs. Anna Rose Mellark” written in sparkly purple gel pen— so it’s safe to say this piece cannot be impartial. Nevertheless, there has always been something so damning to me about the discourse around the two male leads from Suzanne Collins’ legendary trilogy.

There were two types of Hunger Games fans back in the day, even as the narrative has changed drastically in recent years: those who were adamantly team Peeta, and those who were ferociously team Gale in defense. Reddit theories have often speculated that Collins was forced to include a love triangle in order for the first novel to get published, but from what we know from the bestselling author herself, the entire narrative surrounding the two leading gentlemen revolved purposefully around the feelings and actions of our central protagonist.

I want to start this essay by prefacing that the Hunger Games, in all its glory, is a story about Katniss Everdeen: the girl on fire, the mockingjay, the revolutionary. When asked in an interview with author David Levithan about the origins of the male protagonists, Collins answered with:

“Peeta and Gale appeared quickly, less as two points on a love triangle, more as two perspectives in the just-war debate. Gale, because of his experiences and temperament, tends toward violent remedies. Peeta’s natural inclination is toward diplomacy and kindness. Katniss isn’t just deciding on a partner; she’s figuring out her worldview.”

The just-war theory, coined by philosopher Thomas Aquinas, begs the question of why humans choose to engage in war, and if it can ever be truly justified. While incredibly controversial, the theory is meant to present a justifiable means of war with justice being the main objective of armed conflict. Important responsibilities, undesirable outcomes, or preventable atrocities like civilian casualties may justify said war. This doesn’t appear out of a mere connection either— Collins cited the theory as one of the main plot devices used to form the ethics of not only Katniss’s actions, but that of Panem’s broader sociology.

It’s within this theory’s framework that both of the love interests represent the total extremes on either side of the spectrum— with Gale completely embodying the ends-justify-the-means mentality during the rebellion and siege of the Capitol and Peeta believing (apart from when he’s been brainwashed) that one should always try to do the right thing to avoid violence. This relationship evolves over the course of the series too, with the naïveté of the first installment starting as a love triangle and ending in Mockingjay with a choice for where Katniss’s morals lie and how she is able to cope with trauma.

The concept of righteous revenge also crosses my mind when it comes to the Peeta vs. Gale debate— more specifically the closing sequence of the rebellion where Coin asks the victors to vote on holding an “honorary” hunger games of Capitol children as symbolic justice. Peeta, not surprisingly, is the first to voice dissent against such a proposal. Katniss chooses to agree, while she is clearly horrified by the idea, but only to induce trust so Coin will not suspect that she is planning to assassinate her. Since Gale isn’t a victor, one can only speculate where he would cast his vote; but from what we know about his ideology throughout Mockingjay, it’s not hard to determine what his answer would be.

Before we go any further, we should also examine the etymology of both Peeta and Gale’s names in relation to their competing worldviews and relationships with Katniss.

Let’s start with the boy with the bread. Peeta’s name is most obviously a play on pita bread, referring not only to his family’s occupation as part of the merchant class, but also his first encounter with Katniss when he saves her life by purposefully burning a loaf of bread. His last name, Mellark, is a more discrete reference to the meadow-lark, a bird native to the Appalachian region where District 12 lies. Not only that, but larks are commonly used as symbols for lovers within American literature— directly paralleling Katniss’s mockingjay symbolism. While mockingjays are described as solitary birds that travel in flocks in times of crisis, larks have been known to mate for life.

And as for the childhood confidant, Gale’s name draws on multiple origins. Often referring to a strong wind, the name more clearly pays homage to the character’s rebellious and instinctive nature. It’s also a Hebrew name meaning “father of exaltation,” with exaltation meaning to elevate someone in power, more specifically the Abrahamic god— the exact opposite of Gale’s nature. Hawthorne, his last name, also has two differing meanings that both hold some amount of truth: the first being a reference to the American author Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the latter a reference to the Hawthorne Effect in which someone changes behavior because they know they’re being watched or surveilled. For Gale, his name etymology is far more tied to his fate as a military figure than his relationship to his district.

The swamp root, the strong wind, and the bread: that’s essentially what we’re working with here. It’s easy to polarize such specific characters, but in many ways Peeta and Gale are two sides of the same coin, both desiring peace for the people of Panem, just in vastly different ways. The discourse surrounding reconciliation after oppression is never ending, and Collins doesn’t veer away from it unlike many young adult authors who attempt to simplify complicated themes for adolescent readers.

For Katniss, Gale fit perfectly into her life in District 12 pre-games. He was a lifeline to her and her family’s survival, and shared ideas of childish rebellion that most in the districts wouldn’t dare utter. Peeta however, was the reality entering her psyche. And while Gale’s rebellion often pulled Katniss back into the movement, she came to understand in the final installment that merely fighting wasn’t enough to instill lasting change. Mercy cannot rob justice but justice without mercy is dangerous, and Gale’s involvement in the development of the surprise bomb that not only killed her beloved sister Prim, but dozens of Capitol children was evidence enough that unregulated resentment created no solution. If Katniss is the justice, Peeta is the mercy— for a true revolution to be successful, you must have both.

“What I need to survive is not Gale's fire, kindled with rage and hatred. I have plenty of fire myself. What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again. And only Peeta can give me that.”

This is not to say that Gale is in any way a villain, in fact, I reject that conclusion adamantly. Misguided by a deep-set, multigenerational trauma of government mistreatment, Gale acted in the way that he was taught to go about his life— not unlike mining coal in the mines or hunting for game to feed his starving family. It’s hard at times to remember, especially in the films, that all three of these characters are children. And not unlike Finnick Odair’s final line in Catching Fire, “Remember who the real enemy is.”

In the end, Katniss had only ever known struggle. Reconciliation for Panem, as for endless real-world examples, took forgiveness— and instead of resorting back to the fight or flight nature she had been forced to enable her whole life, the mockingjay chose hope.

Sometimes I can still smell the remnants of the burning campfire that my childhood YMCA camp would sing Blowin’ In The Wind around. My mother’s lullabies of American Pie and school assembly singalongs to This Land is Your Land and If I Had A Hammer remain firmly ingrained in my withering national identity.

Most Americans, including myself, were raised with this legend of an unbreakable nation unburdened by the tests of polarization and external conflict. A unified populace that stood on justice and fairness because of a mythical honor code instilled by the Founding Fathers. Today, those ideals feel all but gone. But like folk music in all of her impacts that branch out like the grand oak tree— these values aren’t gone, simply evolved.

The most successful thing that the far-right has ever done is convince the average thinking, feeling citizen that they are anti-American. Figures akin to the modern conservative movement have effectively likened the words “I love my country” with silent complicity— but this is a dangerous myth. Love and attention go hand and hand, because when the citizens of a nation feel nothing but apathy, what is left but a vacuum of power and greed? This is the role of national solidarity, this is the importance of folk music.

Not more than a hundred years ago did the preservation of folk culture become a national effort, beginning with The Archive of American Folk Song in 1928 that later became a center at the Library of Congress. Much of the modern remembrance around the genre comes from the mid-century revival spanning more than three decades between the Great Depression and the end of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

American folk heroes often hold a biblical status— not quite real, and more myth than fact— immortalized by the hymns they either wrote or coined as pillars of resistance.

Woody Guthrie’s This Land Is Your Land, originally written as a refutation of Irving Berlin’s God Bless America, is the foundational resistance song against the maldistribution of land and the wealth disparities that the American populace has faced since the Industrial Revolution. In turn, the floodgates were opened for a new, mainstream confection of folk musicians that rose to prominence alongside an increasingly tumultuous era.

When the sun come shining, then I was strolling
And the wheat fields waving, and the dust clouds rolling
The voice was chanting as the fog was lifting
This land was made for you and me

This land is your land, and this land is my land
From California to the New York island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me

The prophet himself, Bob Dylan, found his inspiration for making music from a couple of Guthrie records propped in the corner of a cafe in Minneapolis. Original freedom fighter Pete Seeger ignited a young Joan Baez’s ambition while she sang barefoot in Harvard Square with only a guitar. Somehow most of the nation’s best creative minds all found themselves in the East Village of New York City at the beginning of the decade.

And at Dr. King’s March on Washington, the pinnacle of the modern American spirit, young folk stars led the crowd of over 250,000 people in a rendition of We Shall Overcome— a tune dating back to a black enslaved community’s gospel hymn. Coined for its hopeful demeanor, the tune has become an international symbol of civil disobedience.

We shall overcome, someday

Oh, deep in my heart
I know that I do believe
We shall overcome, someday

We shall be alright

We shall live in peace, someday

Oh, deep in my heart
I know that I do believe
We shall overcome, someday

We are not afraid (oh Lord)

Even as I doom scroll myself to sleep most nights, consuming news of violent raids in public schools and executive orders hell bent on some kind of revenge against progressive America, it’s still not hard for me to remember why I love my country.

At thirteen, I spent my summer in Germany at an international YMCA exchange program with kids from every corner of the Earth. I dreaded discussing my country with my new host family, deciding that any mention of the president or stereotypical archetypes were to be avoided at all costs so as to not have to explain that not all Americans were gun-loving, bigoted beings with no regard for the outside world. But the inevitable happened, and my face would more often than not flush red with both anger and embarrassment. Usually speaking, I would respond with some snarky comment about how that’s just the way the world is.

It wasn’t until the last night, when all the campers were herded around the campfire for closing ceremonies, did one counselor pull out his worn acoustic guitar for singalong. The opening cords of Dylan’s Blowin’ In the Wind echoed around the circular pit. Seemingly out of nowhere, I was filled with an immense sense of pride: a deeper understanding of what the struggle for progress in my own community had done for those I didn’t share a language, religion, or alphabet with all the way across the ocean.

When our nation is nothing but an idea and our structures deteriorate just as quickly as they were constructed, what remains, to me, are the stories themselves. Whether birthed from the faithful Bible Belt or the wild Rockies, the dairy farms of the Midwest or the immigrant communities in Los Angeles or Chicago, the revolutionary taverns of New England or Appalachian coal miners, Americans have always had a tale to tell.

If anything, folk music is the reassurance whispering in our ears that we’ve been here before, and even through the strife, came out on the other side.