in this situation, the male waiter acted the very same way towards the men at this restaurant, with attention and respect.

society has trained women to perceive their worth in such relation to men and standards around beauty that we believe that men’s respect to us, their kindness, must be in direct correlation with their attraction to us. and men, in turn, are taught that women are less than them, and are only to be used as objects for sexual desire. henceforth, kindness is seen as a symptom of flirting. the bare minimum is converted into love.

but worst of all this doesn’t even protect women who are conventionally attractive. we are told we must starve away to unattainable and unhealthy standards of beauty, must never age (which in itself reflects the perverted nature of beauty standards that attempt to make women smaller, weaker, and less mature), and a thousand other juxtapositions that thread the line between innocence and sexuality. and yet women who meet (or get close to) this standard of beauty are still treated as less than. men will still disrespect and disregard women in the workplace, no matter how beautiful they are. a woman in the spotlight, such as Ariana Grande (and many other female stars) are praised for their beauty until they “take it too far” and succumb to the illness that society has created for them. they are not able to become commercially successful without becoming sex objects, being desirable and marketed to men as visions of fantasy and to women as unrealistic ideals of who they could be. and women with less public visibility, women who climb corporate ladders, are affirmed in their workplace both socially and economically, with attractive individuals being 52.4% more likely to hold high ranking positions. simultaneously, women who are conventionally attractive and do work hard to achieve success in their fields are told that their only reason for this success is their beauty.

but beauty doesn’t make you successful. women are still less likely to hold high ranking positions in all fields, despite making up the majority of higher education graduates and valedictorians. and it certainly doesn’t protect you from sexual assault and harassment.

you see, the point of this piece is that beauty standards are created by men to not only make women weaker and more submissive, but turn us against each other. pretty privilege is yet another tool to create division amongst women when they most need to be united in the face of a rising conservative threat to our rights, threats that come in the form of shifts as small as what style of jeans are in to skinny culture and pro life legislation. because in the end, everything is political, we just are told to close our eyes and grow numb to injustice.

july in the midwest is full of visits to the great lakes and the heat and the threat of summer storms that will toss branches and create streams along roadways. it is the month of lying still in the shade because it is too hot to do anything but lay. these are the things that during the sweltering midwestern heat of july kept me sane and creative.

clothes and shoes

• kimchi blue aurelia lace trim flutter sleeve blouse

https://www.urbanoutfitters.com/shop/kimchi-blue-aurelia-lace-trim-flutter-sleeve-blouse

this is the most perfect lace blouse. i have it in both the white and the black and i wear it nearly every day. i style it with track shorts for a carrie bradshaw look, with jeans, a skirt, jorts, honestly anything. it is super flattering and brings a feminine feel to any look.

• bdg logan printed buckle baggy barrel jeans

https://www.urbanoutfitters.com/shop/bdg-logan-printed-buckle-baggy-barrel-jean

another pick from urban outfitters, i have worn these jeans as often as possible during the heat. they are long enough for me (hard to find at almost 6 feet tall) and they are the perfect amount of baggy. i sized up a couple for an extra baggy look and have them in the pinstriped print. they are a fun pair of jeans that add something different but still classic to my wardrobe.

• a thrifted white midi skirt

i found this skirt at a local thrift store and it is the perfect skirt for the summer. it is linen and has an adjustable waistband which makes it easy to get on and off. i throw it on over a bathing suit at the beach or with a simple top for a day on the town.

• women’s woven mini sundress universal threads

https://share.google/2T8KjxQTaYyiGnzWe

i have been looking for the perfect little sundress and this one from target is exactly that. the embroidery is a super cute detail and the boatneck and babydoll style are very jane birken. i wear it after the beach or just to walk around since it is so hot out.

• havaianas women’s logo flip flops

https://www.target.com/p/havaianas-women-39-s-logo-flip-sandals-pink-7-8/-/A-95047183

these are by far my most worn shoes of not only this month, but the whole summer. initially purchased for the dual purpose of beach outings and as shower shoes for a family camping trip to iceland, i have worn these shoes more than anything. they are easy to put on and look cute with every outfit. i have walked miles in them with little damage to my feet and the pink color is such a nice pop in my outfits.

music

my favorite songs from this month were consistent with the hot, carefree, beachy summer that is for me so associated with this month.

• happiness is a butterfly- lana del rey

• rhiannon - fleetwood mac

• art deco - lana del rey

• the whole album ultraviolence - lana del rey

• gypsy - fleetwood mac

• american cars - noah kahan

• the chain - fleetwood mac

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books

i have finally existed a long lasting book slump this month. two books in particular stood out to me this month.

• mina’s matchbox - yōko ogawa

this book follows a young girl in japan who moves in with her wealthy aunt. she befriends her cousin mina, a sickly girl who loves to write stories about the drawings on matchboxes and rides a pygmy hippo. the story is a beautiful tale of a family in decomposition and two young girls trying to find who they are.

• blue nights - joan didion

this is a short book. it describes didion’s life as she reflects upon the life and death of her daughter and tries to grapple with life without her in it. per usual, didion’s prose is magnetic and there is so much insight into what it means to move forward from tragedy. the writing is beautiful and the story heartbreaking.

skincare and makeup

• rice lipids + ecotoin microemulsion - the ordinary

https://www.ulta.com/p/rice-lipids-ectoin-microemulsion-moisturizer-pimprod2058909?sku=2657152

this is a lightweight moisturizer that i have been using this summer. it keeps my skin hydrated, even when i have been swimming and in the sun, while not feeling heavy on my skin in the heat.

• super serum skin tint - ilia

https://iliabeauty.com/products/super-serum-skin-tint-spf-40-tinted-moisturizer

this skin tint is great. not super heavy and the clean ingredients make sure it doesn’t clog my acne sensitive skin while evening my skin tone. it also has spf 40 in it.

• sulfur 10% powder to cream concentrate - the ordinary

https://theordinary.com/en-us/sulfur-10-powder-to-cream-concentrate-100708.html

this is the only other product i have been using on my skin. i place it on problem areas, like my chin, where i am prone to, in particular, hormonal breakouts. it doesn’t overly dry out my skin, which is good with sensitive skin.

movies, tv shows, and activities

• cyanotype

sunprinting is the ultimate summer craft. it is so fun to print on shirts and other items and then wear them.

• the x-files

i just started rewatching the x-files. god do i love scully and mulder.

• marie antoinette

the costumes, the set, the feminist messages. we don’t need to trade pink for power ladies.

• the odyssey

this movie was fantastic. the message and the cinematography, don’t get me started.

• henna

doing henna tattoos on myself was initially a way to make me want tattoos less. but after doing a hundred different tattoos on myself with henna, i have to say, it might have made me want them more when i am older. it is also a very fun way to express yourself creatively in a unique style.

july has come to an end, as is summer ending too. i cling tightly to the last of the heat, the last of the freedom, the last of my childhood.

now i struggle less with disordered eating, but often grapple with insecurities around the way my body looks.

of course, today, if younger me were to meet me in the street she would be impressed. i have good taste and i have maintained a more slender figure. i have friends, something that 13 year old me longer for desperately. my instagram is curated, as is my reading list. i write poetry that is well received by my teachers and my peers. i am, in all regards, the coolest person i know.

but it still isn’t enough.

there is always another milestone. another shirt to buy, another trend to follow, another ten pounds to lose. it is an endless cycle.

women in particular are trapped in this cycle. the capitalist system has created a world in which women are never enough. there is always something more to buy to make themselves hotter, cooler, closer to a perfection that is unattainable.

roxanne gay, the brilliant essayist and cultural critic, writes, "What does it say about our culture that the desire for weight loss is considered a default feature of womanhood?" from a young age we are taught that to be small is to be beautiful. every ounce of media we consume is full of the praise of thigh gaps and flat stomachs, bodies that are unattainable without starving. no one had to tell me i was fat when i was 12 years old, one day i just knew it. perhaps it was the doctor who told me at my health physical i needed to lose weight or maybe it was the outcast from my peers, but either way i learned that i needed to shrink.

you see though, it never really mattered how thin i was. being skinny didn’t make me more likable. it didn’t give me friends. it just made me stand out less. and now, now i am 17. and part of me still wants to shrink, to become more manageable, more easily consumed.

the patriarchy has always been closely tied to beauty standards. a woman who is small is weak. she cannot stand on her own. she is the 30 degree complementary angle to a man’s 60 degrees. this is reflected in our politics, in our stripping away of women’s rights, making female value in society smaller. it is reflected in our media, in who and what is considered beautiful and trendy. the woman who we are supposed to be right now is quiet, small, easily controlled. that woman is skinny, and that woman is beautiful because she is not loud and she does not take up space and she does not take she only gives until she is the skin left behind by the dying cicaidas.

i am cool now. i am fairly skinny, though of course i could be skinnier, i could do my ab workout more often and i could eat less. i am well read in the kind of way that is considered cool. i am just loud enough. i wear the outfits i see on pinterest and i look good on social media. but isn’t this still all an act, an ingredient list i am assembling in the hopes it creates a person worthy of being loved?

where did personality go?

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i think so much of myself is a reflection of what i wish i could be. i sit and scroll on pinterest and instagram, watching attentively as i learn how to be cooler. i buy the pants and the shirt and i read the book, or maybe i don’t, maybe instead i just scroll, lying sideways on the bed until the sun becomes the color of a grapefruit and i am no longer human. i watch and i scroll and i consume and i purchase because maybe then i will be cool enough. maybe, if i keep trying, keep searching, then i will find the right version of myself to be loved by the world.

“you are the coolest person i know” my friend comments on my instagram post. i smile. but i am not cool enough, none of us will ever be. we can run until our hip bones jut like warning signs against our skin, until our bodies are fragile and we are silent beasts waiting for our masters to tend to us, to lead us. we can spend until our souls are empty robin’s eggs eaten by crows. never will we be cool enough. because as it turns out, the truth is that it is all a lie.

with love,

grace 💌💋

i often see videos or read articles about not being ashamed to eat out alone or do things without others, but for me this has never been a reservation. from a young age, as the oldest daughter, i found peace in time spent alone. these were times in which i waited for no one and didn’t have to negotiate my needs and wants with others, as i was so used to doing. now, at 17, with the mobility of a car, i spend days on my own often. in these moments i can listen to my own music and go where i wish. just yesterday i went out to lunch by myself and then to the beach.

when i am alone i am not bound to other’s contentment, only my own.

so much of the world tells young women that solitude is a burden, something we are supposed to be attempting to escape. but that is a tale to bind us to patriarchy. a woman who can be alone is a woman who doesn’t need a man. being unafraid and unashamed to do things without company is not only empowering, but it also allows women in particular to push back against social stigma that makes us believe that we are not complete without men. solo dates, solo travel, these things all allow women to better learn who they are and become more full versions of themselves. this means that they are content with themselves and not constantly searching for fulfillment in others, which is what society has taught us is the only way to find happiness.

this is not to say that i do not enjoy companionship. i have good friends with whom i enjoy spending time with. rather it is to say that to lead a fruitful life one must balance time spent alone with time spent together.

being alone allows us to find who we are independent of those we love. when we are with friends and family we are always in part a reflection of those around us. we are dividing our wants up to make them bite sized and manageable for others, because compromise is a big part of socializing. in order to be good and functioning members of a community we are required to take into consideration the wants and needs of others, which often requires an extent of relinquishment of our own desires. so much of life is performing what is expected of us. we are attempting constantly to curate an image of the person we wish to be in this world, but when we are away from those who can identify that role we are expected to fill, and or people in general, we are allowed to act without expectation.

i am of the belief that to be a better partner and friend one must be comfortable with being alone. perhaps this is why i have never had a boyfriend, because i am content to wait for someone who is comfortable in solitude as well. i need time alone to reassure myself of my identity. there have been moments in my life where i am alone often because i am unwilling to be unhappy with others in the pursuit of false companionship. and this taught me that solo dates and moments without the input of others are the best way to find myself. it allows me to honor my own needs and wants. every time i choose to do something i enjoy, like eating breakfast out with only the company of a book, i am working towards finding a more honest version of myself. these days i am doing my best to lead a more joyful life through the balance of both time with a curated collection of good friends and time on my own, where I can do things only for myself, and not for the hope that it makes everyone else happy.

i have spent far too much of my life chasing others joy. time by myself is how i heal that part of me that is chasing the approval of others.

with love,

grace

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Away from the two of us

So i watched the leaves fall 

As we knew your hair would soon

And i tried to press the brakes

But turned out i was still 

too small

So winter came 

And froze the right chamber of my heart

So i could no longer imagine 

That life would again start

But of course you aren’t dying

No, its me who’s leaving soon

And so i keep trying 

To run back to you

someone recently told me I was performative on my instagram page. I think they meant this as a compliment, something to do with the fact that I took aesthetic pictures. but I took it as an insult. I think this is because this word has the connotation of someone trying to impress others. and trying isn’t something cool people do. i became self conscious of how frequently I post, wondering if people thought I was obnoxious or annoying because I posted like I was an influencer. I think that is because our culture has decided that to care is weak and stupid. the word performative has ruined trying.

I have always loved to take pictures, ever since I was young I have carried a camera. when I was little I cherished my Polaroid camera more than nearly anything. when I got a phone I took photos of everything. the thing is that I have always been a little bit of a loner, but I grew up with a mother who had a good sense of style and in a beautiful home filled with art and the tools to create it. photography, reading, fashion, and crafting became ways for me to fill my time since I hardly hung out with people. my instagram also became a reflection of that artistic expression. and although it is a private account I have a collection of what I might go so far as to call fans, people who admire my ability to take cool pictures. but I still felt dirty when someone insinuated the idea that I try too hard.

the truth is that I love trying. I think that it is fun to take pictures and catalog my life. I love reading and educating myself. but these are things that social media has told us is embarrassing to do, since it exposes that we really do care about things. especially in high school, the safest thing to be is uncaring. it is horribly easy to be attacked to loving something, like a certain singer. and so we are all just floating in space trying to seem as if we don’t really like anything. and we perform in the act of shunning those who do care, who do try. we do this because we are ashamed that we are too bland to do such things, or not good enough at something to commit to it so greatly, or simply not brave enough to tell others that we do in fact have opinions. the fear of being cringy is ruining our chances of being unique.

the majority of people I actually find interesting are people who have interests, who do try. they aren’t blank sheets of paper too scared to be pink because they think next second blue might be the right color to be. I am so tired of trying to remain curated to what is safe, when in reality the best thing you can be is a multitude of things that may not be liked by everyone. that is what is freedom from others opinions is, the freedom to try, the freedom to be different.

even all these years later we are still fighting the urge to conform. to fit into whatever box is cool during that time. it isn’t just confined to high school either, I notice it in adults. when we are only alive for such a small period of time, why are we wasting it on trying not to care? no one will ever get anywhere if we are all so afraid of being cringy for trying.

when the idea of a performative man went viral, I felt slightly attacked, because although I am a girl, I too carry a book and wired earbuds. I read feminist literature and wear baggy jeans. I was suddenly afraid that I was embarrassing for these things. I worried that I was made fun of behind my back. rather than questioning those who hated, who mocked, I critiqued myself. I didn’t stop to ask whether I liked these things, just came to a decision that I was trying too hard. I didn’t want to be disliked because of what I liked, and so I did what I have always done, which is try to hide what I really like behind ideas of a lack of opinion on things, like music or movies, because I am always so afraid of being shamed for what I like. but that is so tiring. it takes so much more energy to attempt to be uncaring. I want to just have fun, to just love what I love. but that is a lot easier said than done, since we are all so desperate to not be deserted or lonely. even my substack, exposing myself to what hurts me, to what I care about, to my feelings feels risky sometimes, and I often worry that others feel I am a try hard, or not very good. I am working on caring less about those things and more about whether I actually like what I am doing in my life. so far I think I do.

and this might be the type of cliche a teacher would have on a poster in their room, it might be cringy, but maybe that is good, and so I leave this article with the words that the coolest thing you can be is yourself, and that the best thing you can do is try.

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i have always been tall. in the sixth grade i was nearly 5 foot 10 and wore size 10 shoes. being tall made me hyperaware of how much space i took up socially because i already took up so much space physically. since i was seen, i felt very uncomfortable being heard.

when i was young i took my height as a badge of honor. i proudly boasted it, standing back to back with my peers and emerging victorious in this battle. not only was i tall, but i was smart, and i became known by my peers for my perceived maturity. i became trapped in the cage of only performing in the role of the intellectual, since that was what was expected from me.

but as i entered middle school i can remember feeling acutely aware of my differences. women in general are expected to shrink, be quiet. but i was outspoken, especially in academia. i raised my hand and contributed to every conversation. on top of it i was tall. every one of my friends was small, and every time i would stand beside them i would feel the compulsion to shrink away. my shoulders would hunch, and i would try to be quiet, so that maybe they wouldn’t notice that i was different and send me away. standing in a group of girls even now i feel awkward drawing attention to myself.

for years i have isolated myself for fear of rejection. i went quiet before they could tell me to leave

a few days ago i was at the beach with some friends. we were playing on the shore and i made a joke that involved me running around and gesticulating. the moment i did so, attracted attention to myself as more than simply my words, i felt horribly exposed and afraid. i worried immediately that i would be mocked or rejected, even though i trusted these girls and knew that they were already aware of my height and weren’t going to suddenly send me away. but a part of me always fears that my friends are simply appeasing me, that i am the diversity hire of the friend group.

but i have also come a long way since i was a insecure middle schooler. i have learned that by putting myself out there, by expanding my personality beyond my intellectualism, by making jokes and being silly, not always mature, i become more real of a person. i am more approachable, not more rejectable. the thing is that women are always expected to be small, not just physically but also in their composure. because i am unable to physically shrink myself more than just the hunching of my shoulders, the internalized misogyny made me feel as if to be accepted, not only by men but also by other women, i needed to find other ways to make myself smaller. for a long time i struggled with my body image, especially surrounding my weight. i grappled with disordered eating in 7th and 8th grade and i still battle to accept myself the way i am and to not feel compulsion to starve myself in an effort to shrink. but this internal misogyny placed in me by growing up in a society that expects women to be seen and not heard has also made me feel the need to be silent. women are not granted the same rights as men to be anything. a woman who is smart cannot also be funny. a woman who is pretty cannot also be bright. a woman who is tall cannot also be loud. i am constantly, subconsciously working to fit myself into these boxes that have been created for me.

with people i care for deeply and feel comfortable around, i feel free to be my whole self. someone who is varied and complex, who is loud and spontaneous and a little ridiculous. and that is what i wish for the world. i wish that we could create a place for women to be anything, just as men have that freedom. social equality is far from reached. women are expected to be silent and small. but we are not all timid mice. and it is exhausting to work to make ourselves into something we can never truly be: invisible.

so i urge all of us women to be louder. to not shrink. to roll back our shoulders, because otherwise, if we stay quiet, that is what will always be expected from us: silence.

every great artist has suffered. they have had horrible lives, depression, terror, abuse, alcohol. but their struggles are what they have turned into works of art, music, paintings, poetry. pain is the sunlight in this photosynthetic reaction we call creation.

do not misunderstand. i have suffered, and i have turned those feelings of isolation and sorrow into poetry and essays and stories. but i wonder if i can create works that beautifully move members of society without the heavy weight of the world upon my shoulders, crushing.

the thing about great art is that it touches us. it reaches into the reader, the listener, the viewer, and it acknowledges the fact that we have suffered because someone else out there has suffered too. and that means the creator must undergo much pain first. they must feel, so deeply, these emotions, whether they be those of intense joy, intense sorrow.

the artist who feels is the artist who creates. every great has sacrificed their happiness in the effort of their art. they have endured the injustices of the world and the only thing that emerged was a work of writing or music or painting.

but i don’t want to drown in my emptiness in order to create something that is full.

can i write about the regular world, the one that i reside in, and still touch people? can i feel a life of highs and lows, of things lost but so many things gained, and all the while create bodies of work that touch others?

why must it be that art has to touch the broken parts of us to be great? can i simply speak to the parts of us that exist, the parts that some times feel alone, and are often exhausted, and to the parts of us that are confused?

i woke up today, early, because i had to study. and then i took a math final, and i missed one question, and i felt sort of sick because i couldn’t understand why i missed one, why i didn’t succeed in perfection. and the thing is that is the majority of my pain. i have had worse things happen, things i won’t write about now because that occludes the point. the point being that perhaps normalcy, those small disappointments, not the deep dark sadness, is what we have all been really longing for. perhaps the greatest art is the art that doesn't submit to the idea that it must be extreme.

we are all each searching. and we all experience the little sorrows, the small pains, the irritations. and sometimes we are given greater pain, upon which we need something stronger. but most often, most often all we need to know is that someone else is out there, feeling pain at the missing of a single question on a math exam too.

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i didn’t have a lot of female friends, or friends at all, throughout most of my youth. i was a loner. but i have recently made a close group of girls, and it has healed a part of me that i didn’t realize was broken. i have since then been leaning into the feminine parts of myself, and remembering the ways that femininity has been perverted by our culture.

female friendship is, i would argue, the strongest human bond, only behind the bond between mother and child. it is sisterhood, but chosen. these girls are the people with whom you can entrust your life, your deepest secrets, your greatest fears. they are the ones you laugh with, and the ones you cry with. a girl friend will go to battle for you if you need, but also be the one who brings you soup when you are ill, and the one who will make you laugh during a situation in which you would normally be in tears. i didn’t realize how much i needed it until i had it.

but in its power, the patriarch has also attempted to villainize female love and friendship. gossip, which historically has been a way for groups of women to spread messages and stories amongst each other, many of which serve to protect and unify them, is criticized and vilified. not only that, but women are encouraged to turn on each other, are made to believe that only a few women can make it to the top and henceforth they must step on other women in an effort to ensure they are the one who makes it. beauty standards force women to compare themselves to each other in an effort to assert whether they are victorious in the battle over who is better looking, who has done the right things to attract the right attention. and women who too closely adhere to the male eye are called whores. there is a line to walk, and women are trained to act as men’s attack dogs if a woman toes that line.

there has also been an infantilization of girlhood. pink is seen as weak. beauty standards center around childlike svelteness, a lack of hair, and delicate, youthful skin, free of impurities. this appeals to perverted ideals of what it means to be beautiful. to be beautiful is to be young. the prime of a girl’s looks is claimed to be in their late teens and early 20s. women are supposed to be weak, childlike, easy to control. and our beauty standards reflect this.

fashion and culture has seen attempts to reclaim femininity away from the patriarch. artists such as Olivia Rodrigo are seen leaning into the babydoll dress while also supporting feminist movements of female independence and the rights to abortion. women are wearing the color pink again, picking flowers, and knitting. but there is still a constant question of if this is still upholding ideals of a toxic society, or if it can be done for the love of the color pink and crochet, not a reflection of the shift towards conservative ideology.

in recent years the conservative movement has grown massively. the rights of women are being stripped away, beginning with the overturning of Roe v Wade. the idea of a woman staying home to raise children and ideals of republican motherhood are resurfacing and being pushed by conservative political leaders and influencers. and i question if in this cultural moment if the reclaiming of femininity and the color pink is in reality a reflection of conservative push against female independence from the home, or a counter movement against that push.

i hope that it is the latter. i want to be free to paint my nails pink and wear sparkles and bake. but i also want the freedom to build a career, to be educated, to read literature. to be more. because that is the goal of feminism, the freedom to choose. to choose to have or not have children, to choose to wear dresses or wear jeans, to choose to cook or to read. i want to choose to have picnics with my girl friends and to read alone in the sunshine. and i want others to have the freedom of choice as women. i want to reclaim femininity from the patriarchy.

I have been running backwards

To someone i used to be

Stringing wires across fields trying to reach her again

Connecting them to aluminum cans

But she is quiet on the other end

I push open the doors of past

Peeking back into the girls i used to be

Looking through eyes that hadn’t the shades I do now

Trying to remember the time before

My life is in grey and white

I know that before it used to be

In the colors of the crayons i used to keep

In the sparkled pencil pouch

Found the other day

Tucked in the back of the closet

I keep reaching my hands out

To the past

I keep touching the glass that keeps me here

Something has been lost

Felt

On the crest of my cheekbone

The back of my hand

I used to wear it around my neck

My hands flutter to my chest

Finding nothing there

I have a timeturner

It is the pages of a notebook

It is the stuffed animal i used to carry

It is the things i used to love

Maybe if I hold them tight

Close my eyes

Make a wish

The world will turn back again

I wonder if the lines are dead

And that is why everything has gone so quiet

I need to put the phone back in the cradle

And stop waiting for something to begin

While all i am looking for is the past to rebuild around me

1. an open mic night

my sister plays guitar, i can kind of sing. i want to perform at a open mic night. the thing is it doesn’t matter if i suck, it matters that i tried it. i can laugh at myself, i can forget the words. it is an exercise in knowingly doing something i’m not great at, but i love. and maybe, who knows, we might be great.

2. a camping trip

i camped a lot when i was younger, my mother and sister and i in a tent, roasting stores over a campfire. i want to make new memories with my friends camping. i want to make hammock bunk beds and look at the stars and cook pancakes on a camp stove.

3. drive in movie

there is a drive in movie theater in my hometown. i want to pack the back on my car with blankets and candy and pillows and popcorn and go to the drive in. it is nostalgic, it is fun, it is going to be amazing.

4. picnic in a field

there are lots of fields where i am from. i want to pack up a picnic with my friends, bring a book and a pack of cards, and drive somewhere where we can be surrounded by grass and flowers. we can make flower crowns and lay under the sun.

5. take the train to the city

taking public transport is far more romantic than driving, especially through the suburbs on the outskirts of Chicago. the train is great for people watching, and we can bring our bikes and ride them along the lakeshore, before we lay out towels and jump off the trail and into the lake. before heading home we can get Mario’s Italian ice to cool down.

6. analog photo booths

is there anything more aesthetic than a vintage photo booth. i want to bring friends and take pictures in the booths that we can write the dates on the back of and keep in a box to one day be discovered by my children.

7. road trip

i want to pack my car and just drive with some friends or family, drive to anywhere. we can sleep in the car and eat ramen at gas stations, driving until we reach a coast or a town in which we can stop and stay for a while.

8. digital camera diary

i want to buy a digital camera and record videos with my friends for our future children or nieces and nephews. we can pass it between friends, creating a digital diary of our summers as teenagers.

9. try a new sport

i used to play a sport in high school for a long time time, but now i don’t. i want to try out new, unique sports, like boxing, surfing, or skateboarding. i want to learn new things and find new ways to stay active.

10. cook book club

i want to start a cook book club with my friends. we can meet once a month and bake or cook something from a cook book. then we can have a little dinner party.

11. host a party

it doesn’t matter what kind of party, a craft party, a dinner party, a white party. i want to make my house or backyard into a magical little space where i can host something fun.

12. projector movie night

i am going to turn my driveway into a movie theater. i will make snacks, play a film, and bring out a bunch of soft things to lounge on.

13. reading day

one whole day i would like to spend just reading out in the sun.

14. beach day

my grandpa lives on the lake. my friends and i can drive out there, bring snacks and books and maybe a craft or a card game, and we can hang out on the beach all day, tanning and laughing.

15. alter ego

go out to eat or get a coffee and pretend to be from a different country. put down a different name on my order. speak in an accent. it just brings something different and fun to the day.

16. take an art class

i want to take a random art class, like pottery, glass blowing, tufting, literally anything. i get a new talent and a new trinket.

17. girl group chat

i would like to make a group chat of a bunch of girls who want to do fun things, like the ones above. someone can propose an idea and people who are interested or can make it can agree to go. i can make new friends and have people to complete my side quests with.

we all know the cool girl. she wears thrifted jeans and carries a bag with three books, chapstick, mints, earbuds, and nail polish in it. she speaks another language, usually french or maybe spanish. her hair is undone in a way that makes her look like she just woke up but is always classy. she is who we want to be.

ever since i realized i wasn’t cool i have wanted to be. i was odd in middle school, bad haircuts, no sense of self or style. but i longed to be cool. obsessively i would scroll on pinterest or stalk girls i found cool on the internet. i would try to emulate them, buying the clothes they did, picking up their hobbies. i wanted to read what they did, eat what they did, be who they were. but i couldn’t ever copy and paste their personalities, their style, onto myself. it always fit oddly.

i think that the trick to being a cool girl is being uncaring about the opinions of others.

the things we love about her are that she doesn’t care what others think. and this is a cliche, but also a truth. she wears chipped nail polish and undone hair. she reads feminist literature and wears heels with jeans. everything about her is pulsating with the fact that she isn’t looking to impress you. it is messy.

we are always trying so hard to be someone else. to wear the right clothes, the right makeup, to say the right things. but a cool girl doesn’t care about those things. she wears what she likes. she listens to the music she likes. she isn’t copying, her authenticity is what makes her interesting. she shops from small brands that she likes. she doesn’t do fast fashion. she buys pieces she actually loves, not what is simply in vogue

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the cool girl is cool because she tries, but not to impress us. she reads, she journals, she travels. she tries for herself. she works out and she listens to podcasts. she thrifts clothes because it is cheap and good for the environment. she cares about social issues and others, but not their opinions of who she is. she isn’t doing it for us, she is doing it for her.

the point i am making is that i finally became cool when i stopped caring what my peers would think. i stopped being afraid to wear an outfit to school. i liked what i liked. i speak my mind, avidly. i read a lot. i wear capris and flip flops. i try hard, but for myself. i write and i post often on social media because these are things i love. the thing that made me cool was not pinterest, but a sense of self. this is not to say that i no longer struggle with my self image or feel deeply uncomfortable with who i am at moments, but rather that i am cooler now because i care less whether other people like what i do, and more whether i do.

the cool girl is cool because she doesn’t care. so stop trying so hard for others

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This shift is important, and the whiplash against a technological life needs to be fast and strong, especially in our school systems.

Ever since the start of the public school system in the United States, each generation of schoolchildren has attended school for a longer period of time, and with that they have demonstrated higher intelligence, learned more, and become better critical thinkers. This is known as the Flynn Effect. In history we have seen children to have a 3.3% higher IQ per decade. But now that has stopped. It isn’t that kids aren’t going to school for a longer time, they are. Rather, it correlates to the introduction of technology into the school system. Kids no longer learn pen to paper. Instead everything is on the computers. And sure, it makes grading and writing an essay far faster, but is efficiency a worthy sacrifice for our children’s dumbing down?

In the majority of US schools, children are provided laptops or iPads from their educators at as young as kindergarten. They are given access to a variety of learning platforms and videos from which they are taught many different things, such as math and their letters. But this is problematic, since the human brain is programmed to learn from other humans, rather than a computer screen. Children have a harder time learning from a screen, and with that, they are learning less. And with AI becoming so widely available, children are being met with far more ways to escape doing work. Even teachers turn to AI to create assignments now, and many students present the idea that if a teacher uses AI, then they have no moral restrictions from using it themselves to complete assignments. This means that teachers do not teach and students most certainly do not learn. Children are becoming reliant on technology, adults are as well.

This reliance and lack of ability to think critically or independently is a dangerous game to play. It is an agenda that people in power can use to maintain power, because a population without high levels of literacy or critical thinking skills is one that cannot differentiate between propaganda and truth. They are easy to control. The United States has an average reading comprehension level of a 7th or 8th grader, but with the majority of Americans reading comprehension below 6th grade levels. This means that people cannot understand works of literature such as The Handmaid’s Tale and The Hunger Games, which serve as warnings on totalitarian leadership and the impact of conservative movements to strip away the rights of the poor, minorities, and women. Meaning that when signs of these things appear in the real world, they cannot recognize them. Literature, reading comprehension, these are things that are decreasing as we see the application of more and more technology into learning spaces. And this is a dangerous trade off, since we are also constantly exposed to propaganda online.

This constant exposure also serves to introduce people struggling with depression or loneliness to groups that propose violence as an answer to isolation. Mass shooters often are found to have been a part of online groups on the dark web, groups that idolize gun violence and provide a sense of community for isolated members of society. These people are then supported in their violent fantasies, which are sometimes acted upon and result in innocent lives being lost. Mass shootings, in particular school shootings, are a relatively new danger, and one that is specific to places like the US, developed nations without proper restrictions on guns or social media. They began in the 90s, and as technology and social media became more and more accessible, school shootings became more frequent and devastating. A big issue is that children feel isolated and turn to social media to make them feel more connected, but this serves only to make them more depressed. They then seek for further community, and sometimes find communities that place the blame for their struggles on their peers, women, the LGBTQ+ community, or minority races or religions. They are then encouraged to use violence against these groups as retribution for their pain. Technology and social media teaches them violence is a solution to depression and alienation.

Culturally, we are beginning to see a resistance to the digital world. The anti-AI sentiment is strong and there has been an uptick in the distaste for being online, especially as we see the way it takes away from the real experiences we can gain from the physical world. People are buying flip phones and locking up their smartphones. Influencers show their tips for staying offline, digital detoxes and physical media are trending ( yes, I understand the hypocrisy of offline trending on social media). But this cultural movement must be stronger, and it must have a greater influence on legislation. There is the beginnings of this legal action, and states across the country are passing phone and personal device bans in schools. But this doesn’t mean the end of technology in schools, nor will it stop the use of it at home. Students also express concerns about contacting family members during emergencies with the phone bans, and these are valid concerns, especially in the US. But going back to the books could help to ease these anxieties. By mitigating the use of computers in schools, students will be forced to be offline more often. This can help to create a social shift that brings kids off of the Internet and back into the real world. It won’t be as efficient, but it will not only eliminate portions of time spent online for our youth, it will also allow them to learn better.

I want to be offline. I want to live more. I want change to happen so that my generation can thrive. I want to read more and scroll less. I want to go on adventures rather than text about them. I don’t want to live vicariously through my phone screen, I want to touch the world with both feet and both hands, with eyes pointed out rather than down. I want to take life back from big tech.

I want a revolution.

I grew up on the lake. Those of us who have spent enough time in the area will know what lake I mean. When I was just born my mother packed up our little house in South Haven, Michigan and returned home. For our family, home has always been more equated with the lake than with Valpo itself, for the house on the beach has the sort of nostalgia of home. She and I lived there for three years. Us two in the house my great grandmother had died in, with her collection of tea pots and old photographs of her grandchildren who, by the time I was born, the first of what would be 5 great grandchildren, were all pursuing their own lives. But my mother, having found herself no longer alone in the world, knew that she had to return to the lake. And so we did.

The lake house is in Porter Beach, the quirkier, older neighborhood wedged between the national park and Dune Acres, who built themselves a gate to keep Porter Beach people, who had been there long enough that they didn’t need generational wealth or black cards to own houses on the lake, out. When I was born there wasn’t a gate, but times change, and eventually there was one built. The house itself is faded blue, with a porch that stretches nearly into the road and from which at night you can watch the sunset and see the Chicago skyline. There is a mulberry tree on the road that you take to the beach, and most often I do not wear shoes despite the fact that the road has needed repaving for years and is quite gravely. When I lived at the lake my grandfather, who lives in the green house next door, and I would pick mulberries in the summer and eat them on ice cream, our fingers stained from the bursting of the soft berries. The neighborhood, the people who reside there during the summer months, are an interesting group, men and women whose parents bought the houses. They are the first generation of Porter Beach, and now, as they ease into old age, still carry beach chairs and tubes down the rickety stairs to the water. Of course once there were people who stayed year round, such as my great grandmother and Miff Wolfsie and other old women who would make rounds in the harsh winter months to make sure that no one had broken into the summer homes. My mother remembers those days, but I was born as they all died and it became a place where people only lived in the time between May and September. That was until my mother returned with me wrapped to her chest.

Memory serves us as a great foreteller of who we are. How we chose to tell the past is who we are in the present

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The time I spent at the lake house is no longer very clear, more resemblant of photos and stories told by others. The thing I know is that it was good, for I love the lake. My mother calls it the blue in our veins, as if that can explain our affinity to the place. When I think of the lake I think of the shiplap of the walls of the house, the wooden steps down into the beach, and the smell of mildew and sunscreen that lingers about the place. I think of the skylight that casts sun over the old couch, warming the worn fabric so that when you return from the beach you can rest like a cat in the patch of sunlight and sleep. I think most of the water, the way some years the beach is long and you can walk all the way out to the mills and others one can’t make it to Dune Acres without getting their feet wet. The lake stretches forever, and one can almost imagine it could stretch all the way to the Pacific, as the explorers used to.

When I lived there I was little. I was fawned over by my aunts and uncles and grandparents. My hair was bright white and I would run along the beaches. In those days I knew everyone and everyone knew me. All my memories are from summer, summer was when the whole world came to life. In the winter the world would quiet and everything would disappear. But in the summer the mulberries would ripen and fall and the neighbors would return. Once more cars would fill driveways instead of snow, and there would no longer be darkness, but once more light. I would play with the buckets and little shovels in the sand, building little sand castles that would be gone by morning, washed away. I didn’t know much of the world then, but even now, the lake is what I know best.

Those days are foregone, I don’t live on the lake anymore. No one does. We are now part of a diaspora. We have all left the same place, but we ended up in many different cities and towns, stretching miles and crossing state lines, sometimes even national boarders. Yet, every summer, even before the lake has warmed and it still makes the kids squeal when they tentatively dip their toes in the water, every summer we return. We make the pilgrimage, packing cars and kids, kids who are part of the next generation of Porter Beach, kids who won’t grow up on the lake, but they will know it, know it as well as they know themselves. I am no longer one of those kids, but to an extent, I will always be. I will always be running backwards, back to where I came from, back to the lake. Because it is more than a place, the lake, it’s the blue in my veins

For the last 3 years, my life has been a track towards college. Ever since I took my first PSAT in the 8th grade I have been planning and preparing for my application. I have bled myself dry and strung myself out in hopes that this display of constant productivity and accomplishment will make me good enough to be allowed to study at a prestigious college. But now, as I come to a close on my sophomore year of high school and prepare for my most important year of high school, my junior year, I have come to wonder if it is worth it to lose youth in the exchange for a possible future success.

When I was young, college was a far off idea. I didn’t believe in Ivies or prestige, rather in doing what I loved. (As we are all so idealized in youth.) But as I excelled in school and in standardized testing, I began to be reinforced in the idea that I needed to follow a path, one that led to pushing myself to excel in harder and harder situations. Once I found myself being treated with admiration and respect from teachers, parents, and students for getting good grades, I began to accept nothing less of myself than absolute perfection. I created for myself a long track, one I had convinced myself led to something defined as happiness at the end of it. I believed that the dark corridor I ran down could only be lightened by my continued successes. There was no choice but the best, because that was what I was told was my predestined path. I was pulled aside in classes and spoken to by guidance counselors, all who told me the same thing; that my test scores and my grades were something I needed to take advantage of. And truth be told, I adored the attention. I loved being special, as all children do, and so I ensured I would always be special. And the worst thing for me was that it wasn’t hard. I study very little, I don’t have a hard time getting good grades. But eventually that wasn’t enough.

I decided that I wanted to pursue creative writing in my 8th grade study hall. I was sitting and I looked up what was the best school for creative writing. Google provided a list and there started my infatuation with the Ivy League. I became obsessed with Columbia, New York City having been idealized since my first visit at 10. Fancying the idea of the 4% acceptance rate and having truly never faced rejection other than the loss of a student council presidential race, I settled on it as my school of choice. The next years of my high school life then began to form in front of me, and with that died my childhood.

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When you are young, the world stretches before you. Time is nothing, it is inconsequential, but for the waiting period between birthdays and holidays. But as we age, I have found that there is too little time, too many things. And now I attempt to capture time which has been stolen.

As I decided I wanted to be something, to be the best, I learned that I would have to be everything.

The thing about school now is that to stand out, you have to be exceptional. I was told that to be able to get into top 25 universities I would have to create a story. I needed to market myself. I couldn’t just be smart. I needed to start a club, to volunteer, to be brilliant beyond measure. Then that became my life, creating someone that was good enough for this abstract idea of success. Society has convinced us that to be worthwhile we have to meet standards of success set by acceptance rates and average yearly income, and to be able to reach those great heights, we must sacrifice youth. To be good enough, we must be perfect, we must be great. We must find success young and find it in plentitude, and unless we do so, unless we slave to the system, we can never be something, or so we are told. College acceptance is rooted in our successes as teens, which requires the sacrifice of this youth. That email of acceptance is the end goal of my sweat and tears

Because I became so focused on becoming everything, I lost what I loved.

As my life became more full of things I could do or participated in, I became less full as a person. I lost my ability to involve myself in the things I loved and my life became focused on quantitative success, on PSAT scores and getting into more exclusive programs. No longer was writing, reading, art itself, something I did because I loved it, I did it because it was what I had decided I was good at. Once life becomes a checklist or a timeline, it is no longer living but surviving.

I want to stop working towards something and instead start living in the moment that is before me. But I am afraid that I am still too obsessed with the idea of success to sacrifice it for childhood. I will continue to give myself in the hope of tomorrow, in the hope that tomorrow is worth it.

Unless, unless we begin something similar to a revolution, a children’s crusade to reclaim our childhood, to take it back from the possibility of something they have called success. Maybe one day, maybe tomorrow.

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I turn 17 this year, which despite 15 and 16’s great cultural importance, I believe is a far more momentous occasion in one’s life. Unlike 18, it doesn’t mark the beginning of something new. You do not gain anything, rather, you know painfully what you are about to lose: childhood. 17 is the final year of being someone to be cared for. It is the last time that you are a kid, which is the title under which we are most allowed to grow. As I get closer to my birthday I have begun to grasp onto childhood, hold it tight to my chest, all in an effort to slow down the time, in an effort to claim as much of youth as possible before I am an adult.

I had a magical childhood. It was full of sparkles and bright colors and flowers. My mother made everything into a memory, something worth remembering. I would wake up to birthdays with the downstairs decorated with banners and balloons. Every year on the first day of school she would sidewalk chalk in front of our house with bright colors and encouraging words and a hopscotch. We would dress up and dance. It was something from a movie montage, but my mother made it my memories of childhood.

What I wonder is if it will change when I am an adult.

The thing about adulthood is that one must own up to responsibility and to life. No longer can one hide under the guise of being a minor, under the wing of a parent. Small things change, like I must set up my own account for my airport security, and other things that I can’t quite recall but I know will change just slightly. Once I am adult I am never again a child.

But perhaps the greatest fear at the end of my childhood, is how quickly it is coming, at how quickly the world is moving forward. I don’t want to move out of my childhood home, I don’t want to leave the comfort of each night going to sleep in the same house as my mother and sister and my pets. I don’t want to lose them, to move out, go to college, to live my own life, not because I am scared to be alone, but because I am scared to lose the limited time I have left with them. I don’t want to grow up because I don’t want to lose the people I love. I want forever to be able to call my mother, to come home and for her to be there for me to ask for help or a hug. I fear that because each year I get older, my life stretching out longer behind me, each year becomes a smaller percentage of my life. Each year does seem to go faster, even though I don’t want it to, even though I want it to slow down, so that I can savor the feeling of youth, of family, before how it is now is gone.

This is not to say I don’t look forward to adulthood. I want my own little apartment, and my own little life, but I am scared of losing what I already have. My life now, it is beautiful. It is full of wonder and adventure. I am both excited for the future on my own, but terrified of losing what I have.

And so the question that lingers longest in my mind, each night as I drift off to sleep, is am I ready for my childhood to end?

I am from the Midwest, but I have the kind of American face that looks like I could be from California, if only I were exposed to the sun a little more. As a child growing up in such a culturally deficient area as to believe corn and God to be sufficient occupations of the mind, I developed a fetish for the outside world, especially California. Like every good American, I knew the West as a promise land. It was manifest destiny and the possibility of wealth and fame if you squinted just right.

I didn’t believe in God so I believed in California.

The California of my imagination, or my fantasies, it is in Kodak Gold Film. L.A. is filled with people who will one day be legends but for this moment in time are just men and women who smoke joints on the beach and drink at big parties in Malibu hosted by people who are already famous. It is the place where the world starts, where the waves crash on the shoreline and sometimes people die, but the future is too bright, the present too vivid, for anything like that or the smog to block out the sunshine. I have always believed that because California never freezes over it never stops bleeding out culture into the big wide world. I guess one could argue that that makes it something that must come to end, since unlike New York or Chicago it never gets a time to rest, but I have never believed that. To me, California is the church of the spirit, the place to go when the darkness of home has caused you to lose who you were, or perhaps just to find out how to be someone better.

But I have been to California, and it felt like half a promise.

When my plane landed we descended through the smog into LAX. No one ever writes about the smog, not unless you are writing about pollution, which no one truly interesting does. I knew a different California then, for I was 12, having not read anything like Slouching Towards Bethlehem or L.A. Woman. I far from knew myself then. Perhaps that is why I feel so distant from the California of present, because it is a place of my own past, a self I am no longer closely tied to. The California I saw with my family that summer was one of big trees, long stretches of ocean, and the back of a camper van colored with rainbows. It was the California of older days, before it was the center of civilization and back when it was the future of civilization, wild and untamed and calling out to people who had been left unfulfilled in the East.

But all of California is disappearing. The wildfires are claiming the trees and the ocean is rising. When I was there it felt as if the cities themselves knew this, that the streets felt their time running out, that they were finally being exhausted. Maybe what I don’t believe is true, maybe California is being drained. Maybe one day I will wake up and it will be gone, not solely 1960s California, not solely the one of my dreams, but the real one.

When I think back on the California I met all those years ago, it is very different from the one I picture in my head. It is far too green, far too cold, far too empty. In that California Didion doesn’t exist, neither does Babitz. Most likely Steinbeck does, but he is further south, where the farmlands live not the trees. That is the California of the girl I used to be, the girl with shorter hair and wire glasses and a half formed sense of self. But you see, even that girl, she knew California, knew it in a sense. She knew it was something, something better than where she had been born and raised, for as I said, California was the place she and I knew the world must begin.

I still believe in California, I have to, because if I don’t believe in California I am like a man who feels they have lost god. Without California, without it glimmering West, without its possibility of fame and fortune and Hollywood and beaches, what am I working towards? California is the reason I understand God, because whenever life becomes monotonous and dull I remember that California exists, and that one day, one day it will be there, and along the beaches the palm trees will sway, and Eve Babitz will lay on the sand, and Joan Didion will stand on her porch that Harrison Ford built smoking a cigarette and stare out into the setting sun, and I will be there too, not quite someone yet, but who knows in the promise land, maybe tomorrow.

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Reading is what changes the world

Stories are a critical part of our understanding of the world. A good book can change our perspectives on the world. Prose can transport us to a world different from our own. Words, they are the death of tyranny and the creation of change by a thousand cuts, but even more they are the very lifeblood of humanity. As the groundbreaking journalist and novelist Joan Didion once said, “We tell stories in order to live”.

1. Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion

Slouching Towards Bethlehem is a collection of essays from 1968 that details 1960s California counter culture. The book is a depiction of Didion’s classic writing style, precise and descriptive, the kind of prose that strips the story to its bones and builds it again through her perspective. It shows the wild, wonderful, and chaotic 60s California. The insights made by Didion are sharp, and her stories keep her as the cool, collective matron above the chaos of her time. She was in it, but she never was it. The best collection of essays by Didion.

2. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous By Ocean Vuong

This book will tear you apart. Written in the format of a letter from a son, Little Dog, to his illiterate mother, the book traces across generations of trauma in Vietnam, straight into Little Dog’s childhood in the US. It crosses timelines and brings the reader a story so raw, so broken open, that one leaves wondering if it was meant for their eyes at all. The sensory prose serves to enhance feelings created by the stories themselves, vivid descriptions housed in the mind long after the final page is turned. It leaves the reader with the question of whether we can love those who hurt us, and serves as a brutal reminder of the effects of the Vietnam war and the ways generation trauma comes to harm us all.

3. Caste by Isabel Wilkerson

This is the kind of book that makes you rethink all of history. Caste compares the US’s caste system for Black Americans to that created by the Nazi’s during the Third Reich and the caste system of India. It exposes dark truths about the way America has treated people of color and the ways that we still have to change. The lessons it leaves change the way one relates to the world and consumes all types of media. A book that will remain forever in the back of your mind.

4. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

As with all Toni Morrison works, The Bluest Eye will leave you wrecked. Written with her classic poetic prose, each word is emotionally charged and beautiful. The story itself, one of a struggling Black family, the story of a lost little girl, might not be one’s own story, but the tactical and precise way each aspect of the story is written, even formatted, makes it a story we can all feel. It will leave the reader crushed, searching. Like all Morrison’s work its detailing of the relationships and hardships of the black community are eye opening and empathy inspiring. The first and most moving of her novels.

5. Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay

A collection of essays about feminism, social justice, and being a woman. This book challenges the status quo of what it means to be a feminist. The essays cover a wide variety of topics, including Gay’s experiences as an overweight, lesbain, black woman. It rethinks social justice movements and enlightens the reader to the variety of ways one can enact feminism, as well as highlighting to all people the necessity of change in society's relationship with women.

To read is to change yourself, it is to take on the experiences of another and after to remember those lives as your own. These books bring life to the reader through the prism that is human interpretation of life, and allow you to perceive the world in more colors than before.