Pop-Culture | Posted by Julie Z on 09/16/2011

College Confidential: Disorientation

The bottom line of college orientation is that it’s a paradox: feeling simultaneously deeply comforted and entirely thrown off your axis, spinning rapidly towards the unknown. Or at least, that’s what orientation was like for me.

This paradox manifested itself at the very beginning of the journey from Ohio to New York. After posting my obligatory, “Leaving for college. Thanks for the memories everybody!” Facebook status, I packed all of my earthly belongings into the family car. That’s when I realized that all of my earthly belongings fit into the family car. While the reality of this totally satisfied the fatalist in me (look how easy it would be for me to escape with so little materialistic baggage to weigh me down once the zombie apocalypse hits — yippee!) it …

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Feminism | Posted by Talia on 08/2/2011

Like When We Were Eight

A little while ago, I was at my friend’s house for the weekend. Her younger sister, who was in second grade, had a friend over (let’s call her T) on Saturday night. According to today’s beauty standards, T is absolutely gorgeous, despite the fact that she is only eight years old. In addition to being physically appealing, her personality is totally adorable.

The thing I remember T most for, however, is the fact that she laughed. That is, that she laughed despite the big gap between her two front teeth.

It struck me that this little girl wasn’t afraid to laugh out loud, that she wasn’t afraid to smile. She wasn’t trying to hide her “imperfect” teeth. She didn’t feel self-conscious about it. She just didn’t care that her teeth …

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