Flower
Shramana Patra is 16 and studying in the 11th grade in Calcutta, India. “I love designing wallpapers and short animations. I painted the picture of the ornamental flower on a parchment paper and thencovered it with a OHP transparent sheet. I drew an outline of the flower on the sheet with brush strokes of white paint. There are also bits of wax on the flower to give a 3 effect.”
By Edison Mellor-Goldman
In case you hadn’t heard, there’s still a word on the streets that systematically nullifies the opinions of everybody it is applied to. The world at large still uses an adjective that means “your voice is coming from a particular place, and is therefore unimportant.” What’s worse is that it’s politically correct to use it, and toss it about as if it’s just any other descriptor and doesn’t speak lengths about the validity of one’s beliefs. The term is derived from the agitation and paranoia in a person infected with rabies, and the etymological origin of the word isn’t so distant that it has taken on a drastically different meaning since. The adjective “rabid” is one of the biggest inhibitors of legitimate discourse that isn’t an enormous faux pas.
To say that somebody is “rabid” is to delegate them to the fringes of any ideology, when most reasonable people take what they like from various schools of thought. A “rabid” lefty is a tree-hugging face-painting vaccine-fearing CEO-hating idiot who is so entrenched in his beliefs that he refuses to acknowledge that not everybody wants to live in a hippie commune. A “rabid” righty is a pauper-hating money-grubbing gun-wielding Hummer driver who is more in love with the theory of social darwinism than with his fellow human beings. We live in a world of social and political binaries, seemingly because it’s easier to formulate a counter-argument when every alternative perspective can all be forced into one single cohesive “opinion.” I know that most women have become aware that when a guy labels them “hormonal” it basically means “you’re not arguing from a rational place, and therefore I don’t need to accept your conclusion.” It’s invalidating. But the thing is, people are wising up about how invalidating it is. Your douchebag ex-boyfriend may have used that angle whenever he was losing an argument, but you rarely see thoughtful individuals tossing that term around in serious social discourse. “Rabid,” however, can be used to invalidate anybody, and is still used in just about any arena. It might be difficult to frame a pro-life argument against an educated woman who is pro-choice, but it’s easy to assume victory when you can label her a “rabid feminist.” This is hardly a novel observation, but I would like to point out that, of all invalidating phrases, “rabid” has survived for a fair amount of time in our dialogue.
The scariest part about “rabid” is that the people who are labeled as such often don’t realize the implications. If you were to search “Rabid Republican” online, the first site on the google radar will be the “Rabid Republican Blog”, which is a community for those proud to be republican. “Why, yes, I am very opinionated and strong-minded,” somebody who has just been labeled a “rabid feminist” might think to themselves–but that’s not exactly what the label is driving at. It’s one thing to say that you have very strong and steadfast opinions, it’s another thing to say that your opinions are steadfast because of your inability to consider reason from dissenting points of view due to an overwhelming bias. What’s dangerous about the phrase “rabid” is that a lot of recipients don’t realize what they’ve been hit with until too late. They were too busy feeling flattered that somebody would consider them so passionate that they didn’t realize “passionate” was the last thing they wanted to be considered if their opinion were to be taken seriously. I think that’s why the label has stuck around to such a degree, because people don’t immediately strike it down whenever it’s brought up. But the next time you’re debating immigration reform and somebody disagrees with you, do you really want to be told, “Oh, you’re just on your ‘immigration-period’”?
Drowning
Pastel
Rachel Sullivan is an Illustration student. “Most of my art is what people would call ‘girly’. But I paint swirls and flowers because I feel like it, not because I feel that as a girl it’s what I should do. I think feminism is about women being who they want regardless of society, whether that be something stereotypically manly or something that fits right in with what the world thinks a girl should be. The important thing is that you do what you do because it means something to you.”
website: http://www.wix.com/ohavalanche/rullivan#!home/mainPage
Becky
Becky
Simone Allaston is an Artist and Photographer completing her BA in Fine Arts at UWS. She later became interested in Jungian Psychology and the Surrealist Art movement. Simone earned her MA in Analytical Psychology in 2003. “I have always been a lover of bold art. I love strong colours and the play of light in a work. I have always been curious about our dreams and subconscious and have explored these themes thru my work”. Simone has travelled extensively through Bali, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Nepal & Tibet. The story of these countries and their people have influenced her artistic work greatly.
Simone’s current projects focus on portrait photography and journaling family stories.
website: www.simoneallaston.com.au
By Sophia Rowland
One of my favorite Woody Allen films is Another Woman. In the movie, the protagonist, Gena Rowlands, is able to listen in on conversations from the apartment next to hers through a vent in the adjoining wall. The conversations are between a psycologist and his patients. One patient in particular, played by Mia Farrow, strikes our heroine’s interest. Her character’s life mirrors that of Rowlands’ character. And a bond that should never have existed is created.
I fucking love Woody Allen.
Not too long ago I met a boy named Harrison at a party. He was great, and we really hit it off. We went out a few times, connected decently enough ‘til we both decided to call it quits. For him, it had a lot to do with timing, he said. I was too complicated. I was deep. I was too much like girlfriend material. He was just getting out of a relationship. He needed to date some silly girls.
For me, it had a lot to do with him being too stoned to return a simple text. But we were both kinda bummed in our own ways. Even though we were both dating other people.
And on that note…
We were both being pretty honest about why we were calling it quits. And at one point he mentioned another girl, that he was seeing, Courtney:
“We talk about food and SpongeBob SquarePants.”
Apparently that trumped me. And I have to admit, I think about that line a lot.
So it made me really curious about this girl. And like the creeper I am, I deduced from his Facebook who she was…and found her blog.
I feel like now is a good time to mention that I almost never think about Harrison. We promised to stay friends but neither of us made much of an effort. Whatever romantic feelings I felt for him dissipated quickly. Actually, the bullshit with Harrison was a contributing factor to me realizing how amazing/wonderful this other guy I was dating is. And who I am now dating exclusively… (brag, brag relationship brag).
However.
I read Food & SpongeBob’s blog all the time. I know a lot about her and I occasionally see her talking about her casual-dating thing with Harrison. At first I read her blog because I wanted to make myself feel better by confirming her as retarded. Her writing is messy, and many of her posts ramble far away from her original point. But then, gradually, something changed.
Now, I really like her. Like, ‘I want to take her out for coffee’ like her. She’s become Another Woman and I’m starting to see similarities between us. We like the same kind of music and she even makes me laugh out loud. I attempt to tell myself I still don’t like her, but I always change my mind. And somehow, I’ve come to understand why Harrison likes her. She’s fun and light, silly and naïve. So now I’m also a little concerned for her, like maybe deep down she wants more from him than he is capable of giving.
I don’t want Courtney to have to deal with Harrison’s commitment issues. I mean, she talks about how she doesn’t want a boyfriend because she shoots guns and likes having the bed to herself, but it seems pretty clear she wants to be in a relationship. Maybe not a typical relationship, but probably more than what Harrison is capable of giving her at the moment.
Courtney seems like a free spirit, but also a little insecure—though she constantly makes great claims to suggest she is not. And although she also makes some ridiculous, privileged white girl comments, I can forgive her for this, because she listens to Shakira and loves her friends.
I’m not sure what the moral of this story is (except that I am creepy). But if I had to come up with a moral, here are two possibilities:
But I’m going to keep reading her blog.
