#stretch2019

It is undeniable that Buffy is a somewhat exclusionary narrative that directs our sympathies solely towards its overwhelmingly white and privileged characters. Any feminist inclinations this series espouses are emblematic of the equally exclusionary white feminism. However, even within these constraints—focusing only on feminism impactful to socioeconomically privileged white women—Buffy scholarship continually debates the extent of feminist messaging in the series. In 2019, surface-level white feminism alone is often not seen as enough to define a text as feminist. More and more, people are embracing Kimberle Crenshaw’s notions of intersectionality as a lens through which to evaluate texts. Crenshaw suggested that both feminist and anti-racist movements exclude black women, who face the most discrimination because of the intersection of their race and gender, arguing that “feminism must include an analysis of race if it hopes to express the aspirations of non-white women” (166). This term has since expanded to include class, ability, gender identity, and sexuality in feminist critiques.

Recently, the feminist debate over Buffy has been revisited after a somewhat shocking blog post by Buffy creator Joss Whedon’s ex-wife, Kai Cole, that suggested Whedon is not the “loveable geek-feminist” he presents himself as (Cole). Despite the flaws of its creator, is there still a way for Buffy to be viewed as a feminist show? Is this a matter of separating the artist from the art, or, because his intentions while making this art are being called into question, are the two inextricably linked? In light of these revelations, I intend to reexamine Buffy through Crenshaw’s intersectional lens, focusing less on surface-level feminist readings of this series, but instead shifting the focus onto specific storylines to explore how Whedon addresses topics of gender, race, love, and rape.

***

It is not without reason that critics and fans alike have showered Buffy with feminist praise since its debut in 1997. Not only does this series make Buffy the “subject of traditionally masculine storytelling tropes…, [but] she does it all as a tiny, blonde former cheerleader…the embodiment of the girl her genre usually kills first” (Grady). Buffy takes the idea of a “strong” woman quite literally and manifests a teenage girl with superhuman strength who “must stand against the vampires, demons, and forces of darkness,” as the introduction to each episode reminds us (Whedon). Buffy seems to be a show rife with positive female role models for the impressionable teen and pre-teen girls that make up its audience: Buffy is selfless and strong (physically and emotionally); Willow is kind, intelligent, and stands up for what she believes is right; Cordelia is bold and unafraid to go after what she wants; Tara is loving and is constantly helping and caring for her friends.

Buffy often addresses topics that many members of this teen audience may face, largely through its (sometimes heavy handed) metaphorical use of vampires and demons, as well as online predators (“I Robot…You, Jane”), drinking at parties (“Beer Bad”), and drug addiction (“Wrecked”). Seemingly less metaphorical, however, is its feminism. Throughout the series, Buffy repeatedly defends the whole of humanity against vampires, demons, and the like, maintains positive relationships with the other women in her life, is independent, and has (mostly) healthy romantic relationships. The overt “girl-power” theme of this show is quite clear. However, in its final season, Buffy “raises the explicit feminist stakes of the series considerably” (Pender). While in previous seasons, the metaphorical misogyny of the villains Buffy faces could be debated, season seven’s “big bad” is, “of all the show’s myriad manifestations of evil, the most recognizably misogynist” (Pender). Dubbed “Reverend-I-Hate-Women” by Xander (“Touched”), Caleb can only be defeated if Buffy teams up with and shares her power with all potential Slayers across the globe, an act that takes “female empowerment” quite literally in the series finale.

But how did Buffy get to this point? Buffy wasn’t even initially intended for the pre-teen and teenage girl demographic who would become its main audience. Knowing that this show was originally aimed at a male demographic, “it seems evident that producers did not intend to market a feminist show” (Riordan 292). Not only do some of the feminist statements in Buffy feel painfully forced, but upon deeper exploration, much of this show’s “feminism” is only surface-level and disregards Crenshaw’s notions of intersectionality.

Mary Magoulick, a folklorist and Professor of English, Interdisciplinary Studies, and Women’s Studies at Georgia College (“Mary Magoulick”), explores some of the downfalls of “feminist” shows that were primarily created by men for predominantly male audiences in her article, “Frustrating Female Heroism: Mixed Messages in Xena, Nikita, and Buffy.” Magoulick argues that female heroes like Buffy that are “conceived of and written mostly by men in a still male-dominated world…project the status quo more than they fulfill feminist hopes” (729). An integral part of Magoulick’s argument is the idea that “Buffy [is] less concerned with building or celebrating a world than surviving a hostile one” (745). Although Magoulick acknowledges that recognizing the hostility women face in the world is an important part of feminist conversations, Buffy is widely praised for its progressive presentation of women, not for “presenting the troubling reality women live in” (750). Buffy continually expresses her desire to escape from her responsibilities as the Slayer and lead an average life; yet, she continues fighting vampires and demons, largely due to the pressure from her Watcher, Giles. The idea that Buffy cannot escape her situation because of a social institution—the Watcher’s Council, dominated by men and put in place to control women—provides strong textual support for Magoulick’s claim that Buffy is “reflective of current social inequities and gender roles” (750).

Ultimately Buffy escapes her duties as Slayer, sacrificing herself in the season five finale, only for her friends to later resurrect her, bringing her back from what they believe to be a hell dimension. However, Buffy confesses to Spike, “I think I was in heaven. And now I'm not…this is hell” (“After Life”), making him promise to never tell her friends. After coming back to life, Buffy almost immediately returns to her predetermined social position and initially deals with being brought back into her personal version of hell alone, wanting to protect her friends from the truth. Not only does this arc present the feminist concept of emotional labor as something inherently expected of women, but it also more directly begs the question Magoulick poses regarding the entirety of the series: “Is survival in hell, albeit with occasional victories and humor, the best [women] can imagine?” (748).

***

Magoulick promotes an argument first raised by Elyce Rae Helford that “[Buffy] is laudable for allowing women unusual space to voice and act out anger” while also sending strong implications about what kind of women are allowed to express anger (733). Of the Slayers introduced throughout the series, Buffy is the only one who is allowed to act upon her anger, and most of the time this anger is expressed towards the vampires and demons she fights, not people in her personal life. However, Kendra—a Slayer who is also a woman of color—has her anger framed in a much more negative way. Despite the lack of people of color in Buffy—or possibly because of the show’s few characters played by people of color—race and racism have become prominent topics in Buffy scholarship. A closer examination of direct and indirect racist implications in Buffy reinforces the idea that any feminist tendencies in Buffy fall strictly into the category of white feminism, and the show cannot be considered an example of the intersectional feminism pushed for in 2019.

The intersectional failings of Buffy are further explored by Kent A. Ono, a Professor and former Chair of the Department of Communication at the University of Utah who researches representations of race, gender, sexuality, class, and nation in print, film, and television media (“Kent A. Ono”). In his article, “To Be a Vampire on Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Race and (‘Other’) Socially Marginalizing Positions on Horror TV,” Ono argues that Buffy “conveys debilitating images of and ideas about people of color” (163), claiming that “the valorization and heroification [sic] of a white feminist protagonist is constructed through an associated villainization and demonization of people of color” (164). Here, Ono quite literally means demonization. Most of the vampires and demons that appear on this show are played by white actors, so it is not necessarily a question of casting people of color as villains, so much as it is a question of who these villains are intended to be.

As previously established, the writers of Buffy can be somewhat aggressive with their use of metaphor; therefore, it is inarguable that, on Buffy, a vampire isn’t just a vampire. Ono argues that “the marginalization of vampires on the show takes the place of racial marginalization in the world outside the show” (172). In contrast, Magoulick presents a non-racial reading of the teenage vampires as “representative of gangs” (745). Considering the show’s overarching plot, especially the first few seasons Magoulick references when Buffy is still in high school, both of these interpretations are equally valid, and both can be supported by textual evidence. Given the history of representation of people of color on television, it is particularly disturbing that two of the major metaphorical interpretations of vampires on this show are as people of color and as gang members. It is not unreasonable to believe that Whedon and his writers were familiar with racist representations on television that were prominent in the 60s and early 70s, especially because some of these representations still exist twenty years after the show was created. With this understanding, it could be argued that vampires were equally intended to represent people who were racially marginalized and gangs. Ono argues that because the villains of Buffy were the ones chosen to represent people of color, “Buffy…indirectly and directly shows violence by primarily white vigilante youths against people of color in the name of civilization” (168), evoking images of violent white supremacy that are present throughout American history and to the present day.

However, there is a reason Ono describes the “vigilante youths” as only primarily white (168). Kendra, the previously mentioned second Slayer portrayed by Bianca Lawson who is featured in three episodes over the course of Buffy’s second season, is a black woman. Although only appearing in three episodes, Kendra is credited as “offer[ing] the most complex development of a black female character in Buffy” (Edwards 95). While this is technically true, it is important to note that her arc was fairly straightforward, and any character development is as a result of a somewhat racist narrative of acceptance only after assimilation. However, because she is one of the few examples of a prominent character who is a person of color and essentially the only person of color who works with Buffy, I will be examining her in some detail.

Ono argues that because she takes the responsibility of being the Slayer far more seriously, Kendra is a threat to Buffy, causing Buffy’s own racism to emerge. Ono specifically cites “[Buffy’s] discomfort with Kendra’s language…When Buffy uses the word wiggy and Kendra asks what that means, Buffy responds with a racist comment…‘You know, no kicko, no fighto’” (174). However, Buffy’s comment is indicative of a much larger issue in the show’s production team. “By casting Bianca Lawson, a black actress, in the role of Kendra, the second Slayer, [Whedon] makes character a sign imbued with cultural meanings about gender, race, and race relations” (Edwards 87). Kendra is marked as other not only by her skin color, but also by her heavy Jamaican accent, and she is not accepted by Buffy and her friends until she begins to assimilate, sending the message that people of color are responsible for changing themselves if they want to be accepted by white America.

It is important to note that Bianca Lawson’s casting wasn’t accidental. The script specifically delineates Kendra as an “ethnic young woman” (Edwards 91). Whedon has admitted that he did not make any efforts to hire people of color behind the scenes (Busis), so there is a possibility that the overwhelmingly white writers’ room and crew did not detect the racist treatment of Kendra. However, that in itself poses a major issue, not only socially, but also with how we’re supposed to understand the treatment of the few people of color and the metaphorical “people of color”/vampires throughout the series. The absence of people of color behind the scenes could also at least partially account for the Ono’s observation that “no person of color acknowledged as such on the series has been able to remain a significant character. All characters of color…have either died or have failed to reappear” (177).

Although she was killed off after only three episodes, as a black woman, Kendra represents the black women facing discrimination based on both race and gender that Crenshaw advocated for in developing her theory of intersectional feminism. Kendra’s treatment in Buffy is indicative of both the white feminism that will often ignore racist representations in a text because of its slight feminist messaging, and the necessity of including intersectionality in the evaluation and creation of feminist texts.

***

Buffy is filled with incredibly disturbing scenes. We watch Willow get skinned alive by a demon (“Same Time, Same Place”), Buffy’s own mother attempt to burn her at the stake (“Gingerbread”), and a demon stalk and murder sickly children in their hospital beds (“Killed by Death”). However, “Seeing Red” (2002) remains one of Buffy’s most upsetting episodes. Spike corners an injured Buffy in her bathroom and violently attempts to rape her until she is finally able to fight him off. In a recent interview, James Marsters (Spike) described his opposition to the scene, inadvertently pinpointing the reason this scene is so difficult to watch: “My argument was that, actually, when anyone is watching Buffy, they are Buffy…the audience, especially the female audience, they are not superheroes, but they are Buffy” (Marsters). This scene is particularly upsetting not only because of the content, but also because it presents many women’s worst fears—if an injured Buffy, who is still exponentially stronger than an average woman, can barely fight off Spike, what hope do they have of fighting off their attacker? Additionally, Spike is not presented as a violent vampire here: he is presented as human, making this scene more realistic and horrifying.

Wendy Fall, a doctoral candidate at Marquette University and editor of Marquette’s Gothic Archive (“Graduate Research”), discusses this scene at length in her article “Spike Is Forgiven: The Sympathetic Vampire's Resonance with Rape Culture.” She suggests that because James Malcolm Rymer’s Varney the Vampire (1845) is the first English-language vampire narrative that conflates an attack and rape scene, it established a “three-part strategy [gaslighting, silencing the victim, and emphasizing the assailant’s goodness] which encouraged readers to overlook Varney’s sexual violence, and thereby increased their sympathy for him” (Fall 76). She argues that although Spike’s attempted rape technically avoids Rymer’s narrative because he does not attempt to bite Buffy and is never even seen as a vampire, “The more problematic nature of this attack…is in what happens next, when the show adopts similar narrative schemes to Rymer’s to reinforce sympathy for Spike after his attempted sexual assault” (Fall 76).

Fall points out that there are only three more episodes in season six following Spike’s attempted rape, followed by a four-month gap between seasons, prompting the audience to forget how violent and serious it was (77). Not only are Spike and Buffy not seen together for the rest of the season, but they are separated because attempting to rape Buffy acts as a catalyst for Spike’s quest to get his soul back. This gives the audience time to develop sympathy for Spike as they watch him go through painful trials as he tries to recover his soul, while diminishing the severity of the attempted rape in their minds—because, surely, someone willing to go to this extent to obtain their soul and be a better person would never have acted as violently as he did.

Fall argues that Buffy also follows Varney’s narrative strategy of silencing the victim because “the show’s writers seem unwilling to allow the characters to have further discussion on the topic; Buffy never tells anyone the full story, and after this scene, she rarely mentions it again” (78). Fall further claims that “they had access to a strong female character and the opportunity to address her experience of trauma, but they opt not to pursue it” (78). Surely, at least part of the reason we never see Buffy attempting to deal with the emotional aftermath of someone she trusted trying to rape her is because the larger narrative suggests a degree of victim blaming that cannot coexist with holding Spike accountable for his actions. Prior to this scene, Buffy and Spike had been having a consensual sexual relationship, and Buffy attributes the start of this relationship to her “bad kissing decisions” (“Smashed”), so “when Spike attempts to rape her, it seems like an inevitable consequence of her poor decisions” (Nichol).

Finally, Fall suggests that Buffy completes this pattern when it “adopts a narrative strategy that redirects attention away from sexual violence by emphasizing the assailant’s positive contributions” (80). Not only does the rest of season six focus on Spike’s attempt to regain a soul, but the early episodes of season seven also show Spike as psychologically damaged as he comes to terms with the harm he caused as a vampire, putting Buffy and the audience in a position to want to pity Spike when we next see Spike and Buffy interact. Fall suggests that this plotline goes further than simply asking the audience to excuse the fact that this character tried to rape someone. She argues that “the vampire narrative’s memory-altering strategies are also deployed to reinforce rape culture, mostly in the cases of assailants who have sufficient financial power to reframe their own narratives to emphasize their better deeds” (Fall 83). This narrative is everywhere, especially after it became widely acceptable, even expected, to report on the #MeToo movement. It’s unfortunate that this supposedly feminist show perpetuates and validates this narrative that has successfully allowed so many rapists to escape legal scrutiny; Brock Turner’s swimming career comes to mind as a relatively recent example. While Fall ends her article on a relatively hopeful note, providing research stating that articles—like hers—that challenge rape myths can make people more likely to believe survivors than assailants (83), arguments for forgiving Spike still abound.

In 2017, Alyssa Rosenberg, an opinion writer for the Washington Post who covers culture and politics (“Alyssa Rosenberg”), made a case for why both Buffy and the audience should have a more forgiving view of Spike. In her article, “On ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” we fell for the Slayer along with Angel, Riley and Spike," Rosenberg specifically addresses this scene as a “horrifying…illustration that Spike’s gestures are not the same as moral reform” (Rosenberg); however, she identifies it as “the catalyst for a quest that ends with Spike…earning back his soul and sacrificing himself to save the world” (Rosenberg). Rosenberg’s argument falls flat in a way many rapist-apology narratives do. She directly acknowledges the horror of the narrative, both literally in the scene and also in the audience’s minds as they grapple with the fact that this character who is supposedly trying to reform himself can still do something this violent; yet, she quickly glosses over it. Rosenberg immediately dives into how trying to rape Buffy influenced Spike to become a better person, without addressing how it affected Buffy—the actual victim. She highlights that Whedon’s integration of the narrative tactics Rymer introduced to get the audience to want to forgive Spike were effective.

Rosenberg argues that although Spike “commits some of the show’s cruelest acts…he sacrifices the most in an attempt to atone for his sins” (Rosenberg). She additionally characterizes his arc following his attempted rape of Buffy as “a journey that encourages us to think about the conditions under which even someone guilty of heinous acts can perform genuine penance and achieve real redemption” (Rosenberg). Interestingly, her choice of the word “penance” invokes a religious underscoring that implies that once he has performed this penance, Buffy, and by extension, the audience who identifies with her, have no choice but to forgive him. Additionally, none of the “penance” Rosenberg describes is directed towards Buffy. Spike undoubtedly goes through physically and emotionally painful trials as he attempts to regain his soul; however, this is not so much penance as it is a self-centered act. Spike believes that getting a soul might make Buffy finally love him, eventually “becom[ing] a legitimate romantic interest after the near-rape incident” (Nichol).

Rosenberg claims that Buffy “explored where evil and misogyny come from and urged us to fight them,” while simultaneously “ask[ing] those of us who loved Buffy and identified with her to contemplate grace and forgiveness” (Rosenberg). She technically is not wrong here, Whedon absolutely positions us to want to forgive Spike. However, I would venture to argue that the question up for debate is not so much the question Rosenberg poses of are we put in a position to forgive him, as it is, should we be put in a position to forgive him. Buffy is intended to be a role model for the pre-teen and teenage girls who watch the series. Yet, here, it sends a very damaging message: if you have a consensual sexual relationship with someone without loving them, you’re responsible if they attempt to rape you; but even if someone tries to rape you, you should easily forgive them and possibly begin a romantic relationship with them because they may change.

***

In the past few years, the public feminist conversation has shifted towards embracing Crenshaw’s idea of intersectionality. This has therefore influenced the ways we read all texts, even texts such as Buffy that were created after Crenshaw’s paper was first published but before intersectionality was a major concern of the feminist movement. Additionally, the #MeToo movement has revealed the prevalence of the abuse of power by men in all sectors, but notably in Hollywood. Joss Whedon admittedly “didn’t make a point of hiring female directors…[or] people of color’” (Busis); explicitly equated a woman unable to have children with the Hulk—yes, that Hulk (Yang); and, as recently as 2015, refused to call himself a feminist (Busis). The combination of these two public paradigm shifts, closer examinations of Whedon both personally and as a creator, as well as Kai Cole’s disturbing essay about her ex-husband has many people questioning what Whedon’s work can add to the cultural conversation surrounding feminism in 2019. Is the problematic nature of Joss Whedon a matter of separating the artist from the art, or, because his intentions while making this art are being called into question, are the two inextricably linked?

Joss Whedon has made his name creating and writing shows featuring strong female characters. However, he does not seem to understand that “having a girl beat up guys is not equivalent to a strong female character when they always, constantly depend on men” (Simons). Yet, he has still managed to create a career and profit off of television’s lack of actual strong female characters, catering to a largely underserved audience who hoped to see any sort of feminist ideas in fictional television. “Whedon’s openly feminist agenda, frequently mentioned in interviews, has provided an interpretive framework for much Buffy scholarship” (Berridge 478). Whedon pushes this narrative and the public’s perception of him as a well-meaning feminist, while refusing to be labeled as such “because suddenly that’s the litmus test for everything you do…if you don’t live up to the litmus test of feminism in this one instance, then you’re a misogynist” (Busis). It’s upsetting for fans of Buffy to realize that its creator feels that unless he is overtly espousing feminist ideas, his writing will be seen as misogynistic—which, it has been, he’s been criticized for both his Avengers: Age of Ultron script (Yang) and his rejected Wonder Woman script (White).

Although his public persona is that of a feminist, a closer look at his work and his personal life tells a very different story. In a commentary DVD extra for the second season of Buffy, Whedon discusses writing the script for the initial confrontation between Buffy and Angelus, saying “It felt icky that I could make him say these things. It felt icky and kind of powerful. It was very uncomfortable and very exciting for me to do it” (Nichol). This short piece of commentary is a perfect metaphor for Whedon’s career. He’s trying to be seen as “more” of a feminist by claiming he had no idea how he could write a scene where his heroine is eviscerated by her (newly-evil) boyfriend after having sex with him. However, he’s actually taking what could’ve been a moment to discuss the prevalence of slut shaming in our culture and refocusing it on himself.

Not only has his work contained misogynistic and offensive language toward women, but according to his ex-wife, Kai Cole’s, guest blog on The Wrap, he has also had several inappropriate affairs “with his actresses, co-workers, fans, and friends” (Cole). Aside from cheating on his wife, as creator and producer of several prominent series—at least in terms of his actresses, co-workers, and fans—it could be argued that he objectively had more power in these situations. This begs the question of exactly how consensual these affairs were and how much, if any, (possibly unintentional) coercion may have been involved. Furthermore, Cole says he wrote her a letter trying to excuse these affairs, explaining that he “was surrounded by beautiful, needy, aggressive young women” (Cole), and blaming them, rather than taking responsibility for his actions. This pattern of blame is unsettlingly close to the blame Buffy endures for her relationship with Spike.

***

Despite the shortcomings of both this show and its creator, Buffy was, and remains, a prominent series in the lives of many of the pre-teen and teenage girls who have watched and grown with Buffy and her friends since its 1997 premiere—this author included. However, as we become more educated on certain cultural topics, we—especially those of us in positions of power and privilege—are often forced to reconcile our love of certain texts with their more problematic aspects.

I began this essay with a very different conception of Buffy than I have now. Admittedly, I bought into the allure of this series’ surface-level feminism and girl power when I was watching it for the first time. Sure, it was sometimes overtly problematic, but the positive aspects seemed to outweigh the negatives. I thought that this essay would reveal the surface-level feminism of Buffy ran much deeper than I originally realized—not the opposite. A closer examination of Buffy has revealed that the issues with this series are far more serious than its creator’s personal failings. Reading Buffy as a cultural text exposes a series of disturbing messages. Moreover, even when it does put forth feminist ideas, they often fall under the more exclusionary sect of white feminism, completely ignoring Crenshaw’s proposed intersectionality, which had been published nearly a decade before Buffy’s premiere.

The question of how Buffy should be read in 2019 is a question that has been repeated a lot recently: Can the Harvey Weinstein’s films still be appreciated? What about The Cosby Show? Or shows affiliated with Fox Broadcasting, and, therefore, Roger Ailes? While some argue that these men and any texts or media associated with them should be “cancelled,” others call for a separation between the artist and the art. However, I would argue that, at least for Buffy, it is not so much about separating the artist from the art as it is about recognizing the art for what it is—its limits included.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my mom for proofreading all 4,500-odd words of this and catching the many mistakes I missed. I would also like to profusely thank Mary Kovaleski Byrnes for her support, guidance, and the much-needed periodic confidence boosts.

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Ono, Kent A. “To Be a Vampire on Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Race and (‘Other’) Socially Marginalizing Positions on Horror TV.” Fantasy Girls: Gender in the New Universe of Science Fiction and Fantasy Television, edited by Elyce Rae Helford, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2000, pp. 163–186.

Pender, Patricia. "Buffy Summers: Third-Wave Feminist Icon." The Atlantic, 31 July 2016, www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/07/how-buffy-became-a-third-wave-feminist-icon/493154/.

Riordan, Ellen. "Commodified agents and empowered girls: consuming and producing feminism." Journal of Communication Inquiry, vol. 25, no. 3, July 2001, pp. 279-97. EBSCOhost, proxy.emerson.edu/login?url=search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx direct=true&db=edsgao&AN=edsgcl.78260548&site=eds-live.

Rosenberg, Alyssa. "On ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer,’ we fell for the Slayer along with Angel,Riley and Spike." Editorial. The Washington Post, 10 Mar. 2017, www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2017/03/10/on-buffy-the-vampire-slayer-we-fell-for-the-slayer-along-with-angel-riley-and-spike/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.90b458f0de94.

“Same Time, Same Place.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer, season 7, episode 3, UPN, 8 Oct. 2002. Hulu, www.hulu.com/watch/f9a3b884-b72b-4bef-81e4-bcd95b002608.

Simons, Natasha. "Reconsidering the Feminism of Joss Whedon." The Mary Sue, edited by Kaila

Hale-Stern and Dan Van Winkle, Dan Abrams, 10 Apr. 2011, www.themarysue.com/ reconsidering-the-feminism-of-joss-whedon/.

“Smashed.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer, season 6, episode 9, UPN, 20 Nov. 2001. Hulu, www.hulu.com/watch/7728e9d5-e05d-4be3-ac93-d8792a018e54.

“Touched.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer, season 7, episode 20, UPN, 6 May 2003. Hulu,www.hulu.com/watch/ba2c6e7c-b015-47d2-8c62-4f16be64c579.

Whedon, Joss. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The WB and UPN, 1997-2003.

White, Adam. "Five time Joss Whedon, self-proclaimed 'woke bae', blew his feminist credentials." The Telegraph, edited by Martin Chilton, The Daily Telegraph, 21 Aug. 2017, www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/0/joss-whedon-5-times-blew-feminist-credentials/.

“Wrecked.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer, season 6, episode 10, UPN, 27 Nov. 2001. Hulu, www.hulu.com/watch/661f80ab-5cdc-426f-a494-283b03cf2ca6.

When I would walk out of my house in Lake City, Minnesota - a town which is made up of 5,025 people, a total of two street lights, misanthropy, one locally owned grocery store, and a post office [^5] - there would be nobody there despite neighboring a house on the left, a house on the right, a duplex across the street, and existing in a residential zone. And but so [^6] , there was a certain kind of palpable and identifiable isolation in knowing you’re alone in this specific slice of space and time; it’s a cold and visceral reflection of the physicality of loneliness when there are no people, yet this manifestation of loneliness somehow fuels and simultaneously extinguishes itself, - it gives you a real thing that you can point to and blame your destitution on.

When I landed in Boston, the humid, 90 degree east coast air was buzzing, and the energy was transformative - the hum of the public was the roaring industrial engine driving social discourse, the massive skyscraping monuments to humanity’s triumph were poetically juxtaposed against the 50 acre expanse of preserved manufactured greenery situated, as my father would say, “Right smack dab in the middle of everything!” [sic] I was studying with, sitting next to, and experiencing life right alongside people [^7] that are handpicked to be right here in that moment [^8] - nobody was there by accident, everyone wanted to be there from the bottom of their heart, and it was magic. Students were all on the same page during the first week of orientation, we were scared, we were insecure, we were entering a foreign environment without our kin, and we were clueless; none of us knew a single soul, so we tried to meet them all. It was socially acceptable and even encouraged for you to walk up to someone - a complete stranger - and start a conversation: I was meeting people every second of every minute of every day.[^9]

You can’t do that anymore. There’s sophomores, juniors, seniors, and graduate students to contend with; you don’t know who’s who: who is an empathetic freshman, a sympathetic sophomore, a banal junior, or a scoffing senior. Once they moved in, I felt distinctly freshman.[^10] The fascination and amazement that once surrounded the intellectual and artistic powerhouse now morphed into insecurity; the hum of public discourse was distracting from an unwritten essay, the huddled masses of Bostonians were a mob chomping at the bit to engulf me, I was no longer experiencing life alongside anyone else, I was actively avoiding it - I am inadequate. I’m constantly surrounded by people who are more invested than me, more attractive, more emotionally stable, more curious than I am. [^11] Even though, because I hate being alone, I aggressively fill my schedule, I still feel I’m not doing enough: I need more on my resume, I need to write that essay, I need to not be alone. And but so, I somehow simultaneously envy and despise the recluse roommate - that academic anchorite - who is content with nothing more than watching mind-numbing repetitive television programs while ingesting prescription drugs for which he is not the prescriptee.[^12] The one who is able to wallow and relax in their own filth. I want to be able to take comfort in my wretched refuse.

And but isn’t this feeling of isolation paradoxically universally bonding in some strange way? We are all, deep down, united in our belief that we are alone. It’s a self-defeating clause that is impossible to understand - how can one be alone and seeking connection to someone in a sea of people who are also alone and seeking connection to someone. It’s a common story, one that nearly every college freshman or ambitious young adult experiences when abandoning their cliched metaphorical nest - that of perceived isolation in the face of novel settings and experiences and people. I yearn for the day when I was fascinated by street signs - engrossed by plain white letters on a green metallic plate. But so now I’ve transitioned into a time when the banality of giving passerbys directions goes from excitedly abnormal to be horribly and utterly distracting. When I walk out of my dorm in Boston, Massachusetts - a city which is made up of roughly 685,094 people, 67,000 street lights, misanthropy, and dozens upon dozens of locally owned and franchise grocers [^13] - when I walk out of my dorm, there are people there. And I see people I love and respect and strive to impress. There’s a certain kind of abstruse and esoteric isolation when you’re surrounded by people you love and respect and strive to impress and still feel lonely. It gives you nothing to blame for your banal cloistered existence. [^14]

Acknowledgments

This essays owes its approach to David Foster Wallace. I first read Infinite Jest about a year ago and fell in love with Wallace’s use of the English Language - and while it may be cliché or problematic for an 18 year old white man to like Infinite Jest , I truly felt a connection between the page and me that no other book has achieved. I’ve read a lot of Wallace’s work, and all of what I’ve read has influenced this essay, including Infinite Jest, his collection of essays entitled A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again , his collection of short stories Brief Interviews With Hideous Men , and his 2005 commencement speech for Kenyon College that was later published under the title This is Water .

[1] I don’t actually have scoliosis.

[2] Obviously, these artists are not the greatest yet - right now we are all in the midst of creating the utter garbage that will define the term “learning experience.”

[3] My dorm room specifically is not exactly 115 square feet - because of an egressed corner of the room, it’s difficult to get exact measurements.

[4] Some of these wanderers are also students or busy businessmen taking a break from their strictly and precisely organized day, but some, if not most, are coming from places such as: a methadone clinic, their dealer’s house, or maybe a sleazy public bathroom after they shot up or snorted their substance of choice.

[5] Among other things.

[6] [sic]

[7] People that Emerson College’s president, Lee Pelton, would describe as “change makers,” and “truth tellers.”

[8]The moment of banal ecstasy: during your first week in a new location on the map, a group of people you met not one or maybe two days ago go to a comedy show down the street, and on the walk back you look up at the millions of illuminated apartments and office spaces - places where professionals perfect. You are instantly and subtly aware of a connection being formed between you and this group made up of people so breathtakingly individual and legitimate and sincere and nice that you will do anything in your power to sustain this moment. Nothing more, just sustain.

[9] Or at least it felt like it; I was making constant connection to other souls.

[10] Even while doing something as seemingly banal as walking into my residence hall, I felt remarkably immature. Like when you were a little child clutching your parents hand while walking through a department store and they let go and they leave. It’s the first time in your microcosm of a life when you’ve actually had real autonomy - and it’s paralyzing. For the first few minutes it’s exhilarating, but then the fact sets in that you are nothing but a lost little child.

[11] This is not wholly true.

[12] There is a surprising amount of drug abuse that goes on within the walls of academia.

[13] Among other things.

We sat at our favorite table, a Planned Parenthood themed booth complete with its own condoms, a waitress with a strange form of clown makeup and blue hair served us our milkshakes: one chocolate, one vanilla. Saturn Cafe is one of our favorite dead of the night date spots. The late-night city of Santa Cruz bustles with all sorts of crazies, something that would always keep us entertained and maybe even a little scared from time to time. The night sky enfolds the diner and casts a blue hue, tinting all within to match its appearance.

I took a long sip out of my vanilla milkshake, she did the same with her chocolate. Chocolate and vanilla: the perfect mixture. Our laughter filled the room, and my strange cackle made her laugh even more. This ideal mixture never stopped to frown, which was something that was new to me.

I never thought that I would be able to be so happy and so free. I was usually scared of what our relationship meant, what people would say when we walked into a room; but, with perfect moments like these I could forget about the horrors of the world. We chatted about every topic, from the science behind jellyfish to what cartoon she was working on next. I never had to fear how I felt around her because I could just exist as my most authentic self, something I wasn’t quite used to but something I was eternally grateful for.

I looked up from my drink, and her warm chocolate eyes filled me. The room began to glow, turned from the blue hue to a yellow. The moon was replaced by the sun, and I started to uncontrollably smile. A warm, honeyed glaze filled my body; first going from the tips of my toes into the tingling ends of my ears. Her hair was illuminated as if she had a halo surrounding her. Her freckled skin glowed and her smile shone as if it had no bounds. She looked down sheepishly at me, but I felt as if this girl could accomplish anything. The booth turned into a more vibrant pink, her maroon sweater became ablaze with color, and the cream walls transformed to its brightest possibility. It was a wave that came all at once, not slowly, but as if a tsunami was swallowing a small fishing boat while I was the poor fisherman basking in the last moments of awe before being swallowed by the sea. Unyielding warmth surrounded me as I felt a spark come through the two of us. My cheeks hurt from the smile that was molded out of this moment; my eyes could not blink for I wanted this fraction of a second to last forever and I wanted it to be one I would never forget.

This was when I knew I was in love with her.

“Because He knows—and

Do not You—

And We know not—

Enough for Us

The Wisdom it be so—”

The next day I sat at my desk, afraid of this new knowledge but I felt excitement for what it meant. Unable to concentrate as I was doing my homework, my eyes scanned my messy desk as the sun was going down. I spot various things, childhood artwork and many broken pens, but then this printed paper hidden under an old textbook caught my attention. Poem #480 by Emily Dickinson, one of my favorites of many. I read this, and it began to make sense. Why the room glowed when I saw her with fresh eyes. This writing expressed all I felt when simple words coming from me could not. It reminded me why we were together, fast friends morphing into lovers whose only goal in life was to laugh with each other. I pick up my phone and send a verse, unwilling to tell her what it meant even though she was confused on why I sent it. I explained to her that it would all make sense in time but my confidence I had so quickly gained was draining.

Unsure if this was the right decision, I drop the attempt for a few days until we are sitting on the deck of her favorite coffee shop in Capitola. The fog that rolled over the night made the patio wet, but we didn’t care. I stared over and the expansive sea, the candy heart colored houses dotting the pale sand while children played, parents watched, and dogs ran. The beauty of it all made me have the desire to forget the path I had set myself on; to just enjoy life for all it offers. Watching as people laughed along with their loved ones made me crave a much more simple life, one where I did not have to be afraid of what my feelings meant and just have the ability to exist alongside others without conflict. My fears of a hard life began to coexist in my mind with my fears of telling her the truth; which, made me believe that I should have never sent the verses in the first place, that it was only a silly endeavor that did not deserve a happy ending.

Breaking the silence of the waves, we laugh at how absurdly cute two birds were as they try to stay still floating in a current near the docks. They looked confused for why they were moving sideways, until they gave up their attempts and flew away, disappearing into the rising sun.

Giving a sideways glance at her as she ate her cheesecake, her favorite, I realized that I was the same as the birds: confused and unwilling to move. Swallowing my timid nature, I decided to fly towards the sun.

For the rest of the week until Friday night, I kept on sending her random verses. She continued being confused about why this was happening, but I confirmed to her that it would be cleared up soon enough. The four separate texts excluded the first and last verse, for that was needed to be said in person.

The pit of my stomach filled with butterflies as I put on the jean jacket she stole from me many times, twisted half of my hair up, and jumped into my car to pick her up.

“The Lightning—never asked an Eye

Wherefore it shut—when He was by—

Because He knows it cannot speak—

And reasons not contained—

—Of Talk—

There be—preferred by Daintier Folk—”

We sat at the same Planned Parenthood booth, we order our signature milkshakes but this time with a side of fries. Now a man with electric green hair and more tattoos than skin served us. The stars were out, and we again talked about anything under the sun, but this time from our strange history assignment to color theory regarding whether or not blue should be paired with yellow or orange. I dip my fries into my milkshake, trying to find the courage to tell her.

Nearing midnight, we started to walk back to my car with my arm around her shoulders. I looked up into the stars, gathering all of my strength for if I did not declare this I would regret it for the rest of my life. I could not waste this perfect moment, for the night will soon turn into day, and too much time would have come past without her knowing.

“The Sunrise—Sire—compelleth Me—

Because He’s Sunrise—and I see—

Therefore—Then—”

Walking in parallel with the star-filled sky, I state to her:

“I love Thee— “

Works Cited

elementary 

i watch His purple rubber gloves

run back                                and forth

from edge                              to edge.

the smell of harsh cleaning products

and familiar paternity.

the halls are empty now

run along. sprint past locker after locker

classrooms become mile markers

and it’s impossible to stop.

the air is thin and malleable

and filled with instruction.

i am under His wing

just father and son

employment

a murmur

then a silence.

The air had changed.

i heard my name from the kitchen

(i was in the living room).

i slowly approached - Was i in trouble? What had i done? What were they saying?

i don’t remember what they said.

i don’t remember how they told me.

i don’t know the words they used.

i do remember the look in His eyes

i do remember the pit in my stomach

i do know something was wrong.

                the planes

of

                  reality

had

                  separated

a hitchcock dolly zoom was in full effect

those i thought infallible

were now utterly deflatable

FIRED.

He was fired.

***

shh.

it was early.

it was cold. i was tired.

We had to get up before the sun.

We hiked to the stand, high in the tree

and sat

i looked

  where He looked.

i breathed

  when He breathed.

i talked

  only in response.

Our eyes were peeled.

Both searching the field.

Waiting for deer

to make themselves clear.

it wasn’t my place.

it wasn’t where i would have

prefered to be.

but i was happy

because He was happy.

and that’s all I’ll ever need.

2018 MN DNR (Found)

If fishing with one line, you may use two baits.

If you catch a fish

See the

Bait section

On page 31.

If you want to transport

No.

You can’t transport.

A party is two or more people fishing together

While maintaining visual and vocal contact.

A FISH is in your possession once you have caught and kept it.

You can’t possess.

With some exceptions, you can take from all

You can’t possess.

Person(a)

I look up at my son.

He is two inches taller

than me.

I knew him

when he was shorter.

I knew him well.

We were buddies.

Pals.

Friends.

Now I look up

And what I see

I love.

I love you.

But I do

Not

Know

Notes

I sat next to him on the edge of my twin-sized bed, staring at the floor. Our arms barely brushed together as we inhaled and exhaled, though these breaths were significantly more unsteady than usual. I remember him asking if he had been giving me what I wanted, and I lied and said yes, despite knowing that somewhere, deeper within myself, things weren’t working. I said yes for the sake of preserving the one thing in my life I thought I had cultivated to be stable.

“Even with friends, I’m hesitant. It’s like once I get to know them I can’t help but not want to spend time with them”.

My eyes kept trailing along the floor, hoping he wouldn’t notice the

tears welling in my eyes. The idea that I had become tired to him, in spite of the fact that I had shaped myself with such detail to satisfy him, was painful.

Ten hours later, I stood motionless under the showerhead as a steady, scorching stream enveloped by back and shoulders, leaving claw marks along my arms and legs. Everything felt especially heavy. I remember staring upwards at the steam collecting on the ceiling, my neck craned at such an angle that whatever tears escaped would trail back along my waterline and into my eyes. It burned. I’m not normally one for hot showers. Maybe, I thought, this would make me clean. Sterile, actually. In that moment, I wanted to erase everything and be like new.

We hadn’t been seeing each other for longer than two months. What we had didn’t last and was never really destined to, but it felt intense. That intensity seemed to stem from my mesmerization; I was simply stunned that I could possibly be the object of someone’s romantic interest. I realize now that that’s not an uncommon feeling, but I now see how unfair it is to view oneself in such an untouchable light. I allowed that feeling to completely dominate my relationship with him, and it eventually ended things. This newfound desirability I felt with him was something I desperately needed to cling to in order to make myself feel like I was worth something, so I made myself into something he needed. I carefully hand-picked the pieces of myself that I shared with him in order to preserve this heightened, desirable version of myself that I thought he wanted.

“When you say you’re hesitant, I can’t help but think about all of the things I could be doing to make myself good enough for you. I think the best way to be in a relationship is to decide that you care enough about another person to want to see them grow and change and develop. I’ve decided I want to do that for you. When you say you’re hesitant, I just think I’m not good enough,” I said.

He paused for much longer than I was expecting, and placed his arm around me. His touch felt freezing.

“You are good enough for me,” he said.

That wasn’t what I needed to hear. We made up for a moment before I lost my grip on reality, but the things I started saying stopped making sense, and he left. He just grabbed his bag and left. I’m fairly certain that’ll be the last time I’ll ever see him.

I slept over at his apartment the night before his nineteenth birthday. In the morning, I sang to him, fingers over my mouth, trying to hide my breath. He said he had never really enjoyed being sung to on his birthday, but with me, it felt different.

He glanced at me as I laid outstretched on his queen-sized bed, sliding my tongue along the plaque that had formed on my front teeth. He had a red fitted sheet. He said I looked like one of those Greek statues.

“I didn’t realize what was so beautiful about them until just now,” he said.

Wed, Dec 19, 1:48 PM

I’m not upset with you from but from now on I would just like to be friends

                                                                                                        I’m upset

                                                                              I mean i feel the same way

                                                                        But i’m still upset about things

Okay

Take as much time as you need

It was all so comfortable; the laying together, legs in knots. Waking up with my face in his shoulder, getting the chance to take a long look at the curve of his nose, the hook in his upper lip, his chest which pointed upwards, the way his arms fell at a length from his collarbones. Fitting my face in his neck as we just laid there, fingers often intertwined, I became familiar with his smell. Him, with mine. He told me that a sweatshirt of his started to smell like me after spending so much time together, and I can’t really explain it, but that summoned some sort of feeling within me that was unlike anything I had ever felt before. We’d say things like that often.

“No one has ever looked at me like that before”.

And he’d place his mouth on the part of my face where the cheek meets the ear, and I’d feel safe. For once, I felt that I meant something to someone.

In his own mind, he was an intellectual with a unique perspective on

everything. To the rest of the world, he was a self-important stoner with

a tendency to get mad at anyone who disagreed with him. He would always

tell me that he felt comfortable talking to me and no one else. That I was the one person in the world that got him, and that I was a special person because of it. He’s not a monster, and certainly not abominable or evil or awful in any extravagant way. Rather, he’s just much less than what I crafted him to be in my head.

Tues, Jan 8, 2:18 AM

Hey

I know we said that we would talk when we got back but I don’t think I’m coming back

Like there’s a 90+% chance I’m going to drop out

I’m sorry

4:56 AM

                        i will respect you immensely in any decision you choose to make

                                     just consider your intentions before you do anything final

                                                                                                and don’t apologize

                                                                                                              it’s your life

2:55 PM

Thank you

And that was the last time we spoke. It’s strange to think that’s

likely the last time I’ll ever speak to him, as there were days and days during the months of October and November that we kept in constant contact. The consistency was odd to him, he said, because even his best friend from home that he had known for a decade only reached out to him once a week. I’ve heard that when you’re looking at someone through rose-colored glasses, all of the red flags just look like flags.

Admittedly, there’s been a lot of swaying in the dark, of clutching my arms so tightly to my torso and feeling and feeling and feeling for that part of my body, wherever it is, that holds me. It’s so frightening to come to the realization that I had been shaping myself so exhaustively to satisfy the likes of others rather than developing my own identity. To instead become a shell of expectation, rather than a whole person. Sometimes, I clasp my hands as closely as I can around my eyes and ears and nose to avoid letting any important pieces fall out. I’ve been thinking, though, that my real self is actually contained in my legs. They’ve taken me this far.

I often wonder if he felt the same weight I felt that day in the shower. I wonder if he turned the faucet all the way to the right and let the water draw blood in the same way that I did. I would like to think so, and that his tears streamed back into his waterline as well, but maybe I’m just romanticizing the situation again as a way of protecting my own heart.

His presences lingers in an uncomfortable sort of way. He’s here, but obviously absent, and I can’t help but let memories of intrude upon my present relationship with spaces we shared in the past. I can’t use chopsticks anymore, really, after he taught me the trick to using them at a restaurant in Chinatown. I had to buy new sheets, too. Maybe I’m overreacting.

In retrospect, I see that I sought intimacy with him as a replacement for the intimacy I deserved to have been cultivating with myself. For years, I had repressed my own wants and needs in the name of making myself more easily digestible by other people. Instead, I simply wanted what everyone else thought I should want, or wanted me to want. So I wanted what he wanted. I dedicated a significant amount of my energy to making his life easier and more comfortable, while simultaneously making everything for difficult for myself.

After my hot shower, I called a car to the airport. Classes had ended for Christmas break. I went home to Ohio, despite desperately wanting to lay in my bed forever. I think I needed Ohio. I needed that that grounding in a space that was familiar to me in order to process everything.

During that drive home from the airport in Michigan, I cried and cried to my mom. It was late and dark and I told her I had never felt pain like the one I was experiencing, and that I didn’t know heartbreak could carry such a physical weight. Though I no longer feel the same pain, I can’t discredit my past self. She was aching in a way that she never had before. I respect her and love her immensely for coming out of that pain and disorientation on the other side a much stronger person, and for embracing her pain as a life experience rather than some evil force undeservingly thrust upon her.

It took this experience for her to realize that it had been ingrained in her heart that she was to shape herself into the most easily absorbable version of herself. Instead of cultivating the multitudes that she knew existed within her heart, she suppressed them, looking to become more like everyone else.

...

I hurt quite often. There’s an internal ache that’s sort of indescribable, in knowing that you did something damaging to another person’s life, or were at least involved in a decision that has the potential of negatively affecting their pursuit of their hopes and dreams and aspirations. I think I fault myself too much, and I think I’m scared to confront the fact that I didn’t do wrong. I did wrong against myself, but if I’m growing, is that really wrong at all? I don’t know.

To explain the gap I perceive, I must first explain the other half of the equation. In other words, I must explain the life experiences I have had over the course of the past year. After graduating from my small, homogenized, exceedingly white and conservative high school, I was thrust into that age-old, all too familiar cliche - a wacky arts school in a major city. Emerson College, despite its notorious lack of racial diversity, was a culture shock to me, mostly due to its famous inclusive and vibrant queer community. Here, I was introduced to people of all kinds of sexualities, genders, philosophies, and nationalities. It was here that I was educated in a new language - that of queer culture.

I had been familiar with the LGBT community’s most beloved celebrities and most popular terminology, thanks to the internet and the widespread appropriation of this terminology (which is an entirely different and important discussion best saved for another occasion), but Emerson gave me a whole new vantage point. Here, I could watch other queer people discuss celebrities, films, TV shows, literature, and all varieties of pop culture that they valued. Thus, when I entered the academic sphere, which seemingly includes so many queer voices, I was perplexed to find very few voices discussing the same “icons” I had heard about in person at Emerson.

To understand this relationship between the current LGBT culture I perceive and the culture discussed in academic journals, we must first establish the context in which this relationship exists. The context, in this case, would be LGBT culture of the past, and the general concept of this culture. This culture is both incredibly storied and often hidden/undocumented, a result of the stigma around homosexuality and other “deviant” sexualities in almost every historical society. Given that LGBT individuals existed throughout history in every time period and every region, there has been a lot of lost culture.

It is most useful to examine LGBT culture in the last few decades, in that it is the most similar to the culture of today’s community, and additionally, most information available pertains to this period. LGBT “culture” is not merely a underground collection of gay-themed media, but rather, more like a vast web of mainstream media that is selectively chosen and incorporated into the community, combined with certain works that directly deal with LGBT

themes. Historically, music has been particularly important to the community. In his extensively researched article about gay and lesbian music tastes in the Belgium queer community, Alexander Dhoest (and his assistant researchers) gives some background, explaining that “music contributed to the evolution of lesbian and gay cultures on several levels... it not only provided means to meet other lesbians and gays, whether belonging to a community and the construction of lesbian and gay identities” (e.g. Chauncey, 1994; Taylor, 2012)” (Dhoest et al., 208).

Furthermore, Dhoest notes that lesbian and gay tastes can vary from one another, but there are certainly overlapping artists and sensibilities. Particularly important to the LGBT community is “camp”, a style connected to gay culture that can be described, in the briefest, simplest terms, as a heightened parody of the feminine and “tasteful” society. Such culture is showcased in drag queens and the worship of pop divas. Dhoest elaborates, claiming “In a musical context, camp can be identified not only at the level of the performer and their stage performance; it is also audible through lyrics and musical execution.” Examples of such campy divas include Judy Garland, Madonna, and Whitney Houston (Dhoest et al., 209). LGBT culture is vast and dense, and campy pop singers constitute a small fraction of the bigger picture. Other genres can fall under the lens of camp, such as punk and disco. Additionally, from observations and life experience, I have noted there is a historical admiration in the community for female performers in all musical genres, such as Bjork, Blondie (Debby Harry), and Fleetwood Mac (Stevie Nicks). Historically, camp has also existed in the world of film, in everything from What Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) to the more overtly queer John Waters “Trash Trilogy” (Pink Flamingoes) (1972), Female Trouble (1974), and Desperate Living (1977) (Snider).

So, where has queer culture gone since the 20th century? In an age where the community has been increasingly more accepted and visible, especially in western culture, what content has emerged? In Lauren McInroy and Shelley Craig’s article “Perspectives of LGBTQ Emerging Adults on the Depiction and Impact of LGBTQ Media Representation,” a valuable cross-section of early 2010s LGBT culture is illuminated. As the title suggests, the researchers interviewed various self-identifying members of the community whose ages ranged from 18 to 22 (all located in a Canadian city where McInroy works as a professor) on the subject of LGBT representation in media, particularly TV and film.

In terms of representative shows, the researchers found the following to be the most commonly mentioned/popular among LGBT interviewees: Queer As Folk, The L Word, Degrassi, and Glee. Movies included Brokeback Mountain (2005), Boys Don’t Cry (1999), A Single Man (2009), and Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001) (mistitled “Hedwig and the Angry Itch” in the article). Already, it is clear that LGBT culture in the 2000s and early 2010s revolved much more around properties with actual LGBT characters in the narratives. Moreover, the musicians the community supported more openly supported the community in return, as is the case with musician Lady Gaga. Gaga was a favorite due to her larger-than-life media persona and biting wit, but she affirmed the community in return, notably premiering the LGBT pride centered track “Born This Way” in 2011. In these interviews, the LGBT emerging adults (who, it

must be said, were overwhelmingly white and LGB) noted the improved media representation but struggled to name a character or show/film they consumed that displayed queer people in a completely accurate light. Many of the emerging adults preferred new media, i.e. blogs and social media, for LGBTQ representation, because on these platforms the community can represent itself authentically and not be forced to appeal to mass audiences (McInroy). Unfortunately, the 2016 article fails to mention specific new media or new media celebrities, leaving the reader to guess at what exactly the subjects consume.

Regardless of in which era LGBT individuals consumed media, what they consumed, or why they consumed it, it is very clear that this media has an enormous impact, especially when it features some kind of direct representation. In a 2011 study at the Austin Pride Festival, an overwhelming amount of GLB individuals identified media figures as instrumental in their coming-out process (Gomillion et al.). In other words, through these storylines and characters, members of the community can see their own stories, which in turn legitimized and clarified their own hidden experiences and emotions. In a community like the LGBT community, where members typically grow up isolated in heteronormative households/communities, media representation is absolutely essential - for many, including myself, it is a bridge to understanding and acceptance.

Thus, the discrepancy I see between the current LGBT youth culture and the academic sphere does not have anything to do with this underlying understanding. Academic writers understand and have proven through empirical research that media is important to the LGBT community - it’s just that they fail to keep up with, or rather, fail to process this constantly evolving culture in meaningful ways. Each of the academic pieces I have cited contain valuable information, and yet, they all have significant shortcomings. Namely, they are out of date. To a degree, this cannot be helped, as the articles were published in 2015, 2016, and 2011, respectively. That said, the articles do not reference any representative films that were released post-2009, and the most recent TV show referenced began in 2010. Furthermore, these articles are some of the only LGBT-centered academic writing I could locate that deals with the actual community. After scouring the internet and using all the means provided to be as a student at a well-funded communications college, I found that almost all the well-researched, quantitative data on LGBT media and its impact on the community dated back to 2016 or earlier.

To a degree, this is not so much an issue specific to queer academic writing as much as it is emblematic of the faults of the academic genre as a whole. The peer-reviewed, extensively examined processing of academic papers serves as quality assurance, but it also ignores factors such as urgency or influence. This is not to say that academic writing is completely ineffectual in its antiquity and specificity - rather, I believe academic writing is incredibly important, and that the haste with which new material and new research is released should reflect that. In the case of research on LGBT narratives and their effects on the community, perhaps these articles need to be released more expeditiously and become more readily available to the LGBT youth who are

concerned with such matters. Articles like “Radical Love in a time of Heteronormativity: Glee, Gaga, and Getting Better” simply lose relevance in only a few years time.

Therefore, when the cultural items that are examined are no longer essential topics of conversation in the LGBT community, much of the research loses its teeth, and conclusions reached about the community itself can seem inaccurate or outdated. This is not to say that the history of the community cannot be documented, nor are older cultural items like “Glee” unimportant to the visibility of the community. Rather, these simply do not reflect the current values and shared culture of the community, especially for LGBT youths who joined the community long after Madonna and Glee had phased out of popularity. Even in the academic world, timing must be considered. Research regarding an evolving world has to evolve with it and remain relevant, or else the authority of academia will wane further.

Moreover, in the world of academic writing, specifically that which was available to me through my liberal arts style institution, I see two misguided avenues which queer academia often heads down. The first is that of the misguided research. If academic research is to illuminate the influences of media on LGBT individuals, it is essential that the researchers actually interact with LGBT individuals. It is not enough for the researchers to be queer themselves (as is the case with many of the aforementioned articles) - the subjects must be as well. In the piece “Sexuality and Teen Television: Emerging Adults Respond to Representations of Queer Identity on Glee” by Michaela D.E. Meyer and Megan M. Wood, an empirical study is conducted by interviewing various students at a college about their experiences with the TV show Glee. In their opening statement, the authors stress that while previous research has established that queer media can have an impact on emerging adults, they wanted to focus on how these adults are impacted, and in what ways their identities can benefit. This is a valuable vein of research that has yet to be touched, and yet, the researchers miss the mark by solely interviewing straight-identifying individuals. In a study about LGBTQ representation in a show famously important to the community, the researchers allowed for their 97 fans of Glee to be unanimously heterosexual. While the data itself is well organized and analyzed, this oversight renders the data useless in terms of LGBT impact. When the world of academic writing is already so exclusive and, for lack of a better term, narrow, a journal like “Sexuality & Culture: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly” in which this study was published should be providing more accurate and insightful data.

On the other hand, academic writing can miss the mark by focusing too much on the thematic analysis of queer media. After finding article after article about the state of the community written in 2015 or earlier, I began to look for specific articles about current LGBT cultural items of which I knew, those that I had heard in conversations with actual LGBT emerging adults. Researching these items, I found some peer-reviewed entries (there were significantly more entries on queer film/TV as opposed to queer music, despite music’s aforementioned important role in the community), and yet, these were almost always a thematic analysis of the text. Specifically, “Beating Hearts: Compassion and Self-Discovery in Call Me By Your Name” by Joanna Di Mattia and “Call Me By Your Name: Not Pedophilia, Still Problematic” by Renee Sorrentino and Jack Turban are examples of such analytical articles about a relevant LGBT cultural item. Call Me By Your Name, a 2017 film based on the book of the same name, has been immensely popular due to its sensitive and visually splendorous take on gay romance, and therefore, would be a fantastic artifact to conduct research on. That said, these authors, despite writing for publications such as “Screen Education” and “Psychiatric Times,” offer up little more than their review of the material through slightly different lenses. The articles vary in their opinion on the quality of the representation, but each neglects to investigate the actual effects of the material on the represented people. “Beating Hearts” almost purely focuses on the technical and narrative elements of CMBYN, while Sorrentino and Turban’s article makes a surface level connection between modern LGBT youths who use hookup apps and the main character of the film’s experiences. Thematic analysis and opinion based evaluation is not without merit, but there are plenty of conversations on film analysis and queer themes already going on outside of the academic sphere. In order for academia to be necessary and essential in today’s world, it must differentiate itself by providing the kind of empirical data and findings that art journalism cannot cover.

If the goal of the academic sphere is to educate other academics, then researchers must make an effort to reach out of the academic world and learn about things outside of their domain. If the goal of the academic sphere is to educate students my age, then research that is genuinely reflective of the world in which we live must be made available to us. Many of these articles are valuable in certain respects, and on the whole, this body of research constitutes a wealth of useful information when cross-referenced with one another to fill in the gaps. Nonetheless, we, as a community and as young people with a thirst for information, deserve better. Ultimately, the most crucial oversight in the queer academic community is simple - there is a lack of new voices with new information. Whether in the form of impactful texts or influential figures within the community, these perspectives must be addressed and must be heard. Meaningful research must be done that intimately involves these voices in the process itself. It is not easy to change gears within the academic community, to ask a sloth to move faster, but valuable change is never easy. Strong academics do not teach and communicate because it is easy, but rather, because they understand that knowledge and perspective is unimpeachably important. Perhaps, academics can understand that communicating with the current culture themselves is the first step towards communicating this knowledge to others.

Works Cited

Bingman, Andrew. Influence of Media on Gay and Bisexual Identity Formation. 2016.

EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsbas&AN=edsbas.D7683790&site= eds-live.

Boyer, Sabrina, and Erin Brownlee Dell. € ̃Pop Culture Is Our Religionâ€TM: Paulo Freire, LGBTQ Rights and Radical Love. 2015. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsbas&AN=edsbas.EED4E14&site=e ds-live.

Dhoest, Alexander, et al. “Into the Groove: Exploring Lesbian and Gay Musical Preferences and ‘LGB Music’ in Flanders.” Observatorio (OBS*), no. 2, 2015, p. 207. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edssci&AN=edssci.S1646.595420150 00200011&site=eds-live.

Di Mattia, Joanna. “BEATING HEARTS: Compassion and Self-Discovery in Call Me by Your Name.” Screen Education, no. 91, 2018, p. 8. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsgao&AN=edsgcl.576220095&sit =eds-live.

Kies, Bridget, and Thomas J. West, III. "Queer nostalgia and queer histories in uncertain times."

Queer Studies in Media & Pop Culture, vol. 2, no. 2, 2017, p. 161+. Contemporary Women's Issues, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A496450962/CWI?u=ecl_main&sid=CWI&xid=b2c 1e0b. Accessed 8 Apr. 2019.

Meyer, Michaela D. E., and Megan M. Wood. “Sexuality and Teen Television: Emerging Adults Respond to Representations of Queer Identity on Glee.” Sexuality & Culture, vol. 17, no. 3, 1 Sept. 2013, pp. 434–448. PsycINFO, Emerson College, doi:10.1007/s12119-013-9185-2.

Mcinroy, Lauren B., and Shelley L. Craig. “Perspectives of LGBTQ Emerging Adults on the Depiction and Impact of LGBTQ Media Representation.”

Journal of Youth Studies, vol. 20, no. 1, 19 May 2016, pp. 32–46. Taylor & Francis Online, Emerson College, doi:10.1080/13676261.2016.1184243.

Snider, Sarah. “The John Waters Trash Trilogy.” Culture Wars, 19 June 2007,

Thank you to Mary for her soapbox rants in class which inspired this paper and my quiet fight for better maternity leave policies. Thank you to Audrey, Kayla, and Clare for making my recklessly pieced-together words more understandable and eloquent. Thank you to Phil for enduring me while proofreading this piece out loud to him nearly four times the night before it was due. Thank you to my mom for serving as the pivotal point for me to center my academic analysis around and for being the shining light in my life every day. And most importantly, thank you to women and mothers everywhere who fight the good fight because they have to or they want to. My words are their words.

***

Once a month, my mother and I somehow fall into a conversation about the day my brother was born. I was five––a curious child dawdling at kindergarten, presumably learning about seasons and basic additions. But she was working. After downing a glass of warm milk in the morning and feeling rightfully queasy after, Mama hiked up her stretchy maternity jeans and made her way to the Subway franchise our family owned. There she gently laid tomatoes on people’s sandwiches, cleaned countertops, and managed payroll until her water broke, and my father scooped her away to the hospital. Exactly a month after her labor, we sold our Subway to another presentable family that had the time to manage it, unlike my mother who was now straddled with not one, but two young children.  

With my father working full-time, Mama found it best to dismiss her responsibilities at the restaurant to care for her newborn and five-year-old. This solution was possible only because of our family’s financial stability and my parents’ compromise. And because my mother essentially worked for herself, it was painfully easy to voluntarily slip out of her obligations. She wasn’t bound by contract to upper management, and there was no man in power to whom she had to explain the strenuous reality of parenting. Millions of other parents around the country cannot afford this same luxury of leaving work so effortlessly for their children.

Throngs of complaining women root their frustrations in an unsatisfying federal maternity leave policy. Author Megan Sholar, who detailed the policy in the American Historian, gained acclaim for her professorship at Loyola University and her book titled “Getting Paid While Taking Time” on the history of United States leave. Sholar explains the provisions for parental leave that were detailed in the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) in 1993. The FMLA mandates employers offer 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave to women starting families––but even this stringent three-month release is limited by an array of eligibility requirements, including length of employment, size of employer, pay scale, and more (Sholar). Though the legislation was seen as an accomplishment and haven for those starting families at the time of its release, the American mandate is especially strict and unforgiving on households, and families cite its inadequacy time and time again.

The argument often stands that poor maternity leave policies hinder families. Restrictive family regulations loosen children’s bonds to their working parents, set up ample opportunities for childhood isolation, and leave women daydreaming about the state of their newborns while at their desks. But the argument the corporate world should be considered goes unscathed. Due to an ingrained American cultural perspective, extending maternity leave is commonly seen as a hindrance to business. But would extending maternity and parental leave policies’ nationwide truly hurt women’s workplace performance and the economic state of employers in the way this perspective argues? The reality may be the opposite.

Lengthening the duration and financial regulations assigned for maternity leave results in long-term positives that are currently either voluntarily or ignorantly overlooked by most employers. The eventual benefits of extending parental policies, as is done by dozens of other countries and will be detailed later, are overshadowed in today’s negative cultural lens through which leave is usually viewed. And the advantages of widening these policies cannot materialize without first challenging and changing the national attitude toward maternity leave.

Opposition to improved maternity leave is deeply rooted in this American cultural norm, easily adopted and expanded by conservative lawmakers and employers. As a country founded through strident individualism and dogged hard work, leave of any kind––parental leave included––is perceived as a deviation from professional goals. Career features journalist Rachel Gillett writes for Business Insider, “individualism and business...these ideals have been incompatible with the idea of paying new parents to spend time off from work for their kids” (Gillet). Companies view the need to take off work for early childcare as an extradition from economic productivity and profit. But this perception is painfully simplified; it adheres to the basic idea that less work overall is being done when the employee cannot come to her job temporarily.

This attitude is compounded by the economic system that rules the United States. America thrives on being fiercely capitalist––an identification that immediately undermines jobs that traditionally befall women, like housework and child care. A capitalist society hinges itself on the accumulation of profit, and consequently, employers assign financial value to the work their laborers complete. Bryce Covert, women’s political writer and contributor to The Nation, explores the interplay between capitalism and career women in her piece “Is There Room for Women Workers in Capitalism?” The dismal response to her title’s question is no. “Under capitalism, work done outside the home can be sold for wages to capital; work done inside the home can’t create more capital for the capitalists,” she wrote. Following this principle, corporations see little need to ascribe resources for women caring for children outside of their professional jobs (Covert). Their absence from work for maternity leave does not create conventional “capital,” and in this effect, attains no basic monetary contention for the company. But employers’ decision not to provide these resources for working mothers perpetuates a unequal system where these women's labor goes overlooked, hurting both the employee and the employer.

A group of three researchers commissioned by the International Labor Office detail the outmoded perception that allows this cycle of underappreciation to continue in their study titled “Maternity Leave in SMEs: An International Review.” Prominent labor researcher Suzann Lewis and her colleagues highlight the need for a cultural shift in order for the benefits of extended leave to finally reach fruition. “Without a wider understanding, employers are likely to perceive staff maternity as an unnecessary disruption rather than a fact of business life that can be managed productively,” wrote Lewis. Employers’ inability to look past this cultural obstruction is the foundation of their misconception, “underpinning their hostility or resistance to the introduction of related measures” (Lewis et. al). Those constructing leave regulations on a policy level are stuck in a one-track mindset that prioritizes checkmarks on daily to-do lists over long-term productivity that is inevitably boosted by more reasonable maternity policies.

The nature of the American workplace and its inherent lack of flexibility only further obstructs the path for maternity leaves’ betterment. The American workplace not only rewards, but expects, overworking––an activity that is an impossibility for the average working parent. Journalists Hanna Schank and Elizabeth Wallace wrote a seven-part series on women’s ambitions following college for The Atlantic, a popular American commentary magazine. In their article, Schank and Wallace find the average employee extending the 40-hour work week by seven hours in addition to time spent commuting. The women realize that “for the working world to continue to function as it does, and for houses and children to continue to function as they do, someone must take on double duty” (Schank and Wallace). As parents on “double duty” prioritize the needs of their children and slip away from the demanding environment of a workplace that operates over full-time, it’s no wonder bosses see no way through which maternity leave could help their bottom line.

Based on this enduring cultural perspective in the United States, resistance to improved leave carries on, founded in the aforementioned idea that parental leave cannot contribute beneficially to economic productivity. But research into the impact of better leave offers up a more progressive perspective. In actuality, improving maternity leave lends itself to further cost efficiency for the employer and strengthened national workplace equality.

In reaction to poor maternity leave policy, more and more women find themselves interrupting or ending their careers because of their inability to sustain the upkeep of two jobs––one professional and one familial. University professorships and administrators serve as microcosms to examine the linkage between length of maternity leave and retention. Mariaelisa Epifanio and Vera Troeger, prominent researchers at the UK institutions Liverpool University and the University of Warwick respectively, explored this connection at colleges in Britain in their study titled “Bargaining over Maternity Pay: Evidence from UK Universities.” In relation to this paper’s study of American parental leave, their research is prefaced by the fact that the UK offers stronger maternity leave than the United States to begin with––52 weeks with few additional contingencies. Nevertheless, the study concluded that universities who provided shorter maternity leave provisions saw lower retention rates in the women they previously employed (Epifanio and Troeger). Companies then lose trained workers, equipped for the jobs they had and likely to return if offered extended opportunities around childbirth.

And decreased retention of working women, as seen in Epifanio and Troeger’s research, ultimately hurts the pockets of employers who are often too concerned with the immediate finances required to cover parents on leave. Budgeting the extra money to allow for improved leave is a cost far smaller than that of replacing trained workers. Researchers for Family Matters, a non-profit organization dedicated to ending the structural oppression of families, spearheaded a study called “The role of planning, support, and maternal and infant factors in women's return to work after maternity leave,” led by Melissa Coulson and two other colleagues with extensive experience in family-related research. In it, they evaluated the economic realities of turnover: “the costs of replacing employees is quite high, with estimates of turnover costs ranging from 29% to 46%. Moreover, the costs cited do not consider the indirect costs…such as those associated with the initial inefficiency of a new employee” (Coulson et. al). Women, who are bound by the cutoffs of America’s current leave policies, are subjecting their employers to turnover costs when as mothers, they are given an age-old ultimatum: keeping their jobs or having the prolonged ability to care for their newborns? When many inevitably choose the latter, companies’ budgets flail. In this situation, the shortsightedness of the average American employer limits them from considering the overall finances which undoubtedly support improved leave.

Aside from the costs of replacement, retaining working women who return from childbirth elevates the quality of employees and therefore employers’ work. Epifanio and Troeger's research in Britain found some universities offered better leave provisions to attract and keep skilled professors and administers who produce work that would benefit the reputation and standing of the institution. This concept can be expanded to companies, who can look to enhance the quality of their production by putting employee loyalty at the forefront of their mission by strengthening their leave policy.

Conversely, improving leave policies allows employers to attract a wider range of applicants for positions, in addition to retaining their skilled workers as explored in the last paragraph. Rebecca Greenfield, a journalist for the business and market news publication, Bloomberg, explained how companies with longer better leave draw in a larger breadth of applicants: “such laws can motivate companies to adopt the benefit in order to stay competitive...benefits such as paid parental leave may be more psychologically appealing than a raise.” Greenfield’s work evidences a concept that is often overlooked––better maternity leave not only keeps those who are good at their jobs, it entices other highly skilled people to employers with reasonable leave regulations. An expanded applicant pool has the potential to improve a company's workforce, efficiency, and productivity as a result.

In addition, adopting improved maternity leave regulations potentially allows employers to showcase a progressive stance on hiring practices––they can display an understanding that women, including those who give birth and raise children, are equally hireable as men and single women. They can convey both through increased hiring and retention that these women are not professionally disposable in the way they have been in the past. The normalization of employing working mothers will also raise the level of societal equality in the workplace.

In fact, improved regulation before and after pregnancy has a wide-reaching bettering effect on equality in the American workplace in more ways than the one previously mentioned. Shivani Kapur, a graduate law student at The University of Alberta, examined how pregnant women and mothers are negatively stereotyped and positioned in Canadian workplaces in her thesis titled “Pregnancy and Motherhood: Prejudice, Stereotyping and Discrimination in the Canadian Workplace.” Kapur cites maternity leave discrimination that has reinforced “women’s economic dependence on men.” She continues to say that “the general absence of maternity leave laws...fostered the notion that the mother and worker were incompatible roles, thereby perpetuating women’s subordinate position.” Her research asserts stronger maternity policies would provide more room for career-driven women to climb the professional ladder and aid the goals of employers (Kapur). Improved leave regulations then would lead to the increased presence of equal pay despite gender and allow more women to reach higher-level positions––two indicators of greater workplace equality. In addition, women’s increased professional climb and pay equity as a result of improved maternity leave policy will strengthen American economic productivity overall.

Despite the economic advantages of extending maternity leave, the national perception of leave stands still. The societal, financial, and systematic obstacles are seemingly endless for working mothers, building one after another even as more women enter the force. This paper’s exploration of maternity leave only skims its economic and societal effects. Topics including gender-free parental leave, pregnancy discrimination, and family impact post-leave were not even mentioned simply because of time and space restrictions. In an ever-evolving world where jobs become antiquated and new ones emerge, working mothers’ dilemmas shift and change with the times and are in constant need of being justified and explored.

As of now, after seeing my own mother dip out of professional life for her children, I find it essential we reevaluate the American capitalist model that devalues parental work. I watched Mama go to every single one of my dance performances, make my crustless sandwiches after school, and pick up the laundry off my floor as I was a reckless middle schooler. And after leaving her job at Subway, she did the same for my brother. Though looked down upon from a corporate perspective, her decision was praised by full-time mothers and perfect for our family situation. Eventually her choice derailed others’ professional perspective of her. But the public must question the way the overarching American cultural perspective, proven wrong in this paper, has influenced their thinking before judging all mothers the same way. Only then can the label of “mother” and “worker” professionally and personally coincide.

Works Cited

Covert, Bryce. "Is There Room for Women Workers Under Capitalism?" The Nation, July 2015.

Coulson, Melissa; Skouteris, Helen and Dissanayake, Cheryl. The role of planning, support, and maternal and infant factors in women's return to work after maternity leave [online]. Family Matters, No. 90, 2012.

Epifanio, Mariaelisa, and Vera E. Troeger. "Bargaining over Maternity Pay: Evidence from UK Universities." Feb. 12 2019.

Greenfield, Rebecca. "More Companies Than Ever Offer Paid Parental Leave." Bloomberg, June 28 2018.

Gillett, Rachel. "Most people in America want paid parental leave — here's the real reason the US is the only developed nation that doesn't have it." Business Insider, Oct. 1 2017.

Kapur, Shivani. "Pregnancy and Motherhood: Prejudice, Stereotyping and Discrimination in the Canadian Workplace." University of Alberta Journal of Law, 2017, pp. 85-94.

Kohli, Gurpreet. Personal interview. Mar. 30 2019.

Lewis, Suzann, et al. Maternity Protection in SMEs : An International Review. International Labor Office, 2014, pp. 1-16. International Labor Office. FLO eResource Catalog Emerson.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Mary, Kayla, and Audrey for endlessly commenting on this piece and helping it reach the place it is at now. Thank you to Napoleon Hill for writing Think and Grow Rich. This piece would physically not be possible without it. And most importantly, thank you to Papa for his inexhaustible inspiration and guidance.

I found out most kids do their homework near the kitchen later than most because for me, our smooth green granite kitchen island was our home’s only no-work zone. My brother and I did everything from alphabet flash cards to college applications holed up in the corners of our rooms, easily and effortlessly sneaking out our phones in-between––and sometimes during––assignments.

Our dining room was used as a Sikh prayer room, shuttered by sheer curtains and a makeshift door which was actually a wooden folding screen we always saw at World Market. The only table we had sat in the empty space near the kitchen bathed with light and elephant chotskies. But eating meals at this table was reserved for dinners with formal guests, those who we wished to trick into believing we were civilized and polite and normal. Usually when we ate, the four of us were littered around the island only yards away from the stove where Mama rolled rotis, perfect and thin and oval.  

Meal-time configurations were a constant––me on the squeaky far-left stool, Divij on the one right beside me, and Papa standing straight ahead of me, assuredly leaning back on the low-shelved cabinets and staring down at his phone until naan, sabji, and daal were carefully laid out in front of him. On good days, days where he would sing and laughingly scream and grab the butter from the fridge before Mama could ask us to, he would sometimes sit. Otherwise, he devoured his dinner back-hunched, with only his elbows touching the unsanded granite away from us. He claimed he sat enough at work.

But on days that inescapably prompted me to be the last one at our faux-table, when Papa lingered around the sink rather than returning to his nightly ritual of gruesome television, he and I would talk. It was usually on school nights when for some reason; I had no more English reading, and he had run out of emails to answer. My brother always slept early, around 9, and my mother was dead-set on gently rubbing his back until he drifted off. So they fled upstairs well before the both of us.

Sometimes in this late-night dialogue, he lectured me on anything he could pinpoint.

“You’re wasting your time singing and doing speech and participating in everything that has nothing to do with anything that matters.”

“You need friends with bigger goals, bigger ambitions. Or you’ll fall behind.”

“Don’t look down when I speak to you. Look at me.”

“Don’t side with your mom.”

These insults slowly but steadily lost their weight. But these kinds of conversations reminded me he had an unnatural talent for coiling subtle fear into the hearts of each of our family members.

But on easier days, days when we felt closer and more amiable, he would unknowingly retract in a long autobiography. It would be complete with stories of his youth, his dad, his Suzuki motorcycle, his journey to this country, his life. Both my respect and my anger for him derived in his unrelenting air of authority during these kitchen island conversations. I held him to a higher standard than everyone because of how much his words had hurt me in the past––partially because he was my father and partially because of the cultural norms that excused his yelling and hitting and menacing.

Because of the way his father had acted and his father’s father had acted, he thought it was okay that he set the mood of the entire household. Sadly, the remaining three of us had no grip over the air that loomed in our home. If Papa was upset, we were bound to be, wound tightly by his staring looks, his forceful orders to clean and move and shut up, and his ability to burst open in a fit of screaming at any time. If he was happy, we simply weren’t allowed to be gloomy or confused or have other plans with our friends; this was suddenly a picturesque day where we were mandated to wrap ourselves up in quality family time and be ready with an endless list of activities to do together. It was this grip that I always wished to break out of––I wanted to be permitted the power to set the tone for my life. And the only time I felt like I could was when he talked to me like an actual person, not just as his daughter, in these kitchen island conversations.

It is these quiet moments of dimly lit chit-chat that I still think about. And it was one of these quiet moments, days after my high school graduation, that he gifted me Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. The blue book slid towards me on the green granite I’d grown to know and love.

***

Mama and I were squished on the plane during my one-way trip to Boston for college––me completely unaware of any snoozing men and crying children, lost in a fleshed-out fantasy of a life to come. My dreams were no different than the possibility of freedom that prompts so many other naive college freshman to frolic thousands of miles away from where they grew up. I was finally being given the permission, if not encouraged, to study and travel and exist amongst high-rises and privileged intellectuals in Boston––waiting and watching as we all drowned in a pool of debt only for missed classes and Ramen noodle dinners. Even now, I am thankful for naivety because it makes this frivolous college life worth it.

Papa knew I was responsible and entirely capable of handling myself in an atmosphere of liquid temptation, loud roommates, and procrastination. I was already used to handling a busy schedule. Classes, debate, choir, theatre, and running in high school just morphed into more class, student newspaper, and an internship in college. I could do it easily, just with a little less sleep.

My dad reluctantly stayed home with Divij during my move-in because he started school the day after. Papa wanted to come help carry my boxes up flights of stairs and take pictures of me in a filled dorm room with quirky decorations I knew he wouldn’t approve of.

With an hour and a half left in the flight, I pulled out my dad’s gift to me, the book. I wondered if Papa had considered handing down his old, tattered copy, ridden with folded pages, margin notes with crappy pens, and the ancient version of the forward. His version lived on his desk, and he claimed he read it through twice every year. His hand-me-down would have felt more personal, more intimate. In that moment, I wished he understood me a little deeper––deep enough so he could have seen that his was the version I actually wanted.

On the inside flap of the revised copy he gave me, he wrote a long note, in the penmanship I had always seen in letters from Santa, birthday cards, and school permission forms. Make us proud...Babaji Mehar Karan, May God Bless You. I ran my hand softly on the glossy cover and flipped through its pages quickly. In only three months, dust had built up in the spine and between the pages. It landed on my lap as its breeze brushed my face.

Other than the messy, blue writing near the beginning, it was the cleanest book copy I’d laid my hands on in a while. As a serial reader and avid notetaker, every other book I owned was adorned with slashes, quips, and folds. In fact, this copy was the purest thing I was taking to my new shiny life at school.

But sitting on the plane with Mama sleeping beside me, I realized everything in my life was wildly pristine. I was literally floating in the air towards a new city amidst a life of luxury. Had I not been given the opportunity to have an exceedingly average upbringing, I would have no chance to fulfill the extraordinary ambitions I held on that plane. This was my umpteenth time in the air; my first time was before I could even remember, before I could walk, before I could even speak.

Papa was 24 the first time he boarded a plane. He grew up in a house the size of our living room in Old Delhi with a largely absent father who was always at work, an unrelenting mother, and two little siblings he placed on his bike and physically pedaled to school for years. When he flew to an unknown life in America twenty years earlier, he was essentially penniless––with so little money he wouldn’t splurge on an airport burger, let alone a new pair of shoes like the ones I was eyeing after security.

The plane took me farther and farther away from home, from the place where Papa had hidden the true nature of his struggles from me. Gifting me a pristine copy of the book that had helped him lift himself out of a place of poverty, of insecurity, of constant worry only made the difference between his childhood and mine glaringly clear.

I held the book in my hand tightly for what felt like hours. Mama woke up; the flight attendants took our trash; the pilot turned on the seat belt sign; the plane landed. But there I was, letting the sweat from my clammy hands clutching the book seep into its glinted pages and blur the outside ink.

***

Papa’s always been one to unknowingly contradict himself, but he’ll never admit to his contradictions. He’s prideful. It’s ironic that for years, he told me there was no formula for a good life. The only underlying constant in everyone’s reach for the abstract of success was hard work, he said. And I believed it because this advice had worked time and time again.

In high school, I always saw myself as a force to be dealt with because that’s what he expected of me. I approached every test, every tournament, every concert with a glaring air of confidence and poise. It seems like I loved myself as much as one could and had full faith in my abilities, even if I didn’t. Behind this facade, I made 3 AM my regular bedtime, lost weight because I would forget to eat, and packed every hour of my life until there was physically no more time. It was all part of working hard––working hard, he told me, was the only way.

But his favorite book sells a more twisted version of this lesson.

I had graduated days before, and he chose not to give me the book until the tranquil hours of the night when we both found ourselves seated around the green granite once again. He had hidden the copy in plain sight where its presence would go unquestioned by me: the planning desk connecting the pantry and fridge in the kitchen. The book is thick and weighted, held down with the compilation of lessons from some of the greatest businessmen in recent history. These men founded monopolies, created literature that transcended the evolution of time, and forged unexplored paths through violent invasion. Author Napoleon Hill interviewed hundreds of these men, and succinctly wrote “a powerful, proven formula” to personal fulfillment and higher achievement. It’s essentially a cop-out for life.

I flipped it open to the introduction. “TRULY, THOUGHTS ARE THINGS,” it starts. “And powerful things at that when they are mixed with definiteness of purpose, persistence, and a BURNING DESIRE for their translation into riches or other material objects.” It then tarries off into a story about Edward C. Barnes, right-hand man to Thomas Edison. The book was corny, over-simplified, and blatantly everything I’d never want to read.

But I quietly listened to Papa’s summary while I aimlessly perused through the book. And he explained, with wonder in this eyes and voice, how it worked.

“You’ll reach the part in the book where you will see the formula, and it’ll click.”

“Okay,” I said plainly. “I can’t wait to read it.”

***

I never got through the book, and he doesn’t know I haven’t. One day, I intend to. It’s only fair to accommodate Papa’s enthusiasm eventually––hopefully sooner than later, so he doesn’t lord it over me. He claims the book shaped who he was and brought him to the position of occupational and personal power he now holds. After getting through the forward and about a page before re-realizing self-help books aren’t for me, I realized why he likes it as much as he does. Papa believes the cop-out because he does not realize the capacity of what he has and can continue to achieve on his own.

He had big dreams that were hindered by a world of financial insecurity and the burden of a watching family. As the most intelligent and the most willing of his siblings, the responsibility to pull the family out of a paycheck-to-paycheck lifestyle fell on him. Despite the stress I’m sure he occasionally felt, he swooped into this position with ease and confidence. And because he did, I have absolutely no need to take the same role. I am given the power to be ambitious, to be idealistic, to think about passion rather than money for at least a little while. The idealism that accompanies youth was sharply snatched away from him as he was forced to take the path that led to treasure. And his submission of his idealism is what to allowed me to escape this hinderance.

Growing up, I loathed him for his blatant anger and insults that sprouted itself whenever he wielded it. These feelings were pointed at us more often whenever he was stressed about work, about his property, about our education. His anger derived the memory of the life he gave up––though maybe unwillingly––to give our family the life we deserve. His stories around the kitchen island don’t reflect dreams of being stuck behind a desk of a IT company, ordering people over the phone and traveling every other week. He wanted to be a doctor. He wanted a life of intrigue and adventure.

My money will always be built up on money that already existed, the money he made. Though it may be selfish and stupid to complain about starting far above rock bottom, my privilege sometimes minimizes my journey. It doesn’t matter what I achieve in my life; to me, my accomplishments will always be trivial in comparison to his sacrifice. They will never be enough.

In times where I feel lazy and uninspired, I completely forget the moments he was degrading me and focus on those where he and him alone––any and all self-help books aside––drove me to be better.

***

The plans I made for my life began to slowly piece together after my first few months in Boston. I am happy in a menial sense, as much as one can expect an eighteen year old to understand the essence of contentment. My grades are good; my career is on track; my internship is everything I wanted it to be; and my friends party hard and often. And though I see that book everyday when I sit down on my desk to put in my contacts and straighten my hair, the pages mean nothing to me.

I brought the book because it serves as a symbol and reminder of my father: a reminder I currently do and probably will always need. The lessons in Think and Grow Rich and its illustrious formula I have yet to discover cannot possibly teach me as much as he has. My dad’s teachings have led me to a lifelong learning journey of complexity and resilience, and one book, one collection of words, cannot hold nearly as much power.

Papa places everything but that which drives me to an achieving job on a lower pedestal. So when I call him––though these calls are few and far between in fear of fueling his dissatisfaction, I tell him what he wants to know.

“At my internship today, the mayor gave me his personal phone number so I could set up an interview with him––like a real reporter.”

“That’s amazing,” he says. “Did you take the book I gave you to college?”

“Hanji. I did, Papa.”