NOTES FROM THE CLOSET: OBSERVATIONS OF A FASHION ANTHROPOLOGIST

Fashion as the First Art by John E.

The technical term for sticking out your ass at potential mates is presenting.  The pinkening of the genitals due to sexual excitation and invitation is flushing.  Although we human apes are more subtle about such displays, be they voluntary or involuntary, we’re just as likely to engage in them as our homies lower on the evolutionary ladder.  Most of us are familiar with the more common examples – whether it be the use of skinny jeans and high heels to make the booty 3-D or how painting the lips red mimics excited genitalia or even the donning of an ultra red dress before a date (“Your vagina – I mean, dress – looks great!”).

However, our translation of physiological markers into fashion is richer than even that. For example, look at the pictures above.  While some might claim “Pink” or “Juicy” scrawled across their booty, so close to (shiver) real pink, as warm as one’s childhood bed, is nothing more than an unhappy coincidence in which one’s favorite company also happens to have a rather suggestive name, they’re obviously full of shit.  “Oh?  The ‘suckme’ written across my blue jean crotch?  That’s just the name of a little start-up in Nashville.  The founder’s Japanese.”

 But, hey, I’m after more than a meditation on cross-species forms of showing one’s ass-ets.  No, the comparison above shows one of the reasons that fashion is not only exciting, but also the most natural of the arts

 Before there was human chatter about fashion, fashion was. 

“Yo, let there be lights,” the Void proclaimed, and the runway of the world was suddenly amok with the strut, flop, and prance of a near infinity of colors and forms, each conscious of the power of fashion. The lion’s pimped-out mane.  The peacock’s psychedelic feathers. And mammals don’t just settle for the fashion hand they’ve been dealt.  Out on the Javan grasslands, male sambar deer try to impress females by running through brush to pick up twigs and grass in order to trick out their antlers (a strategy familiar to hippies). In the insect world, emerald moth caterpillars sew flowers on their spiny backs with silk.  Lacewing larvae wear cloaks of lichen, bark, plant fibers, and spider webs. And mujid crabs mod their shells with algae, wood, and, in a Jeffrey Dahmerian gesture, parts of other invertebrates.

Fashion then in part is the human equivalent of the displays of other animals, displays that serve two primary purposes – to attract mates and display dominance.  Sound familiar?  From bondage gear and gimp masks to Stetsons and snakeskin boots to Armani Wall Street suits, from “Juicy” sweats to licorice lingerie, we’re down with the wild kingdom.  Fashion is primitive in this regard, savage, vital.

This is an especially interesting point when you consider the amount of nose-holding that occurs when fashion is mentioned.  We humans have a love/hate relationship with fashion (mostly marked by actual love and pretended hate).  Many like to dismiss it as materialistic and shallow, overemphasizing the charms of the physical world and the physical body which are bad bad bad.  But this makes fashion even more significant in our culture.  It’s a battleground between those ashamed of our connection to the rest of the natural world and those who embrace it.

 Sure, sure, no, we don’t want to wholly give into unchecked animal impulses.  Other animals, after all, generally have no problem with copraphagia, sex with minors, and humping socks.  But it’s just as blind to wholly deny it.  We are animal, fashion is animal, and to embrace it is not to push us into the bloody-in-tooth-and-claw world of nature so much as it is to embrace the parade divinity of the howling creatures we are.

Hair Suits and Animal Skins by John E.

I’ve been shocked recently by the disappearance of a certain something, which is perhaps as radically doom-foretelling as the disappearance of honeybees and frogs, as of species of Hendrix-hued rainforest orchids as delicate as tissue paper. I’m talking of course about body hair.

For most of my life, I’ve been down with depilation. No nipple hairs for me, thank you (although it is a convenient way to floss). And yeaaaah, I think I’ll skip on the patchily carpeted backs. But, hey, I try not to be an oppressor, willy-nilly imposing my ideas of beauty on others without recompense. I try to keep things even. So while I’m one of those degenerates who aesthetically prefer trimmed underarms and legs that are less hairy than mine, I also in the spirit of quid-pro-quo regularly get my back (ouch) and chest (double ouch) waxed and take a razor to my other bits, so that I shine as pink and bare, and full of joie de vivre as a very high baby mouse.

I’m not the only dude who does so. According to the Daily Californian, 58 to 78% of men remove body hair (excluding facial hair), as compared to 70 to 88% of women. There’s good reason for this too. In an admittedly heterosexist survey (apologies) of 10,000 women in Germany and Switzerland, it was found that 70 to 80% of younger women prefer men Barbie doll smooth.
But in the last couple of years I’ve begun to rethink this position. Maybe it was about the 100th or so time I’d seen the latest infant-bare pubis in the boudoir and then subsequently had to change my daughter’s diaper. Maybe it was mid stroke as I led a razor down the craggy walnut lines of my balls. Maybe it was because I finally had to admit those guys in My Morning Jacket were kind of sexy after all.

My first question was why? Hair removal’s not new. Long before the bizarrely named King Camp Gilette unleashed his razor on the world and Harper’s Bazaar magazine (in 1915) featured (gasp!) a model wearing a sleeveless dress and armpits as bare as a smile, we were conducting a war on hair.

Flint blades have been discovered that date back to 30,000 BC, along with sharpened rocks, shark teeth, and volcanic glass, all used to etch-a-sketch hair away. For the early Egyptians, a smooth and hairless body was a beautiful one, especially for the upper classes. They used primitive depilatory creams and kicked off the waxing trend with “sugaring,” the application of bees wax and honey to the skin, which was then ripped away along with wispy pelts thanks to a strip of cloth pressed against the paste.

For the Greeks, never ones to avert their gaze from a “comely” boy, a smooth, hairless body, as of those immortalized in many statues, exemplified youth and beauty, and again class. The Romans, as they did in most things, slavishly and creepily followed the Greeks. The historian of hair removal, Russel Adams, notes that the bearded man became the symbol of slavery, servitude and barbarism throughout the Roman Empire. As for the barbarian outlands, Julius Caesar (101-44 BC) writes that, “The Britons shave every part of their body except their head and upper lip.” And during the Elizabethan age, women plucked their eyebrows and forehead hair to foster gigantic pale foreheads, adopting that Cupidic big-headed baby look so popular in the modern age in certain parts of Japan and Mississippi. Mothers even rubbed walnut oil, vinegar, and cat feces on their children’s foreheads to prevent hair growth (“Mama, no! No!”).

Even those perennial American poster children for living au natural, Native Americans, tweezed away facial hair between halves of a clam shell.

But what about pubic hair? What about those articles in Vogue, Elle, and The Guardian, which claim that a deforested pubis is simply a pathetic mimicry of the latest thing porn stars aren’t wearing?

Well, they be tripping. Pubic hair removal goes as far back as any other sort. Muhammad, for example, instructed Muslim women to remove pubic hair, as well as underarm hair. Young Roman girls began removing pubic hair as soon as it appeared, using special tweezers, “volsella” and depilatory creams or waxing pitch. In 1520, Bassano de Zra wrote, “The Turks consider it sinful when a woman lets the hair on her private parts grow. As soon as a woman feels the hair is growing, she hurries to the public bath to have it removed.” While there’s more than a little gender bias in this history, another survey, this time of undergraduates in Australia, conducted in 2008, found that 76% of females, 82% of gay men, and 66% of straight men had removed their pubic hair at least once.

So what are we to make of this?

There’s the class thing obviously. To be hairless is to be civilized is to be not animal. But underlying this is something more. To be hairless is to be of high status, yes, but this in turn is to be closer to spirit than animal flesh. Ancient Egyptian priests shaved or depilated all over daily, for example, so as to present a “pure” body before the images of the gods. And head-shaving is a part of Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, Jainist, and Hindu traditions.

But here’s the thing. Here we are. We attempt to quite literally strip the animal from ourselves. We shave our faces, our genitals, our underarms, and wax our backs and chests. We cover up our animal smells with perfume, bare our canines only in ironic friendly greeting or certain Merlot and Barry White moments. On the surface, we seem to desperately want to have more in common with the sun than other animals. But then we start to miss it. Miss being animals.

So this is what we do. After scraping and shaving and scrubbing our animal-ness away, we put it back on, caught in an eternal schizophrenic double-bind, so that the perfumes we put on to cover our animal stink invariably contain a healthy dollop of “musk,” and we don tight leather pants and furry underwear on our otherwise bare bodies. We pull on winter hats with fur trim and faux horns and ears, slip our fingers into leather gloves as snug as paws. We return via fashion to that we rejected. It makes me think that perhaps it’s time we quit rejecting it. As my fiancé puts it, when describing how she feels when wearing a fox stole, “I feel like a fox. Secretly, I feel superior.”

Disclaimer: The author includes himself in all references to Americans, people, the human race, etc. and thus means to not imply that he is in way superior to his culture but, rather, alternatively gleefully and sorrowfully a part of its paradoxical complexity.

The Inner Lives of Objects

In my day job as a twister of young minds at a university in the Midwest, I routinely come across students who declare, with a convert’s gleam in their eyes, that we shouldn’t sexually objectify others.

They pick this up in read-throughs of half-finished notes taken sleepily in their anthropology or sociology class. Or they read it in a really thick book entitled with red angry exclamation marks and frowny faces or on the library bathroom wall (Seriously, I saw “Don’t objectify” written in a stall once. Don’t ask me who would be “moved” to that particular sentiment while in such a vulnerable state but it was kind of funny). It’s a laudable sentiment I suppose – right up there with we shouldn’t judge others by their appearance. It seems nice. It seems safe. It’s the kind of thing you say at a dinner party to show you’re a good person. “Oh me? Pshaw. I would never objectify another human being. I just like to bow before the divine within them.”

Unfortunately, it’s a bogus statement – albeit stubbornly persistent. Even those who have quite self-consciously separated themselves from body-hating and material-world despising belief systems such as those in some strands of Christianity and Buddhism, still paradoxically hold fast to this particular rejection of the body. But ultimately the lip curling at sexual objectification is partially just the newest shiniest version of such body rejection in a long history of body hating and public dishonesty about private behavior – the new century left wing version of what was a more common antipathy from the right wing about a century back.

Here’s a scandalous proposition.

Perhaps, just maybe, it’s time we update public discourse about this issue since, c’mon, the whole sexual objectification song and dance has been around since the 1960s. Maybe we can all come out of the closet and admit that we admire this jut of buttocks, those doe-like eyes, that slab of bicep, this way-developed, pyramidal trapezius muscle, or that bubble-gum shiny taint. Maybe we can all shout in a collective roar, “Damn. That Johnny Depp sure is a cutie” or “Man, I’d like to hit that.” Because the truth is we’re all saying these things in private – even it’s just to our stuffed animals.

As for me, I objectify people all the time. They’re objects for my desire for automotive satisfaction in having a working starter. They’re objects of my spiritual desire to learn arcane shamanic rituals. They’re objects of my culinary desire to taste new and exciting ways to make kale greens palatable. And yes, yes, sometimes they’re objects of my sexual or aesthetic desire too. And the crazy thing is I think there’s nothing wrong with this. WHAT?! Don’t I care about children’s self-esteem? Don’t I value a person’s mind, their talents, their clever turns of phrase – more than their dirty dirty bodies? Do I seriously want my daughter to wind up a stripper? Well, yes, yes, and no. But, let’s step back and examine this abused term – “objectify” for a moment. An object is according to most dictionaries:

*a thing, person, or matter to which thought or action is directed

*a person or thing with reference to the impression made on the mind or the feeling or emotion elicited in an observer

So, definitionally to objectify a person is nothing more than to direct thought or action toward the person, or to consider how they affect one’s mind or feelings or even one’s naughty, apple-eating, bucking wild stallion of a body.

And for me the gender I happen to be interested in does serve to affect my thoughts and actions (way too much for my own taste, mind you – even to the point of unpleasant chaffing). And judging from a lot of eavesdropping and direct conversation, I’d say that for most of us we are all each other’s objects, especially in terms of sex and attraction. We fantasize about each other, our creative hormonally-addled minds tricking one another out in gimp masks and Sherlock Holmes costumes (Egad! Watson!) schoolboy uniforms, in giant furry squirrel costumes (Nuts! I love nuts!) and wedding gowns. Heck, I’d even say this is pretty darn healthy. So why is the world suddenly up in their angry arms about sexual objectification?

I think what many are trying to get at, but failing to articulate, is that there’s an ethical danger that arises when we don’t also subjectify each other in addition to objectification – when we simply see one another as means to the end of satisfying our desires – without emotions and dreams, without the ability to be wounded, when we abandon developing our empathy in pursuit of satisfying more primitive impulses.

Maybe this is implied by that bit of moral refrigerator-magnetism – that we shouldn’t objectify people. But that dictum is too shortened. Too simplified. Too silly. Way too pursed-lip Calvinist. There is a vast difference between objectifying a celebrity, for example (nice legs!), and willfully ignoring a potential partner or friend’s finer qualities because they don’t meet a pre-determined standard of beauty. There’s a vast difference between admiring a good-looking body and overlooking the fact that a man or woman stomps on small furry animals for fun just because they’re hot.

Such attitudes allow room for knee-jerk moral disapproval of fashion spreads and sexy musicians, of heart-felt sighs at six-pack abs and long, pretty hair bouncing against a well-turned rump, of skirts above the knees, and a nipple poking out as dangerous as a switchblade. In such disapproval, there’s a conflation between pathological objectification, that of date rapists and violent offenders, and normal daily objectification, so that all considerations of sexual attractiveness become ethically demonized in some sort of twisted slippery slope argument. It makes us ashamed of our wayward eyes following the contours of a sassy, well-turned hip. It makes us into social liars. And this in turn promotes an alienation from our physical bodies, from our animal selves that delight in scent and taste, in touch and warmth. Surely, that can’t be a good thing. Me, I like to growl.

Asa Malika Barishman of Akilam Studio specializes in accessories and up-cycling clothes for the modern day woman.
This editorial showcases Asa’s ability to create new looks.

Models- Katie Michelle Lundberg and Laura Pitkute
Designer- Asa Malika Barishman, Akilam Studio.
Make up- Hayley Kassel
Hair- Arpita Brahmbhatt
Photographyer- Kayleigh Kay

Photographer: Kayleigh Kay
Model: Paige Morgan
Aesthetics: Jen Bean
Designer: Cleons by Chad

When you left, our parents converted your room into an entertainment center. They put a big screen TV in front of the window we used to keep open in summer (do you remembering laying on the roof, the clink of chilled glasses, the flicker of distant stars?)

The TV has over 300 channels, some of which—mostly the porn channels—you have to pay for.

The first time I saw a naked woman that wasn’t mom was in one of your magazines. The woman was on an album cover. The album got three and a half stars. You were all about naked women in those days. Maybe you still are.

I myself am becoming more about naked women. I draw them all the time in art class. Drawing breasts is like drawing water balloons: fat is mostly water, and breasts are very, very fatty. I always hated this about them.

After school, I walk into your room, hoping to find you reading a magazine full of naked women. I want you to tell me I am beautiful, but you are lost in the wild, so I turn on the TV instead. I watch shows where men fall in love with women who don’t look like me. Women who look like me can’t be loved, I decide.

I don’t hate you for leaving me alone with the TV. I hate me for turning it on.

2. Sometimes We Should Feed Them (B. J. Lefebvre)

Once, while visiting a zoo, I watched peacocks arranged in the exhibit (the polite form of saying social club). The way they all flashed their feathers like there was someone to impress made me overflow with childhood curiosity.
(Not the kind that kills cats)
***
A few months ago I bought myself a peacock ring and it reminded me of the peacocks in the zoo. The longer I wore it, the more I realized who they were trying to impress.
***
Everyone.
***
They were flashing the colors to capture the attention of anything within a few feet. If it didn’t respond to that they’d (I’d) just casually wave themselves (my ring) in your face until a response was elicited.
***
The ring is a monocle and top hat. A key to the secrets: PTA meetings. “No girls allowed” treehouse gatherings of rural schoolboy mafias. Sophisticated and stylized debauchery of stuffed animal tea parties.
***
It opens the gates to the zoos and comes with bags of birdseed.

3. An Untamed Civilization (Kyle Disien)

Animals, the most fashionable creatures of the wild. They shit, eat, fight, and fuck in glamour. Humans, who are also animals, have the same fashionable agendas. The only difference is, animals don’t skin humans and sell their hides in clothing retail. Animals don’t reprint our colors and patterns on textiles or dangle locks of our hair like trendy feather earrings for self-expression. We use animals as fashion mentors and suck them dry for all they’re worth. We hide our animalistic tendencies with clothing, grooming, and chemicals. We shave, pluck, wax, and laser off our unwanted, coarse, body hair that’s used as sensors to protect our bodies from parasites and insects. We are conditioned from birth to believe that natural body odor is unpleasant. Therefore, we cover and stop perspiration with scented chemicals to mask the aroma of bacteria breaking down proteins into acids. We are civilized but truly untamed. No matter how much we deny it, we are and always will be animals. We instinctually search for mates, kill out of aggression, grow wild hair like our unsophisticated ancestors, crave food, and have bowel movements. We are humans hear us roar.

4. [poh-nee-teyl] (Amira I. Minazzi)

noun
an arrangement of the hair in a long lock drawn tightly against theback of the head and cinched so as to hang loosely.
From dictionary.com

My friends in high school used to bug me about putting my hair up in a ponytail. They told me it “wasn’t as attractive” to have my hair in a ponytail as it was for me to leave it down. They said I looked sloppy when I pulled my hair back. They said I “looked young.”

If I wanted to be taken seriously in my internship, my mother advised me to pull my hair back in a ponytail or bun at work. She said long hair “wasn’t professional.”

When I go to the gym, I put my hair back in a ponytail to keep it off my sweaty neck and face. I notice the men with long hair also have ponytails at the gym.

On Friday nights when I go dancing, I prolong putting my hair in a ponytail as long as possible. I try to maintain my sex appeal before the heat of the club frizzes my hair and I’m forced to tame it.

Sometimes though, I just feel like wearing my hair in a ponytail.

5. Of Fashion and Filth (Pete Glovas-Kurtz)
I wear yesterday’s clothes, radiating the scent of the beer I drank the night before and stale cigarette smoke, sweat now in between the fibers of my plain black t-shirt, bandanna around my neck with grease stains. I wear yesterday’s clothes and head to the convenience store looking for food, un-showered without the desire to touch soap. I wear yesterday’s clothes and the pretty girl behind the counter still flirts with me. I haven’t shaved in 4 months and I still suck face in a dark room later that day. Save up your pheromones friends. Dig through the dumpsters and thrift stores only as necessary. Hike often and wear the scent on your skin. Let it sink into your clothes and attract the right kind of people. I wear yesterdays clothes.

6. How To Date A Well-Dressed Man (Emily Krause)
Eins. Find one. They’re not easy to find in these parts. And if you go to New York, you might be disappointed by the prominence of Warby Parker vintage-esque plastic-framed glasses and leather shoes. Perhaps a more preferable stereotype to chase would be the cowboy, who always wears boots and collared shirts [or none at all]. Zwei: Does he spend more on clothes than you? Maybe his facial jewelry requires more maintenance. Maybe his hair is longer and sleeker than yours. If so, forget about compatibility. Or, take it all in. Perhaps he’ll assist you in your fashion needs. Drei. Do you look good together? Stand next to each other, take a picture. Do you look like mirror images of one another? Can you imagine yourselves making fashionista babies togther? DO IT.

7. Suits: I Am The Walrus (Andrew Shurina)

Picture if you will, a walrus trying to squeeze into a black suit, his blubbery sides sticking out as it struggles in place; perhaps with a top hat and monocle for a more distinguished appearance. Well, that’s exactly how I felt that day at the mall, like a walrus trying and failing to shove his love handles into a pair of dress pants. Minus the top hat and dapper moustache, of course.

“Come on, you bastard.” I curse to myself, barely getting the pants to snap in place over my belly as I now struggle to button the suit jacket over my girth.

I hear people say that the suit makes the man, but that didn’t appear to be the case with this particular mammal. My own body turned against me and refused to corporate, and all for some nice clothes.

‘I want this. I need this.’ I think to myself, wishing in that moment to take back all the pizza dinners and late-night cookie excursions.

I love dressing up because the refined and stylish clothes make me feel like a big shot, a person strong and admirable. Someone worth listening to. Dejectedly, I return the suit to the racks and put my own behemoth clothes back on. I walk towards the exit and pause to glance back at the fine clothing area.

“Someday” I murmur quietly with a smile.

They say the suit makes the man. Well, I intend to prove it.

8. [A Fitting Title] (Theresa Hoffmann)

Setting: Fitting room. Mother and daughter enter one room together, each carrying a pile of clothes: mother has two pairs of jeans and a shirt, daughter a dress, a pair of jeans, and a shirt.

Daughter puts on dress and examines herself in the mirror. Mother does the same with a pair of jeans.

Mother: That’s cute!

Daughter: There’re too many ruffles. It’s not me.

Mother changes into the other pair of jeans after the first won’t button. Daughter changes into jeans.

Mother: I don’t understand it. Six is my usual size. How does my butt look in these? They’re an eight.

Daughter: Um…You should try on a size bigger just to be sure.

Mother: No, I don’t feel like trying on more clothes. Those look nice on you.

Daughter show her how the waistband sticks out at the back.

Mother: Maybe you should try a size smaller.

Daughter: But my thighs are already losing circulation. Does no one know how to shape clothes for a woman’s body?

They change back into their own clothes and exit the fitting room, giving all but the two shirts to the attendant.

Mother: Ready for the shoe store?

Exit.

9. Hollister Complex (Mitchell Mercik)

When I was younger, and far lighter, my style revolved around the concept of a beach bum. I was guilty of shopping at Hollister. I know, and I’m sorry. The thing is: the only reason that I picked that persona was because of a girl. She told me, “any guy who wears Hollister is instantly more attractive.” It just so happened that I liked this girl. After finding this juicy nugget of information I started wearing Hollister, and we started dating. All the while I wore Hollister. I should have taken it as a sign–two months later we broke up. Sixteen, depressed, and wearing Hollister, I did the only thing I thought I could do to win her back: wear more Hollister (imagine my surprise when it didn’t work). The question is, am I so obsessed with, Hollister, the thoughts of others that I would change my, Hollister, fashion for them? Are, Hollister, clothes a manifestation of my inner, Hollister, self, or are they a tool for, Hollister, manipulation?

10. A Faerie Walks into a Bar (Jenna Enright)

And so there I was, de-pantsed and skirted up. As I slipped on spilled drinks and wiggled past dancers who may or may not have been publicly copulating, I kept my hands down, holding the hem of my skirt at my finger-tips. I sat down and finagled my legs into some semblance of a crossed position and noticed I was sitting alone—just me and Mr. Vodkasoda—and I wished I was wearing my jeans.

Some quality time with my companion and I remembered why I’d worn jeans in the first place: I didn’t want to be there. I was tired from a long day at the Renaissance Faire and just wanted to change out of my faerie costume and into pajamas and fluffy slippers—curl up with a book maybe—but I had been coerced into this impostor of a clothing item because it was floral and “so me,” as proclaimed by a group of girls who offered to pay for my $0.50 drinks because I was 21 now and the thought of me juxtaposed with alcohol made them giggle in a way that proved they barely knew me.

I decided that next time, if there was one, I would answer, “you should wear a skirt!” with my faerie costume, and a thick pair of tights.

11. Brownfit (Erin Carlson)

One day I came back from class to look in the mirror and find that I was wearing a brownfit. This happens from time to time; I’ll end up wearing clothes which are the hues of local sandstone formations. I often inspect my morning clothing choice throughout the day and wonder if I’ve accidentally dressed myself from a large man’s closet — but the brownfit was a new low.

Now, the brownfit consisted of brown corduroys, brown hiking boots, and my boyfriend’s brown Carhartt over a brown t-shirt. The sweatshirt may have even had brown mud stains. I may be trying to not remember that. This outfit would have been convenient if I had been hired mid-day to work at a construction site. This has never happened. In any case, I looked like any secret super powers I had would involve me turning myself into dirt.

Sometimes my boyfriend will go shopping with me. If he’s feeling overly-critical, he’ll remind me of Brownfit Day and I’ll be forced to re-examine the collection of dun-colored clothing that I’m lugging into the fitting room.

12. What was He, Her Son? (Sean McKee)
Her daughter left her. She moved to Georgia, where at least she’d be warm. “I got his sweater on and everything,” Mrs. Thomas told me as I walked up to the bottom step of her porch. She reached down and handed me the leash. She was too unsteady on her feet to walk down the steps, let alone take her dog on a mile walk. “It’s so cold out; I hope he’ll be warm enough.”

In my head I sighed because I knew Willie would be fine even without the sweater, but most of the time it’s not worth the effort to argue with an elderly woman. “I’m sure he’ll be fine,” I told her.

After the walk was over, Mrs. Thomas told me that I wouldn’t need to walk Willie the following week because she would be visiting her daughter, out of state. “I’ll give you a call to let you know when we get back.”

She ended up staying longer than a week because she missed her daughter.

13. Hipsterism (Kelsey Power)
I don’t understand all this hype about hipsters. People define me all the time as a hipster but why should I listen to that bull? Definitions are too, too–mainstream anyways. I can’t help it that I was the first person on campus with thick brim glasses but they weren’t knock offs or anything. I always stay classy with my Ray-Ban’s. Since I was twelve I’ve smoked American Spirits and my beer of choice has been PBR. They accessorize my party gear–black fedora, skinny jeans, leather oxfords, and neutral toned plaid flannel. I pick up most of these fresh threads from thrift stores, which are always cheap and unique, nothing mainstream. I’ve recently grown this wicked handle bar stache and the ladies love it–especially my new chick. I’m dating this gal with the cutest bangs and she’s a true artist man. She has this killer polaroid camera and her photography skills are spot on, especially on her Instagram. I knew she was a hip girl when I saw she had the first generation iPod 32gb like me. People constantly call me pretentious but I can’t help that I read Aristotle. I can’t help it that I put little effort in my life and still look gnar. Why do people call me a hipster? Hipsters are far too mainstream.

14. The Vest (Morgan Turner)
The vest has a stain on the back, a small brown one that was never perceived ugly enough for baking soda and bleach. It came from spilled beer, one night when It was lovingly tossed aside. Traded for a big sweatshirt and some slippers. It used to go out all the time. To business meetings and casual lunch-ins. It had quite the life and was frequently complimented. The vest belonged to my mother, for years it just hung in the back of one closet to the next, no longer an item of clothing worth wearing. It began slowly, I would sneak into my moms closet, reaching in grasping for flannel and worn boots. The soft plaid, splattered with white paint, perhaps from the apartment her and my father first lived in. I would wrap myself in her smell and be comforted through the long school days. Towards the end of high school, my friends and I began exploring the world of “thrifting”. We went from the small old lady thrift stores in town, to the hip thrifting life of the city. It was an adventure, never knowing what sort of clothing you would find, what story it would tell. A week before I went to college, my mom had been rummaging in her closet, doing some late spring cleaning. While I sat doing something nonsensical on the computer, she plopped it in front of me. “Do you want this?” The vest was perfect. It was old, the front covered with faded flowers, held together by a worn satin back. The front button almost falling off, but I knew that this fest had been places, this vest would make me fabulous.

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BIOS

Amira I. Minazzi was born and raised in central Texas and left as soon as possible to seek weather below 102 degrees. Her passion for writing began in grade school when she mistakenly learned that taking timed essay exams were fun. Ms. Minazzi enjoys traveling, meeting new people, and playing with her miniature dachshund, Daphne.

Emily Krause is (primarily)music geek, athlete, former black top roller, shitkicker and wanderlust. She was raised in central Pennsylvania but has most recently spent a season in the bad lands of North Dakota where she learned to love country music and the scent of fresh sage.

Theresa Hoffmann was born in Bad Ischl, Austria. She’s fluent in German and is very close with her family. Someday she will be a crazy, scarf-and-muumuu-wearing professor with several cats. for now, she’s busy reading and writing as much as possible.

Erin Carlson was born in the northwestern-most corner of Pennsylvania. She is Nordic-ly tall and her grandmother theorizes that her English ancestors were pillaged by the Vikings. She enjoys fiber art and, while cleaning out her desk recently, rediscovered a bag of her own hair that she has yet to decide what to do with.

Jenna Enright is a young writer from either the northernmost part of Delaware or the southernmost part of Pennsylvania. She spends her free time browsing for books she’ll never read, collecting coffee mugs, and naming inanimate objects. Her favorite color is polka-dot.  Her blog is viewable at:   http://trivolity.blogspot.com/2013/02/i-will-be-happy-when.html

Kelsey Power, born in Oceanside, California, is a Cali girl stuck in rural central Pennsylvania. Her love for writing started at the young age of four when she wrote a poem for her dad. She enjoys hot tea, jumping in fall leaves, and the art of eating a pomegranate.

A lover of sarcasm and buffalo chicken, Sean McKee was born in the vast nothingness of Indiana, Pennsylvania. He accredits his creativity, or rather insanity, to growing up around his father’s thirteen siblings and their countless children. He currently wishes he did not have wavy hair.

Mitchell Mercik is a dyslexic writer who fancies himself a time traveler destined for the 1940s. Currently, Mr. Mercik’s machine is damaged and he is stuck between the salvation of the “good ol’ days” and his future romantic relationships with nonhuman alien creatures.

All information on B. J. Lefebvre is sold at rock bottom prices on Ebay because it is expired. A dabbler in the dark arts he uses a copy of Lolita and a love of grisly gore/horror films to keep people from getting to know him. He drinks Earl Grey and Chai tea spiked with tabasco sauce and sleeps with a stuffed baby Cthulu in his bed and a Jason mask on the wall.

Pete Glovas-Kurtz was expectorated from the womb of his loving mother on a balmy August day in 1990. He was arrested for coloring on walls in the year 2009 and is oft to hyperbolize. Politeness and Whiskey are his religion.

Anatomical Life Drawing for the Illustrator I

2 credits; 1 Lecture and 2 STUDIO hours per week

This introductory course in anatomy and life drawing focuses on the skeletal and muscular systems of the body in order to understand the human form, its proportions, contours, and characteristic periphery of movement.

Hands

I can’t draw hands.

I don’t want to learn how, either.

I’d rather cut off the hands of everyone in the world (and in orbiting space stations, just to be safe), effacing the need to draw the damn things altogether.

The memory of hands will be wiped from human history.  This is how people, in accordance with American conventions of age and gender, will react:

Upon forming a merger that will result in mass lay-offs, Businessmen will not shake hands.  They will kiss each other on the lips.  These kisses will be appropriately firm—no loose noodles here, no sir!

Women will poke twice as many holes in their bodies to make up for the rings they won’t have.  Wedding ceremonies will conclude with the groom piercing the bride’s nose with his teeth (she will shiver at the intimacy).

Instead of high fives, their kids will rub stumps.

As for myself, I will whittle the time by sketching stumps, a simple, unsophisticated art.  Earthy. Closer to my roots.  Yes, the world will be a better place without hands.

I have a butter knife in my kitchen drawer.

This is going to take a long time.

Eyes

Naturally the next to go will be the eyes.  I draw eyes exceptionally well.  So does everyone else–I want to keep them, honest, but I can’t think of eyes without remembering my neighbor in Kansas: Olivia, whose eyes were shaped like pregnant birds.  If Olivia’s pregnant-bird-eyes give birth, their eggs will hatch more pregnant-bird-eyes.

I should cut out Olivia’s eyes first.

Otherwise I might be in a real pickle.

Eyes are bad enough, but pregnant-bird-eyes are a terror, worse than cold towels, or seaweed around the leg.  A real nightmare, these pregnant-bird-eyes.

After I cut out Olivia’s eyes, and everyone else’s, and yours, I will cut out mine.  Then I will say “Hey, you look at me when I’m talking to you!”

You will laugh, which will be the new way of gazing longingly into someone’s eyes.  We will try to remember what we look like when we have sex in the dark.

Noses

They simply must go.  I don’t care if cutting off my nose makes me look like Voldemort, the snake man from Harry Potter. You probably know who Voldemort is, but I wanted to explain in case you haven’t read the books or seen the movies, in case you live in a bomb shelter—which is OK, I don’t blame you, it’s a scary world, I’m scared too, but even bomb shelters should have seeing-eye tubes like submarines, or seeing-nose tubes, rather, so you can smell the ketchup and perfume from outside, though right now it doesn’t smell like either of these things.  It smells like a deer on the highway, a buck with his antlers cut off.  From a distance, the buck could be a doe, or a horse, or a person and, well, that’s why noses have to go, they have trouble telling the difference.

Shoulders

Shoulders should be eliminated as soon as possible. They’re too beautiful.  I don’t trust them.

Even without eyes to see your shoulders or hands to run between them like very large spiders, I could still stick out my tongue and taste the salt and freckles and—is that gasoline? You sly devil!  Putting gasoline on your shoulders.  You know that drives me crazy.

All right.  I won’t cut off your shoulders.  I’ll burn them, quickly, like an old house.

Knees

And if I can’t have pretty knees, no one else can either!

Ribs

To be fair, I’m cutting one rib from every man and two ribs from every woman.

I am not a Creationist.  The women will give me lots of money for showing them a Quick And Effective Weight Loss Strategy.

Their center of gravity disturbed, the men will lean to one side.  The lean will be so significant that their heads will be on the same level as the womens’ waists, which will be so tiny that the men will walk by without noticing them.

The women will regret that they gave me so much money.  The men will wonder why they are lonely.

It is very important I maintain a status quo.

Belly Button

It is not cute, or sexy, or radiant.

It is an aesthetic blight.

I don’t need a hole in my stomach reminding me I spent 9 months incubating in my mother’s juice.  My mother was a reminder.  Every time I said I couldn’t sleep, she hid the sleeping pills and told me not to drink caffeine after 2 PM.  She was afraid I’d swallow all the pills at once and die before she did, which would make the 9 months I spent incubating in her juice a waste of time.

Cutting out my belly button will be more difficult than drawing my belly button.  When I draw my belly button, I jab the paper with a pencil. When I draw myself with stomach muscles, which I do when I’m not being a Realist, I draw a check mark.

Easy.

Before cutting out my belly button, I must draw with a knife a wide circle around it.  I must press very hard with the knife.  Then I must use the knife as a scoop and carve out my stomach like a melon ball.

My guts might get in the way.  I should practice the procedure on someone else before attempting it on myself.

I imagined Olivia giving you the pregnant-bird-eye today.  Normally I’d practice on her, but would rather stuff her belly button with a stick of butter so she gets fat.  Then she will pay me money to cut out her ribs so she can loose weight.

I would benefit very much if every woman except me got fat.

Ears

These as homage to Van Gogh, who cut off his ear for love.

Lust, you say, He cut off his ear for Lust.  The woman was a hooker.

No, I insist, sharpening my knife, I’m telling you it’s true, and besides, can’t a pervert fall in love?

Teeth

 Have you tried drawing teeth?

“To shade the teeth is to not shade the teeth.”  They are white, positive space defined by black, negative space.  Your mouth is an abyss that won’t shut up—Unless I punch out your teeth.  And your teeth sockets.  That way you can’t get fake teeth, which are just as hard to draw as real ones.

Listen:

I’m lying about the teeth.  Lying through my teeth, except a lie is willful manipulation and this is accidental.

Please listen: No matter what happens, we must keep our teeth.  They are more important than our ears belly buttons ribs knees shoulders noses eyes and hands put together.

We   

You

Olivia

I must stay hungry.

This is what happened:  I dreamed every woman on earth except me got fat.  In my dream, the women were wolves.  It was winter.  The earth and all orbiting space stations froze.  The eyeballs of the buck on the road hardened into diamonds.

I tried eating the diamonds, but I didn’t have teeth.  I swallowed them without chewing. I hoped they would start a fire inside me. I choked and froze.

But the women/wolves didn’t freeze.  Their fat kept them warm through the night.  By the time the sun rose, their legs were skinnier than dandelion stems.  The women/wolves were very thin.  In this way they stayed hungry.  They began eating again, and got fat again.

Every night, the sun set on a planet of fat women/wolves.

Every morning it rose on a field of dandelions.

If I’m going to make anything, I must keep my teeth, and yours, and everyone else’s, even Olivia’s.

I must stay hungry.

I had never known Rembrandt very well though, and not until this evening do I study his early numerous self-portraits, one in particular drawn when he was twenty-four. His lips are puckered in a sharp, surprised “ooh!” and his eyes are wide open . . . he’s a comedian. Rembrandt is an imaginative self-portraitist, sometimes costuming himself in different periods. Overall, I prefer Vermeer’s common scenes, his color, the ordinariness of his characters; he was later–to be fair. But you won’t find a self-portrait by Vermeer, unless you accept what the experts say: that the knowing man in the left of The Procuress is a young Vermeer, signaling to the viewer a mutual secret. The man pictured there is inscrutably alive in a way that the others are not, but I wonder why Vermeer would have chosen this sensual merchant to wear his young face. He could have been anyone.

My friend sees something about me I had not noticed before, a self that emerged after I had confessed a longing to learn the tenor recorder, to play early music the way it was long before the “too many notes” of Mozart. The peasant in me, who wears brown and black as if they were one color, who sees forest green as a near-garish shade, can feel the compliment in her comparing me to “the slightly faded, antiquated, romanticized Baroque music” (her words) that I love so much. Truth is, whenever I’ve tried to be other than I am, it never worked out. My curly brown hair has always been one of three lengths, which for me constitutes distinct styles. When I wear lipstick, more of it ends up on my teeth than on my lips. My skin breaks out under foundation and powders, and I rarely have my ample brows shaped. Given these troubles, my natural face is face enough. Wide-set eyes and nostrils lend sensitivity to a masque that has a slightly horsy quality. What can I say? My people were Anglo-Saxon. Still, other than my desire to play an archaic instrument, my friend’s portrait of me as a chiaroscuro woman in afternoon light must derive from some other fact of my personality. I’m quiet, with large teeth that my upper lip barely covers. I do wear dangly earrings, and when my hair is long, I wear it up. But in no way do I resemble actress Scarlet Johansson. I do not forget that my musicologist friend studies gesture, pantomime, the Enlightenment . . . the light and dark of human reality. “Did I mention that I was a flautist, a clarinetist, a conductor? I’ll help you,” she says, and I shiver. “Only tell me what you’d like to play.”

Months later we fell out of friendship, after something indistinct changed between us. Life is a vapor. At first, I had studied her lovely features, my only friend from Hong Kong, and had imagined . . . I don’t know what I had imagined. I knew she loved women, and that I no longer knew what I loved at all, aside from words. When she ran her fingers through her cropped hair in frustration, I watched every frame of the movement, every measure. She was so different from me and my people, and when she chastised me once for thanking her too often, I knew that our camaraderie was wearing thin. When I left Chicago for good, we never exchanged a word after, as if our sole relationship to one another had been built on proximity–no letters would ever pass between us.

In this window I am a merely a portrait and not the artist, though perhaps they can be the same. (I’ve always been half in and half out.) I may hold the instrument up to my lips, but it is silence which gives body to this view of me–the fear that I’ll fail–that my hands will mark the wrong notes. That the light will catch me too clearly. That my imperfections will log against me. There are a host of dying afternoons, and gratefully, the deepening shadows contend that some, perhaps most things, are better left unsaid.

***

Desirae Matherly’s most recent essays appear in Hotel Amerika,
Pleiades, and Descant. Four of her published essays have made the
“Notable” list in Best American Essays, and one essay has been
anthologized in The Best Creative Nonfiction, Volume 2. Her essay
“Vagina Dentata” will appear in Red Holler: An Anthology of
Contemporary Appalachian Literature, forthcoming from Sarabande.
Currently Desirae Matherly is the nonfiction editor for The Tusculum
Review and an Assistant Professor of English at Tusculum College.
Previously she served as a Harper Fellow at The University of Chicago,
and in 2004 completed a Ph.D. in nonfiction at Ohio University.

Literary Editor:  John Branscum

I still don’t know for sure if she was a soldier. But she was dressed like one. She wore camo pants, a nearly-matching camo shirt, and a World War II helmet with leaves stuck to it.  But she also wore boots that were tape-tied at the top with duct tape.

I recognized the ammo bag she carried over her left shoulder. It was from army surplus. I was just there yesterday, thinking of buying one for you to carry your clothes in when you come to visit me. I might have looked at the very bag she threw over her shoulder.

I could see white, cotton underpants sticking out from around the metal buckles of her bag as she swung it to the kitchen counter.

***

At first she seemed to want a cup of coffee. I drink tea, you know. Coffee makes me so nervous. But I bought some instant coffee for you yesterday on my way home from the army surplus, and put it in the cabinet above the stove. I noticed that when she walked in, she went straight to the cabinet to get the coffee, without asking, as if she already knew where I put it. Then she went straight to the dish drainer to get a cup—the one that says, “You’re my sweetie” on it—and poured some hot water over the coffee.

I told her: “She’s coming soon, so you can’t stay long,” meaning that you’d be here any minute and she should leave.

“Look, man. I’m a soldier,” she said in a mean whisper. “I have things to do. This is my first stop. You see this perspiration? Well, do you see it?” She raised her voice as she raised her arms. “It’s from coming a long way, in a hurry.”

That seemed logical to me. After all, perfect halos had formed on her shirt. And she clearly was a soldier. She had the right pants, shirt, helmet, and boots for the job.

So I explained as inoffensively as possible: “I can see that you’re a soldier. That’s perfectly clear.”

“Yes, and I’ve got work to do!”

The soldier had these big hands, hands good for the kind of work a soldier might have to do. Her fingers looked like cucumbers except where she’d lost the index finger of her right hand. I imagined a grenade blowing up in her hand, maybe while she was in ‘Nam. She was so brave.

She threw her hands into the air.

“Well, let’s see the rest of this dump.” Her fingers waved excitedly. “I’ve got more work to do. Hey, man! You think this is my last stop? You think I want to spend the rest of my freakin’ life here? Let’s get a move on.” She reached around me and, with her big left hand, slapped me right on the butt.

So how could I refuse giving her a tour? You know how hard it is for me to say no to anyone. And especially her, so familiar with me and all, a soldier courageously serving her country, a patriot having come such a long way to see my new house.

She wanted to see the storage area first. The canned goods and bottled water I stored in the event of an invasion interested her most, her three fingers wrapped around a can of tomato soup like anacondas.

Then she kicked the wall. “Solid,” she said. “This is all good,” she nodded in agreement with herself, “very good.” She dropped the soup to the floor.

I bent over to pick up the can and place it back on the shelf. I like things orderly, things where I can find them later. By the time I looked up, she was in the living room, looking at the collection of albums near the stereo, holding my Molly Hatchet collection roughly against her breasts. Then she turned to look at a wall poster of Frank Zappa on a toilet, Zappa Krappa, and turned her head a little to the side, like a quizzical Black Lab I once had.

“We’ll have to get rid of these,” she said, shaking the Molly Hatchet albums at me with her left hand, and four other albums with her right. “And this poster…”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“I’m a soldier,” she dropped the albums in a messy pile on the floor and knocked the poster from the wall in one quick swipe. “I’ve come a long way in a hurry.  I don’t have time for arguments today. Your place looks like it will probably pass inspection, but I’ve got other places to see. I can’t stand here arguing with someone who’d have this poster on his wall. I mean, what kind of a man are you?”

But before I could tell her the kind of man I was—the kind you like—she was on her way up the stairs. I didn’t catch up to her until she was in the bathroom, running some water into the tub, testing it with the inside of her forearm.

“This will do just fine,” she concluded, stepping back in approval, nodding. “A soldier has to have a place where she can clean up after a hard day. Where do you keep the soap? How about a towel? And a bathrobe… Do I have to do everything myself?”

She had already begun unbuttoning her shirt with the thumb and middle finger of her right hand, so I thought I’d better get her what she needed and leave the room. I didn’t want her to see me blush.

About ten minutes later, when I heard the drain cough up hair, I knocked hard on the door and reminded her that you’re already on your way. I thought by that time she’d done enough testing and might be ready to move on to her next job. I know how busy soldiers can be. My mother was one. Then she came out of the bathroom with my bathrobe on, carrying her camo shirt and pants, still wearing her boots and helmet of crushed leaves. You can imagine how angry this made me: still wearing her boots and helmet …

In fact, I was just about to throw her out when I heard a knock at the front door. I knew that it was you. I started to walk down the steps to let you in. In fact, I was half way down when it occurred to me that I couldn’t let you get involved in this. There’s no telling what meannesses this soldier might be capable of. I saw your shadow on the porch. Your hair was blowing in the wind and you pushed it back down with your left hand. My first obligation was to protect you. The soldier was unpredictable, in bathrobe and boots and helmet, yawning and stretching and walking toward my bedroom. Who knows what violence might ensue?

But really, in all fairness, she made some sense. I mean, that Zappa poster is so disrespectful … And Molly Hatchet?

I’m sitting here now because I want to be sensitive to your feelings and understand all that happened this morning, really just try to figure out how to explain it to you. The house is quiet now, and I can think things through. I’ve brought in some wood for the fireplace. And I’ve just finished putting some nice biscuits in the oven. I thought they’d go with the chicken I’m baking.

So, what happened to the soldier?

By the time I got back upstairs—about the time you turned and walked back to your car—she was lying down on my bed. It took some mustering of courage, but I told her to leave. I told her about you and how long we’ve waited for this day. I even told her that I resented her taking over my house. I was angry. I could see my face turning red when I looked past her into the mirror.

“This is a military operation,” she said. “Are you a patriot or not?”

I was in a bind, for sure. She rolled over to look at me as I wrestled with issues of loyalty and respect.

“Well? What do you intend to do?” She leaned forward.

“I thought I’d make biscuits to go with the chicken.” She smiled and nodded her head.

***

Well, I smell the biscuits baking. I can’t risk letting them burn.

Listen. I know how you must feel. And, believe me, I feel that way too. Finally we have reached the time and place. But the soldier has come between us. As things are now, and the way I’m feeling, you’re better off not being here anyway. But if the soldier ever leaves, I’ll call you, and we’ll meet the way we planned.

Please don’t read anything into this. There are miles, many miles, to travel to get here. Someday soon, you might travel them again, and we’ll talk about this. Right now I hear footsteps upstairs in the bathroom. It’s time to set the table …