THE DAILY PENNSYLVANIAN
PAGE 4 FRIDAY, JANUARY 17, 2014
Opinion
U.N. AGENDA
VOL. CXXIX, NO. 136
The Independent Student Newspaper of the University of Pennsylvania
129th Year of Publication JENNIFER SUN, Executive Editor ELLEN FRIERSON, Managing Editor JULIE XIE, Managing Editor STEVEN JAFFE, Opinion Editor HUIZHONG WU, Campus News Editor SARAH SMITH, City News Editor GLENN SHRUM, General Assignments Editor JENNY LU, Copy Editor JENNIFER YU, Copy Editor AMANDA SUAREZ, News Photo Editor CAROLYN LIM, Sports Photo Editor LUKE CHEN, Photo Manager
MIKE TONY, Senior Sports Editor JOHN PHILLIPS, Sports Editor STEVEN TYDINGS, Sports Editor IAN WENIK, Sports Editor HAILEY EDELSTEIN, News Design Editor MICHELE OZER, News Design Editor CAROLYN LYE, Sports Design Editor KYLE BRYCE-BORTHWICK, Video Producer
MELISSA HONG, Business Manager BETSY MODAYIL, Credit Manager GAUTAM NARASIMHAN, Marketing Manager
GIANNI MASCIOLI, Finance Manager TAYLOR CULLIVER, Advertising Manager
THIS ISSUE ALLISON RESNICK, Associate Copy Editor SHAWN KELLEY, Associate Copy Editor
RILEY STEELE, Associate Sports Editor ALEXIS ZIEBELMAN, Associate Sports Editor
CORRECTIONS In a front page article in January 16th’s issue (“Homeless to Harrisburg: Student runs for Pa. House”), the caption under Dafan Zhang photo incorrectly stated he was running for State Senate. He is running for a position in the state House. In a front page article in January 16th issue (“One Cosi robber caught, two at large”) the caption under the front page article incorrectly stated the location of Cosi at 38th and Walnut Streets. It is located at 36th and Walnut Street. The DP regrets the errors.
HANNAH ROSENFELD is a College freshman. Her email address is hannahro@sas.upenn.edu.
The fromage fetish THE SCREWTINIZER | What the Swiss Cheese Pervert teaches us about sexual fetishes
T
here was a time when Ph i ladelphia was synonymous w it h t he cheesesteak. And then there was a time when Philadelphia became the city of Swiss cheese — specifically, Swiss cheese wrapped around the penis of a man on the loose. If you haven’t read the saga of the “Swiss Cheese Pervert,” Google it right now. The story involves a 41-year-old Norristown man who became infamous overnight when several women reported him roaming the streets of suburban Philadelphia, “dangling a large slice of Swiss cheese over his penis and offering to pay the women to perform sexual acts on him using the cheese.” Naturally, the local news went berserk over the story (because, okay, it’s pretty funny). While the women involved were understandably
disturbed, the press was altogether amused, summing up the story with headlines like: “Philadelphia ‘Cheese Pervert’ Needs Swiss Cheese To Orgasm, Kraft Cheese Spread Doesn’t Work.” I like a good cheese joke as much as the next girl, but focusing on fromage misses the point. A food fetish may seem weird, but there’s nothing inherently wrong with it. Flashing or harassing women on the street, however, is definitely not cool, and it’s a shame that the coverage of the Swiss Cheese Pervert cashed in on cheap humor rather than offering a frank discussion of fetishization. For better or for worse, fetishes are experiencing a breakthrough in pop culture. Call it the “50 Shades of Grey” effect, if you will: We think bondage is sexy, we sing along with Rihanna when she croons
about S&M, we cheered on a subplot of “Desperate Housewives” devoted to a neighbor who worked as a dominatrix. Fetishes and kink have become acceptable, even appealing.
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Having a thing for thigh-highs screams sexy, but having a thing for cheese signals perversion.” Unless, of course, it’s a fetish for cheese. Anything that veers too far from “normal” suddenly raises eyebrows. Having a thing for thigh-highs screams sexy, but having a thing for cheese signals perversion. “Certainly, having a sexual fetish doesn’t make someone
a pervert,” affirms Dr. Chris Fariello, a Penn alum who serves as the director for the Philadelphia Institute for Individual, Relational and Sex Therapy. But by definition, a fetish — or a paraphilia, to use more technical jargon — is an “atypical sexual interest,” so they don’t always fit into a normative erotic schema. Still, in the case of the Swiss Cheese Pervert, the sexualization of cheese isn’t really an issue. Compared to getting off with handcuffs and whips, a slice of Swiss surely seems innocuous. But while the local media was fixated on the weirdness of the cheese, they missed the darker fetish for exhibitionism — the desire to shock strangers with his exposed privates (with or without the cheese) — and its potentially perverse consequences. “If this guy wasn’t exhibiting
himself, he could do whatever he wanted with Swiss or muenster,” explained Dr. Michael Bridges, a Philadelphia-based psychologist who specializes in the treatment of sex offenders. According to Dr. Bridges’ theory, it’s the exhibitionism — not sitophilia, or the “food play” — that motivates his sexual behavior, and it’s this sexual desire that should have played a bigger role in the news coverage of the Swiss Cheese Pervert. According to the DSM-IV, paraphilias like exhibitionism become psychological disorders when they cause harm to the individual or cause harm to others. In this case, it’s the sense of disgust, revulsion or fear in the women that he solicited. Dr. Bridges’ primary concern is wrangling the cheese man and getting him some help for what he considers a
ARIELLE PARDES serious psychosexual disorder. But other professionals have other concerns. Fariello fears what this news story could do for individuals with strange fetishes of their own. “My fear is that now any person with a fetish — especially a cheese fetish — is going to stay locked in the closet and fear letting anyone know their little secret,” he said, before adding, “at least until they find the fetish community.” ARIELLE PARDES is a College senior from San Diego. Her email address is ariellepardes@gmail. com. You can follow her @pardesoteric. “The Screwtinizer” appears every other Friday.
Kvetching about kvetching
‘SHAT’S’ SHOTS | The endless spiral of narcissistic self-pity must stop
T
he spring semester started two days ago. Ap proximately one week from now, a version of the nation’s saddest exercise in egotism will plague our campus. It sounds a little like this: “Hey, how are you?” “You know. I’m already falling behind.” “Already?” “Yup. Got three papers, two club conferences, a presentation, and a group project. Anyways, how are you?” “Fine. Ouch, I feel you, though. This week’s not that bad for me, but next week, I think I have, let’s see, four papers, three club conferences…” Conversations like that one are more fields of combat, sites of passive-aggressive warfare, than they are sources of true commiseration and companionship. Each side manages to reincarnate the lines of their resume’s entries
as successive whimpers about their lack of leisure time, hoping their final tally of grievances stands supreme. But, like all great pissing contests, the aims of this battle are nil, and the victory futile. What’s worse, this kind of “conversation” — this “groupwhine” — has become so pervasive on campus that we confuse it with true camaraderie, as if we were actually revealing deep insecurities to our friends when we tell them about our next MGMT 104 deadline. But we’re in college — even our closest friends do not truly care about how far below the medically optimal nightly dosage of sleep we’re getting. There is no real conversation when you can repeat your self-pitying monologue, completely unchanged, to a random acquaintance just as well as you would to your freshman roommate, wasting the
time of each. I don’t think everyone who engages in “groupwhine” does so narcissistically — some might actually think it’s a quick form of social stress relief, a release valve for our ambitions. There’s one problem: If your real motive is to unwind and let loose for a few seconds, “groupwhine” sucks. First, it’s not as if you’re not thinking about your deadlines and obligations all the time anyway; we’re so hardwired to obsessive-compulsively check our email that GSR computers automatically open up Outlook for us. “Groupwhine” only makes us think more about our quotidian problems, except in ostensibly social settings where we have no power to make those problems better. Not only is “groupwhine” unproductive, it robs us of the opportunity to actually seem interesting to the person
standing across from us. Second, the problems we complain about are not real afflictions. Real unfairness in this world exists. Sometimes, a polar vortex rolls through our hometowns or the Walnut Street Chipotle runs out of guacamole. These are injustices where we have no power to change that which has gone terribly wrong.
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We confuse [‘groupwhine’] with true camaraderie.”
Our schedules, with their course loads and volunteer opportunities and extracurriculars, are thankfully one of the things we control the most. Here’s when “groupwhine” be-
comes not only unproductive, but annoyingly dishonest. If we really didn’t want to make that presentation, we would have picked a class without group projects, like Penn Course Review told us to. If we really didn’t want to run that club meeting, we wouldn’t have furiously tried to beat the clock for the board application deadline. “Groupwhine,” then, becomes a screechy version of a humblebrag, with each proud pout supposed to signal just how hard it is to care so much about all that we do, to the point that it undermines our very health and psychological state. How noble. The most harmful effect of “groupwhine” is how it’s become not only prevalent, but socially expected. If someone asks us how we’re doing in a high-rise elevator, we might spend half the ride up wondering if chirp-
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AKSHAT SHEKHAR ing about how our life actually doesn’t suck right now would be somehow gauche, insensitive to other people’s lives being hard sometimes. That’s how otherwise cheerful, funny people can turn into overburdened, lifeless students in their daily interactions. Not a good look for anyone. So, for the next time someone asks you what’s up, here’s a little guide: 1. Do not say “you know.” They do not know. 2. Smile. 3. Talk about the NFL playoffs or something, I don’t know. Go Patriots. AKSHAT SHEKHAR is a Wharton sophomore from Boston, studying finance. His email address is ashek@wharton.upenn.edu.
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