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Thursday, September 27, 2018
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GOVERNMENT
Representation Equity
Proportion of Black students at U-M: 4.4% Proportion of Black 1824 year olds in MI: 17%
Completion Equity
Gender Equity
Black Student-toBlack Faculty Ratio
Black graduation rate: 78.4%
Gender makeup of Black students:
Overall graduation rate: 90.5%
58.8% women 41.2% men
Black faculty: 184
Study comparing public universities scores Michigan fifth lowest state in the country
RESEARCH
Climate has more students concerned Early data shows higher rates of climate awareness among University students MAYA GOLDMAN Daily News Editor
An increasing percentage of University of Michigan students are concerned about climate change, according to preliminary data from the 20172018 Sustainability Cultural Indicators Program survey. The SCIP survey has been sent out to thousands of students, staff and faculty annually since 2012, though no data was collected between 2015 to 2017. The latest data suggests the percentage of students who are “extremely sure” climate change is occurring rose to about 75 percent this past year, up almost 10 percent from 2015. The percentage of students who think climate change is very important to them personally and those who think it is caused mostly by human activity also saw roughly 10-point increases from the last SCIP survey. The figures also show University students are more likely to believe in climate change than other students across the country. Yale University conducted a similar annual See CONCERNED, Page 3A
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While 17 percent of 18 to 24-year-olds in the state of Michigan are Black, Black students constitute only 4.4 percent of the University’s undergraduate student
JULIA FORD
Daily Staff Reporter
Report gives ‘U’ a failing grade in representation of Black students at public universities released Tuesday by the University of Southern California, the Daily News Editor & University of Michigan received Managing News Editor an F grade in representation of In a report on racial equity Black students on campus.
Southpaw Michigan will support six central progressive campaign issues
Black students: 1213
DESIGN BY JACK SILBERMAN
ANDREW HIYAMA & RIYAH BASHA
El-Sayed to launch new PAC to spur Dem action
population. The Black graduation rate — for which the University received a C grade — is also 12.1 percent lower than the overall completion rate. See FAILING, Page 2A
Abdul El-Sayed, Democratic runner-up in the Michigan gubernatorial primary last month, announced Monday the launch of his new political action committee, Southpaw Michigan. Southpaw Michigan PAC aims to continue the progressive movement ignited by El-Sayed’s campaign for governor and seeks to promote progressive candidates in local Michigan races. On its website, Southpaw pledges support to six main issues: ethical campaign financing, universal health care, environmental justice, full civil rights and liberties, criminal
justice reform, and equity in education. Southpaw Executive Director Aarica Marsh, a 2016 graduate of the University of Michigan, said Southpaw intends to spread the enthusiasm produced during El-Sayed’s gubernatorial run to down-ballot races across the state. “I think Abdul just wanted to make sure we did something with the momentum and volunteer base we built on the campaign,” Marsh said. “We had thousands of people making calls, texting, knocking doors … We want to make sure we’re electing local progressives, just because politics really starts at the local level.”
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University faculty propose creation of Concern center to educate incarcerated people grows for CITY
Professors spearhead new unit to centralize research on prisons, grant degrees SAM SMALL
Daily Staff Reporter
The United States detains more citizens in prison than in any other country in the world, as well as more people under correctional control than any given moment in American history. At the University of Michigan, a team of five professors — Heather Ann Thompson, Matt Lassiter, Ruby Tapia, Ashley Lucas and Amanda Alexander — are working together to combat mass incarceration within academia. Thompson, a Pulitzer Prize winner and professor of History and Afroamerican and African Studies, recently proposed the creation of an center devoted to researching the carceral state. Besides centralizing the academic study of prisons across units and schools, the professors also aim to make the research benefit individuals serving time, and potentially help them obtain an associate’s degree from the University. “This center will be a focal point for the study of the carceral study,” Thompson said. “There are people interested in this subject in LSA, in the law school, in social work, and Check out the Daily’s News podcast, The Daily Weekly
even in the medical school. Michigan has an usually rich environment in terms of the scholars that are working on this question.” The University isn’t the first institution to attempt such a project — a number of elite colleges run successful initiatives disseminating educational opportunities to incarcerated individuals,
including Bard College, University of California, Los Angeles, and Harvard University. Bard, for example, has granted over 50,000 credits and almost 450 degrees since its pilot programs in 2001. Thompson said the degree-granting program would help bring the University to the level of those other institutions
and beyond. She hopes to engage not only the campus community, but the greater Washtenaw County area and even the state of Michigan. “Michigan is adjacent to a number of cities — Flint, Jackson and of course Detroit — that are hyperincarcerated,” Thompson said. “So, we feel as if there
See INCARCERATED, Page 3A
CARCERAL STUDIES CENTER Interdisciplinary research Resources and education for incarcerated people Enhanced connection between incarcerated people and University community DESIGN BY JACK SILBERMAN
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INDEX
Vol. CXXVII, No. 144 ©2018 The Michigan Daily
migratory bird nests
Washtenaw Audubon Society fights to protect home of chimney swifts RACHEL CUNNINGHAM Daily Staff Reporter
When locals approach Ann Arbor YMCA, they may see a swarm of what looks like bats flying in the fall sky. However, these are chimney swifts, a protected bird species under the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act that live in the old chimney at 415 W. Washington St. The two-story brick industrial building, located in Ann Arbor’s historic district, was created for the Michigan Milling Company in 1907 before becoming the operations center for the city’s Parks and Recreation Department. The city vacated the property in 2007 and currently uses it for limited storage. Since City Council began publicly considering demolition of the deteriorating building, the Washtenaw Audubon Society has been raising awareness around the area about the habitual migratory spot for the birds, urging
NEWS.........................2 OPINION.....................4 ARTS......................6
See BIRD, Page 3A
SUDOKU.....................2 CLASSIFIEDS...............6 SPORTS....................7
News
2A — Thursday, September 27, 2018
MONDAY: Looking at the Numbers
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Some Greek life thing is happening on this campus and I am alarmed.
If I see a dog on campus, that mf is getting pet
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Every time I’m able to go back to north campus I get really happy
to my professor who, in reference to kavanuagh attempting to rape a woman , asked the class who had “done something foolish in high school”: FUCK OFF
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Saw some undergrads playing Magic on campus... I wanted to tell them that I played a lot when Fourth Edition came out, but realized that was like to decades ago, so instead I just crumbled to dust in front of them.
W O LV E R I N E O F T H E W E E K Who was your childhood celebrity crush and why?
“It was Drake from Drake and Josh. I just always thought he was super funny and kind of weird. And he was a musician!” LSA Junior Ava Deloach
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only 2.6 of Black students to Black constituting FAILING percent of the University’s professors. From Page 1A Despite recent measures 7,022 full-time faculty. Under-enrollment has dedicated to lowering a long-standing economic barriers of been Black enrollment at the attendance including the point of contention for the University is less than half Go Blue Guarantee, HAIL Black campus community. the national average of 9.8 Scholarsand Wolverine Campus groups like the Student Union percent. The study includes Pathways, Black student Black data on every four-year, enrollment at the University have proposed various non-specialized, public has hovered near 4 percent steps for the University postsecondary institution in the last half decade. Last to take toward racial in the nation, and F grades year’s enrollment report equity since the Black represent the bottom showed the class of 2022 Action Movements of the quintile of equity scores. slightly decreased in Black 1970s. Historic measures include increasing The University’s Ann representation. Arbor campus received an In gender equity, the housing affordability and overall score of 2.5 out of University received admissions policies similar 4, which was the highest of an A grade. The Black to the state of Texas’s “top any university or college in student population at the 10 percent rule,” which Sudoku Syndication http://sudokusyndication.com/sudoku/generator/print/ the state. Across all states, University is 58.8 percent guarantees admission to women and 41.2 percent all state universities for men, while nationally students who graduate the percentages are 52 in the top 10 percent of their high school class. and 48, respectively. In a 2016 interview, After a statewide ban on University President affirmative action in 2006, EASY Mark Schlissel said minority enrollment at the he did not foresee any University has failed to immediate large-scale rebound. History professor changes in racial and Countryman socioeconomic diversity Matthew due to the recent estimated that the ban on affirmative action program rollouts. approximately “There won’t be as discluded big a leap this year as 860 African Americans, there was last year,” he 133 Latino/as and 56 Native said after the release Americans from admission of the 2016 enrollment to the University in the report. “It’s the kind of years 2007 to 2016. The USC study does thing that will continue to bounce up and down not include measures of year by year, but it’s campus climate, but a important the overall sample University survey reported Black and trajectory is upward.” students are The University also Hispanic received an A grade more likely to experience in the ratio of Black discrimination on campus students to Black at rates 519 and 132 percent faculty, which was 7 higher than white students, to 1. However, Black respectively. © sudokusolver.com. For personal use only. FALLTIME SADNESS puzzle by sudokusyndication.com faculty are still more underrepresented Black students, Generate and solve Sudoku, Super Sudoku and Godoku puzzles at than sudokusyndication.com! however, Michigan had the fifth lowest equity index in the nation. The “50-state report card” measured racial equity for Black students across all public universities in the United States using four indicators: the difference between the Black student population and the proportion of college-age Black people in the state, the gender makeup of Black students versus the gender makeup of the student body as a whole, the 6-year graduation rates for Black students versus those for all students and the ratio
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NA ACP ALUM NI BIRD From Page 1A the council to preserve the chimney as a free-standing structure for the protected species. Cathy Theisen, conservation chair at the Washtenaw Audubon Society, explained chimney swifts roost during the fall and spring to keep warm before migrating back to South America. Chimney swifts used to roost in trees until they were cut down. “They usually would have roosted in old grove trees that were hollowed out once they died,” Theisen said. “But, in the early 1900s, all the old grove trees were taken … there are so few trees left for them that they adapted to living in urban environments.” As of August, the Washtenaw Audubon Society had recorded 1,400 birds roosting in the chimney. Theisen said the birds provide an ecological advantage for the area because they eat one-third of their weight daily in insects such as mosquitoes, termites and wasps. Kathy Griswold, who won the Ward 2 Democratic primary for City Council and is now uncontested in the general election, is concerned with council decisions becoming more based in emotion than facts. “One of my concerns is are we going to have a formal decisionmaking process to decide what to do with the building?” Griswold said. “Frequently we get input from the community but it’s more just (a lot of emotion) gets interjected and we don’t have the facts and a framework to make the decision.” Theisen says the council has been very responsive to Washtenaw Audubon Society in finding a conservation solution. “My belief is that the city wants to cooperate,” Theisen said. “Obviously, they’re going to have to (decide) what the citizens want. That is why it is so crucial that any Ann Arbor voter who wants to preserve this chimney contact Council.” Councilmember Anne Bannister, D-Ward 1, said she and Mayor Christopher Taylor drafted a proposal for presentation at the City Council’s Oct. 1 meeting, which she assured puts the needs of the chimney swifts before development of the property. Theisen said the beauty of the chimney swifts resonates with residents. “I heard one woman tell me that on 9/11 after she watched the buildings go down that the only thing she could think to do was go out and look at the
(chimney swifts) just to see something natural is instead of what was going on in the world,” Theisen said. City officials are considering redevelopment of the dilapidated cityowned building. City Administrator Howard Lazarus said the city is still exploring options regarding the development of the property. “There are no definitive plans right now. The City’s intent is to explore options concerning the chimney and the swifts as part of the redevelopment process,” Lazarus wrote. Griswold believes the chimney should be preserved and the rest of the building torn down. “That building I think is an eyesore and is unsafe and it really needs to come down independent of the chimney, especially the part that comes close to the road,” Griswold said. “I just don’t see where the city would allow a private company to have that kind of a building standing the way it is.” While no distinct plans are scheduled, the city has been previously approached by multiple realtors, according to MLive. One realtor, Bud Falsetta with Real Estate One, proposed a senior living facility owned by Morningstar Senior Living based in Denver. Conducted assessments have shown it is not worthwhile to rehabilitate the buildings due to costs and structural concerns. Griswold said she hasn’t seen any reports from the city staff, saying city government operates on political motives rather than data. “The culture of City Council and city staff for the last couple of decades just hasn’t really been data driven.” Griswold said. “They’ve been more politically driven.” City records also allude to pollution concerns of contaminated soil under the property. According to Historic District Application Records, the property’s building code cannot be changed due to the flood elevations of the site. A DRN Architects reportconcluded the building is not a good candidate for rehabilitation or reuse. The Washtenaw Audubon Society has currently raised approximately $5,000 to donate toward preservation efforts. In its letter written to the council, the society said they hope to see the chimney serve as a natural history site. “This is a way we can really change our environment with a very small bit of action,” Theisen said.
“I heard one woman tell me that on 9/11 after she watched the buildings go down that the only thing she could think to do was go out and look at the (chimney swifts) just to see something natural is instead of what was going on in the world,”
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CARTER FOX/Daily Alumni speak to the University of Michigan’s chapter of the NAACP at East Hall Wednesday night.
INCARCERATED From Page 1A is a community component needed. (The center) could really be a resource for people in our general community, whether it be with re-entry into society or for potential students getting into college. Essentially, we want to bring Michigan up to speed where a lot of institutions already are.” The center would also connect the already existing programs at the University, such as the Prison Creative Arts Project and InsideOut Prison Exchange Program, to work together and further enhance the relationship between the University community and those incarcerated. PCAP is the one of the world’s largest prison arts programs and operates within each of Michigan’s 52 correctional facilities. These workshops allow for joint projects between students and incarcerated individuals to communicate and creatively write, draw and perform. Each week, about 80 volunteers enter facilities and meet with those inside. At the end of the semester, PCAP publishes both exhibitions of art and a journal of writing by the Michigan prisoners they have worked with all year. LSA junior Liv Naimi,
CONCERNED From Page 1A survey that shows just over 45 percent of college students nationally were “extremely sure” climate change is real — nearly 30 percent lower than the University of Michigan figures. Bob Marans, a professor emeritus and researcher at the Institute for Social Research, serves as one of the principal investigators on the SCIP survey. Marans said events including forest fires in California and volcanic eruptions in Hawaii — as well as the increasing attention climate change receives on the political stage — have made climate change a more visible issue. He sees the latest data as an indicator that students are becoming more aware of current events. “Given what’s going on now with the hurricane that’s coming in, (in) North Carolina and South Carolina, a lot more of these kinds of events are happening and … people are probably reacting to what the United States did in terms of pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord,” Marans said. “I think those are some of the factors that are influencing a greater concern and awareness about it.” The results of the latest survey didn’t surprise LSA senior Tim Arvan, but they did impress him. Arvan is the co-director of Climate Blue, a climate change action group on campus that sends a delegation every year to a United
a PCAP executive board member, is excited about the prospect of a new carceral studies program. “(PCAP) allows students to see that people inside are not only creative but productive and amazing people — it really humanizes them,” Naimi said. “Some of them will be in there forever, and some of them won’t. Sometimes, something as little as playing an improv game, where people just simply get to laugh, feels like a transformative moment.” PCAP Director Ashley Lucas, a Theatre & Drama associate professor, believes education inside doesn’t just benefit incarcerated individuals, but society as whole by means of public safety. “Education and family support are the two things that really help people to be successful after they come home from prison,” Lucas said. “The vast majority of the people we’ve locked up are coming home someday. Do we want them to come home uneducated, angry, having lived in social environment that didn’t prepare them for the outside world? Do we want them to have a lack of connections to communities outside? Education helps to fix all of those issues.” Moreover, Lucas said many of those behind bars were not afforded opportunities to receive
Nations conference on climate change. Arvan said he’s seen more awareness of climate issues among his classmates recently. “It’s really encouraging to see this data and to see the leadership that U of M has, especially relative to the national average on climate change awareness,” Arvan said. “I think this is due to both the quality of instruction that’s offered at this university, but also due to the activism efforts and personal enthusiasm for these issues, and the passion to get involved both politically and scientifically within the student body itself.” Earth and Environmental Studies professor Julia Cole has led classes on climate change to undergraduate and graduate students at the University since last year and does not skirt around the issue in class. “I consistently teach it as if it is scientific fact that we are changing climate and that it’s bad and it’s about to get worse because that is my belief based on working in this area for a long time,” Cole said. “There really is no way around that.” Cole said none of the students she’s had at the University yet have pushed back on her approach. Like Arvan and Marans, she thinks the latest SCIP data makes sense based on what she’s seen. “I don’t think it’s surprising,” she said. “That said though, as a scientist I’d love to think that people make those kinds of statements based on (their) knowledge of science, but actually, the thing I’ve learned
a good education in the first place — or perhaps an education at all. These programs intend to give prisoners the chance to have that quality educational experience, which Lucas hopes will help them succeed when they reenter everyday society. “If you don’t give people educational opportunities, they may never know what they’re really good at,” Lucas said. “They may have come from a place with little stability and crime was the only viable option, or it may feel that way if you’re in a certain set of circumstances and you don’t realize you have other choices. There is nobody who really knows what their life and career is truly going to offer, but education helps us think those things through and plan for a better life. It helps us build relationships and relate to other people in a lot of ways you really can’t function in the outside world without: It teaches you a completely different social code.” Both Lucas and Thompson emphasize the barriers many with criminal records face in securing employment, housing and higher education. Earlier this month, Gov. Rick Snyder signed a bill into law banning felon boxes from state job applications, but private employers and even the University itself still require self-reporting on
about communication is that they don’t, and that they tend to be persuaded by what their peers are talking about.” Nonetheless, Cole said it doesn’t matter so much how people are concluding climate change is important — she’s just happy to hear they think it’s important at all. “I think traditionally climate change has been one of those things that is considered to be extremely important in the next 20 years, but not necessarily extremely important in the next year,” she said. “But people vote and make decisions on their short-term worries and so if we keep thinking of it as a long-term future problem, we’re never going to solve it.” Whether students are treating climate change as an immediate problem is not quite clear from the data, though. While he’s enthusiastic about the latest SCIP results, Arvan said part of him worries there isn’t enough being done on campus to spur action. “I don’t speak for anyone other than myself when I say that,” Arvan said. “But I think a lot of the work that is done on campus gets people to feel really good about climate change issues and problem solving and that the process can be a bit of greenwashing where people feel that they are contributing enough by using a water bottle or by implementing some very, maybe entry level or simplistic lifestyle changes that really simplify the problem down without really diving deeper and
applications. Students applying to the University have to check a box whether or not they have served time. To Thompson, this act is unjust, and she hopes the new center will mitigate the harmful aftereffects of incarceration. “We want to make sure we open our doors to people who, if they are qualified to be here, their criminal history should be irrelevant,” Thompson said. “We have invested unprecedented public resources in the project of punishment in the last four years, which has enormous ripple effects: it has impacts on our U-M school system, it has impacts on our economy, and it has impacts on our voting and on our democracy. Institutions of learning are places where we ask questions.” Thompson said she aims for the new center will allow the University to become a leader and change-maker in the field of carceral studies. “Whether you’re a political scientist interested in voting participation or whether you’re a sociologist interested in family structure or whether you’re a doctor interested in health outcomes — you can’t ask any of those questions without noting the impact of this massive carceral state,” she said. “Michigan is a public institution. It is time we take the lead on this.”
understanding the complexities and further channels to get involved.” This topic gained some attention at the University’s Board of Regent’s September meeting. Several public commenters, including LSA sophomore Catherine Garton, a co-founder of the U-M Climate Action Movement, detailed concerns that the University was not devoting enough attention to mitigation climate change. “The University is trying, but it is not trying hard enough,” Garton said. “I feel that we have fallen behind in this regard. Climate change is the biggest problem facing my generation.” Arvan said he isn’t sure exactly how the University can translate students’ concerns into action. He said that’s “the million-dollar question.” But he does believe the latest SCIP data shows the school is moving in the right direction. “Understanding that policy is really the focal point of effectuating change and getting people … politically inclined to express themselves on these issues is a is a way to really drive home local change,” he said. “But then also I think that personal lifestyle changes are really important component of getting people to appreciate how their individual impacts can add up to be really significant … it’s an ongoing challenge of all the student organizations involved in this field to kind of figure out how to progress on that front.”
Opinion
4A — Thursday, September 27, 2018
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FROM THE DAILY
T
Our eyes are on the Senate
his week, two new sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh surfaced. As of Wednesday, three women have come forward with allegations against the potential candidate for one of the most important seats in our government. Last week, Christine Blasey Ford, a professor at Palo Alto University, went public with a disturbing incident that occurred while her and Kavanaugh were at a high school party. Deborah Ramirez spoke out earlier this week with the help of a civil rights lawyer regarding her experience of sexual assault by Kavanaugh while they were classmates at Yale University. On Tuesday, a third woman who attended high school nearby Kavanaugh, accused the nominee of sexual misconduct during a string of high school parties. The course of action before the Senate should have been clear: investigate these allegations seriously and thoroughly before elevating Kavanaugh for a lifetime appointment to the nation’s highest court. Yet Republicans in the majority have sought to disregard or discredit the seriousness of the matter. In response to hearing rumors of the second set of allegations, The New Yorker reported Senate Republicans chose to accelerate the confirmation process rather than slow down and allow Ramirez to tell her story. The Senate Judiciary Committee even chose to schedule Kavanaugh’s nomination for Friday, thereby assuming the testimony from BlasyFord the day before will have no effect on continuing the nomination process. As college students, we are appalled. Senate Republicans, don’t tell the Ramirezs and Kavanaughs that walk among us today that there is a statute of limitations on one’s moral character. Yet, Senate Republicans have chosen in their actions to broadcast to the world — and us — allegations of sexual misconduct from a man’s past should have no serious bearing on his elevation to the nation’s highest
court. What does that say to the high that there is no expiration date for school students and college freshmen the repercussions of our past actions. across the country? The rhetoric, There should be no acceptance, from President Donald Trump in regardless of age, position or particular, exudes a rationale and situation when it comes to sexual sense of exception for both a young assault. Almost 30 years ago we had Kavanaugh and Supreme Court nominee Kavanaugh. But how can an opportunity to set a precedent we disregard the actions of one from for how we treat survivors. It was hailed as a watershed moment, the other? The allegations against but we ended up going backward. Kavanaugh bring into question the Democratic senators treated Anita standards surrounding the morality Hill, Justice Clarence Thomas’s and character we hold our officials sexual assault accuser, with outright to. Yet, it is no longer acceptable disdain and disrespect. The hearings to only hold those in positions of and investigations into Kavanaugh’s power accountable. The consistent conduct are an opportunity to set a argument from Trump, Kavanaugh new precedent of respect, to bring and other Republican officials justice to the victims and to do hinging on the time lag between right by Hill and all those neglected the public accusations and when in the past. If Senate Republicans the events actually occurred brings choose to continue the course of into question how we hold those our plowing ahead with Kavanaugh’s age, those around us, accountable for nomination, it becomes imperative we exercise our right to hold officials their actions. On a campus confronting accountable and go out and vote. If the same issues of sexual assault, you would want the alleged sexual survivor care and dangerous party assaulter sitting next to you properly culture, we need to hold our peers investigated, make sure nominees to to a standard of character. The dorm the highest court in the nation are party that becomes uncomfortable too. and crosses a line, someone taking advantage of another student at that Welcome Week house party Do you love to debate today’s and the inappropriate advances important issues? Do you want your happening next you at a bar – these voice heard? We hold twice-weekly instances, not all that different from Editorial Board meetings at our the experiences the three women newsroom at 420 Maynard St. in Ann underwent, happen all too often Arbor, where we discuss local, state on our campus. Yes, a conversation and national issues relevant to campus. and active change regarding how We meet Mondays and Wednesdays from 7:15 p.m. to 8:45 p.m. we evaluate the character of the men and women we put in office Learn more about how to join is vital. But, if the Kavanaugh Editboard here. accusations highlight anything, it is
JULIA MONTAG | COLUMN
A fresh approach to student activism
T
hough it’s been more than 20 years since marijuana legalization became popular in the ballots, the Green Wolverine Science Symposium marks the first student-organized cannabis science conference in University of Michigan history. Among the seemingly endless opinions regarding approval and legalization of cannabis, there remains truth in scientific research, and this event intends to highlight the latest, groundbreaking advancements from some of the country’s leading cannabis experts. It will diplomatically challenge the student body’s knowledge of a stigmatized topic, and it will do so without telling us how to think. The symposium was planned in anticipation of the vote on the Marijuana Legalization Initiative in Michigan’s Nov. 6 election. The proposal would allow adults 21 years old and older to possess and use cannabis under state law. Legalization of both medical and recreational marijuana has been eagerly rising as many states have already passed some form of legislation in support of the plant. It’s time for Michigan folks to decide if cannabis will be legal for recreational use in the mitten, and student organization Green Wolverine, the symposium’s host, wants to educate the Ann Arbor masses.
With the core purpose of informing students and rebuking prevalent misconceptions, the event is not meant to sway minds one way or another. Green Wolverine Founder Adam Rosenberg, a Business senior, says the symposium was put together solely to objectively educate and help facilitate informed decisions. “We are not saying that people should or shouldn’t use cannabis,” Rosenberg explained. “We are going to present the information as it exists in current science and allow people to come to their own decisions based on that.” Green Wolverine, a Ross School of Business club, focuses on the educational and networking opportunities within the legal, multibillion-dollar cannabusiness industry. Though laws surrounding the industry are currently ambiguous, legal businesses are rapidly populating the cannabis market. Rosenberg recognized marijuana as a business prospect is plagued by stigmatization, resulting in its exclusion from a standard business education. Rosenberg spotted the opportunity his sophomore year at the Ross School of Business and started Green Wolverine to take advantage of the industry’s rapid growth. The club does not take a political stance and, according to
its mission, directs attention only to business opportunities that are entirely legal. Now, we know there have been grand displays of student activism in the past: In March 1970, a fourday environmental teach-in at the University raised awareness and harnessed the passion that resulted in the first Earth Day just one month later. In 1965, University of California, Berkeley students organized the largest Vietnam teach-in, publicizing the truth about the war and making it easier for students to learn what’s going on in the world around them. I recognize demonstrations about war are distinguishable from those about drugs — however, similar to these teach-ins, the Green Wolverine Science Symposium is anything but a protest, making it a unique demonstration. Rosenberg agreed. “This is not a political statement, this isn’t trying to change anyone’s opinion,” he said regarding the symposium. Like its activism ancestors in their respective fields, the symposium is the first of its kind in the realm of cannabis.
Read more at MichiganDaily.com Julia Montag can be reached at jtmon@umich.edu.
W
Republican strategy come November
ith the midterms coming up, Republicans have an important question to ask themselves: Am I ok with President Donald Trump becoming the next Ronald Reagan? Reagan reshaped the Republican Party’s policies, strategies and style for generations to come. Trump is on course to do the same. This should be a scary thought for everyone, especially Republicans. Trump enjoys a 93 percent approval rating among voters who identify as strongly Republican. Yet many of Trump’s strongest critics in the Republican Party have left office, including 40 Republicans in Congress. The Republican primaries have been a success for Trump, with 35 of the 37 Republicans Trump endorsed victorious in their respective elections. The Republican National Committee is run by a former Trump campaign chief and has been shaped in Trump’s image. Once the source of ideas and policy initiatives, the RNC, in pure Trump style, now has a website called LyinComey.com, which has the sole purpose to attack James Comey, former director of the FBI. Polls of Republicans show Trump is changing minds in the party base. Once settled issues in the court of Republican opinion, tariffs and Vladimir Putin’s role in the world are now becoming increasingly positively acceptedby Republicans. The hope that Trump would be shaped more by the establishment of the party than vice-versa is dead. You might be thinking Trump should be considered a conservative president because he’s passed some conservative policies. But he’s too inconsistent. He passes tax cuts while embarking on a quixotic protectionist mission against China. He increases military spending while undermining the alliance system that has been the hallmark of U.S. security policy since the end of World War II. He supports Israel, but also antiSemites. Trump is inconsistent because he doesn’t have any normative or moral compass. His only guidance seems to come from considerations of power. The organizing principle of his trade policy is that we win and our trade partners lose. He has no problem attacking the media, institutions, individuals or even his own cabinet members if he thinks it makes him look good. For Trump, major decisions are a calculation of power rather than principle. He’s a
drunk man’s Niccolò Machiavelli. Trump’s singular obsession with power is what makes him fundamentally different than past modern conservatives. Trump’s view of American exceptionalism is devoid of values. Reagan’s brand of conservatism saw America as a beacon for freedom on the global stage and a city on a hill for anyone who sought freedom and opportunity. Domestically, the party under Reagan promoted smaller, more efficient government and a free market, which included free trade, as to avoid hindering individual ambition and innovation. But I’m not arguing the Republican Party or its values were perfect before Trump. There’s a reason Republicans have long struggled to capture minority votes. Illiberal populism that deals in racism, sexism and homophobia has existed on the
Trump is inconsistent because he doesn’t have any moral compass right to different degrees since the Civil Rights Act. But the Republican Party has had some grand moments. I can name a few: taking a decisive stance against the Soviet Union, granting amnesty to 3 million undocumented immigrants, rigorously upholding a liberal international order which promotes human rights and freedom and promoting free trade around the world. Even if you strongly oppose these traditionally conservative values, it’s still beneficial for everyone that the Republican Party has values to which it can be held accountable. It’s important for political parties to run on values or ideas with policies that are as consistent as possible. When they don’t, elections tend to descend from a clash of ideas to a clash of tribal and cultural loyalties. Such a clash of tribal loyalties will only make our polarized political system more fragmented. Today, the Republican Party is being reshaped. It’s being reshaped to care only that America is strong and that its enemies—which are an ever-growing list of countries, institutions and people—are weak. It’s a party that terrorizes
migrant children by placing them in detention centers and tries to deport even those who have known no home but America. It’s a party that is cutting the number of legal immigrants because it believes people from certain backgrounds have less to contribute. It’s a party that doesn’t believe in free trade. And who cares if dictatorships and illiberal regimes spread across the world? They want strong friends, not morally upstanding ones. To Trump’s Republican Party, defending American exceptionalism means upholding sovereignty, borders and brute strength rather than upholding freedom, global prosperity and human rights. Trump’s view of America is unexceptional. It mirrors the way strongmen around the world view their countries. The midterms are a referendum on Trump’s politics. A defeat of Trump’s candidates could awaken the establishment and the base of the party. Republicans should thus vote Democratic or not vote at all. The fact is that Trump’s politics are not a stable foundation to base the future of the party. Millennials will outnumber baby boomers by 2019, and Trump and his policies are very unpopular among millennials. Trump relies on nativist sentiment that speaks to a white-majority nation. Before 2050, white Americans will not be a majority. Even now, despite Trump’s attack on immigrants and our immigration system, most Americans see immigration positively. Former State Secretary Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 3 million while being a very unpopular candidate during the 2016 election. What happens when the Democrats find a charismatic candidate again? Many Republicans likely support Trump and his views because they think he’s better than any Democrat would be. But such dialectical thinking has limits. What does Trump have to do for that not to be true? Start a trade war that will cost consumers and could actually ruin Christmas? He’s already done that. If you’re a Republican reading this, the next time people are outraged at Trump, please think about what our president has actually done. Ask yourself, “Would I be okay with Obama or Bush doing this?” Only then can the Republican Party reshape itself again, taking the best of its previous foundations and better adapting to the 21st century. Aaron Baker can be reached at aaronbak@umich.edu.
ELLERY ROSENZWEIG | COLUMN
S
Hey, I’m a fat person
ifting through the sales rack, I could hear her laughing closely behind me as she organized the clothing on hangers. When I asked for a dressing room, she looked at the yellow jumpsuit in my hand and gave me an awkward smile. Staring at myself in the mirror, I pulled the jumpsuit up my legs and over my butt, noticing a small hole. The jumpsuit was cute but a little too tight, so I decided to return it to the front counter. As I waited for my friends to finish changing, I spent some time looking at the jewelry. There, I overheard the saleswoman ask her manager, “What am I supposed to do with this big hole?” She looked at me and laughed again. I quickly looked down at the earrings, trying my best to ignore her. My friends finished paying and we continued shopping down State Street. Later that day, laying on my bed, staring at the ceiling, I could not stop thinking about the interaction with this saleswoman. She made me feel like there was something wrong with me and brought back thoughts of insecurity I had been fighting for so long. I was angry she had the power to make me feel bad. But then it came to me: She’s just afraid. She is scared of being fat. It made me feel bad for her. As someone who identifies as being a fat, curvy, tall person, I have been fighting my internalized fatphobia for as long as I can remember. I spent so much time trying to be smaller because believed if I was smaller, I would be happy and love myself. But the truth is no diet, workout plan or change in weight has ever made me happier than when I stopped fighting and started accepting myself. My mindset did not change all at once, but over time I have had a fundamental shift in the way I see my body and the other bodies around me. Lastyear,myroommateshowedme a YouTube channel called StyleLikeU
in which a mother and daughter interviewed different models, artists and activists about their styles and accepting their bodies while they stripped down to their underwear. After watching so many of these videos, I was in awe of how vulnerable the participants were about sharing their stories and bodies. I started searching for more videos of activists like StyleLikeU hosts Iskra Lawrence and Barbie Ferreira and followed their Instagram accounts. They led me to a greater community of body-positive activists who were using media platforms to combat diet culture and fatphobia by uplifting each other with bodies that challenge the mainstream ideals of beauty. With this whole new ideology in mind and the support of an online community, I began talking to my friends who look and feel the way I do about our experiences with our bodies, beauty and shopping. We share websites to buy clothes like Fashion Nova Curve and ASOS. We also support each other on difficult days when we still struggle to accept ourselves. Since the day with the saleswoman, my friends have been there reminding me why I am beautiful exactly the way I am. But even with all of this amazing support, I still live in a world where people are afraid of those who radically love themselves without trying to change their bodies. I still have to deal with doctors, family members and strangers who think they know more about my body than I do and are worried about my health in relation to my weight. Last week, in my Bodies Studies psychology seminar, I shared the bodypositive community on Instagram with my class, hoping to help more people find supportive accounts to follow like one of my favorites, @bodyposipanda. However, a classmate interrupted me saying she thinks posts from activists
like Tess Holliday are problematic because they perpetuate obesity and she is worried about their health. It was exactly what I had been preparing to respond to, but I found myself at a loss for words. I couldn’t stand up for myself and advocate for my identity because I felt targeted. But my badass graduate student instructor saved the day and shared some findings from an article she read mentioning one’s weight is not the only indicator of health, and we cannot make these assumptions about people’s bodies. I was lucky to have her support when I couldn’t fight for myself. Now that there have been more plus size and curve models in mainstream campaigns for beauty and clothing lines, it may look like our society is comfortable with biggerbodied people; however, there is still a lot of progress to be made with representation. For example, the Netflix show “Insatiable” had a fat character, played by an actress in a fat suit, who lost weight by having her mouth wired shut, thus perpetuating fatphobia. We need to see fat people doing more than just dealing with the fact that they are fat. We need to see fat people living their lives and having complex storylines. Also, there is a movement in the body-positive community for more representation of fat men because most of the activists and accounts are run by women. This has been the hardest column for me to write because bringing any attention to my body has always been negative. But I know by writing this, I am helping myself own my fat, curvy identity and creating a space for others to think and unpack the false narratives they have learned about fat people.
Ellery Rosenzweig can be reached at erosenz@umich.edu.
Michigan in Color
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
I’m shook: millennials, cultural identity & privilege
Thursday, September 27, 2018 — 5A
Skin care and make up SWATHI KOMARIVELLI MiC Contributor
COURTESY OF BETSEY STUBBS
TRINA RAY
MiC Contributor
Apart from soberly functioning every day, introspecting into the quirks and the charms that we hold informs how we respond to the pressure campus culture puts on defining who we are. Our campus is filled with millennials, and it’s no wonder that one of our privileges over previous generations lies in the formation of self-identity. We’re caught between a wealth of human and internet resources and the impressionability of our years. The decisions we make about what campus spaces to belong to, and what to achieve for ourselves, eventually build into each other. They develop into another layer of our identity — like secondary, permeable skins. At their best, these skins filter out those earthly forces — relationship issues, mental illness, financial burdens — from deconstructing stable senses of self. Though the relative ease with which we define ourselves doesn’t enable an immediate facility in answering the age-old question of “Who am I?”, it does make it tempting for us to feel entitled to expressing that answer when we think we’ve found it. Cultural organizations on campus particularly urge millennials with minority identities to express their ties to their own heritage. I think one reason why such organizations emphasize cultural expression is to assert that the connection between national and ethnic identities remains intact, despite the marginalizing attitudes to which minorities have historically been subjected. For instance, the Indian American Student Association’s annual cultural show connects the meaning of being IndianAmerican with traditional Indian song and dance, for a more than enthusiastic audience. Thus, I understand that minorities’ resistance
toward systems of silencing is a gratifying one — and rightfully so. As an audience member of IASA’s shows, however, the extent to which I share in the auditorium’s atmosphere of cultural pride has an unfortunate catch. At each show’s conclusion, I think about how I am IndianAmerican, but not IndianAmerican in the way that is portrayed on stage. Leaving the auditorium, in fact, marks the moments in which I don’t feel very Indian-American at all. During my sophomore year, my cousin visited campus. We planned to attend a show, and walked without sharing our thoughts for a while. When we reached Hill Auditorium, he took it all in: the bold kurtas and jugis, the unashamed laughs and glittering salwar kameezes, muttering “Y’all are here with the glamor, huh?” My desire to connect with my heritage has grown, but I have avoided doing so by participating in IASA. This is because IASA has the capacity to both define and reinforce what the most expressive elements of IndianAmerican identity are, and exclude all that doesn’t vibe with that expression. I interpret IASA’s inf luence, a bit regretfully, as a monolithic reference point for a lot that lies outside of my experience. The Indian-American identity I inhabited growing up did not incorporate Indian culture, which was isolated to destination places: Once a year, my family would journey to the suburbs of Indian stores and Hindu temples. Of my bare smattering of Bengali, I still fail to pronounce the words
“At each show’s conclusion, I thik about how I am IndianAmeircan, but not...the way it is displayed on the stage”
Release Date: Thursday, September 27, 2018
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
ACROSS 1 *Top selection 9 Bring pleasure (to) 15 Horror film line that usually gets its speaker in trouble 16 With conviction 17 Final Yahtzee roll, e.g. 18 Defies 19 Omaha-toMilwaukee dir. 20 Epidermal flaw 21 Its practice doesn’t make it perfect 22 *Preliminary sketch 28 Cowboy leggings 30 Quite small 31 __ culpa 32 Indian noblewoman 33 Utopia 35 Degrees of creativity, briefly 36 *Overly defensive stance 39 Track calculation 40 Very long time 41 Support for a stroller 42 Seminarian’s subj. 43 __ bran 44 Stun gun brand 45 *Newbie 49 Kareem, once 50 Interoffice PC connection 51 Vehicle that really moves? 54 Canal zone 57 “Lives of the Mayfair Witches” trilogy author 60 Video game figure 61 Agonize about 62 Deal with a bounced email 63 *Stud poker element DOWN 1 Roofing unit 2 Vigorous spirit 3 “Got anything __?”
4 Mil. three-striper 5 High on the Scoville scale 6 Rodeos, e.g. 7 Equip anew 8 Back nine opener 9 Wealthy 10 “Ecce homo” speaker 11 Hunt stealthily 12 Source of lean red meat 13 PC key 14 Fleur in heraldry 22 Assigns relative value to 23 Mayberry kid 24 2018 Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee Terrell 25 “It’s just a scratch” 26 Not as messy 27 “Nothing to it!” 28 Less refined 29 Deal with 33 Put on quite an act 34 Cubs’ digs 35 Heck of a party 36 Swedish tennis great
like a natural. And Bollywood’s tendency to intertwine wealth, lighter-skinned leads and the escapism of romanticizing an Indian existence reaches an excess I find unrelatable. I’m still figuring out how to incorporate these contrarian views into an identity that determines its own kind of pride and confidence. One that is comfortable in singularity, not being of a normative sense of national pride. It can thus be difficult to separate my critiques of Bollywood from my critiques of IASA’s cultural show, as it incorporates Bollywood-esque music and dance. As I think the show neatly def lects from the bruises that come with the territory of being Indian-American, I tend to spend more time dwelling on these than on the honorific spaces that have been afforded Indian culture in America today. These spaces are not conducive to the upbringing that has shaped my understanding of what being a firstgeneration Indian American entails. Having immigrated to America during the 1980s, my parents had experiences that I still consider when figuring out the extent to which I desire to adopt Indian culture. They came to live in a small town. My parents often felt cut off from the larger South Asian community as they struggled to assimilate into the rural place of their new home. Apart from the previous ones in which they would share their story, the moments when my parents publicly acknowledged their nationality were typically of defense and passivity, in reaction to racial hostility. Their acquirement of American citizenship began a process in which they lost cultural solidarity and gained ambivalent experiences. These characteristics are part of the bargain that citizenship offers, and come in an invisible package compared to the obvious benefits that being an American confers. The steps they took in consolidating their ethnic and national identities happened to lag behind those that strengthened toward a visible, prideful harmonization between ethnicity and culture. Dwelling on how they became Americans, I realize the privileged dimension of being able to form the public presence of one’s cultural identity. I understand how my quiet pride of not identifying with Indian culture is marginal to the expressive freedoms that being Indian-American entails today. All of this is not to say that I don’t have a certain love for the show. As the performance of cultural fusion hits the mark of entrancing crowds, it allows me to become distracted from
37 Astern 38 Amazon berry 43 Kind of band 44 Mine feature 46 Please mightily 47 Be at loggerheads 48 Cost 51 Brawny rival 52 Big name in PCs 53 Bookish sort
54 What a sequence of single strokes from the start of each starred answer to the next often adds up to 55 Thoroughfare: Abbr. 56 “Life Is Good” rapper 58 Farm girl 59 Dungeons & Dragons bird
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
09/27/18
a divide that has introduced me to more ambivalence than clarity. Within a sweet period, I would observe how performance enables an extreme of cultural pride, and focus on the brilliant lengths that culture-based pride can go. However, I think a crucial aspect of IASA’s shows is the construction of a space that allows Indian-American millennials to temporarily forget moments that have negatively defined our own minority experiences. These experiences, I would argue, distinguish Indian-American culture from Indian culture. Thus, I believe that cultural shows would carry more constructive messages if they were to publicly discuss the meaning of the very American bruises that have, at some level, defined who we are. As I do not recognize an elaboration on the hyphenated distinction, which has been central to at least my understanding of IndianAmerican identity, the show apparently subordinates such bruises to its Indian-centric pride. This subordination would be problematic, as it would neglect to represent a fuller range of IndianAmerican experiences. To me, IASA’s show is not merely a celebration of cultural songs and dances. It’s a representation of how I have yet to touch upon a radiance of feeling similar to that which IASA members dance on stage with. Within my hands, such a spark would further promote an identity that is diametric to the idealized traditions of IASA’s celebration. It is unfortunate that I do not have an uncomplicated attachment to the cultural show — to the rhythm-scape of our campus’s Little India. But as regional and psychological differences dynamically stitch the intra-ethnic experience, they produce lives whose cultural practices intersect and superimpose as lines and patterns do. I often think about this comparison in a crude way: I grew up in a small town far away and haven’t formed strong or even partial heritage ties. I hesitate to embrace the University of Michigan’s provision of a cultural capsule’s yearly parade to the center of the stage. For the sake of tempering performances with realism and expressing the triumphs of hyphenated American nationalities, in addition to the moments that have silenced them, I would love to see a certain space emerge on campus. In this space, cultural organizations would acknowledge and expand upon the privilege of many millennial minorities to culturally express themselves, if they think doing so is fundamental to their sense of ethnic and national identities. Not only would such a space better attract those who come from muted channels of expression like I do, but also help more millennial minorities stand up and respect the bruises our immigrant forebears first experienced
Beauty has always been a focus of my life and my daily routines, and whether that is due to cultural pressures or genuine interest is something that is still foreign to me. But, what I do know is it’s something in which I have grown to have a strong interest. However, it’s always been a bit difficult navigating the world of skincare and makeup while having darker skin. I used to wear a foundation that made me look like a walking fire alarm because drugstore foundation brands have never heard of a Brown or Black person with skin that doesn’t have red or gray undertones (because clearly, there are so many dark women who are just itching to have a foundation that’s their shade but makes them look like they’re ready for their funeral). Over the past few years brands have been stepping it up, and with the launch of Fenty Beauty (♥), this movement for darker people to have foundation shades has launched even further than I ever thought I would see it go in the next decade. My relationship with my skin has been … tumultuous, to say the least. It still is, and while my skin is far from perfect, I’ve invested much research and time into learning about skin, especially darker skin. My hormones are always out of whack, and I’ve struggled with acne for the past eight years. So I was obviously inclined to start wearing makeup as a way to cover up all the scarring that’s been left over from my past acne. While that has led to me to be a makeup enthusiast, at heart I will always continue to be a skincare junkie. Speaking of scarring, let’s talk about it! Because nobody else will. Scarring is naturally bound to remain longer on darker skin just due to the fact that dark skin has more melanin. Of all the skin types, the darkest are dark Asian skin (e.g., Indian, Sri Lankan or Malaysian), Afro-Caribbean and Black skin (generally African origin, but can also originate from West Indian/ Caribbean people). AfroCaribbean/Black skin has the highest melanin concentration out of any category of ethnic skin type. The more melanin you have, the darker your skin, so your scars from past blemishes will be that much stronger. Inf lammation occurs under and over the skin when you have a pimple, and the inf lammation leaves a longerlasting mark on darker skin. Most skincare for dark marks is marketed toward whom beauty products have always been targeting: white women. Because they can inhale the mere scent of aloe vera gel and have their scars disappear, and we already know that this is not the case for darker people. I’m here to talk about what things work for us, scientifically speaking, and what things absolutely do not. Number one on the list is extremely harmful yet extremely powerful to lighten dark marks: hydroquinone. Hydroquinone, also known as devil juice, is a common ingredient used in skin lightening and bleaching treatments for darker women, as it is so powerful that it will penetrate the skin barrier to lighten up dark marks. But, I beg you, please don’t ever use this. If your dermatologist recommends hydroquinone, run the other
direction. Hydroquinone, on dark skin, can often worsen dark marks; not only that, the ingredient can be toxic as it does have some carcinogenic and mutagenic properties. While the Federal Drug Administration has concluded it is okay in small doses (4 percent concentration in skincare products), it still can cause adverse reactions not just on a surface level, but internally provoke DNA alterations and mutations. Hydroquinone is often seen as an easier way out just because of how fast it works, but the effects on your health in the long term are absolutely not worth it! But I’m not just going to leave you with this as you go to mope and believe there is no way out to your situation, because that’s not true in the slightest. One of the things that you can do to prevent your dark marks from getting even darker is wearing sunscreen. If you think you don’t need it because you’ve never gotten a sunburn, you’re so wrong. You’re not just wrong, you’re loathsome. Go wear your SPF, immediately. This isn’t even relating to just surface-level appearance, but skin cancer is a sneaky rat and SPF helps prevent skin cancer. You should aim for an SPF of at least 30, and some good ones that won’t leave an ashy/purple cast on your skin include: Supergoop! Unseen Sunscreen Broad Spectrum SPF 40 Aveeno Positively Radiant Sheer Daily Moisturizer with SPF 30 Neutrogena Hydro Boost Water Gel Lotion with SPF 50 (for my dry skin girls!) Number two on the list is glycolic acid. Another thing you can do to actively start lightening some of these marks is to use products with concentrations of glycolic acid on your face, especially if your skin is new to acids. A good example of a product with this ingredient is the Pixi Glow Tonic. It has a bit of a lower concentration than most products, which is why it’s a great way to build up tolerance to products with higher concentrations. Once you’ve built up tolerance, you can try using products containing ascorbic acid, the original form of Vitamin C, if you find glycolic acid concentrations don’t hurt your skin. Number three on the list is Mandelic acid. If you have already used products with concentrations of acids on your face for a long period of time before (azelaic acid and salicylic acid are two of the most commonly used ones), or if glycolic acid irritates your skin, give mandelic acid a go! Mandelic acid is especially good if you have a richer skin tone, and has been shown to have less of an irritating effect. Remember with any of these products to always test on the corner of your face or your hand before plastering it all over your face; it’s always better to be safe rather than sorry with skincare. Remember while these will take much more investment and time than hydroquinone, the long-term benefit is so worth it. While it is always better to go to a dermatologist than to listen to some college student, if you have a darker skin tone, it can be easy to get products that only irritate your skin further. So, make sure you know how your dermatologist works with darker skin. Research, time and diligence are your three keys to glowing and golden skin. Put the effort in, and your skin will reward you!
Interested in writing about campus or popular culture? Have a passion for poetry or personal narratives? Michigan in Color is hiring columnists and bloggers! Email michiganincolor@michigandaily.com for more information. By Jeffrey Wechsler ©2018 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
09/27/18
6A — Thursday, September 27, 2018
Sports
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Aidan Hutchinson hype train gaining steam Teske preparing for
bigger role with ‘M’
MAX MARCOVITCH Daily Sports Editor
Get anyone in the Michigan football program going on freshman defensive end Aidan Hutchinson, and it soon becomes clear how high they are on him. Ask fifth-year senior defensive lineman Lawrence Marshall. “Oh my god, Aidan, from the first day until now, making a huge jump. That kid will be an All-American here.” Ask junior defensive end Rashan Gary, a potential future top-10 NFL draft pick: “I tell him all the time, my freshman year, he’s ahead of where I was.” Ask his position coach, Greg Mattison: “All I know is when Aidan was recruited, and watching Aidan play in high school and watching him in camp and watching him in games, his future is very, very bright.” Four games into Hutchinson’s Michigan career, the hype is deafening. Hutchinson — barely 18 years old — has publicly tempered expectations, saying, “that’s cool, but I have a lot to work on” when asked about Marshall’s All-American prediction. But his performance thus far speaks for itself. Despite playing behind Gary and fifth-year senior Chase Winovich, Hutchinson has seen action in all four games this season. Against Western Michigan, the freshman notched six tackles. Late in the second quarter of Saturday’s game against Nebraska, Hutchinson diagnosed a screen pass from Cornhuskers quarterback Adrian Martinez and batted the attempt back in the air. Martinez caught his own attempt in the Nebraska end zone, but Hutchinson knocked him down, forcing Martinez into an intentional grounding
THEO MACKIE
Daily Sports Writer
ALEC COHEN/Daily
Freshman defensive end Aidan Hutchinson has seen game action in all four of Michigan’s matchups so far this season.
penalty out of desperation, resulting in a safety. It was a glimpse of the athleticism, intelligence and relentlessness that, by all accounts, Hutchinson has been showing in practice all year. “He’s strong, he goes hard, he’s smart. Like he really understands football,” Marshall said Tuesday. “Like a lot of freshmen, when they come in, they really don’t understand the adjustments from high school to college. He really understands football.” That would make sense, given his family pedigree. Hutchinson’s father, Chris, played at Michigan from 19881992, earning All-Big Ten honors his final two seasons and an All-American selection his senior season. Chris totaled 11 sacks in 1992 and finished his career with 20, then the second-highest total in school history. Mattison coached the Wolverines’ defensive line in 1992, and says “(Chris) may be the best I’ve had the opportunity to coach.”
“Obviously him being an All-American here, obviously I know there’s a high standard for me,” Aidan said Tuesday. “I think, but I set my own expectation for myself, and I set the bar for myself.” For the time being, his snap count will be limited by the presence of Gary and Winovich — two potential All-Big Ten ends who rarely take a play off, barring injury. Hutchinson has gained valuable in-game experience in the last three weeks, games Michigan has won by a total of 127 points. Far from a hindrance, Mattison sees Gary’s presence in particular as valuable to Hutchinson’s growth. Mattison often sees Gary offering Hutchinson assistance in meetings and film sessions, which reminds the veteran coach of another player-toplayer relationship. “I can still remember (former defensive end) Chris Wormley sitting right next to Rashan, helping him every day with all of the things we were trying to do, and (Gary) listening, and
him learning it, and doing better each day that way,” Mattison said. “Rashan is doing the exact same thing with Aidan.” Hutchinson will almost certainly step into a more prominent role next season, with Winovich graduating and Gary likely headed to the NFL. He will occupy the same spot, in the same uniform, under the same coach that his father did during his All-America season. If the first portion of his freshman season is any indication — and if Marshall’s words turn into reality — Hutchinson could quickly shed the title of “Chris’ son.” Mattison certainly thinks he’s on his way, even flashing some of the same skills that made Chris successful. “Aidan has a lot of that in him,” Mattison said. “The good thing is Aidan has six more inches.” Aidan Hutchinson has generated plenty of hype in his first few months on campus. But if what Mattison said is the case, not a word of it is hyperbole.
Moore earns praise in first year as tight ends coach After four years at Central Michigan, Sherrone Moore joined Michigan’s staff. MIKE PERSAK
Managing Sports Editor
Jim Harbaugh, like any coach, loves to compliment his players. So when the Michigan football coach was asked Monday, at his weekly press conference, about the development of redshirt junior tight end Zach Gentry, it was no surprise that Harbaugh had a lot to say about all of his tight ends — Gentry, along with juniors Sean McKeon and Nick Eubanks. He even gave a shoutout to former Wolverine Jake Butt, now a tight end with the NFL’s Denver Broncos. And then at the end of his response, Harbaugh quickly added a compliment to firstyear tight ends coach Sherrone Moore. “It’s just really good, good — tight ends, Sherrone Moore’s doing a heck of a job coaching this (group),” Harbaugh said. “… So proud of that.” It’s a small gesture, but it still meant something to Moore, who joined the staff this offseason by way of Central Michigan. Does he get that praise often? “From my wife,” Moore said Wednesday. “My mom, she’ll give me that sometimes. My wife actually told me about (Harbaugh’s comments), which was pretty cool. So, you know, I’m just blessed to be here and do whatever I can to make this team better and make this program better.” Moore was dealt a strong hand when he arrived in Ann Arbor. Not only does he have Gentry, McKeon and Eubanks, but Michigan also landed the No. 6 tight-end recruit in the 2018 recruiting class, Mustapha Muhammad.
Last March, Jon Teske sat with a towel draped over his neck and a long sleeve warmup masking his mostly dry jersey. Twenty feet away, Moritz Wagner terrorized the Loyola-Chicago defense as he hit a turnaround three, found Charles Matthews with a backdoor bounce pass and charged into the paint for a 3-point play, before capping the stretch with a three from the top of the key. In four minutes, he took Michigan from a three-point deficit to the precipice of the national championship game. “Not too many people in the country have the same skillset as Moe,” Matthews said Tuesday afternoon. It’s a stretch that exemplifies what Wagner meant to the Wolverines. On an offense whose identity was being able to shoot from all five positions, the 6-foot-11 center paced the team with a 39.4 3-point shooting percentage and 14.6 points per game. With Wagner now gone to the NBA, Teske, who played just three minutes in that game in San Antonio, moves to center stage. But he’s not Moe Wagner, and there’s no hiding that. Wagner pierced the net 110 times from beyond the arc over the past three years. At 7-foot-1, Teske is an elite rim protector who adds another dimension to Michigan’s dominant defense but has never made a collegiate three. His most recent attempt came in the dying minutes of a 45-point game against UC Riverside last November. “He’s one of a kind,” Matthews said of Wagner. “So yeah, we’re definitely gonna have to play differently.” Had Wagner returned for his senior year, this would be a Michigan team with few question marks. It would carry its offensive identity from last season, with sophomore g uard Jordan Poole slotting in for the graduated MuhammadAli Abdur-Rahkman. The biggest change would be freshman forward Ignas Brazdeikis providing a different type of spark off the bench than sharpshooting forward Duncan Robinson. In t he t u rbu lent la ndscape of college ba sketba ll, t hat wou ld ma ke t he Wolver i nes one of t he nat ion’s steadiest presences f rom a sea son ago. But, as expected, Wagner
declared for the draft and will be playing alongside LeBron James in Los Angeles next month. In his stead, Teske’s development will be key to whether Michigan’s offense can match a defense that ranked third in Ken Pomeroy’s adjusted efficiency metric last season. “Big Sleep has been doing very well in practice,” Matthews said, using Teske’s nickname. “And I think he’ll continue to grow.” The most surprising development for Teske may come from beyond the 3-point line. Though he’s only attempted two 3-pointers in his college career, he reg ularly shot two or three a game in high school. “Jon Teske has shot the ball really well (in practice),” Michigan coach John Beilein said. “Having a big man that can shoot, you all see what can happen, it made everybody else better last year. Having Jon be able to do that, … (that’s) big to get those big men that can shoot.” Added Teske: “That (3-point shooting) is one thing that (Beilein) has seen me grow with. I’ve been showing him that I’m capable of shooting a three.” It’s a different type of 3-point shooting than Wagner, who could shoot in nearly any situation. Teske anticipates that his looks from deep will come as a trailer in transition or off of pick-and-pops. But after losing their top three long ball shooters, the Wolverines will take all the help Teske can give them. Knowing that Wagner was likely leaving, Teske spent the last year studying him and learning his craft. They roomed together on road trips, allowing Teske to learn from him at every opportunity. Even now, with Wagner on the other side of the country, the two keep in reg ular communication by texting. “I was just picking his brain here and there and he’s just a great g uy,” Teske said. “… He’s always somebody that I look to, kind of like a big brother to me.” Added Beilein: “Let’s face it, we lost our three top shooters. That’s a lot of threes in those three and highpercentage g uys. So we have to replace that somehow.” Believe it or not, Teske might be crucial to Michigan’s chances of doing that. “Now that Moe’s gone, it’s my turn to step up,” Teske said. “And I think with my capability shooting the three, I can really stretch the f loor and help us win games.”
“(Teske) has been doing very well in practice.”
“Now that Moe’s gone, it’s my turn to step up.”
ALEC COHEN/Daily
Redshirt junior tight end Zach Gentry had the second-most receiving yards of any Michigan player last season with 303.
And with Harbaugh’s fondness for two and threetight end sets, Moore is experiencing a wealth of riches he hasn’t enjoyed before. “Last year at Central, we were more of a spread operation, so really only in one-tight end sets a majority of the game. Sometimes two,” Moore said. “But, you know, here, as you guys see, we’re in threetight end sets, we’re early in the game three-tight end sets. Then I’ve got all three of them yelling at us, ‘Don’t take us off the field, ‘cause you saw us score.’ And I’m like, ‘Guys, chill out.’ “But, you know, it’s really cool to be a part of a program that does that and to be a part of that. And when you have weapons like that, it’s good to use them like that.”
“... Moore’s doing a heck of a job coaching this (group).”
Last season, Gentry (303) and McKeon (301) had the second and thirdmost receiving yards on the team, and they had the most receiving touchdowns as well — two and three, respectively. Those aren’t staggering numbers, but on a team that struggled to pass the ball, the tight ends were often the safety valve. That dimension was already in their repertoire. This season, they’re contributing in the run game, too. That aspect was a major knock against the tight ends last season, but the improvement is something Moore has noticed firsthand. “Their streng th from the spring to now the gains that they get, you know, I hold the bag sometimes for them and feel a little bit of a different thump when they hit it,”
Moore said. “So that was a pretty cool feeling, to feel the difference of their streng th there. But to watch those g uys really improve from a fundamental standpoint with their hands and their feet has been really cool and really has come to fruition on gameday.” Moore is quick to def lect praise. He credits streng th and conditioning coach Ben Herbert for the tight ends’ improvement in blocking. He lauds wide receivers coach Jim McElwain for passing on some knowledge to him. And he credits the talents of his players for the rest. But there is no doubt that Moore is doing something right. If he weren’t, his praise would still just be coming from his wife and his mom.
“... Here, as you guys see, we’re in three-tight end sets...”
EVAN AARON/Daily
Junior center Jon Teske is looking to replace Moe Wagner at the 3-point line.
DESIGN BY CASEY TIN
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Dissecting the art of hair in AA & beyond ISABELLE HASSLUND Daily Arts Writer
Nothing compares to that feeling you get when you walk out of the salon with a fresh haircut, that feeling of newness and transformation when you leave the hair salon. For those few moments, you strut out of the salon and feel like you can conquer anything that comes your way, feel like you’re validated and you want people to notice you. If we take a moment to consider this, it’s so strange to think these strands of keratin and dead skin cells can make us feel so on top of the world. This strangeness is common for clients and the hair stylists who create this art growing out of our heads. Nicholaus Zinis, owner and stylist of Nola’s Underground Salon, is a bald man with a passion for hair. Walking down the dingy, narrow staircase into a basement to get to Nola’s Underground Salon, I was bombarded by colors and designs that released a sort of cosmic energy into the atmosphere. As I walked through the fuzzy wallpapered space, my eyes were inundated with velvet and random antiques hanging all over the wall. Zinis, a colorful man in fantastic f lowy pants, promptly greeted me. When we think of artists, we seldom think of hairstylists. We think of the struggling artist, someone who has a paranormal connection with a canvas. For Zinis, his canvas is hair. He uses universal energy and this seemingly otherworldly inspiration to do his work and create art. “If you look at the hair, read it and touch it, it will tell you what it wants to do,” Zinis said. “I can’t even claim credit for the haircut, it just f lows. You tap into the universal love that f lows through your arms. Every haircut I do takes three seconds; my day goes by in minutes.” Zinis is a doctor in hair practice, scientist of color and artist of style all in one. He mixes colors and creates masterpieces, each one unique in its own way. He is aware every single person who walks through the doors of his salon is different — both in hair and personality. “Sane people don’t do hair … you have to deal with a lot of personalities and pure, crazy chaos,” Zinis said. For Zinis, it is not just about shaping art, but the personal connections he makes as a stylist. He quit his corporate job to become a hairstylist, and has since been surprisingly fulfilled with the human connections he has made with his clients. That wonderful connection we feel with our stylists is genetically predisposed. “How do animals bond? Through grooming,” Zinis explained. “When you groom each other, you sit in the chair and it’s just diarrhea of the mouth.” “I had a group of students,
and they left in April and none of them got their hair cut in the summertime because they were like, ‘It’s not the same, I can’t get my hair cut now.’ They came back in the fall with a summer’s worth growth of hair, and they were like, ‘I wanted to wait to get my haircut with you.’” You establish a close bond with your stylist by working together to express yourself through hair. Stylists humble themselves by washing your hair, placing you in a vulnerable state. The trust that you immediately give to another person to shape this new part of you, to help create your identity and show it to the world is such an intimate experience. “We’ve had people who are suicidal who come and get a haircut,” Zinis explained. He shared a story of a client who had decided not to commit suicide after getting a haircut because Zinis had listened to him and showed care for him when he came into his studio. “So is it a haircut? No, it’s so much more than that.” Hair is art, beautiful and expressive, but we often miss telling another side of the story. Just as visual and performance art shapes culture, so does hair.
A side of the story that has been brushed under the rug for too long is the story of hair as an art form for women of color. It is through the experiences of women of color that expression through hair has been an essential part of identity for a long time, and it is time we notice. Growing up, I was known as the girl with the long hair. I remember one of my elementary school teachers taking out a ruler to measure the length of my hair in front of the entire class, commenting on its length and fullness. I grew up around the smell of burnt hair in the Dominican hair salons in Washington Heights, New York; the sound of mighty Dominican stylists chatting loudly in Spanish about the latest gossip of the neighborhood; the sounds of praise over my “good” hair. The heat of the blow dryer is a distinct feeling I will never forget. My hair was being shaped by these women, and at the same time they were shaping me and who I was. As I grew older, I started to get my hair cut in upscale salons in SoHo. There, I became accustomed to the smell of bleached hair. I familiarized myself with the
Hair is art and it is beautiful and expressive, but we often miss telling another side of the story. Just as visual and performance art shapes culture, so does hair
side-eyed glances of straighthaired blonde women toward my dark and curly hair. I grew used to being pampered, being offered complimentary tea and paying at least $125 for a haircut. My hair evolved into bragging rights for me — how much I spent on my haircut and products, the length of my hair, and the beautiful and perfect curl texture that took form. My curls were a sign of my privilege, the privilege of fitting more into the white normative than other people of color, especially women. Khalya Hopkins, an employee for the New York City Department of Education and one of the fiercest women to which I have ever spoken, wears her own “crown of glory” with pride, as her art comes to form in a very different manner. She found art in her hair with bantu knots and hair wraps, both ways of wearing your hair when “transitioning,” a term that describes the process women of color, usually women with kinky hair, undergo when shifting from putting chemicals in their hair to wearing it natural. “People don’t understand that when you do transitions, that’s almost like a spiritual journey,” Hopkins said. “You have to talk yourself through that.” “I’ve been sitting around ingesting white normative beauty for so long, that it’s not just cutting your hair. It’s cutting off a piece of your identity. I’ve identified with being part of the status quo of beauty, right? Longer hair, straighter hair. And I had to make a decision that I was no longer going to perpetuate that standard.” Hair is a status symbol. “That’s a badge of honor — when you can keep your hair
straight without using any other chemicals. You’re almost a preferred, VIP Black person, and that’s unfortunate,” Hopkins said. The same is true in many other cultures and communities, but all art will have its critics. In the same way artists learn to love what spills from their hearts onto the canvas, women of color learn to embrace their “preferred” hair type. Liznel Ferreira, a former stylist, also had to come to terms with her hair. “Now I love it because I know I can wear it so many different ways … it was a process in figuring out how to manage my hair,” Ferreira said. This movement from relaxed to natural hair is not just a ref lection of self-identity, but it’s a fight against history and the social norm when the society is telling you that your curls, your personal identity and art form, are wrong. “Growing up, my hair was always compared to my sisters’ hair because their curls were softer. I grew up putting relaxer in my hair,” Ferreira explained. When I was younger, I straightened my hair often
because I saw that as beautiful. Toward the end of high school, I finally stopped fighting my hair and tapped into the cosmic energy both Zinis and Hopkins felt in their hair by nurturing my natural curl pattern. It was the most freeing decision I have ever made, and it is a bold statement I make as a woman of color. “Natural hair is huge: it’s big, it’s unruly, it’s uncontrollable … you are literally saying, ‘This is what freedom looks like.’ And that is something that is scary to people, especially pertaining to WOC. We are the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to privilege and status,” Hopkins explained. Like art, hair is a political and personal statement, especially for women of color like myself and Hopkins. Hair sends a message out into the world that we are here and we are going to take up space and display the art that grows naturally out of our scalps unforgivingly. “I’m going to take up space. A lot of it. I’m going to take up all of your space, and you are going to have to deal with it,” Hopkins exclaimed. Just as one would go to a museum and not touch the artwork, the same rules apply for hair. What grows out of our scalps is our own work — one that Michelangelo cannot even truly recreate. No matter what type of hair, or lack of hair, you are making a statement. It is a masterpiece in itself. We have to uplift and encourage each other by educating ourselves about the nature of the artwork and the history surrounding it to truly appreciate and understand it. This starts with education. “When I was 23, I decided to go to cosmetology school,” Ferreira said. “When I was there, I did not learn how to deal with hair of my texture. … We always worked on fine hair.” If we knew more about hair and could appreciate the uniqueness of it, then maybe we would not be so scared to let loose and let our natural self-expression. Our hair, or lack thereof, shapes who we are. It tells the world who we are. Hair offends and confuses. It brings people together and alienates. Hair frustrates us, finds us community and validates our identities. Hair makes us feel new and vibrant, giving us new energy and empowerment that we never knew we had inside of us. It is a powerful connector and divider, and we decide where the trajectory goes.
Our hair, or lack thereof, shapes who we are. It tells the world who we are. Hair offends and it confuses. It brings people together and alienates.
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CAPITAL RECORDS
Troye Sivan is blowing up, so are blond bombshells ROBERT MANSUETTI Daily Arts Writer
Recently, a longstanding, unspoken personal bond was finally broken: Justin Bieber and I no longer have the same hairstyle. With news of his engagement to Hailey Baldwin came paparazzi photos of him, hair wild and shaggy, sporting a mustache that screams “I’ve been listening to a lot of Post Malone lately and doing just fine.” I was a prepubescent boy (i.e., dumb) during the “Baby” heyday, so naturally I harbored a completely irrational yet deepseated aversion of the singing, dancing Canadian. Irony is a fickle mistress though, as one can scroll down to the murkiest depths of my Facebook profile and see tagged photos from the early 2010s featuring a tinier me sporting the same side-swooped bowl cut. Like clockwork, if Bieber ever changed his hair, I would somehow end up with the same haircut – albeit a couple months behind – despite laughing at all the “memes” mocking his androgynous looks or imploring God to give us back Michael Jackson if we offered Bieber up in sacrifice. Slightly shorter bowl cut Bieber? Been
there. Shaved on the sides, styled long on the top Bieber? Done that. I may have lost him for a bit in 2017 when he both shaved his head and went back to the bowl, the look closest associated with his rise to superstardom. But when I decided to dye my hair platinum blond, our souls were briefly realigned and everything was alright. The platinum blond trend in men’s hair has increased exponentially over the past few years. This summer, Zayn Malik went blond, Pete Davidson went blond, Charlie Puth went blond; even a handful of Mexican soccer players went blond for a World Cup match. Through its adoption by many of the best-groomed men in Hollywood and the fashion industry, the trend’s en vogue status has become solidified. The fact GQ articles detailing some facet of the platinum blond dyeing process keep cropping up once a year speaks to its lasting power. It’s easy to dismiss platinum blond as a fad, and that a decade from now we’ll be looking at it with the same disdain we now have for frosted tips. On the notion of a fad, one must first understand frosted tips were far from one; the reignited boy band craze of the late ’90s and early ’00s solidified their cultural impact, and they
were a commonplace hairstyle for many young guys over damn near a decade. Fads are lucky to stay around for a year, as pogs (milk caps) and fidget spinners are fated to be relegated to the dustbin of history. Trends like frosted tips stick around, becoming a cornerstone of their era’s defining aesthetic. We’re quick to associate nostalgia with fashion as it was something in which everyone technically participated. Everyone wanted to look like Justin Timberlake. The thing is, not everyone wants to look like Malik or Davidson or Puth. Platinum blond hair seems to have caught on only among the upper echelon of men. If I walk around campus on an average day, I will only see two or three other boys with hair like mine, out of some thousands. Whereas dyed hair is so ubiquitous among women, it still continues to be a taboo for some men. Hair dye has been around for centuries, with the earliest and most prominent adopters being the ancient Egyptians, and blond hair has its own history, too. Roman prostitutes were required to have yellow hair to indicate their professions, with some bathing their hair in a solution made from the ashes of burnt plants to
Thursday, September 27, 2018 — 3B
achieve that color without need of a wig. Later in the 1700s, the color became fashionable and Italian women would sit out in the sun with their locks submerged in a corrosive solution for that luxurious blond color. French chemist Eugene Schueller created the first synthetic hair dye for commercial purpose in 1907, a product that would later become known as L’Oréal, and it quickly became easier than ever for women to change their hair color. The list of iconic female blondes could span hundreds — Marilyn Monroe, Farrah Fawcett, Madonna, to name a few. But one would be hard-pressed to find a single male celebrity with platinum blond hair worthy of the moniker “icon.” This is partly because platinum blond hair on men, as previously stated, is a trend very localized in the 2010s. Most celebrities who dye their hair, like Bieber, either just recently dyed it and have not put in the time necessary for icon status, or gave up maintaining the color after a year or so and switched to a new headline and eye-catching hairstyle. There is, however, a young man on the verge of becoming synonymous with platinum blond hair. In 2017, Troye Sivan, a South African and Australian singersongwriter with unassuming mousy brown hair fresh off the success of his debut album Blue Neighborhood, posted on Twitter and Instagram pictures of his apparent blond curls. His fans were initially skeptical, though Troye made sure they knew it was no fake, no wig. Aside from this dramatic change and a few features, Sivan did not have a world-stopping 2017. But this year, Troye is on top of the pop world. It’s been less than a month since his chart-topping sophomore effort Bloom was released, featuring the infectious anthem “My My My!” and the Ariana Grande collaboration “Dance To This.” His explosive popularity came seemingly out of nowhere, but it’s pretty easy to understand. What makes Sivan so different from his other male contemporaries? And what makes his hair such a statement? The answer lies in his unapologetic acceptance of his queerness. As you may have assumed, the reason dyeing your hair is still taboo among most of the male
MUSIC NOTEBOOK
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Spikes, Studs & Subversion: the political resistance in punk hair CLARA SCOTT Daily Arts Writer
Mohawks. Buzz cuts. Tangled, teased, dyed, chopped, braided, long, short and any every color in the book. What do you think of when you think of punk hair? This is a broad question, but holds more meaning than it may seem. From its beginnings in the ’70s in England and the United States, the punk movement has always been closely related to its members’ presentations in fashion and grooming, specifically hair. Though punk has split into many subgroups since its inception, the general consensus remains the same: To be punk is to subvert the status quo in every manner, especially in the way you look to others. The separation between the
mainstream and counterculture that functions as a foundation for the movement was initially and still is based heavily in presentation. This is something that has splintered into different subcultures in the past five decades but is still what many people imagine when they think of punk conceptually. In terms of appearance, punk hairstyles have become the primary marker for the masses to identify rebellion and subversion in public, an opportunity for members of the movement to “other” themselves in a way that is easy to reverse and change at a moment’s notice. Punk and its offshoots have often gotten a bad rep in the media and society at large, in response to not only the ideology of their movements but also their appearance. Extremist submovements, like the white
nationalist skinheads, have often overshadowed the meaning behind punk style from the beginning, and color the media’s portrayal of the culture as a whole with negativity. But in reality, punk and its attachment to style began as a way to subvert the expectations of mid-70s England, which was under the heavy veil of social pressure to conform as the post-war world erupted into turmoil once again. Young people who resisted the norms of their world found solace in music from groups like the Sex Pistols and created a cultural movement that shifted the “free love” counterculture of hippies to a harsher, more direct response to political and social discord. In the late ’60s, the earliest members of the punk movement shaved their heads in protest of the longhaired freedom of the Aquarian
age, becoming the first skinheads. Later, the name “skinhead” would become associated with ugly nationalist rhetoric groups, but initially, it was just a descriptor for those who chose to buzz their hair in search of a bare-bones, stripped look. Using appearance to solidify their identity, English youth began wearing ripped and distressed clothes, black, leather and, of course, spiking and cutting their hair. London punks gathered in places like Sloane Square to organize and meet other people like them, but as the movement gained traction, outsiders would often come to their hangouts to gawk at the variety of hairstyles on display. One of these haircuts, arguably the most famous of the punk movement, was the mohawk or mohican, a characteristic spiked ‘do running down the
population is it goes against all norms of traditional masculinity. For lack of a better word, going to a hairdresser and getting your hair dyed platinum blond could be seen as “gay.” In fact, while doing research for this article, I stumbled across a finely-worded Yahoo Answers query asking if it “would be gay if (he) dyed (his) hair platinum blonde” (he specifically requested “girls opinions on the matter” and declined requests for comment as he is both anonymous and asked about nine years ago). While the most mean-spirited of bullies would call another guy a “sissy” or “faggot” for dyeing their hair, their vitriol isn’t misdirected; most guys who are inclined to change the color of their hair are of a queer sexuality. And why is that? While I am by no means qualified to speak for all non-heterosexual men, my hair has come to mean a lot to me. For years, I had sported haircuts so uninteresting they would fit snugly into any given fraternity composite. Once I began to come to terms that maybe there’s more to life than girlfriends, that guys can be pretty too, I became increasingly frustrated with my outward appearance. Easy to disappear into a crowd, the straight, brown-haired white freshman I appeared to be was at odds with the interior. In all my social anxiety, I believed people looked at me and saw the most uninteresting man in the world. I wanted so desperately for them to not write me off as boring and shy but them to see me and instantly want to befriend the silly lovable idiot I am underneath. So a seed was planted and my plan was to dye my hair something radical Thanksgiving Break. I settled on platinum blond after scrolling through an unhealthy amount of Lucky Blue Smith pictures. That plan was derailed by the family and friends occupying my house for the holiday, so it was pushed back to December. I would bleach my hair over Christmas, only tell a very select few about it and surprise everyone else in person. One stinging three-hour visit to my mom’s favorite salon later and the plan was underway. It’s now sophomore year, and has dyeing my hair platinum blond changed my life for the better? Well, yes and no. It hasn’t transformed me into some cherub of an extrovert with countless
friends under his wings, but I do think it represents a more authentic version of myself. It represents someone who finally came to terms with their worst hidden struggles and no longer hates themselves for who they are. I’d be lying if I said the random compliments I get in public bathrooms or fastfood restaurants don’t give me the slightest bit of confidence to keep going on particularly hard days. I have varied my hair color slightly, dabbling in pink and lavender, but platinum blond is my new home that always calls me back. I don’t even remember what I look like with brown hair. Hair is one of the most important forms of personal expression, which is one of the most crucial things to the identity of any queer person, Troye Sivan and myself included. While he and I differ on the personal meaning of our platinum blond hair — Troye has always been public about his identity way before the hair change, while my acceptance of my identity coincided with the hair change (as my friends have chided me about, in a very Ralph Wiggum-type way) — both of us use hair as a means to love and accept who we are. Troye Sivan’s hair has become very central to his brand in an amazing, celebratory kind of way. The album cover for Bloom is a black-and-white image of Sivan with his back facing the camera; the most prominent feature from that angle is his hair. The video for “My My My!” employs the same technique. As Troye dances in front of these empty, dimly-lit and monochromatic backdrops, and the platinum blond shines from every angle. It could be reductive to say all of one’s personality could be distilled into their hair, but when we choose what color we want our hair to be, it’s safe to say it’s a very sentimental personal trademark of ours. While hair has the utmost importance to queer people of all genders, it particularly stands out among queer men because it swims in a heterosexual sea of blasé male hair. I like to think people look at me (and boy, do I get looks now, good and bad) and see the person I want to present to the world, the self becomes more and more true every day. I hate to call my old hair boring, because I’ve seen beautiful brown hair, but I’ll be damned if blonds don’t have more fun.
center of the head. The shock factor of these looks alone drew attention from the mainstream, and in turn, punk became a bigger and bigger phenomenon, their music and anarchist ideologies thrust into the public eye. At the same time, musicians like Patti Smith and The Ramones began the same path in America, separating themselves from both the mainstream and hippie counterculture to begin something raw, new and profoundly powerful. New York City punk was less gaudy than London’s initial movement, but still presented itself as a legitimate social culture with a look to match. Though NYC is often credited with the beginnings of American punk culture, Los Angeles had its own burgeoning punk scene, and eventually, the movement spread to most major cities. The leather and distress of English punk made its way into American punk culture, some taking an almost identical approach, but many people in the States chose to bypass the extreme hairstyles of punk fame and instead opt for a messy, slept-in look, long and unkempt as if to say: “I don’t care what I look like, what matters is the message.” By the late ’70s, punk was a massive force in youth culture and counterculture as a whole, and the appropriation of its characteristic looks began to flow into the mainstream. Bands like the New York Dolls started subgroups like glam punk, which took the basic elements of punk and brought them to a draggy, over-the-top level, sporting highfemme makeup and big teased hair in an effort to distinguish themselves. Art punk formed in bands like Television, who grew out of drug culture and into almost avant-garde music and performance. In addition to glam and art, the punk movement started to fracture into dozens of these smaller subcultures with their own looks and ideologies. But there was still a distinct emphasis on the purposeful self-
“othering” of punks through their choices in clothes and hairstyles, something that lives on today in these shattered pieces of the original movement. As the ’80s came and went, punk grew into its own, and so did the movements it inspired, like hardcore and eventually postpunk. Many of the bands who transitioned into the latter two categories even began as part of the original punk rock movement, but then separated themselves as the subculture grew and changed. The looks that accompanied both were noticeably less extreme and shocking than many of early punk’s trademarks, choosing comfort and the ability to mosh over the spiked extravagance and upkeep of their predecessors. Their hairstyles followed this, either settling into the Patti Smith mold of languid disinterest and shag or completely buzzing it off in order to follow the raw intensity of their music. This continued into the next two decades, as post-punk, grunge and emo rock carried the spirit of the original punk movement into the future and with it the style which separated them from the mainstream. The remnants of punk are everywhere, in music, culture and of course, in hair. Now, extreme colors and cuts are more common than in the ’70s, but the value of unique styling has stayed the same — ultimately, hair is an easy way to separate yourself from the masses, to express culture through your appearance and show it for all to see. It is clear how the hairstyles of each facet of punk matched and enhanced their mission as subcultures, drawing attention to themselves in an effort to subvert and in turn highlight the reality of social norms. The superficial shock factor of a mohawk is obvious, but the history behind it may not be. At the end of the day, it’s just hair, after all, but its power to shift perception is a foundational aspect of the punk movement’s history, influence and proliferation into the present day.
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ARTIST
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
TV NOTEBOOK
IN
PROFILE
More than just a haircut: strengths & shortcomings of makeover television SAMANTHA DELLA FERA Daily Arts Writer
Katelyn Mulcahy / DAILY
Breanna Cross on beauty, boldness and Black hair NA’KIA CHANNEY MiC Editor
Breanna Cross is an LSA Junior double majoring in Communications and Spanish. Originally from Southfield, Mich., Cross has been doing hair ever since she was a young girl. She loved the creative agency that braiding gave her in how she chose to present herself. Presently, Cross has made a name for herself as one of the key stylists specializing in Black hair and braiding on campus. Smiling, Cross reflected on the success of her business, Bre Natural Beauty, and her love for Black hair. However, she remembered a time when vehement love for her hair didn’t exist, and she isn’t alone in her experience. “When I grew up, starting when I was really young, I lived in a predominantly white neighborhood,” Cross said. “All of my friends had straight hair, my mom had straight hair, even the Disney princesses had straight hair. They were the only girls that had influence on me. I hated my hair and I wanted my hair to be long and flowy like everyone else.” Due to white supremacy and Eurocentric beauty standards, Black women from a young age are conditioned to internalize negative attitudes about their hair texture. Messages of unkemptness, unattractiveness and unprofessionalism permeate descriptions of Black hair. To assimilate, many Black women resorted to straightening or covering their natural hair. Since the mid-2000s, Black women around the world have become advocates of the Natural Hair Movement, a movement for Black women to celebrate and to indulge in the uniqueness that comes with having kinkycurly hair. The natural hair
movement is about more than hair; it’s a radical movement of self-love. It is is a movement to reclaim agency — to reclaim the lost love for yourself your hair, your roots, in a way that society historically has tried so hard to
“If you don’t have a good relationship with your hair, you are going to do harmful things to it”
discourage. Cross claimed that having a good relationship with your hair is crucial for its vitality. Through her business, she hopes to not only create a good hairstyle, but to also teach Black women how to healthily maintain, grow, treat and love their hair. “If you don’t have a good relationship with your hair, you are going to do harmful things to it,” Cross explained. “It’s changing with the natural hair movement, thankfully. However, when I was younger, I didn’t know anything about my hair, and that’s why I hated it.” The Natural Hair Movement is, in essence, a love story, and Cross’s work is a testament to the recovery process Black women around the globe are having with their hair. Styling hair gives Cross the agency to invest patience and care into
Black hair, allowing her to fall in love with her own hair and to help others cultative that love for themselves. “Some of the most rewarding things is being able to create relationships with my clients and to be able to constantly learn about different textures,” Cross continued. “Black hair is so amazing to me because you can do so many things with it, and everyone has a different texture. I love the people and I love learning more about Black hair.” “I love talking to people and I love Black hair, and I love the Black community. That’s why I do what I do, and why I love it.” Though Cross recognized the unique significance of hair for Black women, she warns about viewing Black hair as more than exactly that — hair. Just as some Black women choose to identify closely with their hair, Black women should also be afforded the same agency not to. “I’m totally not attached to my hair. I would cut it off the next day with no worries,” she laughs. Cross’s business is just beginning to pick up momentum, and she has no plans to stop any time soon. In the future, she has plans to create a blog, a YouTube hair channel, natural hair workshops and natural hair organization. She also wants to expand her hair services to include custom wigs and clip-ins. Cross remains optimistic about her business, and she looks forward to learning more about herself and the community through the process. “I can control my own destiny, and I can control what I want to do, or how, when and with who I want to do it with. I have choice.” Anyone interested in contacting Cross can do so via Instagram @bre.natural.beauty, the Black Umich or Black hair group chats, or email.
BOOKS NOTEBOOK
‘I Wore My Blackest Hair’ MIRIAM FRANCISCO Daily Arts Writer
“I am a lion with a black mane, tearing my teeth on the piano bench,” writes Carlina Duan in the opening poem of her 2017 collection “I Wore My Blackest Hair” (Little A, 2017). Her “black mane” is a site of contested cultural identity throughout the collection, both symbolically and literally. It is the part of her body she returns to when her identity is questioned — by others or by herself. In “I Wore My Blackest Hair,” Duan, who is Chinese-American, grapples with the ways that her
appearance shapes and is shaped by her evolving identity. Hair — whether hers or her family members’ — is where feelings of belonging and exclusion physically manifest. It is something concrete, both mutable and essential. “The first time I was aware of my Asianness was when I asked my mother why I wasn’t blond,” wrote fashion writer Andrea Cheng in her April 2018 New York Times article on Asian-American women who bleach their hair. For Cheng, hair is as much a physical expression of who she is rather than who she is not. “Of course, my story is not unique,” Cheng wrote. “It’s an
experience that’s probably shared by most American-born Asians as we shake off our perceived otherness and strive to prove our Americanness.” For Duan, this is certainly the case. Her hair is a mediator of her “Asianness,” a metric by which she and others gauge whether she embraces or rejects her heritage. “My mother is not / from your country, / and I am not / ashamed,” writes Duan in “Pledge Allegiance.” “I slip my hands / through her / wise hair, / and keep.” Here, hair is a physical reminder of Duan’s mother’s culture, and it bridges the divide between them as Duan explores
Every sleepover I had from elementary to middle school ended the exact same way: snuggled up under a million blankets, popcorn in hand, “America’s Next Top Model” on the TV screen. As young girls, my friends and I were obsessed with the glamour of it all. Tyra Banks took ordinary girls and turned them into gorgeous, high-fashion women. When we were done watching — and fighting over our favorites — we would pull out our Justice-brand lipstick and hot pink brushes. Each of us tried to make ourselves into models, posing against white walls and taking pictures with disposable cameras. We wanted to be pretty, too. Shows like “America’s Next Top Model” and “What Not To Wear” claim to be transformative. They say “come to us, change your look and your life will change, too.” It’s more than a wardrobe full of new clothes. These stylists stick these people in a chair, then chop off, dye and completely alter their hair. Hair can mean a lot to a person; it can be the place they express themselves, the only area of their body where they have full and utter control. Hair can show us where we came from, unifying families through a set of ginger heads or tight ringlets. But on these shows, watched by millions and continued season after season, your hair is what’s holding you back. On “America’s Next Top Model,” the hairstyle was often what made a potential model’s makeover infamous. In the often toxic modeling industry, natural is never enough. Take Michelle on Season 4 of “Top Model.” She was a long-haired brunette, but her makeover consisted of bleaching her thick mane. Michelle was visibly in pain from how intense her dye job
was, and struggled to keep it up throughout the season. The next season, contestant Cassandra Jean sobbed as her long locks were cut into a pixie cut à la Mia Farrow. While host Tyra Banks empathetically assured her it would grow back, comments from the judges and other contestants alike forced Cassandra into an upsetting position. As Cassandra is prepped for the cut, fellow model Ebony is quoted in a confessional saying, “It’s good to see Cassandra showing some emotion.” Shortly after, judge Jay Manuel complains, “It’s been 12 hours of crying.” That’s not to say every transformation was negative. The show and its remodeling would not have lasted as long as it has if it was drenched in pure gloom. Bianca from Season 9 was meant to get a blonde wig, but her hair was too damaged to support it. So the team went with Plan B, and shaved it all off. While Bianca was initially upset, she embraced her natural look and the hairstyle transformed her into a regal, high-fashion face. The same goes with Kayla from Season 15, who had two rules from her girlfriend going in: No baldness and no red hair. The latter rule was, of course, broken, yet the hair color turned an otherwise ordinary girl into a unique modeling asset. Compare the uncertain emotions of that series to today’s most popular transformation show, Netf lix’s “Queer Eye,” and the difference is telling. Yes, “Queer Eye” is not preparing people for the cutthroat world of modeling, but a lot of the same elements of “Top Model” are there. Except instead of crying in the mirror as the hair you love is taken away from you, you’re laughing with perhaps the most optimistic and loveable force on television today: Jonathan Van Ness. Episode after episode, Jonathan
doesn’t force a look on the people he styles; he talks to them, gets to know them and gives them whatever hair, beard or mustache revamp he knows will make them happy. Instead of crying tears of pain and sadness, people on “Queer Eye” cry tears of happiness, as they find their true potential and self while a chorus echoes “yes honey!” behind them. As “Queer Eye” brings home three Emmys, the ratings of “America’s Next Top Model” have been on a steady decline. This may be a function of time and the fading novelty of “Top Model,” and the fact that “Queer Eye” has become something of a phenomenon. Yet the changing balance between the shows reveals something more about what viewers are looking for. “Queer Eye” radiates positivity, educating and exposing viewers and the cast alike to important issues like the relationship between the gay community and the church or the lives and struggles of transgender individuals. It is more than just a makeover show; “Queer Eye” is a snapshot of contemporary society in a vital stage of change. That change just happens to start with a few great haircuts. People already feel bad enough about themselves. It’s only natural that one might want to turn to a more uplifting show than one whose appeal is based primarily in how dramatically it can change its contestants. Our hair is our own, and whether we change it should be left up to us. No one should be made to feel bad about something that came from their own body, that was formed by their own genes. As our TV shows change, I can only hope that our culture can too, and that somewhere there is a group of girls reaching for their hair brushes right now, smiling into the mirror and lifting up their friends with the ever-reassuring words: “YAS queen!”
VH1
her identity as an Asian-American woman. Duan’s desire to “keep” in these poems — to keep her heritage, her identity, her sense of self — is all the more captivating given the descriptions of earlier dismissals of Chinese culture. “To replace the languages our mom spoke, we smoked up our Chinese with blond dolls,” she writes in “Little Sister, American Girl.” As a teenager and young adult, Duan’s relationship with her hair and appearance changes with her understanding of what it means to be a young Asian-American woman. This collection does not trace a linear path from repudiation to redemption, but instead tracks moments of both bewilderment and clarity, bestowing both with equal importance. As she matures, Duan’s sexuality becomes inextricably tied to her Asian-American identity. She interrogates her
own experiences of distance and intimacy with a keen awareness of the fraught territory mapped by her own desire. “A boy plumps his lips on your throat / and asks you to say something dirty / in Chinese,” Duan writes in “Your Mom Tells You To Stop Writing About Race.” She does not stop writing about race, as her mother requests; instead: “you yank your hair / into a knot at the back of your neck” and doubles down on the subjects that preoccupy her. Duan’s hair is where the line between recognition and fetishization becomes most apparent in her poetry. “he came over. asked, What are you?” Duan writes in “Here I Go, Torching.” “black plains of hair. / plain of mouth, of meat… I’m Chinese; see me,” she continues. She yearns to be recognized as more than just her heritage without
being stripped of it. Hair becomes a bridge to the things she wants but does not know how to ask for. “I want you to untouch my hair,” she says in “I Want My Books Back,” mourning the parts of herself she shared and cannot regain. Throughout the collection, Duan commits and recommits herself to her world. She is not trying to escape anything — she revels in the tangible, the terrible, the mundane. Her hair is all of these things; it unmasks her when she wants to be hidden and hides her when she wants to be seen. She alternates between introspective and hostile, giving herself room to collect evidence of her own contradictory nature. In the marrow of each poem lies Duan’s abiding appreciation: for herself, for her family, for how the process of understanding her heritage has both taken from her and made her whole.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
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Thursday, September 27, 2018 — 5B
NOTEBOOK
MUSIC VIDEO REVIEW: MACHINE GUN KELLY’S ‘LATELY’ IS A TOTAL BORE
FOX SEARCHLIGHT
What style bangs should you get, based on your deepest insecurity? DANIELLE YACOBSON Managing Arts Editor
Bangs are a telltale sign that something is wrong. Nobody just wakes up one morning and thinks, “I should get bangs today.” No, bangs are premeditated. They take planning and plotting and panicking. And when judgment day comes, the verdict is most definitely going to be guilty. I have spent hours — nay, nights — searching through the depths of Pinterest for the perfect bangs. My research has shed light on the fact that each face shape is conducive to a different style of bang. Therefore, to select your most bangable bangs, you must first identify the shape of your face. The problem is that my face increases in circumference proportionally to the amount of MSG, carbs and alcohol I consume in any given week. But bangs are forever. Or, at least until they grow into side bangs that — like froyo, shrugs and Victoria Secret lip-gloss — should stay in the mid-2000s. And yet, there comes a time when you find yourself thinking about getting bangs at 2:00 in the morning. You Google messy bangs, Reese Witherspoon bangs, bangs that will draw attention away from your chin. You’re frantically
pinning, pinning, pinning … until the melatonin kicks in. There will inevitably come a time when you ask your friends, “Should I get bangs?” If they are good friends, loyal friends, they will tell you “NO!” with the fury of a hundred monsoons. If they are liars, they will lie and say you are someone who can totally pull them off. Let me be clear: Bangs have only ever looked unspeakably fantastic on Julian Casablancas, but that’s a different story entirely. Bangs are, really, a cry for help. So, I have created this chooseyour-own-adventure to help a lost, bang-ridden soul in need. Also, I overheard a girl telling her friend she “like, literally, can’t stop doing Buzzfeed quizzes” and all I have to say to that is: I aim to please. If you’re the poster child for unrequited love, you should get: Side-swept bangs I’ve always been an avid supporter of break-up hair. Your boyfriend cheated on you and smashed your gullible heart into a million shards of damage? Go blonde! Who cares if your hair no longer matches your eyebrows. But what if you didn’t have a boyfriend to cheat on you in the first place? If your particular brand of low selfesteem stems from years of getting the short end of the unrequited love
stick, side-swept bangs are here to say “loneliness” so you don’t have to. If you have no direction in life, are broke and have a liberal arts degree, you should get: Long bangs You’re trying to be someone you’re not. Your bangs looked OK for a total of two seconds just after they were professionally styled, and in that moment you vowed to make them look whimsical every goddamn morning. You even purchased a round brush. But, honey, you will never have the patience to style your bangs. Not ever. You will not get the right products, or blow-dry them when they are just the right level of dampness. They will (dare I say) air dry, and they will not look good. But, you chose to major in English, and think you can adapt to whatever challenges come your way. Let’s hope you’re Zooey Deschanel. If you fear you are not interesting, you should get: Baby bangs You hopped on the manic-pixiewhatever train and haven’t quite been able to hop off. Sure, you’re a feminist, but it’s 2018 and that should be the bare minimum. Your quirkiness has run its course and you fear that you may be, simply, boring. In the Voltaire vs. hair
debate (See “The Princess Diaries” if you are drawing a blank on this particular witty reference), you’d rather pin bangs ceaselessly into the night. So, you sign up for a class. You try finger painting so you can tell people that you do finger painting, but you really, really hate finger-painting. Then you take a wine seminar, but realistically there is no way you can afford such a bourgeois hobby. You could be interesting, you think, if you had the funds. Having interests is so expensive these days. Good thing narcissism is in. If you push people away and need an emotional laxative, you should get: Blunt, straightacross bangs I am the most worried about you. Especially if you have curly hair, but choose to straighten just your bangs. This eludes to Christopher Nolan level psychological labyrinths à la “Inception” that not even the cutest version of Joseph Gordon-Levitt can lead you out of. Blunt bangs are just the first line of defense into the emotional turmoil that you keep locked away. The key lies in pinning those babies back. If you can’t commit to anything, not even bangs, you should get: Parted Bangs Get parted bangs, and not a tattoo.
INTERSCOPE RECORDS
“LATELY” Machine Gun Kelly Interscope Records In his recent video for “LATELY,” from new EP Binge, Machine Gun Kelly certainly seems to stay on his narcissistic brand. Once having watched him scream at a small audience during a panel about how he is possibly the most underrated hiphop artist of all time, the song and video’s selfref lexive nature comes as no surprise. From the get-go, MGK makes a nod towards his own creative inputs with a title shot that states “Shot by Machine Gun Kelly.” What proceeds is a tripped-out fever dream with most of the shots being entirely of his own face. It’s a rather repetitive formula: close up, extreme close up, cigarette/blunt, wine, repeat. There seems to be little else left for MGK to focus on when he’s
“having crazy thoughts.” And MGK’s shot choices seem to be just as crazy as these thoughts; chaotic handheld camera movements contribute to the viewers’ inevitable disorientation, mirrored in his manic, disjointed lyricism. He switches topics from being abandoned as a kid to treating women poorly within the span of a few lines before making his return to the banal chorus — what MGK often lacks in originality, he makes up for in aggression. Frankly, if you aren’t a fan of MGK’s face or some good, old-fashioned drug use, there’s really nothing else to see here. The video content is almost more minimalistic than the songwriting itself, leading to inevitable boredom within the first minute or two of the track. He closes his choruses with “And you know I’m tryna change, but it’s very hard,” which couldn’t be more obvious with such static material. -Dominic Polsinelli, Senior Arts Editor
NOTEBOOK
Embracing the curl: Learning to love my Jewfro SAM ROSENBERG Senior Arts Editor
I used to hate my Jewfro. As is the case with most curly-haired Jewish people, I would often fantasize about what my hair would like like if it were short, slick and straight, something akin to Alex Turner’s high pompadour or Brad Pitt’s undercut or even Adam Levine’s relaxed waves. I’ve even considered altering the color of my hair and shaving it off completely. The specific tightness and thickness of my curls make it difficult to get a haircut that wasn’t just “long on the top, short on the sides.” It didn’t help either that, along with my last name and the shape of my nose, the style of my hair made my Jewishness stick out like a sore thumb. This, of course, is not to say that I’m ashamed of my Jewish heritage (far from it). But like anyone who comes from a marginalized background, I had trouble reconciling with the inextricable tie between my identity as a Jew and the hair on my head. Even though I was surrounded by a Jewish community for the majority of my life, my hair was still a constant reminder that I was different. Jewish or not, big, kinky and dark hair is something that has always been seen as an aesthetic accessory needing to be tamed in order to heed the societal standard of short, straight and
light hair. In the more specific context of the Jewfro, the unkemptness of curly Jewish hair on men can often be seen as unattractive, asexual, awkward and out-of-fashion. Famous Jewish male celebrities like Jonah Hill, Seth Rogen, Jesse Eisenberg and Andy Samberg helped popularize the Jewfro early in their careers, but have long since abandoned those hairstyles for more refined ‘dos. TV characters who sported Jewfros — like Robbie Shapiro (Matt Bennett, “Grey’s Anatomy”), the geeky puppeteer from Nickelodeon’s “Victorious,” and Kevin (David Bloom, “CSI: NY”), the lonely pre-teen from Netflix’s “Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp” — were usually the butt of the joke or simply comic relief, which inevitably reinforces negative, stereotypical representations of Jewish masculinity. For me, the Jewfro represents a paradox of pride and shame. My parents, sister and I all share curly hair, though each of us possess different textures: My sister’s is bouncy, my mom’s is flowy and my dad’s is rigid (though it was radically bulkier in the ’70s, which resulted in him getting the nickname “Poodle”). Hair is one of the few traits that my family and I can appreciate sharing together, but growing up, that didn’t always feel like enough. Whenever my hair grew long, I brushed it for what felt like hours, trying to get rid of the knots and cowlicks that refused
to be subdued. Trips to the barbershop made for both an exciting and anxiety-inducing experience. On rare occasions, they were humiliating, like when my mother coerced me into getting a haircut one day after school in sixth grade when she saw it was getting too big. As I sat weeping in that chair in the Yellow Balloon Barbershop while my barber ran her coarse fingers through my hair, all I could think about was how I was missing out on playing Guitar Hero and eating popcorn with the boys who were in my carpool. My hair had quite literally inhibited me from socializing. Moments like those deepened my embarrassment for having a Jewfro. After ninth grade, I kept my hair mostly on the short side and made sure to get a haircut at the beginning of every month. Before embarking on a six-week summer program in Israel in 2013, I asked my parents to give me a buzzcut, since it was a trendy look among my friends at the time. Unfortunately, their attempt at shaving my hair with the incorrect set of clippers in my backyard led to the worst haircut I’ve ever received (sorry, Mom and Dad). The flattened strands, which were later fixed by a professional barber, made my hair lose its curly quality, causing me to briefly consider that perhaps a shaved look was not the best idea in the first place. In other instances, my Jewfro became a source of actual physical agony. At my first ever “Rocky Horror Picture Show”
midnight screening in the summer of 2015, a young woman yanked my hair and proceeded to violently rock it back and forth during what’s known as the “Virginal Sacrifice,” an initiation in which “Rocky Horror” first-timers are subjected to aggressive dry-humping by a crowd of “Rocky Horror” veterans. After it happened and my initial mortification subsided, I tried to laugh the whole thing off, thinking that the more important thing was to just have fun. But I couldn’t shake off how much her grabbing my hair hurt, how painful it was to have something so integral to my identity be violated for the sake
of spectacle. As time has passed, I’ve started to embrace the Jewfro look a bit more. I’ve realized that cutting my Jewfro was both flattening my hair into a more neutral appearance and erasing an important facet of my Jewish identity. Based on the suggestion of a barber I met in New York this summer, I bought American Crew forming cream to help volumize and brighten my curls, and since that purchase, my insecurity over my curls has lessened dramatically. A friend recently told me, after seeing a picture of me on my Instagram story, that my hair looks better when it’s longer. I mentioned
that I was thinking about cutting it soon, which was followed by a message of three eye-rolling emojis. Maybe he’s right. So often we are told to suppress who we are in order to appease the expectations of others or to change ourselves in order to stand out among the masses, and these primal fears can be traced through our need to cut or alter our hair and other parts of ourselves. I used to think that my Jewfro made it harder for me to navigate the straight-haired world, but the more I’ve learned to appreciate it, the more I understand why it’s necessary to who I am and who I am becoming.
COURTESY OF SAM ROSENBERG
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6B — Thursday, September 27, 2018
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
NOTEBOOK
FILM REVIEW
A case for frizz TRINA PAL
Daily Arts Writer
NETFLIX
The graceful ‘Nappily Ever After’ triumphant with self-acceptance (Daria Johns, “Animator”) and a tentative romance with Zoe’s Daily Arts Writer down-to-earth father Will (Lyriq Bent, “She’s Gotta Have It”). Our culture is one saturated Part of what allows “Nappily by antiquated, sexist and Ever After” to find success is its Eurocentric perceptions of ability to balance heftier topics female beauty. Intertwined with lighthearted moments. At with this conception of physical the surface level, Violet’s search perfection is hair, more for “the right man” can be passed specifically straight hair, which off as akin to any female lead’s has prompted journey to love in generations of any other romantic “Nappily Ever African-American film. However, women to alter what sets “Nappily After” their unique Ever After” apart Netflix frizz and curl is its dissection of patterns to fit the impact of the the mold of silky locks. With its male gaze on women’s choices well-constructed protagonist, regarding their appearances. engaging character relationships All her life, Violet was taught, and profound, relevant both by the beauty industry reflections about skewed societal and her mother, that men only guidelines for beauty, “Nappily want women with long, flowing Ever After” simply cannot be tresses, not afros and dreadlocks. passed off as just another chick- Thus, she styled her hair straight, flick, even though it abides by altering herself with the end many of the rom-com genre goal of presenting herself the conventions. way she thought men found When Violet (Sanaa Lathan, desirable. Through her dramatic “Love & Basketball”) was a little hair transformation and healthy, girl, she quickly learned that blossoming relationship with the only path to perfection was through straight hair. And she never forgot it. As an adult with a thriving career, a doting and sexy boyfriend and long, relaxed hair, Violet’s life is nothing short of perfect. However, when an eagerly anticipated proposal from her hunky beau Clint (Ricky Whittle, “Austenland”) turns out to be a false alarm and leads to a messy breakup, rainclouds begin to form over Violet’s flawless and straight-laced world. Struggling to get back into the dating pool and navigate lingering feelings for her ex, Violet, in a drunken craze, makes a hasty and emotionally-charged decision to shave her head. At first regretful of her rash choice, Violet’s definition of beauty begins to re-shape itself when a trip to the salon to salvage her hair-troubles leads to an unexpected friendship with the sassy yet sweet Zoe SAMANTHA NELSON
Will, Violet finally starts to grasp the notion that a real man, or at least any man worth her time, will see her for who she is, regardless of what does or doesn’t grow out of her head. Violet’s transformation by the end of the film is clear. Once insecure about her natural hair and allegiant to the flat iron, Violet is no longer the same woman by the end of the film. For so many years, water was Violet’s enemy, as it had the power to ruin her painstakingly pressed locks within seconds. Newly empowered and unchained from anyone’s standards, Violet lets it all go through her symbolic leap into a swimming pool,
literally drowning out years of lies that she has been told about her frizz, her curls and her texture not being beautiful enough. On its own, straight hair isn’t the problem. As is emphasized in the final moments of the film, it is not that women should feel guilty or wrong for wanting to switch up their natural hair, but rather that all women should feel confident in their choices to alter their looks with the knowledge that they are worthy of love and respect no matter what.
“Nappily Ever After” simply cannot be passed off as just another chick-flick, even though it abides by many of the rom-com genre conventions
NETFLIX
I have frizzy hair. This is an indisputable fact. My hair best resembles a bush of black ringlets springing from different angles across my head. The strands in the front are shorter and bounce up if you give them a quick tug at the ends. When I reach behind my head I feel a mass of uneven curls; the tips are frayed even after a recent haircut and the outer layers are always softer than the inner sheets. I envy those that can run their fingers through their hair and change their part in seconds, because mine just doesn’t move like that. I love my chaotic hair to death. But there’s one issue. My whole life, I’ve been told that it needs to be tamed. Summer 2006: I’m standing by the entrance to the bathroom, watching my grandmother plait her waistlong hair in front of the mirror. Her red and white sari is loosely wrapped around her frame and gold bangles jangle against her wrists with each movement of her delicate fingers. The rich smell of coconut oil saturates the air; the scent irritates my seven-year-old nostrils and I take a step backwards. Finishing her braid, my grandmother dumps some coconut oil into her hands, rubs them together and makes a beeline for my head. I scream. That dreadful summer afternoon was my earliest notion that something wasn’t right with my hair. Many Indian women have similar frizzy hair types, but their locks are always oiled and braided, tied up instead of bouncing against their backs. Short hair is seen as unfeminine. The strands frame their faces, not cover it like mine. The picture of the happy woman plastered on the front of the coconut oil bottle is clear in my head: Her hair is soft, silky and oiled. This was the ideal, and I didn’t fit the norm. Part of this standard for female hair is perpetuated by Bollywood, an industry that
capitalizes on rigid gender stereotypes. I have yet to see a Bollywood heroine that wears her hair like mine — curly and loose. Silky and straight hair isn’t realistic for the majority of Indian women. But because of Bollywood, it’s what every Indian woman aspires to have. Spring 2012: My clash with hair standards reached their height in Kathak, a type of Indian classical dance I pursued in my pre-teen and teen years. Typical Kathak dancers tie their hair up in a bun and decorate it with jasmine f lowers. Their hair is pushed aside to display their face, accentuated with a tikli — an ornament resting on the top of the forehead. A deep red bindi is pressed onto the forehead for the same effect. When I tied my hair for Kathak dance recitals, gravity-defying strands of hair shot up at the root of the bun and near my ears. It looked like a lion’s mane, an obvious anomaly on stage. My teacher and fellow dance students had effortlessly neat buns on their heads. When I looked in the mirror minutes before showtime, I forced myself to ignore my hair and focus on the rest of my appearance instead. But the shame burned at the pit of my stomach, a constant reminder as I performed that I was different. Years later, I’ve realized why my culture’s ideas about hair never fit my own. I chose to keep my hair down all those years because my hair was an integral part of my personality; it typefied my energetic and happy persona. I didn’t mind the frizz, even though society had always told me to tuck it away. Hiding my hair made me feel naked, as if I was missing a part of who I was. I haven’t been near coconut oil in years. I wear my hair the way I like it: always loose, always frizzy, but always me. I still don’t understand the antipathy to frizzy hair I see when walking the streets. What’s wrong with frizzy? Frizzy is different and diverse, fun and sassy. And it’s beautiful.
The picture of the happy woman plastered on the front of the coconut oil bottle is clear in my head: Her hair is soft, silky and oiled. This was the ideal, and I didn’t fit the norm
EP REVIEW: YOUNG THUG’S ‘ON THE RVN’
ATLANTIC RECORDING
Roughly a year ago, rapper Young Thug was charged with eight major felonies, including intent to distribute methamphetamine and hydrocodone. This headline came and went, and the Atlanta star seemed to be in the clear. Two weeks ago, while on tour with J. Cole, Thug posted an Instagram picture of a notecard that read, “On The Rvn,” implying a soon-to-come antiauthority album and bringing to the surface his legal issues. Just days later, he turned himself in to the authorities, delaying the release of the EP. Now released on bail, Thug finally dropped the project. The 6-track EP is limited in features and primarily showcases beats from London On Da Track, the same formula used for Thug’s
most impressive mixtape, Slime Season 3. After the release of the mediocre full-length album, Slime Language, which seemed to ref lect a regression in the
On the Rvn Young Thug Atlantic Recording
rapper’s ability, On The Rvn is a redeeming return to what works. Unlike on Slime Language, Thug is not fighting for space with featured artists who sound just like him; the only guests are 6lack and Jaden
Smith, and their contributions are limited and very wellsuited. Additionally, London On Da Track’s beats make the project an easier listen overall, as he provides dynamic sounds that stray from the hackneyed trap of Slime Language. To cap it all off, the EP ends with an official release of Young Thug’s remix of Elton John’s “Rocket Man,” a track that has bounced around SoundCloud for a few years. With a gorgeous falsetto that slides to trembling baritone, Thugger reminds listeners why he is one of the most innovative rappers alive, an important move after his prior release left fans doubting his relevance. — Mike Watkins Daily Arts Writer