SHEI Magazine // Fall 2020

EPIPHANY

Standford Lipsey Student Publications Building 420 Maynard St, Ann Arbor, MI 48109

NATALIE GUISINGER COLLEEN JONES Editor-in-Chief

Creative Director EVAN PARNESS

Publisher

Marketing Director KIRA MINTZER

Operations Director DRISHA GWALANI

Design Editors CARLY LUCAS MACKENZIE SCHWEDT

Print Fashion Editors NICK FARRUGIA JUAN MARQUEZ

Print Features Editor DEIRDRE LEE

Print Photography Editors KATIE CORBETT RYAN LITTLE

Video Editor KENDALL KA

Digital Fashion Editor JACOB WARD

Digital Features Editor MELINA SCHAEFER

Digital Photography Editor RITA VEGA

Finance Coordinators ALEX CHESSARE DEESHA SHAH

Events Coordinator ALEX MCMULLEN

Managing Photo Editor ALEX ANDERSEN

Street Style Editor LUCY CARPENTER

Human Resources Coordinator JULIA NAPIEWOCKI

Social Media Coordinators ELIZABETH HALEY HANNAH TRIESTER

Public Relations Coordinators MACKENZIE FLEMING GILLIAN YANG

Digital Content Editor ALEX STERCHELE

Design Team

Camille Andrew, Helen Lee, Sophie Levit, Tung Tung Lin, Halley Luby, Gabi Mechaber, Yuki Obayashi, Emma Peterson, Taylor Silver

Fashion Team

Sophie Alphonso, Josie Burck, Kailana Flora Dejoie, Chloe Erdle, Isabelle Fisher, Tavleen Gill, Anastasia Hernando, Anthony Huynh, Amreen Kanwal, Amanda Li, Karly Madey, Claire Manor, Peter Marcus, Courtney Mass, Noor Moughini, Natalia Nowicka, Sarah Ory, Abigail Rapoport, Jacob Sweat, Dhruv Verma, Caroline White, Megan Young, Abigail Ziemkowski

Features Team

Christina Cincilla, Lauren Champlin, Benjamin Decker, Katherine Feinstein, Sami Iyengar, Neha Kotagiri, Sophia Layton, Scotty Lockwood, Heba Malik, Will Neuimaier, Soneida Rodriguez, Hannah Triester, Patience Young

Photography Team

Lauren Berman, Rosalie Comte, Gabriella Ceritano, Nick Daniel, Korrin Dering, Calin Firlit, Jenna Frieberg, Frances Gu, Maggie Innis, Kendall Ka, Devon Kelly, Youmna Khan, Mihir Koharthi, Anders Lundin, Gabrielle Mack, Karly Madey, Becca Mahon, Gwen McCartney, Hannah Mutz, Liv Pilot, Maisie Prince, Paulina Rajski, Eva Russa, Webb Sarris, Sureet Sarau, Ally Vern, Fern Sirapa Vickaikul, Hannah Yoo

Videography Team

Sara Cooper, Grant Emenheiser, Macy Goller, Madeline Kim, Hannah Mutz, Sam Rhao, Lisa Ryou

Finance Team

Laura O’Connor, Sophia Gadjis, Siena van der Steen-Mizel, Annie Varellas, Xiaolei Wang

Human Resources Team Julia Barofsky, Sena Kaddurah, Sean Marshall, Izzy Tuchmann

Public Relations Team

Devon Mann, Caroline Martino, Daphne Patton, Rachel Pordy, Jarryn Shin, Mya Steir

Events Team

Sophia Afendoulis, Ava Ben-David, Annie Cooper, Amanda Engels, Caroline Martino, Rachel Rock, Mia Scalia

Social Media Team

Halle Dretler, Nadia Elnaggar, Nina Fazio, Apoorva Gautam, Julia Goldish, Sofie Harb, Neha Kotagiri, Carolyn Soltz, Makena Torrey

Digital Content Team

Nicole Belans, Lily Cho, Mallory Demeter, Nicole Kim, Jason Moy, Tess Perry, Lucy Price

IN THIS ISSUE 04

EDITOR’S NOTE

06

PAST SUBURBIA

10

CRITIQUING THE FAMILIAR

16

HAZE

24

DEFINING DYSTOPIA

26

FARENHEIGHTS

36

PSEDUO-TOPIA

38

THE VISITOR

48

FASHION FOR EVERY BODY

50

FLORA AURORA

58

MOTHER

60

CELESTIAL

EDITOR’S NOTE During these nine months of quarantine, we’ve allowed ourselves to sink into our utmost selves and develop personal, introspective thoughts on how we want to realign ourselves among the world/environment in a post-pandemic society.

The home we call Earth, one in which we always thought of as robust, mother-like, capable of withstanding anything, can, in reality, only take so much, until it collapses.

With an uncertain world at the cusp of destruction, we took the approach of considering it in a gamified sense — the fate of the world is in your hands. Do you submit to the industrialized destruction, or defy these conventions and adopt sustainable solutions? Our shoots represent two directions in which humans respond to the pressing environmental issues we currently face.

Scrutinizing America’s past, Epiphany is first contextualized in Critiquing the Familiar (pg 10). By giving our team members an opportunity to conceptualize a print shoot, this collaborative project first investigates the contrived aesthetics and societal flaws of 1950s suburban Americana. Features writer Hannah Treister asserts,“Though I recognize the stability afforded by community playgrounds and a lush front lawn, I also realize how many are excluded from this utopia, and how many within it have been left to navigate the dystopian nightmare of conventionality completely alone.”

Many of us have the privilege to call these suburbs home, but considering the truism, ‘hindsight is the best foresight,’ it’s imperative to determine what we want to make of this past. What are we changing? What are we embracing?

What are we submitting to? These questions lead us into the obscurity of the unknown.

In Haze (pg 16), the dark, obfuscated imagery reflects the uncertainty we have with our existence. We symbolize paper airplanes as vehicles of pollution in order to question if we are arbitrarily handling our Earth and resources.

As we grapple with our perceptions of the world, William Neumaier argues that we are currently living amid a dystopia. This year fulfills each of the five pillars of dystopian living, and Neumaier concludes that, “It’s so very important that we as a society take this time of turmoil and distress and let the art around us teach us something about the world.”

The game continues as we choose the path of taking more than we can give. Because climate change is expect-

ed to worsen the intensity and impacts of extreme weather, we depict the polarized duality of frigidity and hellish heat on an overused Earth. Farenheights (pg 26) expresses that fashion will most likely respond to this dilemma in a way where people adapt trash and found objects into wearables to survive.

In Pseudo-topia, Soneida Rodriguez contemplates the way in which one might need to exist in order to survive in a perfect world. “I loved every minute of evolving; I just wished I was better at it. Looking back only left you behind.

Living in the age of right now was a true utopia.”

Then, we take a step back and look at Earth as a Visitor (pg 38). We are in passing — viewing the world as something devoid of the possibility of growth.

After presenting the narrative of humans burning through Earth, we pivot and start to think about the solutions we can enact now to combat our current challenges.

In Fashion for Every Body (pg 48) , Lauren Champlin discusses how current designers and fashion icons question gender labels and assimilate/adopt nonbinary clothing. During this pandemic, Champlin states how “Little thought has been given to the ways that people of non-normative gender identities are harmed in the wake of this global climate crisis.”

Viewing the Earth as a precious entity to nurture, Flora Aurora (pg 50) is our representation of humans deciding to embrace nature and view it as something to coexist with instead of exploit.

Our features embedded in Epiphany float more and more into abstractness, yet the important topics and underlying messages remain. In Mother (pg 58), Heba Malik’s metafictional narrative tackles the pressing issues of what we’re facing by exploring the relationships we as humans have to Earth.

Finally, we land to a distant destination where the equilibrium between human and nature has prospered over time — where a utopia is achieved.

By stretching your mind and then pulling you back to reality, we hope these human journeys will lead you to your own epiphany.

Natalie Guisinger Editor-In-Chief

EPIPHANY What does it mean to exist? What purpose do we serve? Who do we serve? Why are we here?

Periodically, we masticate on these existential muses as their flavor soaks into our minds, muddying our values, beliefs, and ideas until it all tastes the same. They fester like maggots, removing all that was in order to create space for what is and will be. If left unchecked, we risk losing our lives to these abstractions, but, if left to carefully marinate, a possibility — a hope — presents itself to us: epiphany.

Epiphany (noun): the experience of a sudden, significant realization.

Throughout our lives, choices appear to us like discreet oracles, cementing our decisions into an invisible cascade of further choices and consequences. We can choose many outcomes, to be optimistic or to be pessimistic, to be angry or at peace, to resist or to embrace. The very questions mentioned above have been manifesting for a while, and especially today, there’s a fine line between us disintegrating underneath its gravity or using these questions as seedlings for our own growth.

This magazine has chosen the latter. We dare to navigate our own epiphanies, to bear witness to these insights, to see the very things that demand to be acknowledged.

Fear. Love. Shame. Hope.

We choose to explore realities that have, are, and will define the future. Despite uncertainty, we persist.

Our writers unravel the complicated consequences of our epiphanies and how they define our timelines and histories. At the center of each feature, we question our relationship to the other(s). For some of the articles, the other falls into tangible items, while the rest deconstruct the metaphysical other. We try to sift through what was, what is, and what might be in order to make sense of our position as human beings and our position to these others, and how we might grow from them.

Through our reflection, we’re able to project future possibilities, and because this journey has no predetermined course, we challenge fact and opinion to find the truth. We invite you to venture into the pages to uncover our epiphanies. Let the words marinate in your mind. Mull over your own interpretations and takeaways from them, and allow yourself to identify the flavors arising from the questions above. We know our conclusions, but do you?

Deirdre Lee Print Features Editor

T S PA URBIA B U S

e h t G N I QU

I T I CR ILIAR FAM Suburban neighborhoods were built as members-only clubs for the upwardly mobile. Their bouncer service was cooperatively dispensed by public and private forces, who unbolted the heavy town doors in the fifties and sixties for only the classically nuclear family: the male breadwinner, his placid housewife, and their smiling children. It was, and is, a configuration of inherent discrimination and superfluous privilege.

Suburbia is not natural. Compulsory conformity and romanticized homogeneity are very much contrived. People put things in a place to achieve a purposeful effect. At this elemental level, SHEI does the same — team members bring props to a shoot location to depict a proposed theme.

Of course, American geospatial divisions are entities not quite comparable to issues of our magazine. Though we can equate the two in terms of building something from nothing, they remain differentiated by the former’s intent to exclude, while our own mission is to include. This shoot is something we built to mock an equation of sidewalks with success, uniformity with country, and the hiding of something out of sight while keeping it out of mind.

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THE SET This set of photos was taken beside the University of Michigan’s School of Nursing, where grass conquers concrete as it strives for sunlight concentrated between rising red brick walls. However, editing the images meant stealing these colors from our backdrop. The shoot photographers dulled the scene’s natural state, as real estate developers did to a once empty urban periphery. Stolen swaths of unmarred land beget the building of replica after replica of their daughters’ doll houses, all for a waiting list of security-seeking Americans.

The expectation of a living room seems reasonable until its familiar elements are placed in an alternative setting. Our team carried a bare mattress, an old chair, and a rickety wooden side table to a space where such objects do not belong — a contextual transport that was our attempt to break down traditionalism. The arrangement mocks a missing television set, which forms the centerpiece of many shared living spaces because environmental sameness encourages greater interest in absolutely anything else. Our rigid social rulebook is made quite senseless — and fairly ridiculous — by the physical movement of this indoor furniture to the outside.

HER MAKEUP Zooming in, our model’s expression adds a layer to our narrative. Even as her eyes pierce through the page, there is a disconnect to her gaze. Her body exists in a space from which her mind is absent: she has lost her grounding, pulled away by the invisible string of her neglected intellect.

The clouded, dark eyeshadow is a more pointed visual clue to a matching — and growing — cloud which forebodes unbending doubt and fatigue in the character she embodies.

Suburbia’s enduring backbone, the wife and mother figure, is a constant in American history for which many make assumptions. She is assumed to be placated by cooking dinner and washing the dishes. She is assumed to enjoy the domestic tasks that determine her day, and to support her supposedly hardworking, breadwinning husband at night. She is assumed to be fulfilled solely by providing for children to whom she was also assumed to birth.

Unsurprisingly, she is tired. She wishes she would have further pursued the subjects she loved in high school. She resents her own parents who never encouraged such pursuit. She wonders what passions she might have found in the great big world she never explored for herself.

She sits in her favorite chair in the living room, lies on the bed she barely has the energy to make up, and curls her toes in the shaggy beige carpet. Her life is a song on repeat — not because it’s just that good, but because it is the final song on the album, and no one has bothered to shut it off.

HER CLOTHES Shiny white pearls sit like a pretty chain around her neck. Chunky fourinch heels strangle both of her feeble ankles. Black stockings simultaneously hide and expose her long legs.

How do fashion trends begin? Are they perpetuated by honest desire, or trivial lust? The contemporary shopping mall exists only as an outlet for the funneling of mass-produced goods to a materially thirsty middle class. Affordability tastes so sweet because it enables the average consumer’s accessibility to elite fads, while family fallibility becomes so easy to hide because neighborly envy warps flaunted items into assumed status.

Overconsumption has ravaged our definition of self worth. Nothing satiates. There is always something better. Once we are so easily able to implant an object from another time or place into our own familiar scene, what remains of its worth? We take and take and take, but how much of ourselves — our quirks, our imperfections, our truth — do we give? Art converts to copy, slight distinction rebrands as limited edition. But, it’s all the same, and it all sells.

THE TRUTH It is not easy to meditate on the drivers of centuries-old American social organization. I’m not even sure it is fair to impersonally judge the types of neighborhoods from which I hail. Nevertheless, my education and time away has permitted my reflection on suburbia in a new, almost harsh light.

Though I recognize the stability afforded by community playgrounds and a lush front lawn, I also realize how many are excluded from this utopia, and how many within it have been left to navigate the dystopian nightmare of conventionality completely alone.

Yet being based in the reality of personal truth diminishes our conditioned impulse of hiding behind purchases and normative behaviors.

Through echoed campus voices on its polished pages, SHEI deconstructs some of the barriers blocking this cultural realization — and honest conversation about the whys of this world is our indelible first step.

By Hannah Triester Layout by Gabi Mechaber

Epiphany 11

Concept & Styling Josie Burck, Tavleen Gill, Karly Madey Photographers Alex Andersen, Webb Sarris, Rita Vega Videographer Grant Emenheiser Graphic Designer Gabi Mechaber Model Rose Williamson

HAZ E HAZE HAZE Concept & Styling Nick Farrugia Juan Marquez Photographers Alex Andersen Katie Corbett Ryan Little Videographer Kendall Ka Graphic Designer Helen Lee Models Christian Devaull John Faubert

The current moment we’re in is faced with tremendous uncertainty. Our generation is inheriting a future with existential consequences: Will we adapt, overcome, and make our planet habitable? Or will we all fall together?

How can an individual find a sense of comfort in this haze of possible realities?

Reality becomes harder to grasp as we struggle to wrap our minds beyond what we are attempting to comprehend. We attempt to control the outcomes of our lives, while the world continually reshapes our realities in uncontrollable ways. We yearn for clarity, visibility, a sign to lead us out of this clouded vision of truth, toward the world we must inherit.

Defining Dystopia I read George Orwell’s 1984 for a journal project in high school, just as countless other kids did, and just as countless other kids will. A few years later I picked up Fahrenheit 451 at an airport in Hong Kong and read it over my next week abroad, another recurring favorite among high school and middle school literature curriculums in the United States. Both novels follow a similar trend in the worlds they present to the reader, that of an oppressive dystopia centered on repressive regimes and their authoritative rule, the former concerning the biased rewriting of history and the latter the removal of history through the incineration of all literature.

However, the United States isn’t the only country that emphasizes dystopian societies through their literature curriculum. In Italy, Dante’s Inferno is considered a literary rite of passage among developing scholars, a tale in which a man possesses a unique ability allowing him to journey through the three stages of the afterlife, “a climactic apogee” in the dystopian tendency of Italy’s literature to represent the end of the world and second-comings1. However, this isn’t to discount the countless other entertainment and art mediums that have represented and interpreted such a society, from the paintings of Michael Kerbow to The Hunger Games and Snowpiercer. Interestingly enough, viewership and sales for dystopian media seems to have risen significantly in recent years2 — are we preparing for a dystopia of our own?

Many infamous, real-world events have often been portrayed as apocalyptic and dystopian, and rightfully so. But, what exactly is a dystopia, and how can we see its characteristics present in our everyday life? Furthermore, is our modern world a dystopia, and if not, are we on the path to one? Various sources seem to agree on five

24 SHEI Magazine

main characteristics that can be used to define a true dystopian society: oppressive control, both governmental and technological, restricted and dehumanized individualism, environmental destruction, and a false vision of a utopian society.

While modern American governmental control might not yet be considered absolute or totalitarian, the recent surge and lack of recognition concerning oppressive policing, uses of excessive force, and brutality against people of color surely brings to mind the repressive governmental control so common in dystopian novels such as The Handmaid’s Tale, a novel centered on the patriarchal subjugation of women. One can clearly see the parallels of injustice in our modern society, with inequity so often elevated for those of intersectional identities, calling to mind the murder of Breonna Taylor and the utter lack of recogniton by the courts and government officials.

Nonetheless, overarching control doesn’t stop with the government.

With a digital world growing rampantly, a progression likely catalyzed by the COVID-19 pandemic and its need for online workspaces — it is quite scary to consider the breadth of technological control shared by only a small number of dominating companies, such as Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Apple, whom together share a combined market capitalization of more than $4 trillion. Beyond the corporations themselves, it’s hard not to consider the reliance that our modern society has placed on various technological affordances. While these devices themselves may not be quite literally ‘oppressing’ us, we might consider how much of our lives are contained in these handheld devices and the way in which they influence and track our every move. It almost makes the overcrowded, virtually-focused dystopia

represented in Ernest Cline’s novel Ready Player One seem not too far off.

Considering these conglomerates control the technology industry, it’s not difficult to connect the ways in which they contribute to the third characteristic in defining a dystopia, which is a sense of dehumanizing collectivism and a loss of individualism; often, this is manifested through mass consumer culture and the datamining conducted by large corporations in order to better market, sell, and profit. Increasingly prevalent is the surge in brand-endorsed influencer culture, a unique intertwining between technological control and dehumanizing capitalistic collectivism, with the televised advertising strategies of the 50s adapting to the information age. Celebrities and social media moguls often act as a sort of living and breathing corporate commercial, such as various YouTubers and their bombarding brand deals, which make it hard to hear SeatGeek and not think of David Dobrik. While it’s difficult to argue there’s a complete loss of societal individualism, the augmented capitalistic tendencies of modern societies easily allow us to draw comparisons to a dystopian worldview, much like that in Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World.

The fourth, and quite possibly most prevalent, tenet of a theorized dystopian society is that of environmental destruction and/or disaster.

With raging wildfires, oil spills and poor waste management, and the ubiquitous pressing issue of global warming, environmental destruction and disaster is quite literally among us. Considering the lack of recognition and action taken by a number of leading officials (governmental control) and the cause of much deforestation and oil spills (capitalistic exploitation), a developing dystopia doesn’t seem like a far-fetched idea.

Though the fifth and final pillar of a dystopian society, a false vision of a utopian society strikes a strong case as the most terrifying of the five, when the oppressive control and destruction is framed through an illusory perfect and harmonious society, when in reality, it’s quite the opposite. It calls to mind the delusive communities present in the novels so many of us read growing up, such as 1984 and Fahrenheit 451. Without analyzing these novels, it’s still apparent to see how our modern society exemplifies these dystopian paralleling policies in the Trump administration. When it becomes commonplace for government officials and authorities to play down or altogether refuse to recognize the events transpiring around us, from police brutality and technological surveillance to a lack of individualism and environmental destruction, the darker tendencies of a society take one step closer toward a theorized dystopia. Suddenly, it seems like this ‘imaginary’ model may hold more truth in the world around us than we realize.

Even though our society displays a number of dystopian elements and satisfies each of the pillars in one way or another, we haven’t yet descended into the dystopian society so prevalent in much of today’s popular media. It may seem like we’re on a dark path toward such a world, and while we quite possibly may be, a landscape like that would likely be quite difficult to attain, and as the definition of the

term implies, a dystopia is technically a fictitious theoretical model of an “imagined” world.

Nevertheless, it’s so very important that we as a society take this time of turmoil and distress and let the art around us teach us something about the world. One of the leading causes behind a majority of these issues is a dire lack of acknowledgment and recognition. The first step in inspiring a positive change around us is to understand the necessity of such reform and be conscious of what a resulting world would look like if such signs are continuously neglected. Thankfully, we have a whole host of books, shows, and movies to give us a glimpse into what such a world would resemble, with them serving as a type of gentle forewarning toward the possible repercussions of such negligent actions and outlooks. Using this media to instill a bit of healthy fear in us, we should do what we can to stimulate constructive change in order to hopefully prevent the manifestation of a dystopian society.

By William Neumaier Layout by Taylor Silver

Ania, G. “Apocalypse and Dystopia in Contemporary Italian Writing.” University of Salford Institutional Repository, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 1 Sept. 2007, usir.salford. ac.uk/id/eprint/1782/ 1

Tam, Aaron. “Dystopian Fiction Is Selling Like There’s No Tomorrow.” NBCNews.com, NBCUniversal News Group, 10 Mar. 2017, www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/dystopian-fiction-selling-there-s-no-tomorrow-n731846.

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Epiphany 25

HEIGHTS FARENHEIGHTS FAREN

We often only think about habitat loss in the context of other species. Rarely do we question the loss of our own, possibly because we see ourselves as removed from nature. When we irrevocably cross the threshold of climate change, will this planet even be habitable? The stability of our environment is something we have taken for granted due to our disconnection from it. We view the earth as our giver, as we take more than it can give. We degrade our natural environment to fuel our increasingly industrialized and automated lives and destroy the very stability our entire existence is dependent upon.

When our natural resources have run out, and our terrain becomes unsuitable for our society as we know it, what will become of us?

Concept & Styling Nick Farrugia Juan Marquez Photographers Katie Corbett Ryan Little Juan Marquez Evan Parness Graphic Designer Mackenzie Schwedt Models Jasmine Glover Dan Niewoit Jr Ankita Singh Amy Su

PSEUDO TOPIA It took every ounce of willpower not to flinch as cold sweat sliced my back. I couldn’t give the job interviewer the satisfaction of seeing my nerves manifest. Nerves were a sign of weakness. In this Darwinian economy, the weak were quickly and mercilessly selected for the unemployment line.

“Alright, I think we’re done here,” the interviewer said abruptly. “You’ll have an answer from us within forty-five minutes.”

“Thank you for your time,” I replied dryly as I logged out of the virtual interview room. “Forty-five minutes! Spitting in my face would be less insulting than a forty-five minute waiting period.”

I slammed my laptop down as if somehow the abrupt force could bruise the clear complexion of the interviewer’s chiseled face. Leaning back in my cold, metal chair allowed my eyes to consume all four corners of my pathetic office nook. The only light illuminating the room originated from a ghostly bulb in the center. Its feverish yellow light constantly flickered as if it was struggling to find the motivation to endure. It was truthfully a miracle as to how I managed to salvage a single picture to post amid such ill lighting. The sharp bell of a phone notification reminded me I had three agonizing minutes until my next obligation.

36 SHEI Magazine

As if driven by an unseen magnet, my feet automatically drove me over to the full-length mirror that took up the entire left wall of my shoebox office.

The impossible size made it all the more impossible to ignore. A glance in that mirror could do more for my career than any degree program, professional conference, or LinkedIn connection combined. I could recall a countless number of lectures, meetings, and events in which that very mirror had been my savior. From catching stray hair in the back of my slicked pony-tail to a wrinkle on my all-white pantsuit, it had saved my personal brand and image from looking anything less than perfect.

The mirror had quite literally saved my life.

Standing before the mirror, I became consumed by my own reflection. As if caught in a trance, my eyes poured over every inch of my face, every break in my foundation, and every mutinous curl that defied my laid edges. Normally, tallying up my imperfections would set in motion a rigorous beauty routine. But rather than rally my makeup, hairspray, and brushes as if plotting a cosmetic coup against imperfection, I didn’t move. I could not move. Time seemed to have forgotten how to inch forward and my body froze with it. As my breath came quicker, I had this overwhelming sensation that my thoughts were about to swallow me whole. In this state of permafrost and panic, I decided to do something that had probably never been done in the last century: reflect.

At the moment, I was certain I was one of only a handful of people who even remembered what this ancient term meant. It was from a digital dictionary dated over 100 years ago from the year 2020. A student struggling to complete her thesis on the “Intricacies of the Perfect Selfie” had brought the word to my attention. I remembered how she maniacally proclaimed that this single word, reflection, was somehow the solution to everything that is wrong with today’s society. I laughed at the notion that the answer to the universe was found by an unemployed,

disheveled college student skimming the pages of an antiquated dictionary. Ridiculous! Her audacity to remain a whole fifteen seconds after her allotted appointment time burned a permanent place in my memory. Adding to my fury was how disheveled she looked. One look was all it took for me to be certain that her future was in the unemployment line (that is, if she even survived until graduation). Human resources experience or not, it didn’t take much to recognize the unemployed when you saw one.

Not once during my six month tenure as a English literature professor had a single student managed to manifest such profound hatred from me.

Long after I kicked her out of the zoom call against her will, the word she wrote in the chatbox, “reflect”, seemed to echo in her absence. According to Webster’s 2020 dictionary, it means to look back upon or reconsider.

What a useless thing to do. The only way to live was to move forward. There’s no time to reflect. Living was synonymous with evolving. Unemployment and irrelevancy were worse than death. The only way to remain employed and relevant was to be in a state of constant change. We were all in a constant state of searching for one’s next job or personal brand.

It never ended.

I loved every minute of evolving; I just wished I was better at it. Looking back only left you behind.

Living in the age of right now was a true utopia.

One would think I was comfortable with death with the way my thoughts aimlessly wandered.

I was not. Despite my hesitation, I continued to mercilessly murder these 180 seconds by interogating my past actions. What possessed me to hold onto this professor position after the four-month mark?

The other students in my year-long Ph.D. program were long gone after three months. Allowing such an absurd amount of time to lapse before changing careers left potential employers wondering what was wrong with me. Any sort of hesitation in the “age of now” translated to be nothing more than a sign

of weakness. Even when I slept, I was consumed by my next steps. The number of times I dozed off with images of job applications, interview responses, and social media captions dancing in my head ought to be criminal. Even so, it’s anything but criminal. It’s normal. Actually, it was a dream that sparked the idea to apply to the computer software engineer program.

Three days of training guaranteed me two months of employment in a city halfway across the world. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to restart. With my career seemingly in a state of cardiac arrest, this job was just the type of shock it needed right now.

Suddenly, the blood-curdling ring of my cell phone cut through the silence like a knife through tender steak. The surprising sound jolted me out of my comatose. Without missing a beat, I scooped the phone from my pocket and answered it before it rang twice. It was the interviewer on the other line.

“I apologize. We cannot offer you the position,” said the interviewer coldly as she delivered my death sentence.

She mumbled a few lines after that, probably something important, before her voice abruptly cut off, leaving me alone on the line.

The sound of the dial tone rang like the sound of an executioner’s ax splitting the air apart. All I could do was stand there waiting for my head to roll.

By Soneida Rodriguez Layout by Sophie Levit

Epiphany 37

THE

Do we exist within the notion of time, or do we hold onto time as a reminder of our own temporality?

What will we leave behind when time runs out? As we burn out so bright, past ambitions, innovations, and the hopes of prosperity scorch the earth beneath us. Seedlings cling to the thin air left still in our wake. The earth we excavate and build upon slowly dissipates back into the soil. As nature begins to overtake our fabricated environment, we are alien, a visitor, passing through the time we left behind.

Concept & Styling Nick Farrugia, Juan Marquez Photographers Katie Corbett, Ryan Little, Rita Vega, Evan Parness Videographer Evan Parness Graphic Designer Yuki Obayashi Model Anonymous

fashion for every body Today, more than ever, on the runways of luxury and fast-fashion brands, “unisex” and “sustainable” are the industry’s buzzwords meant to reflect the culture’s push toward a gender-inclusive and eco-concious future. However, when unisex is imagined in the scope of industry fashion, as brands including male and female models in their runway shows or introducing classic men’s silhouettes in women’s lines, there leaves practically no room to challenge the constructed gender binary. Instead of celebrating gender variance in fashion, the label “unisex” reduces all gender expansive identities to a singular term — one that is still focused on biological sex.

This model of unisex fashion limits our understanding of how gender expression is at play in our wardrobes. It doesn’t allow for the full spectrum of gender identities to reimagine clothing at its core and where it needs to shift its focus for a truly sustainable future.

Rather than assimilating to binaristic conventions of clothing, a number of non-binary, transgender, and gender-nonconforming designers have opted for the term “gender-free” to replace unisex. As a refreshing breath of air to the world of fashion, many non-binary designers have made their names known by collaborating with prominent luxury brands. Working as an apprentice under Alessandro Michele at Gucci, the London-based designer Harris Reed hopes to “pioneer fluidity” with their exaggerated, Victorian-inspired designs. Their grandiose silhouettes are adorned with feathers, crystals, and ruffles, but all the while use sheer and nude materials to play on the romanticism and vulnerability of the bare human body. “These are the times we’re supposed to be creating pieces that change the way people think, the way people feel when they wear them,” Reed said in an article for Vogue. In the same article, designer and former Gaultier assistant Alphonse Maitrepierre described their process of designing by deconstructing pieces of clothing and reconstructing them in unconventional ways in order to make something completely new and free of the gendered tropes historically associated with them.

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Coinciding with the push toward gender-free language and designs in fashion industry discussions is the necessity for sustainability in both luxury and fast-fashion brands. In 2020, it is well known that fashion is the second most polluting industry in the world after oil, and no one knows this more than transgender and non-binary designers.

Climate change, while a threat to all of humanity, has been shown to negatively impact the lives of people of color, poor people, and women more than men in wealthier areas.

As it was described by Maya Lewis for the online magazine Everyday Feminism, this is because climate change only worsens the gender and racial inequalities that already exist in the world. A number of studies have been conducted on the adverse effects of climate change on women in rural, low-income, and Indigenous communities, including displacement, agriculture, and economic loss. However, little thought has been given to the ways that people of non-normative gender identities are harmed in the wake of this global climate crisis.

Factors such as workplace and housing discrimination already present issues for the safety and security of many queer and gender-nonconforming individuals, and because relief efforts during natural disasters rarely provide adequate aid to queer and trans communities, they are left especially vulnerable to climate-related displacement and homelessness. Additionally, Lewis discussed the lack of diverse gender representation in the mainstream conversations and policy-making about how to best address issues related to climate change, stating that, “You’d be hard-pressed to find any formal LGBTQ/GNC organizations or representation at conferences like the Framework Convention or the UN Climate Talks.”

While a lot of work still needs to be done to bring the issues facing trans, queer, and gender-nonconforming communities to the focus of important climate change conversations, several gender-nonconforming individuals working in fashion today establish inclusive sustainability as the driving force behind their designs and missions for their brands. For

Nicole Zizi, founder of NICOLE ZÏZI STUDIO, every decision they make “serves as a motif of [their] commitment to sustainability.” By sourcing exclusively recycled, alternative, and natural materials, this Black-owned brand is focused on creating eco-conscious and innovative streetwear. Their sleek and structured designs lend themselves to gender-free silhouettes that enhance the strength in the human form. In the brand’s mission statement, Zizi establishes the importance of sustainability that promotes gender inclusion by stating, “As a nod to circularity, I aim to protect our communities while simultaneously keeping in mind the way each design affects our environment as a whole.”

Official Rebrand (OR!?), spearheaded by New York based non-binary artist, MI Leggett, aims to breathe new life into discarded clothing. Their funky, gender-free takes on standard workwear pieces such as aprons, button-downs, and blazers, challenge both today’s industrial and social norms. Leggett describes OR!?’s transformative process as one that “celebrates the fluidity of identity, dissociating garments from gendered categories, reintroducing them without arbitrary social constraints.” Through their most recent capsule collection, collapse/convulse, Leggett meditates on why fashion matters in the midst of so much chaos and prejudice in the world, returning to the sentiment that “fashion is a vital means of self-expression for marginalized groups. It is an indispensable tool for self-determination and affirmation when living under a system of compulsory heterosexuality and cisgenderism.”

Another brand that is pushing back on normative standards of beauty is Rebirth Garments. In a world and fashion industry that caters most to the needs of cisgender, heterosexual, white, and thin people, Rebirth Garment’s mission is to create gender-nonconforming wearables and accessories for individuals on the full spectrum of gender, size, and ability.

The mind behind this brand is Sky Cubacub, a self-identified “non-binary, queer, and disabled Filipinx human from Chicago, IL.” The neon colors and loud patterns in their lingerie

and swimwear pieces refuse to hide bodies that society typically shuns. Through their commitment to “radical visibility,” Rebirth Garments “challenges mainstream beauty standards that are sizeist, ableist, and conform to the gender binary.”

By hand- and custom-making their garments themselves, Cubacub eliminates standard sizes from their brand’s model, centering Rebirth Garments on queer and disabled bodies, never assimilating to normative ideas of existing, loving, and creating.

Gendered labels often get lost in translation once the pieces leave the retail market and end up in donation bins.

Thrift shops, while still arbitrarily sectioned by gender, offer fashion lovers access to affordable pieces that they can make their own, no matter their gender. When I’m sifting through second-hand pieces at the thrift store, I find myself floating back and forth between the endless aisles, often losing track of which gendered section I’ve stumbled into. It’s moments like those where I don’t ponder questions like Was this made for me?

For my body? and instead I simply gravitate towards the fabrics, textures, and prints that make me feel good, that make me feel like me. We’re not in a post-gender world yet, and we have a lot of work to do before we get there. The influence of artists like Harris Reed and Alphonse Maitrepierre on luxury brands brings the topic of gender-free clothing to the forefront of fashion industry conversations and creates large-scale visibility for gender-nonconforming perspectives in fashion. Many smaller brands created by artists like Zizi, Leggett, Cubacub, and so many more exhibit the inseparable nature of gender-inclusivity and sustainability in fashion. Both perspectives, that of global enterprises and small businesses, are critical for guiding fashion and society to a more fluid future ­— one that deconstructs our flawed notions of gender, class, and the body in order to value inclusion, collective power, and the planet.

By Lauren Champlin Layout by Emma Peterson

Epiphany 49

flora aurora

In a naturalistic existence, the laws and forces of nature govern the structure and behavior of society. In a changing universe, every new stage of life exists as a product of these laws. Humans, with an understanding and deep respect for the laws of nature, find themselves an equal patron to the same laws and forces that govern the rest of the universe. Connection with nature has been restored and strengthened, with humans and the natural environment that surrounds them becoming one.

In this utopia, humans exist within the spectrum of nature, becoming indiscernible as they grow as a whole.

Concept & Styling Nick Farrugia, Juan Marquez Photographers Katie Corbett, Ryan Little, Evan Parness, Rita Vega, Graphic Designer Carly Lucas Models Maya Green, Caleb Quezon

Dear Reader, what does it mean to exist?

Mother Loves –––––

You exist by emotion, by love, by rage. You exist to feel the touch of another or no one at all. You exist because you had no choice of inception. You live because it is asked of you, but you survive only because you choose to.

We come into this world ignorant and unwilling contestants of a lottery of birth. We are born to parents, perhaps one a Jew, another agnostic. The color of skin given, not acquired. Thoughts embedded and observed, not formed. We learn, and we evolve as the summers pass, a harsh sun shaping the faces of those whose fierce gaze it burns. Different worlds nurtured us all, and there are those of us who were never nurtured at all. Our only commonality in this diversity, then, is that we all owe our existence to Mother.

The heart is a hysterical and unreliable organ that leads us to lives consumed by simple and almost certain desires.

You. I do love this physical world. I love this physical life with you. The air and the ocean. The old navy apartment stairs and the broken gravel. The grass. The cool nights. Lying in bed with the whisper of your touch on my shoulder.

I peer at you and see our past, the accumulation of memories, the freshly felt love. I think of the window behind your bed, posed such as to allow the wandering eyes of curious neighbors. Let them watch. I am as helpless as Adam in the apple orchard.

I make you as your make lies within me, and we exist, however briefly, in a world of two no one believes in. You peel away at me until all that is left is skin and bones, and yet I bathe in this rare vulnerability. Your thin fingers wrap around that frightful organ in my ribcage, and I let you tighten your grip.

Alas, dear Reader, the great art of life is sensation, and this great love will be the only immortality we share.

Mother Creates ––––– In divinity, she stands enveloped in an inky abyss littered with stars, orbited by a ceaseless stream of rock, dust, and worlds. An ancient apparatus, this naked rhythm lived long before us and will continue far past the end of our existence.

Like dust, she creates us with no regard for who we would become. So many generations, so many civilizations, so many realms. They trace their genesis to the womb of a single omnipresent being.

Mother would gaze adoringly from above as we sprinted through cobblestone streets, as we fell and scraped our bony knees, as we grew into our bodies. She would watch as we hurt and were hurt. Maybe she would look away as we killed.

She birthed us knowing that we bore an ignorance of purpose; finding that, she mused, we would accomplish on our own.

We grew under her Eye, living lives we cannot imagine — strangers to Mother, strangers to ourselves, and strangers to our own existence.

We can only have faith that we will never again be forgotten, denied, referred to by a name other than the one Mother calls us — our own name. We must trust, and we must believe. And so we build, because what is building and rebuilding and rebuilding again, but an act of faith. How else to prove to Mother that we are here, that we are human, than to build. To belong.

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Mother of My Mother ––––– How can you love one knowing that she does not even know you? That if you sat in front of her, in another’s body with another’s eyes, she would not recognize you? The soul, the voice, the heart, the mind, the touch: none of it. That, drifting in those corridors of “home,” is only a ghost of a shell brilliantly disguised under a blanket lie of happiness, of love. To lie with fluency, to act with renowned vigor, to lay in silence: she does not know me. If she knew me, I would be but a name unremembered, my limb violently sawed off the family tree as swiftly as a breath exhaled.

“Love is conditional,” she says.

I nod.

I sit, and I will cry for a mother who is not dead. But, do I cry at the tragedy of inevitable death, or the misery of a relationship that never was and perhaps never will be? When will I realize the root of division is a similarity so stark and honest that I cannot help but look at her and see myself ? Is it self-hatred? I do not know.

Strangers remark about physical similarities: an identical jut of the chin, a tilt of the head, a movement of the lips.

They do not notice the distance between our bodies, the misaligned paths we tread. Always one step ahead of me and two steps to the left. Family speaks of a shared love for science, for people, for laughter. Those closest will note a twin vigor, a rebellious flame, an untamed rage.

My mother did not ruin me. She simply left.

Mother Breaks ––––– Like lifeless twigs, She rips us in half, one for a trust long forgotten and one for ourselves. For some, the pain ends there; for others, it is but the beginning of an endless sentence. Heads removed like discarded Barbie dolls, hearts broken as effortlessly as old ceramic kitchen plates, legs tossed out like wishbones after family dinner.

We navigate this life, this life she designs, through trauma and through the ensured pain of existence. Made old without having lived, we sit in the tangibility of our own melancholy.

Perhaps it is a profound sadness that both entrenches and connects us all.

We are broken, yet to be fixed by Mother. We move through space as twisted limbs of sharpened glass pierce us with each conservative movement.

Mother does not care.

Why, Mother, must you take away our homes, our people, our tribe? Why do you inflict such suffering upon this world, a world in which millions seek to find relief in Death? Why, why, do you create those who chose to murder, to rape, to break?

You birth evil like insipid works of art. You incite chaos and unleash tsunami after earthquake after forest fire. You hate us, Mother.

Is this the grand punishment for our actions against your creations? Do you rebel against us as we do you?

Mother Burns ––––– Outside in the world, governments rise and collapse, they target ministers and leaders, they lay siege to cities, they gas their own citizens. Walls fall. Rockets explode. But here, things are peaceful. We hear the whizzing of bombs in movies, sometimes in the news. These riots and violent demonstrations are only quiet thumps, muffled by distance.

Here, where we are, where you, my Reader, sit. We believe we are safe. Out there, the world is in pandemonium, they will say. They will not tell you that we are the gas, we are the fuel load, we lit the match. Mother simply left us to our devices.

Mother may burn, but we destroy.

The men and women who lie at the unlit bottom of the Mediterranean. The shadow of a Japanese man incinerated into the ground following a blast that rang so loud no one heard it. The children in Yemen who resemble Holocaust survivors more than their own mother.

Mother ––––– A cluster of stars palely glows above us, and disguised between the faint silhouettes of forgotten trees, a trembling sky appears as naked as we stand. We see Her face there, strangely distinct as if it emits a soft radiance of its own.

Mother, we live for you and in spite of you.

Why? Sincerely, The Collective

By Heba Malik Layout by Tung Tung Lin

Epiphany 59

In an alternate realm, Earth exudes vitality and is teeming with life, as if never touched by the hand of mankind. Nature exists as the greatest force to maintain the delicate balance of life. Viewing humanity as integrated into our larger ecosystem, we break through our disconnected dichotomy and discover an environmental equilibrium allowing us to flourish alongside the untamed beauty of the natural world. How can this balance be found? The time to question the importance of this balance is behind us, as the weight of human life exhausts the earth. We must establish a mutual symbiosis with nature if we are to survive, but how can we collectively achieve this?

Concept & Styling Nick Farrugia, Juan Marquez Makeup Artist Juan Marquez Photographers Katie Corbett, Ryan Little, Hannah Yoo, Evan Parness Graphic Designer Halley Luby Models Dara Woo, Brooke Taylor

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BEHIND THE

SCENES In the making of “Epiphany”, it was important to us as an editorial team to put the theme of environmental consciousness at the forefront of our creative process. We understand how as individuals, tackling the existential threat of climate change, waste production and overconsumption are issues beyond our sole control; yet we long for a world which we can inherit that provides ours and younger generations the chance of an equitable future. One aspect we could control in the development of our issue was how we sourced our fashion, which for every photoshoot in Epiphany consisted of thrifted, recycled, re-fabricated and repurposed clothing, minimizing our consumption of new materials. Our culture has commodified fashion to a degree in which we fail to recognize the impact of our consumption, as waste produced from the manufactured clothing contributes to 10% of humanity’s carbon emissions, extorting sources of freshwater and polluting rivers and streams, while 85% of all textiles produced are wasted every year. We must re-evaluate our consumerism, not only in the production of art but in the way we live our lives. If anything, this issue is a testament to the beauty that can be produced while forefronting eco-consciousness thematically and in practice.

With the countless challenges thrown at us all this year, the creation of “Epiphany” gave us all something to look forward to: an opportunity to channel our anxieties and fears among the uncertainties of our current moment into a collective artistic expression. The ability to safely collaborate during the pandemic with motivated, visionary creatives has deepened my appreciation for the power of the arts to provide hope, comfort, and passion in a year overshadowed with loss, inequity, and struggle. When the world is full of fear, we must look those fears dead on, finding ways to overcome and reinvent ourselves. Let this epiphany be a moment of reflection, one in which we grow and blossom into something more beautiful than we could have imagined before.

Evan Parness Creative Director

www.sheimagazine.com