The Play Issue SS ‘20

Vol. 13, Issue 2

P L A Y

VASSAR COLLEGE

SPRING 2020

P L A Y

VOLUME 13 ISSUE 2

P L A Y

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beauty

34

merging timelines

tent

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sex, image, and awareness

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styling the set

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a main pajama party

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sleepover

LETTER LETTER FROM THE FROM THE EDITOR EDITOR

There are a million ways I could start this letter, but I ll stick to the obvious: These past few months have been nothing like any of us have ever experienced before. Nor expected, for that matter. As you hold this magazine (digitally, that is), you may be wondering, why the theme?

Doesn t Play feel a bit at odds with the current circumstances? And to that I say, let me tell you a story.

It was way back in January when the Contrast team met for the first time after winter break. We were excited, raring to go. We dove in immediately, co-hosting events, tabling around campus, and even adding eight new members to our board. For a few weeks, we searched for a theme that would match our energy level. It took us a minute, but by mid-February, we settled on Play. It was perfect̶it emphasized the more relaxed, openended approach to fashion we had

been striving toward all year, and would allow us to let loose, and well, play.

Our brainstorming meetings were as lively as ever. We tossed around ideas for a pajama party photoshoot, a beauty workshop leading up to Founder s Day, a streetstyle video series, and a free market, festival-esque launch party. In the end, only a few of our ideas had the time to be realized̶keep reading, and you ll see which ones.

When we got the news in late March that we wouldn t be returning to campus, I know I can personally say there were more tears and frustration than I care to admit. The pandemic, which continues to rage on, has taken something away from all of us. For many more, it s taken away loved ones, entire livelihoods, and safety in all senses of the word. Entire systems

have failed us, institutions and leaders we rely on have faltered, and disparities have reached immeasurable depths.

Because of this, you can imagine the kind of conversation our board had during our first online meeting nearly two months ago. If we kept Play, we wondered, would it be like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole? Should we just abandon the whole idea? After some debate, we ultimately decided to keep our original theme. In the chaos in which we currently find ourselves, we wanted to offer a small respite̶a space to smile and find joy in the small things (if you re up for it, of course). Along with this magazine, we also began a second, selftitled Spring 2020 Special Project, which has similar goal, but is more introspective in its intentions. Every week, our Media team has been publishing student and alumni art on our blog in an effort to foster a space for creativity, community, and kindness. I ve been amazed at the sorts of work people have been sending in, and I am endlessly grateful to those who ve contributed.

To end this story, I d like to acknowledge the fact that none of this semester s projects would have been possible without the unfailing committement of my fellow board members. Though it has by no means been easy, you all continued to show up.

Thank you for rising to the occasion in the most unlikely of circumstances. To you and everyone reading, I sincerely wish much health and happiness to you and yours.

Happy reading, Aidan Zola

"You can travel to the past, explore the present, orimagine the future."

BY MALKA FLEISCHMAN

There is something undeniably appealing about watching a movie that just looks good. For me, costumes have the power to make or break my experience watching any film or TV show. A film s use of fashion to create a more interesting visual experience is like the cherry on top of my experience as a viewer.

In real day-to-day life, there aren t many opportunities to play with fashion. Sure, you can be someone who experiments a lot and takes stylistic risks, but the truth is, most of us take small risks and prioritize dressing either for comfort or to feel confident, sexy, or what have you. However, in movies and television, this isn t usually the case. These forms of entertainment create controlled micro environments that only exist for a certain amount of time̶in that time, you can make the clothing and fashion convey anything you want. You can travel to the past, explore the present, or imagine the future. You can stick to reality or play with countless styles and time periods.

Take for example Sophia Coppola s Marie Antoinette. The story takes place in the late-18th century, and while the fashion mostly adheres to the reality of the time, there is a detectable special attention paid to each characters style that almost breaks this reality. All of the costumes not only help to transport us into their world, but they also create an almost nauseating glamour amidst the excess of fabrics, giant skirts, piles of sweets and pastries, and tones of pink.

The costumes prompt us to enter a world of seemingly frivolous femininity and comment on the timelessness of this

"Some say [Euphoria] redefined the teen TV show genre. It doesn’t place teenagers into the sparkly world made up exclusively by high school status and stereotypical fashion choices."

world. You are most able to see this in the scene in which amidst traditional fabrics, skirts, and dainty little shoes, there lies a pair of baby blue high top converse sneakers. This play on time periods suggests that Marie Antoinette is not much different than girls today.

We are encouraged from a young age to find both entertainment and identity in clothes, makeup, and accessories, but that is not all we are. It has never been and will never be.

Another interesting example is the all too famous HBO show Euphoria.

Some say it redefined the teen TV show

genre. It doesn t place teenagers into the sparkly world made up exclusively by high school status and stereotypical fashion choices. If there is one show that plays with fashion, makeup, and accessories, it is this one. No longer do we see the traditional high school tropes: cliques set apart practically only by the clothes they wear, the popular girls in dresses, skirts and thin high heels, the losers in cardigans and old sneakers, and the extras in plain, ill-fitted jeans and sweaters.

Euphoria, on the other hand, plays with fashion to give each character

a unique and carefully thought out aesthetic. All the outfits are extremely current, but we still get so many references to styles from the 60s all the way to the 2000s. Characters like Rue reference the 90s by layering tightand loose-fitting clothes; Kat references BDSM culture, mixing underwear with outerwear in a sexy goth style; Maddy brings back classic 2000s staples with modern styling and wide ranging colour palettes, from pastels, to glittery blacks; and finally Jules, who experiments with different styles and decades, from more traditionally feminine color palettes and

80s/90s plaid pleated skirts, to modern punk night outfits.

I could keep going and talking in depth about so many films and TV shows that have beautiful, interesting, and playful costumes, but I ll leave with a final honourable mentions list of movies and shows from very recent years. Period pieces: Little Women (2019) and Emma (2020). Fantasy: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016 & 2018) and Game of Thrones (2011-2019). 20s: The Great Gatsby (2013). 70s: The Deuce (2017-2019). International: Velho Chico (2016 *telenovela). All worth the watch!

A MAIN

pajama

PARTY

BY ALEXIA OERTER

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To honour this semester s theme, Play, we decided to have a photoshoot featuring our models in sleepwear in the Main parlours. This angle served as a reminder that being fashionable can be comfortably fun. We wanted to emphasise that fashion never has to rhyme with discomfort, and that caring about fashion is a trait that can be cultivated through self-care and allencompassing positivity.

To take on another angle of the theme, we wanted to create an unconventional setting by reconciling a speciďŹ c type of clothing with a completely unexpected place.

In this case, we chose to link sleepwear with the parlours in Main that we could use as symbols of academics, luxury, and even maybe a certain rigidity that comes with a school environment. To counter that, all the clothes needed to express comfort and lightheartedness, conďŹ dence and playfulness that counterbalanced the antique rooms.

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I had the pleasure of providing most of the clothes used during the shoot, and it just made me so proud to see such beautiful people wear clothes I always choose carefully for their potential to make me feel at my best. I really hope they experienced as much joy wearing them as I do!

The clothes were mostly sleepwear sets made of flimsy fabrics, selected for their comfort and prettiness, but I also provided hair clips to match. I actually loved playing with the colours to find the pair of clips that would match each outfit best. All models wore a pair of hair clips which highlighted the ways in which they all uniquely wore their accessories. It definitely revealed how infinite the possibilities are for creating a personal style.

“...comfort can look and feel just as empowering as a suit.”

“...we wanted to create an unconventional setting by reconciling a specific type of clothing with a completely unexpected place.”

One of the best realisations this shoot brought was that, despite the clothes belonging to only a couple of people, every single outfit fit its model perfectly despite different body types. In concept and in practice the shoot reminded of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants̶a bond between people strengthened by a meaningful piece of clothing.

Sleepwear is definitely a style that discriminates the least; I wish all types of clothes could be shared as easily, creating an even more powerful fashion community built upon generosity.

In the end, we most wanted to reaffirm that comfort can look and feel just as empowering as a suit. And even for me who was in the background, the amazing day I spent at the shoot with my friends and the models definitely achieved this goal.

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Sex, Image, and Awareness: A Journey of Self-Exploration By Thao Williams TW: Sexual Assault, Toxic Relationship On April 1st, 2020 I posted a photo on Instagram that I would have previously deemed too risqué. April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month (SAAM), and I had just read Chanel Miller’s Know My Name. Miller is the survivor of the Brock Turner Stanford Sexual Assault case in 2015, who for years has been labeled Emily Doe and subjected to immense victim shaming— but also waves of support from across the world.

Feeling more empowered, I chose to post about my survivorship, my struggle with my body image, and my disconnection from the jurisdiction of my own body. I chose to not think of the post’s easily sexualizable nature or the array of vernacular that could come with such an image. I presented myself as I wanted to, not caring what those who would see the image would think. I chose to emphasize with my survivorship and not my victimhood.

Society tells us, especially women, to be prude but also sexualized, to be slender but also curvaceous, to have clear perfect skin but also perfect makeup to emphasize it. Bleakly, it still carries the undertone that sexual violence is preventable, typically through “better choices” survivors could have made. Although social media has the trajectory of becoming more inclusive, influencers still perpetuate the ideologies mentioned before, whether it be in their sponsoredposts, tweets, or tik-toks. Clothing and makeup brands have become more inclusive of race, ethnicity, and size—perhaps for social capital…but that’s another rabbit hole to tumble down another day.

In perpetuating these standards and norms, social

media creates easily consumable and reproducible trends in which being “different” is objectified and fetishized…but still not the ideal.

Unfortunately, at 18 years old I was in a relationship that amplified these standards. Among other things, my ex—my “first love,” took away my sense of feeling pretty, of feeling beautiful. His previous girlfriend was “a supermodel” —tall, thin, delicate, fair and clear-skinned; standards I could not compete with. I was a short, tanned Asian gal with curves in the wrong places and too skinny otherwise. My weight fluctuations were constantly noted. My skin was acneic and he constantly picked at it even after I asked him to stop, eventually leaving physical scars behind along with the emotional ones. As invasive as they were, his critiques of me were never “personal;” I wasn’t his standard of beauty or society’s standard for that matter, and he clearly showed it. In weaponizing my selfimage, he found a mode of manipulation that was easily imposed on me, a young and somewhat naive girl in the fragile stage of adolescence. He controlled all my decisions— from who I spent time with, to the way I dressed, to the way I did my makeup—in an attempt both to mold me to his standards and to make it known that I was his. If I wore a skirt or dress or did my makeup in a noticeable manner these were proof I must have been looking for attention, looking to be sexualized.

In November 2019, I finally exited that relationship. After years of wearing very conservative clothing, not doing my makeup, and not feeling

“Social media creates easily consumable and reproducible trends in which being ‘different’ is objectified and fetishized”

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confident, I finally began my process towards selfaffirmation. In high school I was the girl with the weird outfits, the crazy heels, the bizarre makeup— things I loved and embraced. More importantly, I embraced being myself. I felt like me in my body, I felt I had agency over myself. I am reclaiming that element of myself again. Only in separating myself from my ex did I realize that the only person that matters in my decisions regarding my body, my appearance, and my personal decisions is me.

This January I began dressing for myself once again, taking more selfies and photos of myself than I had ever done previously—I decided to reclaim my image. I started wearing neon greens, unusual prints, rainbow makeup. I took hundreds of selfies, capturing both my good angles and my bad angles. Now, dressing for myself and doing my makeup is a form of playing with my appearance.

I’ve rediscovered the confidence that, though it had always existed within myself, had simply been

closed away for three and a half years. I reclaimed both my sexuality and the agency over myself in sexualizing my appearance. And I’ve embraced my body, its flaws, and its beautiful human perfection.

Yes, some may see this as performative.

While I sometimes feel anxious sitting in a classroom wearing a neon green shirt and bright aqua eyeliner and worrying about how others see me, I’ve focused more on the joy it brings me.

In reality, these simple things I do for myself are my way of separating my internal dialogue from the idea that my body is an object to be judged, sexualized, or consumed. The ritual of choosing my clothing and doing my makeup in the morning based on my mood has let me both reclaim my image and be gentle with myself. Taking a selfie in acid-wash jeans, a white t-shirt, silver boots, and neon-pink eye makeup makes me happier than I ever could have imagined.

These looks and photos make me feel confident; I love all of them.

“I’ve embraced my body, its flaws, and its beautiful human perfection”

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Beauty

Beauty

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Merging Timelines: Where the Past Confronts the Present

By Anastasia Koutavas

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As I look at the miscellaneous items in boxes I had cast to corners of my bedroom closet before leaving for college, it feels like I’m staring into a material mirror. Before opening each container, I wasn’t sure what I would find. I could vaguely remember stuffing them with clothes, accessories, even souvenirs. When I had stored away these parts of me, I didn’t think anything of it.

It seemed ordinary at the time: move to college, make choices about what to take with you, leave the rest behind.

While it didn’t initially feel like the end of a chapter, it became more evident over time that these objects, mostly garments, reflected how I externalized my thoughts and feelings.

Though only a few years have passed, revisiting each item reminds me of could-haves and did-haves. In comforting and exciting ways, I can trace a meaning and function to each object—from shirts to snowglobes— despite how removed they have been from my experiences over the past several years.

The opportunity to confront these pieces of my material past is a unique way to play with time, image, and perception of existence. These days, confined to my room, I’m alone

with fabrics and accessories that materialized my youth, encouraging me to resurface memories I otherwise only remember through pictures.

I’ve become familiar with fabrics that used to be a part of me, and while the individual pieces do not represent my current style, they somehow signify so much more.

While the present seems to have been put on pause, I’m finding inspiration in these fragments of the past. The past, however, is not solely my own. All this time spent rooted to our homes during quarantine has unleashed a desire to reinvent space and belongings.

In my multi-generational household, my grandmother is confronting her living environment in a similar way. Sorting through belongings and old souvenirs, she has uncovered memories of her own experiences, generated through things as simple as garments. As she revisits shirts, skirts, and accessories that remind her of years past, she hands them to me, hoping to incite a new connection with these valuable pieces.

Circumstances have helped me consider these parts of my wardrobe— once chosen (by myself or another

generation) to be stored away—as part of a present moment and environment.

I feel like I am bringing new life to skirts my mother used to wear to school, jackets my grandmother fashioned for work, shirts and accessories that represented me in earlier stages of my life. Reclaiming control over what comes in and out of my closet—encouraged by the histories of family members I admire—has instilled a personal sense of agency in a world where there is immense doubt. The contents of these boxes are miscellaneous—even more so when including those stored by other generations. The fabrics and garments offer more than a physical presence; they are memories, means of escape to a different time and place, and the opportunity to play with time in an explicit way. In their variety, these styles represent a lifetime of thoughts, experiences, and choices, playfully interconnecting in the now.

By refreshing our memory of what once was, we can play with the visions of how we would like to be.

These clothes and accessories, once forgotten in closets and basements, serve their purpose again as lenses into generational existences, all pieced together to play with the present.

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exec board Aidan Zola - Editor-in-Chief Angelica Luo - Art Coordinator Kanako Kawabe - Co-Beauty Director Sarah Kopp - Co-Beauty Director Jane Romero - Beauty Assistant Anastasia Koutavas - Co-Editorial Director Gina Pepitone - Co-Editorial Director Andie Berkowitz - Co-Film Director Yume Murphy - Co-Film Director Yifei (Evelyn) Zhang - First-Year Rep Cameron Asharian - Co-Layout Director Sophia Kapur - Co-Layout Director Janrey Serapio - Co-Layout Director Stephanie Madonna - Media Director Isabelle Paquette - Media Assistant Hannah Benton - Co-Head Photographer Clara Pitt - Co-Head Photographer Justin Davila - Secretary Anna Grayson - Co-Style Director Lucy Posner - Co-Style Director Alexia Oerter - Treasurer 36

contributions beauty committee

editorial committee

photo committee

models

keira digaetano haley whetstone

nina ajemian hannah benton andie berkowitz clara pitt grace rousell haley whetstone yifei (evelyn) zhang

malka eischman thao williams

tiara s. coleman taylor gee henry gilbert mahalia hunter petch kingchatchaval nicole kormendi cameron saltsman dardan ukaj madio wallner sophie wang

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