#NotYourAsianSidekick

Sometime earlier today, writer/artist/organizer Suey Park started a trending topic on Twitter using the hashtag #NotYourAsianSidekick. As I understand it, the phrase originated in a discussion specific to the issues surrounding Asian/Asian-American women's lack of a voice in mainstream feminism; as the hashtag took off, the online conversation has expanded to general issues of oppression, misrepresentation, and microaggressions experienced by AAPIs (Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders). It's not an easy topic to discuss with any nuance in 140-character blocks, but it's provided an incredible opportunity for an ad-hoc community to form and, if nothing else, air shared grievances and receive support for them in the form of retweets and favorites. (The less Twitter-literate might not appreciate the significance of this, but suffice it to say that it's a lot like sharing an opinion and have someone nod along vigorously, or like getting a high-five from a friendly stranger.)

For 10+ hours now, it's been an affirming space for some of us -- and here, I'm claiming my membership in the community -- to feel that we aren't alone in facing any form of oppression based on the color of our skin, the size of our eyes, our ability or lack thereof to do math, etc. There are a lot of experiences that I now take for granted, among them being pressed for where I'm really from (is New Jersey not real enough?), being asked if a horrible mispronunciation of my last name is "good enough" (no, it's not, but you'll move on anyway), being complimented on my amaaazing tan (thanks; I was born with it). By seeing those aspects of my experience as an Asian-American woman reflected back at me from utter strangers on Twitter, I've been reminded, jarringly, that they're really not okay at all. To be reminded of your oppression isn't a pleasurable experience in the least, but the solidarity is cathartic.

Of course, as soon as people of color start having any semblance of fun or dare to feel comfortable, someone has to step in and ruin the party. Today's White Savior came in the form of a "Neo-Libertarian" with a fancy college degree who happens to know a LOT more about oppression than I do, and he didn't hesitate to tell me all about it. I shouldn't have responded, but I'm a sucker for a good argument with someone who needs to lose.

The header for the Storify doesn't appear here, but it should read: "The hashtag #NotYourAsianSidekick has been trending on Twitter for hours. It's mostly filled with expressions of everyday oppression/discrimination/misrepresentation experienced by Asians/Asian-Americans and corresponding messages of support -- and some jerks. This is what happened when I responded."

If anyone wants to use this as a case study in derailment and the willful blindness conferred by overwhelming privilege, please do. Make sure to note his condescending tone, his flaunting of questionable academic credentials (and implied assumption that I have none of my own that might equal or surpass his), and his refusal to respect my desire to end the conversation civilly. Note that he continued to tweet at me, at one point telling me to "Hahaha Go to school, before you rant about topics too sophisticated for you" -- like my own life, I guess? Good thing Twitter reinstated the block function, because what a gross white guy.

(Incidentally, if this is still not clear to any acquaintances/complete strangers reading this who don't know me well enough to give me the benefit of the doubt, I understand that there are non-gross white guys. I salute them.)

More than this kind of all-too-common ignorance, though, I want to highlight the positive responses that have come out of this. I've compiled some of my favorite responses here, with mine included -- not because they're the "best," but because they're mine and it seems only appropriate to share them here.

[Suggested listening: "Concrete Wall," or any other song, really, by Zee Avi, an incredible Malaysian singer-songwriter more people should know about because...just listen to her.]

Male and female brains wired differently, according to scientists who should be fired.

According to an article in The Guardian based on a recently published study in PNAS entitled Sex differences in the structural connectome of the human brain, "scientists have drawn on nearly 1,000 brain scans to confirm what many had surely concluded long ago: that stark differences exist in the wiring of male and female brains." As a woman having read just the eight-word headline ("Male and female brains wired differently, scans reveal"), my knee-jerk reaction is that this must be wrong, cannot possibly be good science; as a former cognitive psychology student having read the entire news article and as much of the journal article itself as are available to me, my more rational, analytic response is still that this is wrong, and is not good science.

But which is the lady brain? Neither is pink...
National Academy of Sciences

This is blatant intellectual dishonesty, and both this writer and the researchers themselves should be ashamed. As unthinkable as it is that an entire team of Princeton researchers could draw such wildly inappropriate conclusions from their research, it is even more disheartening to consider the reasons why they might have done so. They argue that patterns of neural connectivity divide along gender lines, where "men's brains apparently wired more for perception and co-ordinated actions, and women's for social skills and memory, making them better equipped for multitasking." For any Neuro/Psych students who are thinking, "Hang on, that's the opposite of everything we've learned about the development of the human brain, which is primarily influenced by its environment," you're right! This write-up and even the study's own abstract are bullshit. Here's the tip-off:

"Male and female brains showed few differences in connectivity up to the age of 13, but became more differentiated in 14- to 17-year-olds."

That is to say that pre-adolescent brains proved, in fact, to be more similar than different until a certain cultural/developmental turning point, which implies that differences in neural connectivity are a product of environmental influence, not based on any biological gendered difference. To be clear: that is exactly the opposite conclusion that this writer, and the researchers themselves are touting. They gloss over the obvious implications -- that these so-called "hard-wired" differences between men and women are the product of gendered roles being forced upon them and that, in turn, shapes their brain functioning --  and the difference between cause and effect in interpreting these results in order to serve lukewarm stereotypes that men are more X and women are more Y because they were made that way. This is not only an incorrect application of these kinds of research methods; it's irresponsible, incorrect, and absolutely disgraceful.

The science correspondent's bias is obvious in his lazy introduction about scientists confirming what the common-sense population "had surely concluded long ago" about women and men's inherently different ways of thinking -- nice universal generalization of your own opinions to society at large, way to go. Even more troubling is how readily one of the contributing researchers summarizes her findings in such complacently sexist terms:

"If you look at functional studies, the left of the brain is more for logical thinking, the right of the brain is for more intuitive thinking. So if there's a task that involves doing both of those things, it would seem that women are hardwired to do those better," Verma said. "Women are better at intuitive thinking. Women are better at remembering things. When you talk, women are more emotionally involved – they will listen more."

Even the official news release from UPenn piles on the hackneyed stereotypes:

"For instance, on average, men are more likely better at learning and performing a single task at hand, like cycling or navigating directions, whereas women have superior memory and social cognition skills, making them more equipped for multitasking and creating solutions that work for a group. They have a mentalistic approach, so to speak."

Women are more intuitive and better listeners, of course! Of course, of course. They are also better equipped to cook and clean because their brains are smaller in size, and thus cannot handle the cognitive load required for higher-order tasks like running a business, leading meetings, or being ordained into the Catholic Church. Men are better at learning -- all types of learning, all the time, no matter what. That's why they're so much smarter.

I had assumed this kind of thinking went out of fashion along with phrenology, but sometimes I can be wrong, too. I eagerly await follow-up brain scan studies confirming that white men are more likely to succeed in leadership positions, black women don't feel pain, and Asians are better than everyone else at math.

This is where my food budget goes.

There's a small grocery store around the corner from my house, close enough that I once debated walking over with just a coat thrown over my pajamas when I realized I didn't have milk for a bowl of cereal in the morning. (I didn't, because anxiety over adhering to social norms is maybe the only thing that can trump my laziness. Also, let's be real here: it was early afternoon.) Today, my groceries consisted of the following:

And I have nothing further to say on the matter.

Cake close-ups.

Yesterday was my brother's 20th (!) birthday. I did not make him a cake, because no amateur birthday cake I could manage to whip up would ever live up to a) boxed yellow cake mix or b) store-bought ice cream cake with those little chocolate crunchies, you know what I'm talking about. These are just facts of life.

Instead, I bought an ice cream cake with chocolate crunchies (duh). We watched Eddie Izzard's "Cake or Death?" sketch, and he had three slices (slabs?) of ice cream cake. Then, for completely unrelated reasons, I baked a loaf of bread and three different cakes. Here they are!

Sally Lunn bread, as seen from above:

Uhhh this is not fluorescent in real life. I don't know what happened here.

Deb Perlman of Smitten Kitchen is my #1 culinary role model. She posted this recipe, and I followed along without changing a single thing, which is unheard of. I trust her that much. She recommended pairing this slightly sweet, brioche-like bread with honey brown butter, and a warm slice of this spread with that is reason enough to believe in a higher power.

I swear, you could slather that all over a used sock and I'd have to think long and hard about how inadvisable it would be to lick it off. I tried to take a quick picture of my test slice, with the honey butter on it gleaming brighter than sunshine, but I ate it in about eight bites instead. (That doesn't sound that impressive, but I have a small mouth, so take my word for it.)

This is another Smitten Kitchen favorite:

This strawberry buttermilk cake delivers the biggest payoff for the least effort of any recipe I know. The original, which uses raspberries, is my personal favorite take on it, but the strawberries in the fridge were about three minutes away from spontaneously exploding into fuzzy mold, so in they went. The second cake was the same, but with semi-sweet chocolate chips, in case of any weirdos who wouldn't want the fruity, delicious first option. I didn't take a picture of that one because all the chips sank, leaving a perfectly smooth, perfectly dull surface with the chocolate lurking beneath. Surprise for whoever cuts the first slice!

I've been trying to find a suitable coffee cake recipe: the kind of coffee cake that contains no coffee but plenty of cinnamon, topped generously but not indecently with sugary streusel. It's harder than it sounds. I thought I'd managed it this time, but instead of beautiful brown sugar crumbles, I got this craggy alien landscape:

You know what, though? It's delicious. It's a keeper. Don't judge a cake by its nooks and crannies.

I wrapped everything up in foil and labeled it:

So don't anyone ever tell me that you can't "win" at church coffee-hour. I'm pretty sure I just did.

Long walks on the beach sense of humor chocolate friends.

I'm a pretty hip, with-it Millenial (with limited job prospects and cynicism disproportional to my age and advantages), but I still don't get online dating. Real-life dating is already such a bizarre, foreign concept to me, and I worry enough about my 160-character Twitter bio to even imagine what hell it would be like to pitch myself to potential cute strangers in a few paragraphs. Coupled with what I've just realized is my new status as a "professional writer" (in that I occasionally receive payment for verbal services rendered; not to be confused with being a particularly good writer) and the additional pressure to be witty and articulate that comes with that, I would rather perform a root canal on myself than write an online dating profile.

This knit cactus understands online better than I do.

Luckily, I don't have to figure out how to use SEO tactics to maximize traffic to my OKCupid/eHarmony/UniformDating.com ("for singles in uniform and those who like them!") profile. For one, I'm un-single at the moment, with no plans to change my Facebook relationship status anytime in the future. For another, there's a way to cheat now: this random text generator that pulls keywords from actual dating profiles to cobble together whole paragraphs of phrases like "playing my guitar Woody Allen dogs everything but country music." It's like Frankenstein's Monster all over again, except with dating clichés. It's amazing. Here's what I got:

Exploring the city I'm pretty laid-back playing my guitar Woody Allen. Going to shows hiking art school outdoorsy the simple things in life, foreign films self-deprecating humor Indian food coffee really hoppy beers. Tattoos feminism Oxford comma outdoor activities fitness local sports teams. 

My cats honest and direct happy hour making people laugh. I hate lists new friends having a few beers outdoor activities Vampire Weekend, Netflix The Daily Show grilling honest and direct my beard. Amazing women I've met feminism I enjoy fascinates me I don't really like talking about myself glass half-full.

 It's fascinating and a little disheartening how relevant that is to my tastes and interests. I'm passionate about feminism, the Oxford comma, Netflix, and The Daily Show, I really am; it's just that the entire online dating community seems to be as well. Then again, the random text is more inaccurate than it is accurate, and it's only thanks to the Barnum effect that I think it's so spot-on. Like horoscopes, another form of basically randomly generated text (sorry, astrology-believers, but not really that sorry), the fake dating profile is broad and vague enough that I and everyone else are all willing to claim that it sounds just like us. So much for individualism, and best of luck to anyone trying to sound unique and special to prospective hotties online.

But seriously, try this thing out. Who wouldn't want to date someone who's into outdoor activities tattoos Doctor Who strong and confident? No pressure, they're only looking to have some fun not too complicated joking around glass half-full honest and direct. You could grab coffee or a drink bikes fixing up my house hiking together! Let me know how the date goes.

[Shout-out to The Hairpin for inspiration!]

Teach me how to British.

I've officially accepted my offer to begin my postgraduate life at the University of York this fall, hurray! I'll be spending the next year studying for an MA in Modern and Contemporary Literature and Culture, and hopefully applying to continue on to a PhD immediately after. As it turns out, my Scottish rejection was something of an anomaly; all eight English universities to which I applied offered me a place, and I'm thrilled that I was able to say yes to York.

Orientation starts September 28, and until then, the remainder of my summer is a series of waiting periods: for my student aid information to arrive, for my loan application to make it across the ocean by snail mail, for York's financial support office to approve it, for the UK Border Agency to issue my visa, for the plane to touch down in Manchester, and for the line at Immigration before they stamp my passport and officially let me into the country. Naturally, I've already begun exhaustive research on both the city and the university (there are so many grocery stores! there's a chocolate tour!), and I've found the university-provided International Student Handbook particularly helpful in teaching me the nuances of British life.

"Look at how diverse we are!" screams the handbook's cover page, desperately.

On humour-with-a-u:

"The British sense of humour can be difficult to understand and often involves the use of irony. For further information on irony and how it is used, please see the following article in The Guardian newspaper: www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2003/jun/28/weekend7.weekend2." 

That link leads to an article that includes the following passage:
"There are a few reasons why we think the Americans have no sense of irony. First, theirs is rather an optimistic culture, full of love of country and dewy-eyed self-belief and all the things that Europe's lost going through the war spindryer for the thousandth time. This is all faith-based - faith in God, faith in the goodness of humanity, etc - and irony can never coexist with faith, since the mere act of questioning causes the faith fairy to disappear."

You'll never take away my dewy-eyed self-belief!

On minding your p's and q's:

"British people may seem rather reserved and distant. This is not because they are being deliberately unfriendly; often they are trying not to invade your privacy. 

 British people may not seem to be very direct. This is because they don’t wish to be impolite so may not say what they really think.   

British people are very aware of their ‘personal space’ and do not like it if you get too close to them, for instance when holding a conversation.

It is considered important and respectful to say please, thank you and sorry."

Ugh, chill out, United Kingdom. This is why people think you're uptight. Please AND sorry? Get over yourselves.

On ladies wearing breeches and men wearing bonnets:

"Gender roles may seem different and confusing to you."

I was under the impression that I was dating a nice young Englishman, but maybe I was wrong about the -man part? Oh, no.

On sucking face in the street:

"It is quite acceptable to see couples, including same sex couples, kissing and holding hands in public."

What kind of ungodly, immoral country am I going to where people think it's okay to hold hands in public? Get a room, Brits!

On xenophobia:

"Britain is generally a very tolerant country and known for liberal attitudes towards people of other nationalities who choose to live in the UK."

Hot damn, I can't wait to be tolerated.

On avoiding deportation or jail:

"The laws in the UK may be very different to those in your home country. Please be aware that the following are illegal: Carrying or using any illegal drugs including cannabis, ecstasy, LSD or amphetamines."

Illegal drugs are illegal. Got it.

On getting crunk:

"People in the UK are allowed by law to buy alcohol when they are 18 years old. As this coincides with many UK students going to University, you may see some UK students drinking to excess as it is a new experience for them.

Some British people focus a large part of their social life around alcohol and this may seem quite strange to you. There will be UK and international students who do not like to drink alcohol at all or who choose to drink in moderation. You should not feel pressured to drink alcohol if you do not want to. Drinking too much alcohol can be dangerous."

Translation: no matter what country you're in, freshmen remain the same.

On the need for Pepto-Bismol:

"It is also common for new international students to experience upset stomachs following arrival. This is usually due to the body adjusting to different food and water and it does not mean you are allergic to all UK foods." 

This un-American water is making me ill.

Olives?

I have a lot of faith in my friends. I think a lot of them are funnier, smarter, nicer, and better-looking than I am, and occasionally I try to take advantage of their worldliness by foisting my naïveté upon them via Twitter, hoping they'll set me straight.

What do olives taste like, I asked innocently, attempting to crowdsource my life experiences. What do olives taste like, I asked, hoping for a consensus. Instead, I got the following:

According to K, olives taste like "rancid slime."
According to H, kalamata olives are "salty, earthy, sharp-tasting, a bit acrid, but all in pleasant ways!"
According to M, pickled olives "taste like salty death."

That really clears things up.

YOU GUYS, WHAT IS THE DEAL WITH OLIVES? I just want to know.

P.S. I once made the mistake of asking Twitter if cookie butter is worth trying. An account claiming to be cookie butter itself tweeted back at me that it would sooo risky to pay the $3.99 to find out. I did not take kindly to sass from a dessert spread. 

Like April 1st all over again.

Eating pretzels in the library during my carefree undergrad days.

I got a rejection letter today.

I wasn't turned down for my dream job after a month of rigorous background checks and nerve-wracking interviews or anything like that. That kind of rejection letter is the terror of the mature job seeker, a class which I have yet to join (although I'm starting to suspect that with my new qualifications, I would have an easier time finding full-time employment than the part-time summer work I'm looking for now -- damn you, high schoolers). It wasn't even technically a letter, more like an email notification that I should log into an online account to check the message in my one-way inbox, but it was definitely a rejection. University of X does not, in fact, want me in their graduate program, and they made no attempts to soften the blow:

"We are unable to consider you for a place on this programme as the information you provided in support of your application did not meet the standard we require."

I'm biased, but that sounds like kind of a bitchy way to put it, no?

It's not the first time I've had higher education turn me away. I'm not yet at a point in my life where I feel secure enough in myself to advertise just how many colleges turned me down as an aspiring seventeen-year-old with a decent GPA but killer standardized test scores (the telltale indicator of lazy smart kids across the nation), but suffice it to say that my heart knew a lot of brokenness the spring of 2009 that had very little to do with teenage boys.

A little over four years later, I have a bachelor's degree with honors from a well-ranked institution, I've worked six different jobs (four of them simultaneously at one point), I've flown across the ocean and back a few times, I've conversed in French with actual French people, I'm ranked in the top 1% of Scramble with Friends players globally, I make people laugh sometimes, and now I'm applying to graduate school with enthusiastic references from two professors I respect and admire. If that all sounds like I'm being a bit defensive in order to remind myself that I'm not generally a failure in life, it's because I am. Practice does not make rejection perfect.

Proof of my mild distinction.

The good news is that I have two other universities willing to take me on for a Master's in Modern Literature, and I'm holding out hope for another six. Unless dire circumstances strike in the next two months or so, I'll be a graduate student somewhere in England this coming fall -- or a postgrad, as they call it -- and I'll be so over University of X. For now, their rejection is a fresh bruise, but I've always thought bruises were kind of pretty, all colorful and mottled, and so full of character. I'll move on, and I'll almost -- but never completely -- forget about it. I'll go somewhere else, and they'll be sorry it's not there.

Also I unfollowed them on Twitter. Take that, jerks.

Standing with Wendy.

I planned to go to bed early tonight, but I made the mistake of tuning in to the online live stream of the Texas Senate's special session. State Senator Wendy Davis (D-TX, Fort Worth) was filibustering Senate Bill 5, a piece of anti-abortion legislation that would inevitably be passed by the Republican majority if put to a vote. SB 5 proposes to prohibit late-stage abortions under criminal penalties and effectively reduce the number of health clinics performing abortions in Texas from 42 to just 5 by imposing new requirements forcing clinics to undergo certification as "ambulatory surgical centers" and mandating that clinic doctors have admitting privileges at local hospitals -- conditions that, in their absence, have never before interfered with clinics' ability to perform safe, necessary medical procedures. In order to avoid giving Republicans the chance to pass the bill, Senator Davis announced her intention to filibuster, i.e. to remain on the floor discussing the bill for the 13 hours remaining until midnight, when the special session would be required to close without having had the chance to vote. Because the Texas Senate only convenes once every two years, with the exception of governor-mandated special sessions like this one, the legislation would have been tabled until 2015.

AP/Eric Gay

I'd been watching parts of Senator Davis's remarkable performance on and off throughout the day, as she read to a predominantly-male Senate a series of testimonies by Texas women who'd had firsthand experience needing abortion services. Not being allowed to sit, lean, eat, drink, use the bathroom, or otherwise move from an upright standing position during the filibuster, Senator Davis wore comfortable neon-pink running shoes for her very lengthy speaking engagement. She was holding up well, until the third time a Senator called for a Point of Order due to to Senator Davis allegedly breaking the filibuster rules. The first time was for introducing a topic that was not "germane," which is to say relevant, to the discussion of the abortion bill; the second was because she received physical assistance from another senator handing her a back brace midway through her lengthy standing session; the third and final interruption was again a claim that discussing Texas's newly passed ultrasound law was somehow off-topic when discussing abortion. I didn't witness the first two objections, but the third is definitively nonsense: by no stretch of the imagination are ultrasounds -- which Texas now requires for all women undergoing abortions -- NOT related to the bill at hand.

In short, with about two hours remaining on the clock for Senator Davis's filibuster, the remaining time was filled with an almost comically confused back-and-forth between senators about parliamentary procedure, like first-graders arguing over whose turn it is to play with the toy truck, or a particularly inept rendition of Who's On First. The Democratic minority senators backed her up, with Senators Leticia Van de Putte and Kirk Watson in particular providing robust appeals of the appeals to the filibuster (it got complicated). Senator Van de Putte, having been overlooked in earlier parliamentary proceedings, triggered the night's final push with only ten minutes left to midnight when she directly addressed the President of the Senate to ask, "At what point must a female senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over her male colleagues?” The thousands of citizens watching and listening from the balcony erupted, and the cheering drowned out any attempts at legislation until midnight had safely passed.

The sinister twist to the story is what happened next: the Senators huddled -- literally huddled, in a small mob of suits and thinning hair -- and took a vote anyway, two minutes past their deadline. They claim to have passed SB 5 with a vote of 17-12 in favor, but the midnight deadline is non-negotiable, and that verdict is therefore illegal. No one is sure what happens now, but the thousands of protestors remain in and around the Texas Senate building awaiting confirmation either way. Department of Public Safety officers are handcuffing and forcibly removing them one by one, but the pro-choice supporters are stubborn, and they're there in droves.

I live-tweeted the situation, naturally. If anyone's interested, I'm trying out Storify for the first time to compile my take on the events as they happened:



[Update] Fast-forward to now. It's 3:30 a.m., and by the time anyone reads this, the cat will be out of the bag: SB 5 IS DEAD. Thank you, Wendy Davis; thank you, Leticia Van de Putte; thank you, Kirk Watson; thank you, Democratic senators whose names I didn't catch, women and men both. Thank you to all the avid Twitter users who kept the rest of the country informed while every single major news network slept. Huge shoutout to The Texas Tribune, whose live stream and live blog proved that local news isn't dead, and that we need it more than ever.

Nick Swartsell, via Texas Observer

I've never had an abortion, and I don't have any immediate plans to need one -- but then again, no one ever does. I'm also not a Texan, and definitely never intend to become one. Nevertheless, this was a personal victory for me, as it was for every single person in the country who may one day have to resort to this kind of reproductive care, and I'm glad I stayed awake to see it happen.

How (not) to make jokes about women.

This picture of me will be relevant later. I look okay, though, right?

[Note: this is not new, but it’s new to me, so I’m writing about it as if it were new to everyone.]

A little over a year ago, 4Chan, the sort of Reddit Lite image-sharing forum site where teenage boys go to feel something – anything – birthed a “hilarious” meme called “2/10: Would Not Bang.” It’s a spinoff of the 2010 “Butthurt Dweller” meme, which in itself subscribes to that brand of humor that strives for irony but trips over its own offensiveness: the acne-ridden, glasses-wearing, greasy-ponytail-sporting face of the meme makes judgmental comments about other people, even though he’s not such a hot item himself.

The joke is in the irony, of course, because what right does some video-game-playing nerd who lives with his parents have to comment on anyone else? Just as much of a right as anyone else, arguably, but there’s potential for a genuine laugh in the contrast between “Complains about being bullied in school / Calls everyone a faggot online” or “Complains that girls only like attractive guys / Likes girls because they are hot.” That’s incisive, and it’s based in truth – there really are people like that, and I tend to be okay with making fun of people who make fun of other people. (Note that I don’t apply this eye-for-an-eye philosophy in other areas of my life.)

“Butthurt Dweller” isn’t a name I totally love, though, because in simple terms: butthurt → reference to anal sex + male character → insinuations of homosexuality + intention to be humorous → gay people are funny because ew = homophobia. So BD, as we’ll call him, is often paired up with captions specifically leveling ridiculous criticisms of women, like “Girl I stalk is holding hands with some guy / WHORE.” That’s hilarious, because it’s a clearly unfair accusation borne out of the character’s bitterness rather than reality. However, there’s a difference between jokes that establish BD as a jerk then play off that, and jokes that assume BD’s worth is tied up in his attractiveness. He looks like this:

…and that joke only works because the viewer agrees that this is a wildly unattractive guy who would never have a shot with any woman, period. That’s pretty shallow.

The “2/10: Wouldn’t Bang” meme arose from this shared agreement between meme-maker and audience that BD doesn’t get girls, so it’s super ironic of him to be so critical of women when, again, he looks like this:

So 4Chan users ran with the joke, creating “2/10: Would Not Bang” as a sort of competition to see who could come up with the most ridiculously unfounded criticisms of beautiful women, starting with comments Photoshopped over an image of actress/model/WWE fighter/George Clooney’s girlfriend Stacy Keibler in her underwear: her eyebrow arch is too extreme, her bra and panties don’t match, her bracelet isn’t authentic quartz, the curtains are wrinkled, 2/10: WOULD NOT BANG. This, I submit to the jury, is good comedy. What isn’t so funny are the memes that came after it:

Did you catch that? “Fat ass pinky” is funny; “rope should be around neck” is horrifying. Implying that a woman should commit suicide is never funny, and even less so here because it’s so out of the blue: why, exactly, should that rope be around her neck? Because she’s, ha ha, not pretty enough? That’s sick, and whoever “would not bang” this woman is definitely not someone I would bang, or let my friends bang.

An image of Angelina Jolie, voted Most Beautiful Woman in the World (probably by a bunch of heterosexual men) like, a million times, is great fodder for this meme:

“Ears too high for head,” “nose bridge too straight edged,” and “hideous mole” (pointing to maybe a two-pixel blemish) are all outlandish comments to make about Angelina Jolie. This meme succeeds, but it’s one of the few that does so without taking a sharp turn away from humor into perpetuating legitimately offensive comments about these women’s appearances:

The first example is straight-up rude. “Forehead cut off” is worth a laugh because duh, how irrelevant to someone’s appearance, but “big ears,” “big man shoulders,” and “boobs too small” are likely contenders for things that girl has actually thought about herself, looking in the mirror on a particularly rough day. Irony succeeds when it presents a view that contrasts sharply with someone’s expectations, like if a picture of Dolly Parton were captioned “boobs too small, would not bang,” but this fails to do that.

The second example, which not only repeats the not-so-funny “Jew nose” joke while introducing the term “gypsy,” which is a racial slur, also completely misses the point. The girl’s cleavage really isn’t presented from the best angle there, so calling it “Grand Canyon cleavage” is just doubling down on an actual, if infinitesimally minimal, flaw in her picture. “Roger Rabbit teeth” doesn’t make sense: her teeth aren’t big enough to merit derogatory comments, but they’re not so small to make that criticism truly outlandish, either. “Rings from extensive goggle usage”…well, that’s just not funny, try again.

According to an article by Slacktory, a self-identifying “comedic blog about the pop culture of the internet,” Would Not Bang is the funniest thing going (or at least it was in 2012; again, sorry for my much-belated outrage). According to me, a self-identifying woman with 21+ years’ worth of experience as a punch line for jokes about making sandwiches and being a bad driver, it’s more inadvertently misogynistic garbage masquerading as satire that buries any actual comedic value under a dump truck’s worth of humor that laughs at women, not with them. Sure, there are a few examples of men being subjected to the Would Not Bang treatment, but the Slacktory gallery at least didn't bother to include any. At any rate, this is just one example of the myriad ways our society normalizes putting women on display like museum exhibits; while it might be flattering to treat someone like art, it also makes them an object, potentially one that can be bought and sold. People aren’t paintings, and they’re worth more than face value.

Some of the meme creators used pictures of celebrities; others used pictures that, worryingly, look to be pulled off a Facebook page, not necessarily with the subject’s consent. I can’t do anything about that, but what I can do is present my version of the 2/10: Would Not Bang meme with myself as both joke-maker and joke-taker, using a picture that I thought I looked at least good enough in to send to my boyfriend (although the kissyface IS a joke). Female-authored comedy right here, everyone:

Hideous.

I got in the kitchen and made me a sandwich.

Giant mutant strawberries are coming for us all.

Over the past four years of splitting my life between Morristown and Meadville, I've found that one thing remains constant when I come home: there's never any food in the house. There will always be leftovers more than a week old, a giant tub of baking powder that expired in 2010, a plastic lemon half-filled with juice that grows ever more acidic and not in a good way, and whole milk when I've grown used to skim and 2%, but there has never been anything I'd be excited to eat. I've been home for a month now, and yesterday was the first time I had a chance to go grocery shopping with my mom (read: without using my own money; starving grad student habits start now)...and I did with a vengeance. (Or a hunger. Damn, missed that pun.) It took two stores and four hours, but the kitchen is stocked and my stomach doesn't have any reason to complain for a few weeks.

With the proper ingredients in the house, the obvious first step is to bake. I woke up this morning and made buttermilk biscuits for my best friend, who's off to start her new life in the South and will probably have more and better biscuits in Kentucky. I ate the ugly biscuit, made up of all the fragments of dough left from cutting the prettier biscuits, as soon as it came out of the oven; the rest are sealed up in foil for future reasons that I will elaborate upon shortly.

I got more ambitious for late lunch/early dinner (had a verrry long nap this afternoon, so) and made a sandwich that came to me in a vision yesterday afternoon: prosciutto, mozzarella, and baby spinach with cracked black pepper, toasted and pressed in a buttered skillet. The abundance of food blogs I read have always helpfully suggested that a home cook with a panini craving but no sandwich press to call her own can concoct a sort-of substitution with a foil-covered brick, a clothing iron, or a particularly heavy saucepan, so being without brick and skeptical of ironing my sandwich, I tried the third method today. It looked like this:

THREE saucepans.

Not quite food blog worthy. Check out the sandwich, though!

Yeah, I eat in front of my laptop, whatever I'm a millenial.

Then I had an ice cream sandwich and cut up some strawberries, tossed them in white sugar, and put them in the fridge so that I can take them out tomorrow when they're all syrupy and make strawberry shortcake with the leftover biscuits and vanilla ice cream and maybe some melted chocolate over top and I just really love food, you know?

Blerg.

Lately I've been getting occasional bursts of energy and inspiration and motivation for self-improvement, which would be well and good if they didn't always occur in the middle of the night. I tried to go to sleep early(ish, at about half past midnight), but woke up around 4:00 a.m. and couldn't get back to sleep. Instead, I read up on the Supreme Court decision giving law enforcement officials the go-ahead to take a cheek swab of any arrestee's DNA without obtaining a specific warrant in advance, the nouveau riche class in mainland China, and a Philadelphia experimental theatre company's race-swapped adaptation of Uncle Tom's Cabin in Philadelphia. I scrolled through Tumblr for a while and reblogged some crossover fanart of John Watson à la BBC Sherlock in his soldier days with a pet Growlithe because that's the kind of thing that appeals to me these days. Then I tried in vain to find an original source for said fanart, and lamented that we live in a world where people don't think to credit artists before appropriating their work for Tumblr-fame.

Then I got sad about how much I think about Tumblr in general.

I've been trying to brush up on my French again. If I'm completely honest, a lot of that effort is driven by guilt at including "French: intermediate reading, writing, and translation proficiency; conversational speaking proficiency" on my graduate school résumé, which is...a stretch. I once vaguely considered how much I would enjoy working as a literary translator, and I still anticipate that I'll need to manage quite an advanced level of reading proficiency to take advantage of academic resources in French someday, so it's a career-driven goal in that way. I also have lofty ambitions of reading at least sections of Proust in the original French at some point in my life -- who doesn't? (People with better things to do/care about.) Part of it, too, is the stubborn refusal to let what was technically a very significant chunk of my education (six years through middle/high school, an AP class, a 300-level college course, travel in Paris and Belgium) go to waste. Duolingo has been enormously helpful in helping remind me of the basics, and I've been pleasantly surprised to realize how much I already/still understand of the more subtle nuances that don't come across so well in online software. It's also incredibly satisfying to learn new vocabulary, which is one of the most instantly gratifying intellectual experiences out there. It's hard not to brag, actually: I didn't know this word in French yesterday, and I do today, which makes me one word smarter now than I was then, you guys! Be thankful I don't tweet about it every time.

I'm also blogging again, I guess. I'm an unemployed English major; it's basically a right of passage.

Me and John Watson: SO ALIKE .

Swish and flick.

It's been a while since I've touched a video game controller. While I'm proud to say that growing up female never hindered me from holding my own in Super Smash Bros. tournaments with rooms full of boys -- always boys -- more invested in the outcome than I was, these days most of my interactions with video games involve waiting for The Boy to finish playing Skyrim and talk to me. (He always eventually does, so no worries there.) I respect video game culture, I appreciate the incredible skill and artistry that goes into game design, I have friends who play video games, etc. but it's just not my scene right now. That said, it takes something really impressive to make me sit up in my warm bed on a cold winter morning to watch half an hour's worth of video trailers: something like Sony's new Wonderbook: Book of Spells, inspired by Harry Potter and based on Miranda Goshawk's Book of Spells, the predecessor to the Standard Book of Spells, Grade 1 that's listed as required reading for any first-year Hogwarts student.

From a screencap of the Wonderbook game.

If that previous sentence seems to have taken a sharp left from the territory of real-world technology into fictional spellcasting -- well, that may have been the game designers' point. The Wonderbook technology is, according to the Sony + London Studios team, the first instance of "augmented reality" in game design, in which a physical book and handheld motion controller directly correspond to their virtual equivalents -- a richly illustrated magical textbook and, naturally, a wand -- to create an experience that's a little bit reality and more than a little bit fantasy.

London Studio Director Dave Lanyard refers to the experience of turning physical Wonderbook pages and having the action reflected by your character on screen as like looking in a "magic mirror," where the mirror is your TV screen, which sounds about the most apt metaphor for video game play in general. As a person who still maintains that the dawn of Wii-style motion sensor technology (however uncool the Wii itself mostly turned out to be) was one of the most exciting advancements in video games for as long as I've been a consumer of them, this kind of integration of tangible movement and virtual consequences is about a hair's-breadth away from actual magic to me.

The game illustrations are, predictably, unspeakably gorgeous. They've used the same saturated but sort of antique color palette as Pottermore (which I've written about previously), and there are flying dragons and flaming sparks and water spraying out from your wand after casting Aguamenti and I can't even, watch the video instead:

The developers' diary video of how the creatures were animated is particularly enthralling:

Frog-rabbits! The sound of the dragon's wings flapping is the sound of a fireball! Creatures and their "fantastical natures!" You guys, this is the kind of thing that makes me sad to have grown up at the same that I wonder if I really have at all.

The sad news -- for me, at least -- is that I don't own a PS3, nor do I have any immediate plans to expend my meager student savings on one. As much as I find new technology fascinating and even exciting enough to wake me up in the morning, I'm on more of an ink-and-paper budget. I wasn't paid to write about this new, crazy awesome thing I got an email about, but if I were, I'd probably buy, like, a new sweater with the money. If anyone were ever going to convince me otherwise, though, it would probably only take thismuch more magic to do the trick.

Wait, what, the game includes new original content by J. K. Rowling unavailable anywhere else?! Shit. I need a PS3.

P.S. Despite growing up in a household with a younger brother who always got the video games he wanted for Christmas and thereby provided me with access to a number of consoles for the borrowing, the only game I've ever bought for myself was Harry Potter Quidditch World Cup for GameCube. No one is surprised. (I was the best at it.)