Author: ipaulesbronet
Back to Life
by Rachael Phillips
This song, Back to Life, was written by a dear friend of mine from the four months I spent in Cape Town, South Africa this year. Rachael and I spent an unforgettable weekend together in a township called Ocean View, and we continued to bond for the rest of the semester over our love of English, late night coffee, the University’s weekly jazz shows, and interesting people. I came across this song on her Facebook, and was amazed by its stunningly haunting quality. It is beautiful and thoughtful and I can’t wait to have it stuck in my head for the rest of this week. I hope you all enjoy!
13 Thoughts People Have When They Cut Their Legs While Shaving
1. Doo da doo, shaving my legs, gonna try not to miss any spots this time.
2. Oooh my legs are gonna be so soft after this. I should remember to put on lotion.
3. Wait a second, why is the water red…?
4. SHIT. Am I bleeding??
5. How the hell did THAT happen? I didn’t even feel it!
6. Where is it even coming from?!
7. There’s so much blood. It looks like someone amputated my entire foot.
8. Whyyyyyy why why was this necessary. I did not need this.
9. Okay, I found the spot. It’s so small! Why on earth did is bleed this much?! I will never understand.
10. Time to administer the crumpled ball of toilet paper to my wound.
11. Now, ladies and gentlemen, I will perform the great acrobatic act of continuing to shower with my leg dangling out the side with a cute piece of toilet paper stuck to it.
12. Nope nope I’m definitely going to fall.
13. Ughhhhh I give up. Guess I’ll shave my right leg another time.
The Definitive Rankings of Disney Princes
11.) Adam (The Beast)
Oh hell to the no! I did not just sit through an hour and a half of pseudo bestiality anime porn to watch Belle end up with some gay ass looking Cara Delevigne impersonator. I mean I get that women are naturally attracted to bad boys/love to “fix” men but that only applies if the guy is hot like James Dean or Joe Jonas circa 2009. Newsflash boys, you can only be an asshole if you’re hot.
10. Kristoff
I understand that Princess Anna is adorkable and quirky or whatever but did they really have to pair her with a guy who was raised by trolls and gets intimate with a reindeer in his spare time? Sure, he’s nice and whatever but he’s just not Prince material- especially when you consider the fact that his nose is big enough to be a landing strip for planes. The…
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When a Guy Tries to Kiss You in the Bar
All You Need Is…
My dad just sent this to me. He knows me so well.
Upworthy’s “The Perfect Flow Chart To Help You Determine If Someone Owes You Some Sexual Relations”
Check out this flow chart to see when a woman owes a man something. Spoiler alert: the answer is never.
My Friend was Sexually Assaulted in my Bed: When “No” Means Nothing
Check out my article, published on Unwritten!
This One’s for the Girls
“Truth or dare?”
“Truth.”
“What’s the most embarrassing thing you’ve ever done?”
Well, what WAS the most embarrassing thing I’d ever done? I racked my brain and came up with squat. I wasn’t someone who did embarrassing things. Ever. I was the opposite of young, wild, and free – I was mature, tame, and restrained. I was insecure and doubtful and had no idea what my place in the world was. Eventually, I answered the question, as I did every time, with some bullshit answer that wasn’t remotely embarrassing, claiming that I just couldn’t think of the best one at the time.
The truth was, I knew what the most embarrassing thing about me was. But it wasn’t something I had done, it was something I hadn’t done. At 19 years old, I had never been kissed. As confident as I was in other aspects of my life, I was ashamed of being 19 and kiss-less. In my 19 years, not a single boy told me I was beautiful. It hurt. I felt unwanted and invisible. My friends didn’t understand and I felt alone.
Now, I’m not trying to make this some sob story about a girl who had never been kissed and was insecure and melodramatic about it. That IS how I felt, but this story isn’t about how awful it was to be me at 19. What I’m trying to do is reach the population of people just like me, the 13, 18, or 27 year-olds out there who are in the exact same position as I was, and tell you that there is nothing to be ashamed of; it is actually (truthfully and honestly) not a big deal, no matter how it feels.
I thought my first kiss would be a big deal and that it would define who I was. Sophomore year of high school my best friend and I made a pact: we both felt kind of lame for still being first-kiss-less, so we decided that whenever we got our first kisses, we would buy each other ice cream. About six months later, I bought her ice cream. Four years later, she bought me ice cream. Needless to say, I felt like the biggest loser on the entire planet. I literally did not know a single person less experienced than I was. I wanted my first kiss to be magical, to be special, to be with someone I cared about.
It wasn’t. It was on a dance floor, he was probably drunk, he lifted me up and everyone probably saw my hot pink lace leopard print underwear, and we didn’t exchange names until after we finished making out. I was THAT girl. It was embarrassing. I was frustrated – nobody was ever interested in me except for the people I was extraordinarily NOT interested in, and I just decided, screw it. My friends didn’t understand why I felt so weird afterwards; I mean, college (yeah, you did your math correctly earlier) hookups are totally normal. But I had totally let myself down – I’d had standards that I completely dropped because I was sick of not feeling okay about my total lack of sexual experience. I try to not regret things I have done, but I think I regret this. It didn’t make me feel any better about myself when I woke up the next day, and it didn’t help my confidence. I felt awkward, stupid, lame, and disappointed in myself. This was the opposite of what I wanted it to be – not only was it not someone special, it was someone I didn’t even know. There were no fireworks, there was no magic. There was just a lot of tongue.
Long story short, I wanted to get my first kiss over with. I felt stigmatized (if only by myself) for being so inexperienced and I was done with it. It was a mistake. So for anyone out there trying to decide whether or not to “just get it over with,” whether “it” is your first kiss, your first time having sex, or anything else, don’t do it. Keep your standards; it’s worth waiting for someone who is worth it.
“So, Ileana, what’s the most embarrassing thing you’ve ever done?”
“Saying yes when the guy who I danced with for ten minutes drunkenly asked, ‘uhhh… you wanna kiss?'”
Baby Sloth Understands My Life
Guys I just figured out how to put gifs on WordPress (all I had to do was Google it, who knew?). This is a big moment. However, it is 3:27 in the morning (questionable life choices), so I picked one that accurately describes how I am feeling. Thank you baby sloth for understanding me.
Style Inspiration: Edie Sedgwick
Edie Sedgwick was one of Andy Warhol’s superstars. A model, socialite, actress, and American heiress, Edie Sedgwick was another “It Girl” of the 1960s. Edie Sedgwick, much like Twiggy, was thin, mod, and embraced her boyish figure. Like Twiggy, she contributed to the change in modeling in the 1960s.
“I’m in love with everyone I’ve ever met in one way or another. I’m just a crazy, unhinged disaster of a human being.”
The Daily Show’s “The Fault in Our Schools”
This is funny, but too true. Colleges don’t handle sexual assault the way they should. Everyone should watch it and learn a few lessons from what they have to say at the end.
http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/z2b627/the-fault-in-our-schools
The 10 Types of College Relationships
College relationships can be really confusing. After being in a committed relationship for a long time I really never knew all the gray areas in relationships. Becoming single in college was definitely a rude awakening for me. I’ve learned that there are several different types of relationships that exist. Tie in texting/social media/binge drinking and that only complicates things more. So with that said, I’d like to take some time to reflect on the different relationships that exist in college and what they actually mean.
1) Hooking Up
“We’re hooking up” is a phrase that can be complicated. Some identify hooking up as fucking while others just take it as any type of sexual relations. Typically, I see it as the latter. Although hooking up can include sex, I don’t think it necessarily has to. After my dad asked me if I was going to “hook up” with a friend…
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A Treatise from the Bullied
My boyfriend, Matt, is considering starting his own blog and wanted to test out some of his pieces first, so I offered to publish them on Sometimes I Wear Tiaras and see what the feedback is like. This is the first of many articles to come – his critical take on current world issues. Comment or like to share your opinions – thanks!
A Treatise from the Bullied
by Matthew Kugler
Bullying is widely considered an epidemic here in the United States, specifically in our elementary and middle schools. As a kid who was born in the early 90’s, as the awareness to bullying was starting to grow, I have watched the anti-bullying movement develop around me. The bullying epidemic has gotten so bad that when you type “stats on” into Google, the #1 suggested search is “stats on bullying.” The epidemic is real, but the strategy to fix it has to be changed in order to truly affect our children and subsequent generations. Before I delve into the statistics about the anti-bullying movement, let me give you a background of the “bullying” that I experienced growing up.
At the beginning of elementary school, nearly everyone is around the same size. Everyone is young and developing together, until people starts growing, which is when kids start to diverge. Even in first grade, I was one of the smallest kids in the class, always sitting in the front row for class pictures. Because I was so small, bullying was always present in my life, especially once I became a self-declared “nerd.” In first and second grade, I didn’t have many friends, but by third grade I had fully integrated myself into the nerdy kid group. We played our Gameboys under our desks in class and Yu-Gi-Oh during lunch. Needless to say, this geekiness opened the door to a fair amount of ridicule. At this time, there was one kid, Stephen*, who stood out in my life. He had just transferred to our class from a different school, and he was definitely a bully. He pushed people around and was rude and mean to people in the class. One day Stephen decided I was an easy target, and he slapped my Gameboy to the ground. I was overwhelmed and didn’t know what to do, so I ignored him, picked it up, and walked away.
A few days later, Stephen cornered me and tried to get me in a headlock. I panicked, and in a moment of desperation, I bite his arm as hard as I could (I definitely wasn’t strong enough to push him off in any other way). He screamed and ran to the teacher saying that I bit him out of nowhere, but she knew better. However, instead of having the school administrators intervene, facilitating some program about how to deal with bullies, or telling us to make sure to tell an adult if we were getting bullied, our teacher left us to learn and deal with this situation on our own. Starting the next day, my three close friends and I shut Stephen out entirely. We didn’t look in his direction, wouldn’t speak to him if he addressed us, and started telling everyone to do the same. By the end of the week the rest of the class joined in too, and when everyone in the class was no longer speaking to Stephen, he lost all his power. A bully is only effective if the rest of society lets them be; if the collective won’t accept them as a bully, they’ll stop being one. My class and I learned this lesson at age 10, all because the administration decided to make us deal with the situation on our own. A month later, Stephen was a different person altogether and he eventually stopped acting like a jerk. By the end of the year, my friends and I even let him play Yu-Gi-Oh with us.
In middle school, kids start hitting puberty at different times, creating a diverse mix of body types among the students. Some kids look like adults by age 12, while others lag significantly behind. I was one of the latter; I was only 4’6’’, weighed less than 80 pounds soaking wet, and had the muscle definition of a twig. I was 100% the nerdy kid who was just asking to be bullied, and it didn’t even take a full week for someone to notice. This guy was about a foot taller than me and outweighed me by about 100 pounds; he challenged me to fight him right there in the middle of band class/practice. I stared him straight in the face and told him I would fight him in front of everyone if he beat me at a game of chess. Hearing this challenge, the rest of the class watched to see what his reaction would be. With all eyes on him, he lost all his power over me. After that confrontation, we actually became friends and I played him in chess once a week for the rest of our time in middle school (for the record, he never beat me).
Now, with my stories in mind, here is what www.bullyingstatistics.org says about bullying and what should be done to combat it:
“These numbers are too high, and parents and teachers need to do something to stop it. Teens also need to stand together and put an end to bullying. When teens see their peers being bullied, they need to report the incident or get help.”
Things to do to help your child:
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That you go, together, to school authorities to see what can be done in terms of mediation, and in terms of increased attention paid on the school grounds.
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Encourage the child to avoid the child bully, and seek help from a teacher or trusted adult when necessary.
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Practice being assertive and asking the bully to leave the child alone.
In the 1950s, only 2.1 out of every 100,000 adolescents between the ages of 15-19 were committing suicide. The anti-bullying strategies listed above have been in place since the late 1990s when bullying peaked, and resulted in a rate of 11.1 suicides in every 100,000, more than 5 times the number from 1950. Within a few years, the anti-bullying movement was able to reduce this number to 8.1 per 100,000, but the numbers have remained stagnant ever since.
To continue to make progress on reducing bullying, the strategy needs to be reviewed. We need to stop telling our kids that we will solve their problems for them; rather, they need to learn how to solve their own problems. We need to stop making the bully an outcast, because that makes them even more likely to be even more brutal to their victims in the future. We need to encourage our kids to form their own sense of identity, and help them learn that the bully and the bullied are both the same. Both are just kids, trying to learn how to deal with growing up, and helping them to find their collective identity will provide everyone with equal opportunity to be happy. The bully is an outcast just like that nerdy awkward kid, both trying to find who they want to be, wanting to be liked and to find people to share in fun experiences. Once we learn that lesson, we can make progress towards the ultimate goal of reducing the number of kids we have taking their own lives. Instead of fragmenting kids into the bullies and the bullied, we should take action on both sides separately and help them understand each other and work together.
* Name has been changed
Why We Shouldn’t Avoid The Homeless
I agree wholeheartedly. Ignoring homeless people on the street, even if you have absolutely nothing, is cruel – it is saying that you don’t acknowledge that they are people at all. Whether or not you have something to give to them, at least look them in the eyes and show them that you see them and that no matter what, they still deserve to be treated like a human being.
I’m the type of guy who goes out of his way to avoid homeless people. If I see one within 30 feet of me my first instinct is to cross over to the other side of the street or walk on the outside of my friends so I’m less accessible. And when one asks me for change, I generally mutter something about not having money (even though I do) before walking away quickly. In some rare cases, I do give the person a dollar or two, but that is only if the person is friendly and seems less likely to try and gnaw my face off.
I’m aware of the fact that I needn’t feel guilty about doing any of this. Pretending homeless people don’t exist has become the social norm. No one thinks any less of me whenever I refuse to acknowledge a homeless person’s plea or give them…
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Al Dente Pasta and Other Things I Can’t Live Without
- The artistic genius that is the relationship between Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler.
- Chapstick.
- Copious amounts of ice cream.
- Friends (the TV show, not the people I have relationships with in real life). All ten seasons.
- My teddy bear.
- Hair ties.
- The color pink.
- Harry Potter.
- Ridiculous and funky earrings.
Style Inspiration: Twiggy
Twiggy changed the fashion industry for good with her looks in the 1960s. Twiggy represented the height of mod fashion, impacting not only the 60s, but every decade to come after. Twiggy, now in her 60s, is still a prominent figure in fashion and a role model to women everywhere.
“Being a grown-up woman doesn’t mean you can’t look beautiful, individual, and different.”
How to Get a REAL Job in College
Sick of the ole internship model where you spend 3 months getting coffee for the CEO’s production manager’s marketing specialist’s assistant for a salary of $0.00? Join Open Campus, where you’ll be doing REAL work in your area of expertise, getting paid for it, and building up your resume.
This groundbreaking website is student-created, student-run, and built using their own resources. According to the website, “Open Campus is an online community that expertly targets and easily connects students to jobs based on experience level, skill set, and location.”
People all over have work they need done and students have the skills and motivation to do these jobs! Just look at this sketch and imagine how many of these jobs you’d be able to do if they were offered to you! Open Campus wants to put YOU in touch with these businesses.
Entrepreneurs and Skidmore students themselves, Marcella Jewell and Ezra Levy built Open Campus to connect the talent they saw around them on campus to the need they saw in the community. Now they’re trying to grow from their current hold over New York’s Capital Region to a larger population of students all over the country.
So now instead of looking for sketchy Craigslist jobs, or frantically searching Google for nanny jobs in Europe, you can be treated as you should be – like the talented, hardworking adult that you are. Open Campus focuses on the idea that students are an under-utilized group of people who deserve jobs that don’t undermine their skills. Open Campus offers job opportunities to students who want to be respected for the work they excel at. This website is aimed at students who want to utilize their social media skills, interpersonal capabilities, and time management strengths; Generation Y has so much potential – Open Campus wants to show that to the world!
To find more information about Open Campus or to sign up and find/post jobs, check out the following links:
Style Inspiration: Audrey Hepburn
I’ve decided to do a series of posts on fashion icons – people who rule the fashion world and who we can gain inspiration from. Each of these posts will feature one of my fashion idols, along with a quote that exemplifies their take on fashion, womanhood, and the world.
First on the list is Audrey, obviously. Audrey Hepburn is most people’s go-to girl for fashion and beauty inspiration. She is the epitome of poise, girliness, and glamour. Audrey gets a lot of recognition for her influence on the world of beauty and she deserves every ounce of love people give her.
“I believe in pink. I believe that laughing is the best calorie burner. I believe in kissing, kissing a lot. I believe in being strong when everything seems to be going wrong. I believe that happy girls are the prettiest girls. I believe that tomorrow is another day and I believe in miracles.”
4th of July Party Outfit
Sometimes I Wear Tiaras 