P.S.
Art by Kristen Hemrich
October 02, 2019
After a particularly hard day (or week, or month), I’ll buy myself something indulgent. “I deserve this,” I’ll say, as I sit down with a selection of Trader Joe’s frozen desserts or as I browse Sephora’s website. Such a transaction is easy—I feel like my actions warrant a reward. I made it through a midterm, I’m hightailing it to Juice Laundry. But I find it is much harder to conceptualize what I intrinsically deserve, just from existing and taking up space. Radical acceptance of the fact
Art by Kirsten Hemrich
September 19, 2019
Welcome back to another year of Iris! It’s almost fall, which means it’s finally the time of the year when I have things to look forward to, like celebrating all the best holidays (including my birthday) and being able to wear a jacket without accruing copious amounts of armpit sweat. The transition into autumn has always read like my favorite novel, like a slow and sweet descent into a happy ending, despite any brief plot twists thrown my way.
However, this semester I feel a
Art by Kirsten Hemrich
April 17, 2019
This is it, Iris’s last issue for the 2018-2019 school year, and we could not have been happier to have spent the last several months sharing our thoughts, ideas, and passions with the Iris readership. For many of us, the closing of this year means the closing of our chapters at both Iris and at UVA. On one hand, we all love a good transition. We love the opportunity to say goodbye to the old and welcome the new. On the other hand, I’m
Art by Kirsten Hemrich
March 20, 2019
I love Spring as much as the next person. I love when it gets warmer and the days get longer. I love retiring my parka for a few months and opting for a lighter jacket that’s not nearly as heavy. I love that my car isn’t buried in the snow, and that my seasonal affective disorder has taken a hiatus. I love showing off my very pale, very translucent legs in my favorite tennis skort that I wear 5-6 times before washing. Do I play tennis? No. Is this hands-down the
Art by Kirsten Hemrich
February 26, 2019
Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex, echoed the sentiment of all of us when she said, “Personally, I love a good love story.” Ali McGraw melted our hearts when she told us, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” James Joyce had us utterly confused when he explained, “Love loves to love love.”
Regardless of the words, love is truly a universal
Art by Kirsten Hemrich
February 12, 2019
January has come and gone, February is upon us, and Iris is back with a new edition.
It’s truly a miracle we have already made it this far in 2019, and we’re only getting started. It’s time to reflect on what we’ve accomplished thus far. Some of us have held on to our resolutions, but most of us have already decided that 2020 will just have to be our year. And that’s really ok. Because being successful in absolutely every thing that we do is simply not possible on our journey
Art by Kirsten Hemrich
January 20, 2019
Welcome to a New Year! In January, we push ourselves to resolve new paths and fresh ways of doing things. This could mean anything, from going for a run every once in a while, to picking up our journals and meditating on each day. It could be reconnecting with an old friend, or finally getting yourself out of a toxic relationship that has been bringing you down for years. For me, this means a 7th attempt in just as many months to give up eating pizza in my clean
Art by Kirsten Hemrich
November 14, 2018
How did we get here? It’s already November, and we all know what that means: it’s time to think of what makes us thankful. Of course we are thankful for the obvious things: family, friends, our health, the continued success of Keeping Up with the Kardashians.
And then there are those things that we really have to dig deep for, the
Art by Kirsten Hemrich
November 12, 2018
About a year ago, I started on a journey towards building a sustainable wardrobe. I wrote a final paper for my feminist theory class on how fast fashion retailers (specifically Zara) target the “neoliberal female subject.” I felt like these clothing companies were way too prevalent in my brain, and I
October 31, 2018
We are halfway through the semester, and for most of us, things are just as confusing as they were at the beginning. We’re still stressed, lost, overanalyzing every decision we made up to this point, regretting the choices that left us in spaces of uncertainty and doubt. But hey, that’s showbiz baby.
What we don’t seem to recognize and fail to dissect with every