Advocacy

I was in Sephora over winter break, looking for a new perfume, when a couple of girls who could not be any older than 11 shoved past me to get to the Sol de Janerio display.

Walking into a dimly lit room, bass vibrations rattling the windows, I look around—the women are in uniform. So am I. The year is 2023. I’m in a small “going out top” matched with straight leg jeans, and for personal flair, my black combat boots.

When I was in first grade, I wished for the first time to be a writer. I pictured holding a book and running my finger over my name in embossed text on the cover of a pristine book jacket.

On a recent Saturday morning, I was bursting out of the dimly lit Paramount Theater in Downtown Charlottesville with furrowed brows and a long stride.

I am no stranger to opinion. 

As someone who gravitates towards op-ed writing, I am used to disagreement. I enjoy reading political essays online, especially from news outlets that allow conservative voices to publish thinkpieces.

I am instantly hit by an unforgiving wave of humidity and booming trap music. There are tons of people around me dancing, drinking and making out, but they all seem adrift.

Gay Christmas, or bitches Christmas, was a queer Halloween parade born in Philadelphia in the 1950s, in response to the

As I watch Bridgerton edits on TikTok, I once again ask myself, “Why do they get to dress up and go to balls, while I have to dress up and go to frat parties?”

In the fall of my junior year of high school, the athletics program mandated an assembly for all the female athletes, stuffing our already cramped cafeteria full with apathetic girls.

It is not lost on me, the irony of reading The Idiot as my clock reads midnight: I have work in 8 hours. But I am captivated.