Mad Sounds Magazine

Consent: and Why Media Hates Intoxicated Women

As I begin to talk about consent, I realize how hard it is to possibly cover everything that the verbal “yes” can mean, as there are so many bases it has become misconstrued in. Before writing this piece, I made a list for myself to refer back to of all the things consent is in fact, not, and how media tends to look the other way towards it and saw quite a large trend of one factor: intoxication. The instant drugs and/or alcohol become involved in any sexual act, things are bound to get messy and the way society and court acts towards it is extremely apparent in their disdain and lack of importance and priority. As we normalize the idea of drugging women and then taking advantage through music, paint sexual assault survivors as “careless party girls”, and completely ignore this as sexual misconduct, society is ignoring a huge pillar of consent.

When Lil Wayne says, “I gave her pills, she started confessing and started undressing” to which he then describes the sexual acts he and this woman pursue, he is plain and simple telling the story of rape. Even if you know your partner well and even may have had sex before, giving anyone drugs, even if they consensually take them, and then doing anything remotely intimate is breaking consent. Intoxicated individuals cannot consent to anything and to pursue anything sexual while you are sober and your partner isn’t is taking advantage and unlawful. However, this is constantly overlooked and instead replaced by the idea that this is somehow the victim’s fault, do to being too “wild” and “careless”.

During the trial of Brock Turner, the victim of his actions was under constant scrutiny for her intoxication, claiming that being drunk at a party, brought this on herself. As read in her letter to him, she stated, “To listen to your attorney attempt to paint a picture of me, the face of girls gone wild, as if somehow that would make it so that I had this coming for me”. Along with this was the various portrayals of her throughout the trial, she was painted as a “loose” and air headed party girl who could’ve avoided this if she had just stayed sober. But here’s the thing: when claiming this, it is following the idea of victim blaming or that it is the survivor’s fault for being sexual assaulted.

Overall, as we continue to display intoxicated women as “careless” and “have it coming”, along with discussing and enforcing normalization of drugging women and then having sexual interactions, we are creating a society and community of rape culture. A “no” is a no and a “yes” is only a yes if both partners have the ability to consent.

The Difficulty of Starting Something New

Photo by Willow Greene

Change is a complicated and daunting process. It can take a lifetime to finally reach the goal you have been pursuing, whether that is in relationships, a job, traveling, or figuring out who you are. Fear of disappointing people who care about you and fear of the future are road blocks that make arriving to your destination extra difficult.

I see Change as three steps: risk, perspective and control. When you take a risk, there is bound to be a change either in your character or in your life. After you take a risk, your perspective is what determines the change to be beneficial or detrimental. Once you decide the character of the change, you can take control of the change, and ultimately, your life.

This summer I have learned that life is too short to not be picky. We have limited time here on earth, so why spend it in a constant gloom? I have had friends complain to me about their job, their dissatisfaction with their significant other, and their unhappiness with their college program. I think people often forget that they have control of their life. We become so comfortable in the position we are in that the thought of stepping out of our comfort zone seems menacing.

So, why is change so hard? Before I cracked through my timid shell and started embracing what the world has to offer, I stuck to what was familiar. Throughout high school I was afraid that, by changing who I was, I would disappoint the expectations of my family and friends, or, if I took a risk to chase after something new, I would fail and lose what I had before. But now, I do not understand how I lived a systematic life of doubt for so many years. If you are settling because you are afraid that nothing better will come along, that is just as unsatisfactory.

Our generation has adopted a mindset where being selfish is not necessarily considered a terrible quality. We are learning that looking out for ourselves and treating ourselves is rewarding and addresses our needs that no other person can fulfill. In my first year of university I realized that if I wanted something done, I had to do it myself. In the real world people do not wait for you; they move on to somebody who is ready for a challenge. You have to chase opportunities because they will not idle by, anticipating your decision.

By resisting change, you are preventing the growth of your mind. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. was an American judge who said, “A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.” I hold these words close to mind because they speak the truth. When I moved from a small farming community to the “big” city, I realized there is so much more to life than following tradition. The problem with us is that we are addicted to predictability. If we can see it coming, we can plan for it, which makes life easier for us. But when did easier become better?

Why Traveling is Good for the Mind, the Body, and the Soul.

“If you have money, spend it on travel, if you have time, spend it on people.”

In your lifetime, there is one thing that you should never say no to. That is, traveling. Travel is good for the mind, the body, and the soul. If you ever have the opportunity to travel, do it! You will come to realize how much more there is to this world we live in and how little you are compared to it.

For my piece today, I have come up with 10 reasons as to why you should travel!

1. Travel opens up your eyes:

If you are willing to open up, travel will make you a more well-rounded human being. It changes the way you relate to the world. You will witness that your way of life is not the only “way of life”.

2. Traveling helps you learn and understand who you are:

Traveling reveals who you really are and what you really want. It reveals sides of ourselves we did not expect. You will discover passions, interests, and your likes/dislikes. Stepping out of your comfort zone and away from your daily routine is a great way to know exactly what you want and don’t want.

3. Travel brings out your adventurous side:

When you are in a new country, new state, new city, or new town, you can’t help but want to become familiar with the unfamiliar. You become eager to try out Chicago’s famous deep dish pizza, or New York’s hotdogs, or Spain’s paella and tapas, or Los Angeles’ food trucks, or London’s fish n’ chips, or Korean BBQ. Traveling to somewhere different makes you want to do something new and exciting that you wouldn’t usually do back at home. Would you rather go skydiving in your hometown or somewhere crazy like Dubai? You become this explorer when you travel.

4. Traveling gives you perspective:

Meeting people from all over will help you realize that the way you have been looking at life isn’t the way everyone else does. Engaging with people from all over helps enhance or change your point of view. It helps you look at life in a whole new light. Traveling makes you appreciate your life on a whole other level. It broadens your horizons and leaves you with a clearer mind.

5. Travel to appreciate new cultures:

Traveling allows you to submerge in the world of the other. It allows you to understand social dynamics, traditions, customs, and history. You learn other people’s definition of happiness. You learn to live as a local.

6. Travel challenges you:

It tests your limits, you learn to adapt, and you overcome fears. It is empowering. You learn how to be on your own or if you are traveling with friends, you learn how to live with those you usually don’t. Traveling and exposure to unfamiliarity is a great way to challenge you mentally.

7. Travel makes you grow:

Believe it or not, traveling is educational. You learn so much about a state or city by being in it rather than reading about it from a book. Traveling also broadens your mindset. You leave being less judgmental and more accepting. It awakens your senses, how you look at others, and how you look at yourself. It teaches you how to be thankful. Not everyone gets the same opportunities as you.

8. Travel to live in the moment:

When you’re busy at school or stressed at work, you never get to fully live in the moment. You are constantly stressed and worried about what needs to be done by the end of the night, tomorrow, or in two days. Your mind is everywhere. When you travel, you leave your worries. You get the chance to lay on a beach and live in that moment.

9. Travel teaches you simplicity:

You learn that simplicity is best when traveling and in life in general. You learn to have fun and enjoy yourself and the company around you in the simplest ways. Materialistic things become less and less important to you. You learn how to live without things you would normally want but don’t need.

10. Last but not least, travel to feel free:

Travel relieves you from the rhythms of daily life. Feeling cooped up? Stressed? Need inspiration? Tired of the same old? Then travel. It will take you to another state of mind and you will know exactly what needs to be changed.

Blond Review: First Listen

Frank Ocean’s music is a dream. It’s trancelike and foggy with only the occasional break of light. The artist’s sophomore album “Blond” has an overarching feeling of nostalgia and reflection. Give the album a chance, and it will pull at the heartstrings in the least cheesy, most terrifying way possible. Terrifying because the album is lyrically non-comforming while eliminating any possibility of viewing youth or love with any sort of façade. It’s real.

As anyone and their mother knows, it’s been four years since Frank Ocean released his freshmen debut “channel ORANGE”. Prior to releasing Blond on August 20^th, he had repeatedly pushed back the announced release date with little to no explanation. Whatever the reasoning was, it only increased anticipation for the sophomore album. By the time the album was finally released, it seemed as if though the announcement triggered a nationwide holiday.

With millions tuning in at once, Frank did little to shock the audience on his first track Nikes. The track’s critique of materialism is fueled by autotune and a repetitive trancelike beat. While the track is nothing spectacular, it is good and it feels right. When Ocean’s voice finally breaks through in clarity over halfway through the song, it is like a breath of fresh air. Something suppressed over the last four years. That relief is soon replaced by the realization during the bridge of what this album is going to do. It’s going to hit hard. Repetition of the line “I’m not him but I’ll mean something to you” makes it clear that success and worship by anticipating fans has done nothing to change the artist’s lyrics. They are lonely, humble, insecure, realistic, twisted, and relatable.

“I thought that I was dreaming when you said you loved me”. The opening to the album’s second track “Ivy” produced by Jamie XX makes it clear that the dreamy production on the first track will continue during the duration of the album. It also promises to make you cry for both your first love and your next. The feelings of vulnerability that begin creeping in while listening are in no way stopped by the smooth and accepting way Ocean sings “we’ll never be those kids again”.

Ocean gracefully takes his foot off the pedal of our heartstrings with the third track “Pink & White” which features Beyonce. It is one of the few bright spots found on the album and seems to be a break in the clouds of Frank’s moody musings. It is catchy and reminiscent of some of his older releases such as “Novocane” and “Super Rich Kids”.

The fourth track is a quick recording regarding the dangers of drugs because when “people become weed-heads they become slugglish, lazy, stupid, and unconcerned”. Frank replies to this in his next track “Solo” by mentioning dirty dancing and being “gone off tabs of that acid”. In my opinion, one of the most memorable moments of the album occurs during the chorus when Ocean’s anguished, angelic voice sings the lines “It’s hell on Earth and the city’s on fire. Inhale, in hell there’s heaven.” Those two lines seem to perfectly capture the essence of the album. The pain felt is undeniable, but the beauty created is unbelievable.

The dream that is the album continues relatively uninterrupted until the ninth track “Nights”. It is clear from the beginning, that this track is a pause from the vulnerability of the rest of the production. It is a sort of victory. The easy beat and the smooth way in which Ocean hits every note seems to indicate that he has finally found a relief from his musings and a lack of any worries. This quickly changes in the second part of the track when it turns into one of the most reflective moments of the album. Ending with the line “shut the fuck up. I don’t want your conversation.” Excluding the interlude of rhymes by Andre 3000 in the next track, that attitude seems to be the theme of the rest of the album. The next track “Pretty Sweet” is chaotic and vulnerable. After the clarity and joy found in the preceeding track, it is back to confusion and trust only in himself.

One of my favorite parts of the album is found towards the end with the two tracks “Close to You” and “White Ferrari”. The layered, etherealness of “Close to You” is reminiscent to the style of Bon Iver. Funny, because both Bon Iver and James Blake make appearances on the next track “White Ferrari”. My personal favorite. The track is a journey. Layered and broad. It is both beautiful and hard to listen. An incredible combination of the best each of the three artists have to offer. The trapped desperation found in the line “I care for you still and I will forever. That was my part of the deal, honest” is replaced by liberty during the final line in the track “We’re free to roam”. It's that sort of lyrical tranquility that makes each of the three artists legendary in their own ways.

“Futura Free” is the perfect outro song. It is a rambling but also a victory. The track opens with one of the few expressions of humor on the album with Ocean’s admission that “If I was being honest, I’d say long as I could fuck three times a day and not skip a meal, I’m good”. It is a relief to see that after the torment expressed in the album, Frank is able to end by rejoicing in the fact that he hasn’t had a job since 2009. No shit. However, even in his gladness, Ocean never loses his humility. He remains transparent in his statement that “I play these songs, it’s therapy momma, they paying me momma. I should be paying them. I should be paying y’all honest to God”

Ocean insists that he’s “just a guy, I’m not a god”. After listening to the album, it’s debatable. However, I’m sure he knows better than the rest of us. Either way, for being just a guy, Frank Ocean was somehow able to exceed four years of monumental anticipation and do it in a way that lacked gimmicks, flashiness, trends, or the insincerity that is so often prevalent when artists attempt to remain relevant. Rather, Frank Ocean exceeded our expectations on Blond by simply making great music.

The Adolescent Bucket List, and My Failure to Check the Boxes

The final girl. A classic slasher/horror trope, the final girl is the one that escapes the jaws of death, defeats the killer or evil, and emerges victorious from the bloodbath. How does she do this? Easy. She doesn't engage in any of the behaviors that her teen counterparts do. No smoking, drinking, drugs, and certainly no sex. Think Jamie Lee Curtis' character in Halloween. The other teenagers all get axed (usually after having sex) but Laurie, the pure, virtuous babysitter, is allowed to survive (for now...). It's a misogynistic and unrealistic way of looking at the world, to equate partaking in anything mildly scandalous with deserving death.

I'm the final girl. Or it feels like it sometimes. Except this time, making it out alive without even a scratch or having engaged in anything rebellious doesn't feel like a victory. It just feels wrong.

It started in seventh grade when my friends and I began to attend these public dances at a local middle school. We'd go for the fun of dressing up, to dance, hoping to meet someone. At the age of 13, I knew that these dances were the home of what could possibly be the most shocking act I was aware of: hooking up. Remember, this is hooking up in the seventh grade sense; just making out, I guess. I never got the chance.

My mind at these dances was populated by contradicting thoughts. Is this something I want to take part in or not? One part of me craved the experience, a first foray in the world of adolescent sexuality. Another part worried about the logistics. How was I supposed to get myself into a situation where hooking up happened? Did I have to talk to my partner? Would I screw up while kissing them and make a fool of myself? What would people say about me? In the days before I was diagnosed with anxiety, these questions tormented me and banished me from the world of preteen make out sessions. I heard my friends tell their hookup stories and wished that I could have the courage and the experience that they did. I stopped going to the dances, because spending a night fighting my anxiety was too painful.

And then people started drinking. It was like hooking up all over again, but with added risk. This time, if your parents found out you would really get into trouble. I avoided scenes that I knew would involve drinking, because I was scared to try it, and scared to be judged for not trying it. I'm not saying that drinking makes you brave or noble or anything, but I felt ashamed at my Puritanical ways. It's not like I think drinking and sex are sins or, like, the lure of the devil or something. My aversion to them is merely personal, a self-reflective insecurity that shuts me out of taking risks. A combination of being afraid of the act itself and how people will perceive my fear of the aforementioned act holds me back. I'd rather be safe than sorry; rather stay home alone than reveal my diffidence.

Because I've barely experienced anything in my seventeen years of life, I feel like I've failed teenagehood. What teenager has never been to a party, never snuck out of the house, or never been hungover? Have I failed some duty I owe to myself by living by the rules? I can't say that these years have been boring-- I've found plenty of entertaining and exciting things to do with my free time. They just don't involve the things I feel they're supposed to-- crushes, first kisses, breaking minor laws. Isn't they're some adolescent bucket list that I'm supposed to have checked off by now?

I don't mean to advocate either way for these things. Health class 101 taught me that you don't need to drink, smoke, or hook up to be cool. And in no way do I aim to shame those who do do this stuff. I mean, they're the majority. And it's completely alright. I merely mean to say that sometimes I feel like I'm doing my teenage years wrong. My life will never reflect the teen movies I was raised on.

The final girl. Sometimes I wish I had some scars. Some mistakes I made, the trouble I got in. Final girl feels to naïve, too safe.

Talking to a friend about this, she reminded me that I'm young. There's time for all of this, and there's no right way to do life. There's no right way to be a teenager. I guess she's right, but I can't help but feel wrong, like I've failed by making it out of high school with no regrets, asides from regretting that I have no regrets.

I don't have an answer for other teenagers that feel like me. I don't know if I'll feel like I've spent these years well. But if I can impart something on you, it's that I hope you don't doubt yourself, whatever you're doing. I hope you're able to do what you want to do with your adolescence, without being afraid of what others think of you, and without fearing what you think of yourself.

Insecurities of a Writer

Ever since I started writing I looked forward to the day that people took my work seriously. I wanted to be one of those super cool, incredibly talented girls online who write effortless poetry and have no problems sharing their feelings with the world. It’s so easy for young artists to feel insecure about their lack of experience, or even competitive with those who get more recognition than I do. I wondered if my work was any less valid because I didn’t get 5k notes.

I spent a lot of time feeling like I wasn’t a “real” writer; like I was fooling everyone into thinking I was something more than I actually was. Whenever a classmate would come up to me and compliment my writing I felt like I didn’t deserve to hear it. None of my friends who were artists seemed to feel the same way about their work. My best friends would show me their newest songs with a level of confidence I could never dream of having- like they already knew they would make it as musicians. Others post their art on Instagram nonchalantly, tagging their muses in their posts as if they wanted them to see it.

At the end of the day I have to remind myself that I don’t write to be noticed. I don’t hit the “publish” button in the hopes of getting the most reads I’ve ever had. I write because I love doing it (almost) more than I love pizza. Writing takes me to a place where I can distance myself from any problems I have and make sense of the world around me. I love going back to old pieces and seeing how much I’ve improved in as little as a couple of weeks and as long as two years. Even if I feel like I’m not the most amazing writer to ever walk the planet, when someone messages me or comes up to me and tells me that my writing has connected with them and made them feel less alone, made them reconsider an old opinion, or helped them find a new favorite band, I feel like all of the hard work and doubt was worth it.

So, if you’re anything like me, remember that a lack of recognition does not equate a lack of talent or a lack of hard work. Remember that the best reason to do anything is because you love to do it, not because it makes you look cool.

Mad Sounds Magazine