i am an eight year old in a twenty year old’s body. i am also a sixteen year old in a twenty year old’s body. i am an eleven year old in a twenty year old’s body.

 as a young adult, i’ve found joy in chasing the younger version of me that i thought used to exist. i thought of her as a past self, not one that still exists today. but she does, and i see her everywhere. i see her as i paint my nails pink and draw white flowers on top. i see her as i eat fruit loops at my kitchen table in my college apartment in a green bowl that has been in my family for years, but i’m not quite sure where it came from. i see her on my right arm, she is my ribbon tattoo. i’ve always been in love with the idea of people expressing themselves through their bodies. whether it was physical like piercings or tattoos, or a form of creativity such as dancing across a stage; it makes people vulnerable. their expression of themselves in a world full of judgment is refreshing because it shows that they don’t care whether you like their hair color of the week or if it makes you give them another glance or two, because it’s what they want. 

in a timothy keller sort of way, to be known is to be loved. how are people supposed to fall in love with the beauty that is you if they don’t know what gets you out of bed in the morning or the exact amount of sugars and creamer you take in your coffee? to know me as my twenty year old self, you must know my eight year old self, my eleven year old self, and all of the other years that i have been on this earth because they are the reason i am here writing this right now. that is why i have this tattoo. i love when people ask me about the meaning because it means i get to introduce them to eleven year old inessa who wore a different bow in her hair every day of fifth grade, who found joy in expressing herself through a small aspect of her appearance despite the uniform placed on her by a school that is now closed. the school might have shut down, but the memory of adorning my hair in a different ribbon each day is never leaving. sure, i wore ribbons when i was eight, but that was most likely from my mother who dressed me, except for the days in which i wouldn’t leave the house unless i had a tutu on my waist. in a world of strict rules in place about what i could put on my body and how long my hair could be and what color shoes i had to wear, ribbons were my choice. it was my first time having the creative freedom to choose how to express myself, and although i couldn’t do it through clothes, i got to spend each morning choosing one of the many bows from claire’s that i had carefully curated in my collection. 

although i only use one of those childhood ribbons as as my twenty year old self, i still feel like a giddy eleven year old when i put a ribbon in my hair that matches my outfit. and i find myself feeling even giddier when people recognize that about me. when they say, oh, i saw a bow today and it reminded me of you. when my mother puts on a dress and asks me to tie the bow for her. when my friends tie a ribbon and it looks off, so they ask me to redo it for them. when i receive a gift and it’s wrapped with a pretty ribbon that i get to keep and tie in my hair later. my mother did that this past christmas. as i unwrapped the gift, i mentioned the beauty of the ribbon and how i planned to keep it for later. she said, of course, that’s why i put it there. to be known is to be loved. and to be loved is to be a gift tied with a bow.

Written by Inessa Kiefer

Edited by Wendy Moore and Elisabeth Kay

Memories aren’t lost just because the people in them are.

My mom has boxes upon boxes filled with pictures of my brother and me from our younger years, all with the well-known orange digital camera date and time in the bottom right corner. 

My favorite picture from one of the boxes is that of a little four-year-old me sitting on a deck box by our old boat. Beside me is my grandpa, smile bursting, and his mouth covered in chocolate ice cream. This picture means more to me than ever since he’s no longer here to share the memory with me. I don’t remember this day, what the ice cream tasted like, or even what we did after that moment, but the memory will never be lost. Someone saw it and knew it would make an amazing photo. No, it's not phenomenal quality with perfect editing, but it perfectly captures the moment. It’s perfect to me. The pure joy in both of us, with the sun beating down, and the melting ice cream.

Now, my camera is my most prized possession. I don’t own a vintage digital camera like everyone else, but my Canon T7 has my heart anyway. Since middle school, I have been obsessed with taking pictures and documenting anything and everything. I was hooked the first time I held a real camera in my hand— it was during a high school newspaper class and  I couldn’t figure out how to zoom out far enough to fit all of our student council in one photo. Nevertheless, I knew it felt right. 

I got my first camera for Christmas 2021. Photography is what connected me to my surroundings. From the grainy underexposed pictures taken on my iPhone 6S posted on an Instagram page with nine followers to taking my friend’s senior pictures last summer. I am the 0.5 friend, always flipping my phone around and holding it up in the air. I’ll always be the one to ask for a picture. Upwards of ten thousand memories reside in my photos app. Ten thousand pictures taking up storage, that I’ll never delete.

It's no surprise that our generation loves trends of the past. We long for times of no social media and the simplicity of physical pictures with no photoshopping.

Everything comes back around. This rings true with stylistic choices such as our beloved high-top Converse and mom jeans, which my mom hates when I wear. The latest comeback has been the digital camera. Some people may have gotten a digital camera just to follow the trend, some may have gotten one as a gift, and some may have even received one as a hand-me-down from a family member. 

Is their purpose to find the simplicity of a physical camera and move away from the forced perfectionism of social media? Or is it just to participate in yet another influencer-based trend?

If all people are looking for is the aesthetic of a digital camera—easy—pull out your phone and download any editing app. I believe people are searching for nostalgia, for the simplicity and genuineness that a physical camera gives. I used to look through my parents’ scrapbooks from high school and college and admire the genuine memories captured, precisely taped in, names and dates written in ink below.

The first camera trend I remember was the pastel-colored Instax Mini polaroid cameras which featured way too expensive film and less than stellar quality (I had the light blue one). The next obsession was the bright green disposable cameras where your local Walgreens took months to return the pictures to you. They were cute though. 

I am simply pro-capturing the memory, no matter what form you use to do it. Take the BeReal, take the Lapse, and make the Instagram post. Make your friends pose. Ask the stranger to take a picture. Use the flash on the street. 

Capture the memory, because one day it may be all you have left.

Written by Megan Reynaert

Edited by William Beddick and Kate Castello

In recent years, Tate McRae has made a name for herself as more than a dancer or YouTube singer/songwriter. Just last year, the Calgary-native pop star stunned the world with the success of her song “Greedy.” But despite her random success, which was seemingly out of nowhere, in 2023, she’s been in the industry much longer than you may think. 

In an interview with Elle, Tate McRae explained that she thought she was going to be a backup dancer for the rest of her life; and she wasn’t entirely wrong. McRae started dancing competitively in 2013 attending Berlin State Ballet, winning awards at the 2015 Dance Awards, performing on The Ellen Show, and finishing as a finalist on So You Think You Can Dance. 

In the interview, McRae said that she discovered a passion for poetry. When she was 6 years old, her grandfather got her a piano, and that’s when she realized she could sing her poetry. At 13, McRae then started uploading original songs on YouTube. 7 years later, it came in clutch for her. 

Tate McRae caught the attention of RCA Records in 2019 after many of her original songs gained attraction on YouTube like her 2017 song “One Day.” After her signing, McRae released her debut EP All the Things I Never Said. A few months after the EP’s release, she released one of her biggest singles for her second EP, Too Young to be Sad, called You Broke Me First. This song broke the record for being the song with the longest stay on the Billboard Hot 100 by a female artist in 2020. To stay consistent on the charts, she performed the song at the 2020 MTV Video Music Awards, 2020 MTV Europe Music Awards, Jimmy Kimmel Live, and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. 

In 2022, Tate McRae released her debut album, I Used to Think I Could Fly. The long-awaited debut album brought the fan’s expectations to reality—however, the rollout was underwhelming. With the success of the second single on the album, She’s All I Wanna Be, fans expected a brand new groundbreaking artist. The album debuted at #13 on the Billboard 200 lasting only 7 weeks on the charts. With how much potential Tate McRae has with her skills in dancing, singing, and songwriting, the expectations for this album were not met. A lot of people blame it on RCA’s reputation with other artists like Flo Milli, but Tate might’ve broken that reputation. 

It’s no surprise that artists use TikTok as a platform to promote upcoming songs. But even with the promotions through TikTok, sometimes they still don’t become successful, like Tate McRae’s “Uh Oh.” In August of 2023, Tate McRae posted a TikTok promoting her new single “Greedy.” Even though the song wasn’t released, it went viral with more than 220,000 people using the sound for their own different trends. With the release of “Greedy” on September 15th, the full song was expected to become a big hit. 

Despite its popularity through TikTok, the song itself sounds original. Tate McRae is known for sappy love songs, while “Greedy” brings in a new wave with fans seeing a feistier and more playful side of her. The current trend for music however is sampling a lot of songs that are considered “nostalgic.” Tate McRae interpolates Promiscuous by Nelly Furtado and Timberland. To keep up with people’s short attention spans nowadays, McRae’s song “Greedy” is short but sweet. A lot of songs tend to suffer from being super short, but Greedy feels like a complete pop song. McRae hit the chorus within 20 seconds and had all of the pop song elements including a bridge. 

RCA Records took advantage of this opportunity immediately rolling out McRae’s sophomore album called Think Later, released on December 9th of 2023. With the success from her second single Exes and Run for the Hills, her sophomore album debuted at #4 on the Billboard 200 competing against Nicki Minaj’s Pink Friday 2. In this era, she trades neon sweatshirts for hockey gear becoming a Canadian Sporty Spice. Compared to her debut with blunt ruminations on teenage love, her second album toughens up that first impression with homogeneous one-dimensional introspections.

An industry plant is an artist who has a major label backing their movement but presents themselves as a “homegrown start-up” to create a pseudo-organic following. Because of this wild random success from Tate McRae and entering the main pop girl era, accusations of being an industry plant come along. During a conference office in Los Angeles, McRae mentioned “I’ve been grinding since I was 13 years old! I’m probably the furthest thing from an industry plant for how long I’ve been doing this.” It’s no surprise that McRae is offended because it discredits all of the hard work she has put in to get to where she is now. 

With a growing generation now relying on becoming viral on YouTube, TikTok, or Soundcloud. It is really easy for people to consider so many new upcoming artists and industry plants. Nowadays, it is super hard for people to organically grow through record label promotion. There is also a huge trend where artists are now considered indie despite being backed up by a huge team but isn’t that what people wanted? Aren’t people tired of seeing the typical pop girl? It seems hypocritical when people want more diversity in the music industry, but then afterwards call them industry plants. 

If an artist truly claims to be independent while having the backing of a label, they could be considered an industry plant. Lorde is a great example. 

Lorde made music that was considered “different” and not just about sex, drugs, and money. Billie Eilish brings a depressed girl persona with her deep lyrics and baggy clothes. Being an industry plant doesn’t mean bad—being an industry plant can be a positive thing. In easier terms for people calling out “industry plants” just say that their growth in the music industry is just manufactured differently.

Written by Justin Pello

Edited by Kate Castello and Elisabeth Kay

My clearest childhood memory is when I held my sister for the first time. She was so small and frail, bundled in soft white blankets. Her hair was dark and wispy, peeking underneath those knitted beanies they give out at the hospital. She was so tiny. 

I often wonder how much of my personality is shaped by my birth order. How much of me, if not all, is due to the fact that I was born first? 

Being the eldest daughter meant having to miss sleepovers and birthday parties because Mom was always working late and I needed to babysit. It was okay though because I had offered: I was free help and she needed as much of it as she could get. Her hair was thinning and falling out from all the stress and weight she was carrying around day to day, so as soon as I was able, I lifted the load.  

It was never too much to handle. It is never too much to handle. 

When I was a freshman in high school I was waking up at four in the morning to help my sisters get dressed and pack lunches from the meal plan I curated at the beginning of each week because I wanted to be helpful. That is always the goal: to be helpful–lessen the load until your back is practically breaking but you can’t let anyone know because this was a choice, your choice. And I chose to write notes in my sister’s lunchboxes with stupid jokes on them just like my mom used to do for me.

Being the eldest daughter means that I plan every birthday party. I buy the decorations a week in advance and I stay up until five in the morning to set them up. I bake a cake from scratch every year. I send out the invitations, I follow up with parents, and I make it happen.

I have never had a birthday party. 

I didn’t have my first sleepover until I was fourteen.

I have to order my own birthday cake. 

Being the eldest daughter means that I teach what no one ever taught me so that my sisters don’t face the same struggles I did so that they are spared of the embarrassment I experienced. No one ever taught me to do my hair but I’ve been doing my sister’s since I was ten. I just bought my twelve-year-old sister a basket of her own curly hair products as a Christmas gift with a tag that said “From Mom” on it.

Being the eldest means feeling like a parent and not like a sibling. I can’t tell my sisters about a school crush I have on a boy or why I’ve been crying for the past four days straight—I remind them to do homeworks and look over book reports and ask them why they didn’t finish their lunch. I had no one to look up to. I had no one to ask what to wear on a first date or how to put makeup on. No one to steal clothes from or ask for advice. I am meant to fill that role but how can I when I was never shown how?

I’ve come to realize that being the eldest means that I am never the one being surprised. I will always go above and beyond and kill myself bending over backward for people who would never lift a finger for me. I am always the listener and never the talker. I will always show up when you call. I will apologize when I never had to.

Being the eldest means that my mom hasn’t seen me cry in three years because I don’t want her to think I’m not doing well even if sometimes, I’m not. 

Being the eldest means that I felt like I abandoned them once I left for college—it seemed selfish to divorce my family and to even wonder what life was like without them constantly around; they had been my life’s purpose for so long. How could I possibly want freedom? Freedom feels like an exaggeration. Helping around was not a prison, but somewhere along the line of life, I traded my childhood at its expense.

I didn’t even realize how much of a childhood I wasn’t afforded until it was over. It’s almost as if when I held my sister for the first time, the door to childhood and childhood things began to close. I didn’t watch it close. How could I? I was too busy making sure my siblings’ childhood was magical, making sure it was everything mine wasn’t. I was so busy that I forgot I was only seven or eight or nine years old. I was so busy that I couldn't even try to stick my foot out to stop it. It had closed and locked and all I could do was stare at the wooden slate, reaching and longing for what I didn’t even realize I’d lost. 

And I don’t expect an apology because it was my choice. 

But I was seven. I was a seven-year-old little girl who just wanted to be helpful and thrived on feeling appreciated. 

And now in my embraced role as the eldest daughter, I am supposed to be perfect all the time but I won’t ever feel good enough. I am the role model who always needs to put on a brave face. I have to be the person that everyone leans on, but who am I supposed to lean on? Who am I supposed to trust? I’m the person who is never allowed to break… but I have been cracking for years. Surely, a seven-year-old isn’t meant to carry the same weight as her thirty-seven-year-old mother.

But I don’t want an apology. 

In my role as the eldest daughter, I put others first, I worry extensively,  I help with homework, I attend the concerts, I make the schedules, I plan the birthdays, I wrap the Christmas gifts, I make the reservations, I do the school supply shopping, I drive to and from, I know every in and out of every single person of the household, and I get absolutely nothing in return…

But I don’t need an apology.

I am a walking one-man show but I accept it with all that it comes because who even am I if not the eldest daughter?

Written by Camille Ware

Edited by Lauren Myers and Kate Castello

I notice it on the second week of Christmas break. 

My parents are both working late, so I volunteer to make dinner, putting together the same soup my mother used to make whenever I was sick as a child. My little brother has been convinced to set the table, and I blink when I see the plates he took out. “When did we get new plates?”

He stares at me and then looks down at the plates in his hands. They are white and have a pretty border of green swirls. The plates I remember were completely blue. 

“Oh. Dad dropped one last month so mom got a new set.”

“I didn’t notice before.” How had I not noticed? 

My little brother shrugs, “I mean, it’s just plates. You don’t live here anymore, so it’s not like you knew we switched them.”

And then he walks away to finish setting the table like he didn’t just shoot me in the chest.

I don’t know when it truly hit me that I didn’t live in my childhood home anymore. Maybe it was when I started saying I was “going to my parent’s house for the holidays” instead of just saying I was going home. Maybe it was when I bought my own blender instead of stealing my family’s old one. Maybe it happened the second I stepped into my freshman-year dorm. 

But I haven’t lived in that house for more than a few weeks for over a year now, which probably means that I need to start moving on.

I’ve been trying to define the word home, recently. When I was a kid, home just meant the physical location. I used to have these vivid nightmares where my childhood home would catch fire, and they scared me more than any monsters under my bed. I used to think it took having a physical, permanent place to stay that made a home. 

The past three years of my life have proven that wrong. I’ve bounced around and around, from two different dorms to a summer internship apartment in a different city, to finally my own apartment. But even that won’t last forever. Now, I’m looking at graduate schools all across the country, and not a single one is even in this state. 

But in every single place, I’ve still had a home. 

My mother still has the string of photos from my graduation on the living room floor; the posters that decorated my first-year dorm hang in my new apartment; my second-year dorm probably still has the stains on the sink from dying my roommate’s hair black; I have the flowers that decorated my bedroom this summer pressed between the pages of an old journal. I bring people into my new apartment, take photos of every event and party, frame my friend’s smiles with the lens, and immortalize my love for them. I’ll bring them into whatever place I end up next, and place the old photos on the fridge, leaving room for new ones too. 

I still don’t think I can properly define home; how do you define something that stretches through time, that exists in fifteen different places, that changes every step of the way, that walks the line between a physical place and a concept you can only hold on your heart? Sure, I don’t live with my parents anymore, but it’s still home. The old porch light will still glow in the distance when I come back; it will always be there when I need it to be. Every time I leave for some new place, I’ll reach into the lamp and pull out a little bit of its flame, and I'll use it to warm my new hearth. 

It’s not a true definition, but maybe it’s a start.

Written by Emma Moran

Edited by Lauren Deaton and Elisabeth Kay

iPad kids are the bane of modern existence, for parents and bystanders alike. They affect everyone with their temper tantrums and sheer inability to exist without constant instant gratification. This is a phenomenon that didn’t quite exist when we were kids: we were young enough not to remember a life without technology and yet it wasn’t so ingrained in our culture that we couldn’t step away from it. I believe that Gen Z was graced with the perfect era to grow up in, but that is no reason to gloat. Unfortunately, for all future generations, that won’t be their reality.

I do, however, find that people overly villainize this group of kids. Sure, they can be hard to please and massively greedy, but they didn’t put themselves in that position—it was capitalism and corporate greed that stuck a tablet or phone in the hands of any child who would accept it. I also think that they will grow up to loathe technology and actively work against it, just as Gen Z has. They just don’t have the means to yet. For the time being, I will avenge the iPad kid, with some firsthand knowledge I’ve so graciously been able to experience. 

My first piece of technology was a Kindle Fire tablet, that is if we discount the desktop computer and cable television; the Kindle was mine and mine only. It wasn’t connected to the internet and was merely used to play games; I don’t even think it had a camera. There was a kind of subtle bliss that came with the Kindle, where I was still disconnected but also didn’t feel left out. I had a few more iterations of the tablet before I received the ‘godforsaken’ iPad, which had less parental control and more online access. It also came with iMovie, and my creative life blossomed.

I became an instant filmmaker. My friends and I found so much joy in making movie trailers and silly videos. Eventually, I had my parents set up a YouTube account for me to share my creations with the world. I know that nowadays, it is hard to limit YouTube access and what is safe for children on the platform, but I relished it in my two followers (my parents). I’m also so glad I was able to make this archive of videos, full of childhood wonder, that are still up today. Every now and then I revisit CupcakeFrenzy17 and smile, reminiscing on the kind of secluded glory that children sadly don’t feel today. Whenever I come across a viral clip of a child posting a video, whether it is a fake vlog or a GRWM video, I think back to myself and thank god there were no weirdos and haters in my comment section. Why can’t we just let kids be kids?

This is why I will always defend this new generation. They have been set up for failure, and it is all our doing. I gawk when people say that all childhood creativity has been lost on this new generation because I know they haven’t actually been perceiving kids. Over the summer, I worked at an overnight camp where kids came for at least a week. They slept in cabins with screen doors and played outside, unplugged from the virtual world. This is not a new phenomenon either, because when I was younger, I went to this camp, phoneless and all. You’d be surprised at the number of kids who came to this camp of their own volition, who wanted to escape the pressure and consistency of the internet and constant communication. Just because it may be hard for them to disconnect—one of my campers asked to hold my phone just to “remember what it felt like” on their last night—doesn’t mean they don’t want it. 

I worked with middle schoolers and soon-to-be freshmen in high school, and I could see how they flourished being away from technology. At this point, it is on parents and all adults to bear the burden of what we have done to kids. This is not a problem we can get mad at them for; that would be irresponsible. So next time you think this generation is “so lazy and uncreative,” think first about who and what made them that way. Gen Alpha, you will be okay.

Written by Leighton Curless

Edited by Gabi Amorim & Elisabeth Kay

I’ve always clung to labels. I collect them like prized medallions and pin them across my chest. A redhead. A twenty-something girl. A Libra. A lover of Fleetwood Mac, specifically Stevie. A perfectionist and a procrastinator, somehow simultaneously. 

I just love the notion that people perceive me in some sense. As something or other. I know that spelling out the concept on paper makes it sound redundant, but the core of my high school beliefs boiled down to one absolute truth: to be seen, is to be loved. 

When I was a senior in high school, I received the superlative “Most Likely to Brighten Your Day.” I was eighteen, freshly committed to Pitt, and planning on pursuing a career path that made most adults ask if I had a backup option. I was begging for someone to give me another prompt to follow, and those six, tacky words provided the perfect mold to cement my senior-year persona. Six words fashioned into a barbed-wire fence that I could herd my mess of complexities into. I practiced a permanent, toothy smile that never ceased to feel forced. 

Sure, the superlative was somewhat true. I’m a glass-half-full kind of girl, and I will most likely always have something to add to a conversation… But what about the other side of the coin? What about the part of me that dreamt of clawing my way out of my small-minded, suburban bubble? What about the part of me that was aggressively opinionated, unsatisfied, and most contrastingly, unhappy? It was left to rot under the guise of a sickly sweet pushover, a school mascot for everything I used to go against. 

A couple of months that felt like years whirled together and spat me out in a graduation gown. I offered teary goodbyes to girls that I had spoken to twice and teachers that I was never very fond of. As far as emotional depth goes, I was barely skimming the surface, but at least I had made it into the pool. 

Within that agonizing purgatory sandwiched between graduation and college, “How do you feel now that you’ve graduated?” was a commonly used icebreaker. 

To which, without fail, I would always respond, “Bittersweet,” through gritted teeth… even though the bitter-to-sweet ratio was a solid 20:80. How ironic that I forced myself to be the brightest in the room until the socially appropriate response was to be sad. Those six words plagued me with an inner monologue that functioned like a PR team, keeping my record of polite conversation clean and consistent. 

That is, up until college.

When I got to college, many things changed, and most things didn’t. In the span of four months, I had lost any semblance of familiarity, and in return, gained ten years’ worth of friends. When adults asked if I had a backup plan, I started saying no. 

But I was still putty fresh out of the casing: shapeless and impressionable. Who am I if I’m not perceived as something tangible? Surely that decision doesn’t belong to me. 

For the first time in years, I had no veil to conceal my mess. What began as something purely internal, soon trickled out and solidified as something physical. Laundry routinely blanketed my dorm floor. With each passing Wednesday, I was one half-off bottle of wine closer to emptying my savings account. My thumb had adapted to five-second intervals between each methodical flick, muscle memory on par with my doom scrolling. 

How to be successful by twenty-five! You should be successful by twenty-five. Flick. Get your Summer body by March! Flick. Get ready with me! Gym. Study. Green juice. Gym. Coffee. Class. Gym. Flick. 

With each methodical flick of the thumb, I was hooked on the perception of being methodical myself. I was hooked on hair matted into sleek ponytails. A glossy makeup routine disguised as natural beauty and minimalism. I was plagued by this Clean Girl Aesthetic, this virtual perception of girlhood rooted in consumerism that I couldn’t afford to consume. Finally, I could pour my mess into another mold. 

That is, up until I couldn’t. 

I tried relentlessly to slick back my hair in that polished fashion that appears so seamless online, only to find that it reminded me of middle school, dunking my curly hair under the shower nozzle so that I could try to comb the ringlets out of it. I had spent years chasing a cure to my dissatisfaction, only to realize that I was trapped in an endless loop of unattainability. 

Now, if there’s one label I’ll cling to, it’s that I’m a writer. And ever since, I’ve been able to romanticize my mess. A half-off bottle of wine is now a small price to pay for three hours’ worth of stories, and a senior superlative is now nothing but six, tacky words.

Written by Delaney Pipon

Edited by Renee Arlotti and Kate Castello

I never really understood why it was hard to find love in a city, especially one like Pittsburgh which has many universities. I finally decided to enter the dating scene here a few months ago and boy, is it a marathon. I’ve realized that finding love in this city is not my problem; it’s finding someone who wants a relationship. Rivaling with passing organic chemistry with an A or surviving sorority recruitment with your identity intact, finding someone who might just want to maybe, possibly start a relationship with you is impossible.

I had this conversation with my girlfriends repeatedly, and we all attempted to answer the same question: is love dead in Pittsburgh? It left me thinking for days and I finally came up with an answer: sort of. Now, that sounds like a cop-out, but hear me out! I find that the love I am searching for is too hard to ask of a college man. We are only so young and in my experience, a college man doesn’t want to find the head-over-heels love of his life. Rather, he wants to find someone that could have interest in him and then once you display that interest, he freezes up and calls it quits, leaving you and your dignity thrown into the trash like a SPAM email. 

Even worse are the dating apps, you see a guy you think is cute and he has in his dating intentions “Short-term relationship, open to long” or even worse than that, “Long-term relationship, open to short,” which both sound promising. But, most of the time, they’re not. Instead, they are just words on a screen without the intention of actually meaning much. Entering the dating world is being thrown into the biggest game of catfish, but with words, not pictures. Anyone can say anything they want on their profiles and if you are new to the dating scene like I was, you’re going to believe it all. I believed everything and anything a man told me about their life or their intentions. God, I even believed a man when he told me that he still liked me after he said he wasn’t exclusive with only me. Was I wrong to believe that? Absolutely.

My experience with love (or lack thereof) in Pittsburgh has been a convoluted one. Every time my trust is betrayed, I am brought back to the same starting point: is love dead in Pittsburgh? Now, I can only speak on my experiences– as a man looking to date other gay men–but it is eerily similar to that of my girlfriends seeking out straight men. In fact, a girlfriend of mine was detailing to me her past situationship and how it went from the obsession–the texting every day, the asking how your day was, the getting to know her roommates, and the meeting of his friends and hers–to complete radio silence. How is it that a beautiful, intelligent woman like her can get stood up by a man who in fact, started it all? 

Even worse, another girlfriend of mine was recently victim of a love bomber: one who showers you with constant love, affection, and adoration to ultimately gain control of you and the relationship. Once she ended things with him, he was quickly back on the dating apps to find his next person to assail. This is exactly how both cases, the obsessor and the love bomber, can get you and your emotional stability wrapped around their fingers. Right when you display interest, it’s game over and you are thrown back into the sea of eligible bachelors, drowning as each wave is thrown your way.

So where do we go from here as young adults joining or still stuck in the dating pool? Is love really dead in Pittsburgh? When entering (or drowning in) the dating pool, you should remember these three things: protect your peace, have fun with it, and always make sure to listen to your girlfriends (or your boyfriends if they are at all competent to the issue, which is rare I might add). We are only this young once, so make the most of it. Now go and call your girlfriends, they can probably relate to this one too.

Written by Will Beddick

Edited by Ruby Kolik & Elisabeth Kay

The first time I rode through that infamous tunnel into Pittsburgh I made my mom blast “Heroes” by David Bowie. With the windows rolled down and a smile on my face, I felt like I was finally having my perfect Perks of Being a Wallflower moment, finally having that quintessential, picturesque, coming-of-age epiphany. 

For a long time, to know me was to know that I loved coming-of-age movies—they seemed to fill an insatiable need in my soul, and I thought that I would never get enough of them. But lately, I’ve noticed that they’ve started to fall flat, a gulf growing between these films and me, as my age and my experiences move further and further away from those of high school coming-of-age movies. There’s a kind of sadness there, a deep loss that I never really considered about growing up, a letting go of films that had been my home for so long, that had been tied so closely to my identity. My twentieth birthday is just around the corner, and I’ve never really been a person who felt weird about their birthday. But this year I do. This year it feels like a final marker. A distinct moment that I’m no longer a teenager, that I’m no longer coming-of-age. It feels like a reminder that it's time—time to let go of teenagehood, to let go of coming-of-age. 

And there’s a kind of brokenness that comes with that, an acknowledgment of the beauty I found in so many of these films, a beauty I still see so clearly but isn’t so perfect for me anymore. These films are now someone else’s, they are past memories for me, instead of current experiences. Those vivid moments, of Charlie in the tunnel (Perks of Being a Wallflower), of the Dead Poets running through the leaves (Dead Poets Society), of Earl and Greg and Rachel sitting on the curb eating ice cream (Me and Earl and the Dying Girl), aren’t for me anymore in the way they once were. They are no longer what’s directly in front of me, but rather, what’s behind me, a reminder of the love, loss, and laughter that was teenagehood. A reminder of something I’m endlessly grateful for, but no longer so completely a part of. 

And I feel it. That growing up, that confusion and pain, in my viewing habits. In the films I now gravitate towards. I find myself now being more enraptured by films like Cha Cha Real Smooth, Francis Ha, and Shiva Baby. That feeling of wandering, of finding out who you are—that feeling that is so ever-present in coming-of-age movies but that grows and changes and presents itself in different ways the older you grow. A lot of the same emotions are there, but they’ve morphed into different forms, forms not grounded so much in high school, but in the wider world, in college, in relationships, in jobs, and so much more. My world is bigger now, so are my worries, and so are my dreams. That kind of precipice I felt myself standing on when I was so enraptured with coming-of-age movies, I now find myself in the midst of—I’m not waiting for that first step—I’ve taken it, and I’m trying to figure it out along the way.

Growing up is really hard. There’s loss and there’s pain and there’s responsibility, and there are so many other hard things that you never even expect. But there are also so many beautiful things. As you grow, you accumulate pain, but you also accumulate beauty—there is a wider capacity for hurt, but also a wider capacity for love and joy. And all of that is something that I’m very actively learning, as I begin to see differently so many different films that have meant so much to me, as I distance myself from the intense closeness with which I once held them. And as I go in search of something new.

Written by Lauren Deaton

Edited by Priyanka Iyer & Kate Castello

It’s hard to forget the first time I got catcalled. I was only 14. 

That summer I was working in Queens, New York to get volunteer hours, and the hot sun beating down on the city pavement was making me sweat more than anyone else in my group. While walking to the nearest YMCA to shower, a man at least three times my age looked me up and down and made a suggestive comment about my body.

I was stunned. 

I had heard about catcalling in TV and movies, but I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that anyone could say something so degrading to a person in real life. Even now, sitting in a classroom in Pittsburgh, over 300 miles from Queens, and that man, his comment makes me feel uncomfortable. 

It makes me feel unsafe. 

Later, as I stood in the shower at the YMCA, I turned his remark over and over in my head, my anger growing. Who is he to think he has the right to comment on my body? How fucking dare he?

I knew my anger was useless—it hadn’t stopped men in the past, and it certainly wouldn’t stop them now. If anything, I’d just put myself further in harm's way. 

But that didn’t stop me from getting angry when the catcalling got more frequent when I moved to the city for college. It didn’t stop me from getting angry when guys touched my friends at parties where they were barely sober enough to stand—expecting my friends to like it, expecting them to be grateful. And it certainly didn’t stop me from getting angry when two men denied me the surgery that would fix my agonizing back and shoulder pain—not to mention my self-esteem. 

My chest has always been an insecurity of mine. I know so many girls wish for big boobs, but I’d wish mine away in a heartbeat if it were possible. It always feels like a silly complaint—“Oh, you mean the body part people constantly talk about being attracted to? The one that would make so many people feel more feminine and serve as affirmation to them? That one? You must have it so tough.”

They’ve never made me feel feminine, they’ve only ever made me feel exposed. I can be fully dressed and still feel completely naked. 

And don’t get me wrong, sometimes they make me feel pretty or desirable—I’m 21 and vain after all—but most days I fantasize about being free. 

One day I got tired of fantasizing, I wanted it to be my reality. So I made some appointments and tried not to get my hopes up. 

I answered the same questions over and over: 

Where did you say you were experiencing pain? My back. My shoulder. My neck. I get headaches, my bra straps cut into my skin. 

Have you tried getting fitted for a proper bra? Yes. Of course. 

Family history of it? No.

Do you take any pain medication? Definitely more than I should be.  

I got tired of hearing myself talk about what felt like phantom pain. 

Some days, the pain is barely noticeable, but other days I can’t turn onto my side in bed because my back feels as if someone is sticking thousands of needles in it. Some days I feel like I could live like this for the rest of my life (though I’d be Advil’s number one customer) and other days I cry and know surgery is my only option for finding peace in my body. 

It’s been years since I’ve looked at my body and not seen angry red lines across my chest where straps and underwires chafe against my skin. I’ve tried every bra out there, underwire, no underwire, bralette, sports, etc. Nothing makes the pain—or my self-esteem—better. 

So, I met a surgeon. And I stood there in a cold office while a nurse took photos of my bare chest on her iPad (yes, an iPad, as if the topless photos weren’t uncomfortable enough, you had to take them on an iPad?) all in the hopes of getting help. I felt like a stranger watching myself from above, cringing at the awkward silence and the way I tried to crack my back nonchalantly—anything for a little relief. 

That day I realized just how badly I needed surgery. The nurse knew I needed it. The surgeon knew I needed it. And yet, 

My insurance company needed less than two days to decide I didn’t qualify.

 I sat, dumbfounded as I read their decision, tears already rolling down my cheeks before I’d even opened the letter. I looked at the name of the doctor—the man—who had made the decision. A man who had never met me, who had only seen photos of my condition and didn’t know what it was like to have to get used to pain caused by two fucking sandbags on your chest being pulled down by gravity every day. 

My anger came back, familiar but fresh, as if it had been locked away and never seen the sun in the first place.  

But my anger wasn’t only aimed at this insurance doctor, he was only half of this messed-up equation. My surgeon, a man who’d swapped chemistry stories with me and told me he could see how uncomfortable I was, that he’d like to help me—chose an amount to take off that he knew wouldn’t pass insurance requirements. But he wouldn’t go higher, “I don’t want you coming back in here and asking for a boob job because you think you’re too flat now. How do you think that makes me look?” Even after I assured him I’d 1000% rather be flat-chested than be in this much pain and hate my body so much. But he thought he knew my body better than me. 

These men assumed I would get over it. They assumed that I would want these boobs later on regardless of my pain, because what else is a girl good for, right? They assumed I would be grateful to them for saving me from a life-altering surgery I’d dreamed about since I was 14. 

My anger cooled into obsidian resentment. I resented people who’d never have to go through this, who didn’t know this pain. I resented the two male doctors for making decisions on my behalf because they thought they knew better. But god—I resented myself so much more. 

I didn’t look in a full-length mirror for two days after I got rejected. I showered with my eyes closed. I wore baggy T-shirts and two sports bras. I couldn’t think about what could have been, but my body was a permanent reminder. 

It’s now been several months since I was rejected, and I’d be lying if I said I was over it. Every few days, I remember this is the way my body will have to remain and I spiral into a fresh hell. The other day I sat for too long and couldn’t fall asleep that night because my lower back was on fire. Somedays, I can’t get out of bed. Call me dramatic all you want—I know it's just boobs—but really, it's my comfort and self-esteem. It’s my goddamn peace of mind. 

 I don’t know what it’s like to wear a sundress without feeling like I’m showing too much skin. I don’t date or let people see my body. I don't trust my own judgment, constantly asking if my top is too low-cut. 

I don't know who I am or if I will ever know, until I have this surgery.

But for now, I know I have to live with the decision two men made for me. 

Written by Kate Castello

Edited by Belle O’Hara and Elisabeth Kay