34th Street Magazine's "Toast" is a semi-weekly newsletter with the latest on Penn's campus culture and arts scene. Delivered Monday-Wednesday-Friday.
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There is a large discrepancy between the medically accepted notions of healthy bodies and the images encouraged by popular culture, and I’m not the only one who’s been affected by it.
We’re seeing senior women with full courseloads, a work-study or part-time job, relationships and leadership positions who, shockingly, want to take a few hours to themselves sometimes. What’s so wrong with that? Washed up? We think not.
Acting like a real person means, essentially, acting like a grown-up, an adult. But it doesn’t have the same, sad, unexciting connotation as those other terms.
The discourse of empowerment makes us feel good about putting a Band-Aid on something while avoiding actually questioning our role in systematic racism, oppression and injustice.
More than an eighth of the undergraduates at Penn are international students and a significant fraction of the faculty is also foreign, meaning that under FISA, the government can track all their communications.
The twerk used to be just a bouncy dance that came of age in a culture where people just wanted to get down and have a good time. It was good, clean fun.
Many professionals in the corporate world spend plenty of time on public interest projects. Unfortunately, few students — including myself over the past few years — know about these people.
In most situations, hugs are an inordinately intimate greeting. Sometimes I find myself in the grasp of a hug with someone who I’d never even had a one-on-one conversation with.
Originally, I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted from my time off, but now I realize that what I wanted was a renewed sense of hope and imagination. And I’m happy to say that I found that.