Thursday, August 7, 2014 T Thursday, August 7, 2014 8 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis ACROSS DOWN 35 Some hotel 50 Keyboard 1 Spring 1 Rough spots lobbies contemporary uf 5 Goes kaput 2 Amherssch. 36 Encape on the Vladimir 9 Buckle 3 Poser way down 52 Memo header opener? 4 Starttotext? 38 Losing reion 54 World Cup 14 With passiorr 5 Arm-twisting 39 Dungeons & broadcaster 16 Chekho's" 6Takes the stage Dragons role 55 Drillers deg. 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One superb aspect of the film is the cast of wonderfully developed characters, each with motives and histories of their own. Rocket (voice of Bradley Cooper, "Silver Linings Playbook") is a geneti- cally-modified raccoon bounty hunter whose vitriolic tongue and highly intelligent brain provide some interesting antics. Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista, "Rid- dick") is a hulking warrior bent on avenging his slain wife and child. Quill dubs him a "walk- ing Thesaurus" who is ironically incapable of understanding figu- rative language. Female warrior Gamora (Zoe Saldana, "Avatar") was orphaned as a child - some- thing she and Quill subconsciously bond over - and was taken up by Thanos (Josh Brolin, "No Country for Old Men"), a selfish titan of the universe who reformed her into a weapon. Michael Rooker ("The Walking Dead") delivers a volatile performance as Yondu, captain of the very same spaceship that abducted Quill as a boy. The film's appeal is perhaps most reflected by Groot (Vin Die- sel, "The Fast and the Furious"), a humanoid tree whose origin goes unexplained. Yet, we feel as though we've known Groot from some other time. James Gunn described him as "one-hundred percent deadly, one-hundred per- cent sweet" and that's as accurate as any description can be of him. Groot is, like the film itself, both extremely powerful and extremely nuanced. His character has but one line: "I am Groot." Like every other risk in the film, Gunn and company completely pull it off. That particular quality - stack- ing risk on top of risk, then fulfill- ing them all with cinematic grace and originality - defines "Guard- ians of the Galaxy." Between the retro music, the maniacal charac- ters, the genre satire, the anti-hero story, the visual effects, the humor and the subtle tragedy unique to each character, Gunn has created a film of tremendous spirit, at once wildly entertaining and refresh- ingly new. Though "Guardians of the Galaxy" takes us to new places in our universe, it remains quint- essentially grounded in human nature. And that is its greatest tri- umph of all. I felt nervous as I shuffled into the yellow glow of the classroom. Everything appeared as it normally did every other Tuesday night. Perhaps the night's still life wouldn't be as mortifying as expected. Yet, as I nervously laid out my drawing pencils, I couldn't shake the embarrassment and anxiety swirling in my stomach. I'm not sure what detail of the assignment shocked me more: drawing a nude model or the fact I'd be doing so for three hours! I understood the artistic value of the human figure, but something about drawing it still felt explicit to me. Despite my obvious naivete, I was startled to learn how quickly I was able to dehumanize the naked individual sitting in front of me. It sounds harsh, but I quickly learned to stop thinking of the model as anything more than a vase or a chair. Muscles and bone rapidly transformed into mere lines and angles. While it made the drawing process easier, I felt ashamed for reducing a living, breathing human to a mere object. That's exactly what society trains us to do. We minimize. We reduce. We extrapolate select characteristics and use them as ideals for the rest of humanity. Reduction is the only lens society looks through to view the human body - particularly feminine bodies. Currently, women's bodies are walking billboards to sell anything from hamburgers to hot rods, but even eye candy must be whittled down to the right size. According to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, "up to 24 million people of both genders and all ages suffer from an eating disorder" and "86 percent of students report the onset of an eating disorder before age 20." Society dismisses these structures of bone, flesh and muscle that house minds capable of creativity and imagination. They hold hearts capable of immense love and compassion and are vessels carrying magnificent souls. Instead, the most important assets of a woman are the sacks of fat resting upon her chest and the flesh encased by her jeans. Humanity is taught to simultaneously glorify and vilify these anatomical structures. Women are expected to shed pounds, their self-confidence and concerns for their health in order to amplify these features and give guys something to gawk at. However, while the world treats us like sex objects, women are warned to never embrace their sexuality, for fear of appearing improper. There's an even darker side to the minimization of women's bodies. According to statistics from the World Health Organization, "more than 125 million girls and women alive today have been cut in the 29 countries in Africa and Middle East where FGM is concentrated." In Africa and the Middle East, young girls can be subjected to a cultural medical procedure known as female genital mutilation, where genital tissue is surgically removed to help ensure they exhibit proper pre-marital behavior and resist "illicit sexual acts." Even in the United States where FGM is illegal, there's still a need for concern. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention reports that "150,000-200,000 girls in the United States are at risk" of undergoing FGM. There's even possibility of girls being forced to leave the country to have the operation illegally - known as "vacation cutting." There's no medical reason to perform the procedure. Rather, FGM dehumanizes women and threatens their bodies by exposing them to numerous health problems such as "cysts, infertility, hemorrhaging, and need for later surgeries." Women's bodies weren't created to be shrunk, purged or spliced. We aren't objects to be tweaked or manipulated to guarantee good behavior. Society needs to stop placing women's health on the line to placate the populations who enjoy objectifying us. Melissa Scholke is an.LSA junior. MELISSA SCHOLKE I Taking back our bodies Thursday, August 7, 2014 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com Coming hoMe ast summer at this time, I felt the same way that most incoming freshmen probably do now. College was fast approaching, and as the warm, orange summer sun set earlier andF earlier; as the VICTORIA loose ends of NOBLE my summer job wound themselves tightly together; and as my high school friends and I bid goodbye, I was surrounded by the feeling that everything was about to change. I was excited. My roommate and I couldn't wait to get to campus and begin our freshman year. As fall grew closer, our excitement grew until we just couldn't wait to be at school. My parents and I loaded up our car with everything from toiletries and closet organizers to twin extra long sheets and pictures of home to decorate the walls - everything needed to make our shared, cinderblock- walled dorm room feel like home. Except it wasn't home, and it wouldn't feel like it for quite some time. My parents left, leaving an overwhelming feeling of insecurity. But, like most freshmen at welcome week, I got dressed and ready, and headed out to a party with my roommate. I later came home in tears, wandering through campus homesick and lost. Now, that was just one night, and homesickness is to be expected, at least to an extent. Some of my other welcome week memories are among the best I have of freshman year, and my one bad night was nowhere near catastrophic. But for some students, they can be. Combined with pressure to make friends with new classmates and the nerves associated with suddenly being on their own, often for the first time, alcohol can pose a very real, and in some sense heightened risk for freshmen. Add that to the fact that some of these kids didn't drink in high school and it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that welcome week can often produce negative experiences for our youngest students. I watched peers deal with serious and damagingexperiences in their first weeks on campus. One got ticketed for Minor in Possession of Alcohol. Even more had close encounters with over- consumption. One was injured on thewayhomefromaparty,andone still regrets asexual encountershe had with a boy she hardly knew. Instances where ambulances are requested become warning tales for overconsumption - and rightfully so. But it doesn't take an ambulance rideto stain astudent's first week on campus, and we should be mindful of the impact events that seem less serious might have on younger students. When so many of us call up memories of our first weeks as Wolverines, we cast them in shining, golden hues. In their false light they portray an idolized time when we traipsed around campus with new friends. Envious of our past selves, we remember a time when everything - and I mean literally everything - was new and exciting. There's no doubt that the first weeks of campus life are incredible experiences. But by neglecting to critically examine the difficulties we faced during that time, we consequently fail to consider how we might improve the experience for the next class of students - and it certainly needs improving. For many incoming freshmen, Ann Arbor hasn't yet morphed into the home away from home that most students eventually come to appreciate. To them, it's almost inevitably uncomfortable while still enviably fresh and exciting. Despite offering up thousands of new souls to meet and hundreds of restaurants, buildings and parks to explore, campus still lacks the comfort and familiarity, and consequently safety, of home. The University has taken some steps to help improve the experience of incoming freshmen duringtheir firstweeks on campus. They've eliminated the option to move into dorms early, and shortened welcome week. All of this might limit the opportunity to party without the constraints of schoolwork and class. The University should be commended for recognizing the problem, and taking steps to solve it. They also provide alcohol education, and tools like the Stay in the Blue app, to help 5 students monitor consumption and understand how their habits affect their bodies. While these efforts are admirable, they don't do enough to remedy the lost sense of security that can, for some, contribute to destructive behaviors. That's our job. As returning students, we have the ability to help incoming students feel safe and comfortable on campus, starting from day one. By pressuring incoming students to drink, asserting that drunken adventures are what college is about or failing to be a source of support, students directly contribute to a more hostile environment. And that isn't the norm at the University. In my experience, many people did do their absolute best to welcome my friends and I to campus in a positive way. If nearly everyone approached welcome week with supportive attitudes, and offered themselves as sources of guidance to younger students, Itruly believe we could profoundly improve the new student experience. Eventually, college will start to feel like home for new students. But for that to happen, they'll have to rebuild the support system that they lost when coming to college. And to do that, they need you. They need peers who, even if they don't know them all that well, will be a friendly face on the street offering a smile or some directions; a nice person to talk to at those awkward, somewhat anonymous mega-parties; a benevolent source of advice as they prepare to read their first Psych111chapter. When we come back to campus in the fall, we'll be, in a very real sense, coming home. Hopefully, Ann Arbor will become a home for the incoming students. They'll realize, as I did only a few months ago, that when I said, "I want to go home," I was no longer referring to the place where my parents lived. But those sorts of things take time, and until then, we should at least try to provide the security their home will later provide. No matter what kind of home these students create for themselves this year, the people they meet will always be the foundation. - Victoria Noble can be reached at vjnoble@umich.edu. Look for The Michigan Daily's return in September 2014!