Opinion

SHOHAM GEVA
EDITOR IN CHIEF

CLAIRE BRYAN 

AND REGAN DETWILER 
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITORS

LAURA SCHINAGLE
MANAGING EDITOR

420 Maynard St. 

Ann Arbor, MI 48109

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The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4 — Friday, February 12, 2016

I

nterrupting our scene, my act-
ing teacher put her hand on my 
shoulder and looked me in the 

eyes. Soft, yet 
affirmatively, 
she told me to 
“park politeness 
at the door.” 

“Get out of 

your 
head,” 

she 
demanded. 

“Don’t 
think 

about your reac-
tion and don’t 
manipulate your 
response; 
just 

express the feel-
ing that comes naturally to you.” 
Feeling very uncomfortable and 
utterly lost, I stood on the stage 
rubbing the inside of my palms. It 
was hopeless; I didn’t know what to 
say, or the right way to say it.

Our class was learning the Meis-

ner approach to acting, where the 
name of the game is to express 
authentic emotion during an impro-
visation by recalling your own feel-
ings and experiences. Through a 
series of repetition exercises, we 
were supposed to learn how to react 
honestly to our partners’ expressed 
emotion rather than focusing on 
the lines that we were exchang-
ing. For example, if my partner said 
something that made me anxious, 
I would say aloud to him, “You’re 
making me uncomfortable.”

As I stood helpless in front of the 

class, I was saved by yet another 
interjection by my teacher. “Tell-
ing someone what you’re actually 
feeling is hard, isn’t it?” The entire 
class nodded in agreement. “In our 
culture, we’re so focused on being 
polite that we’re afraid to express 
our feelings. We create so many 
miscommunications by being afraid 
to be emotionally connected with 
another person.”

After she said this, I started to 

reflect on my relationships. Even 
though I had only known my act-
ing partners in the class for a few 
weeks, I already felt more connect-
ed to them than to friends that I had 
known for months.

Initially, I was worried about 

how much I would actually enjoy 
this class. Being a person diagnosed 
with generalized anxiety disor-
der, I have difficulty with public 
speaking. I could barely give class 

presentations, let alone channel my 
innermost feelings to share openly 
with a class of 16 strangers. But to 
my surprise, by the end of my scene, 
the unexpected happened.

Instead of provoking stress, the 

activity lessened my stress tre-
mendously. As weird as it sounds, 
it actually felt great to show com-
plete vulnerability to a stranger. I 
hadn’t noticed it before, but after 
that scene, I realized that I had 
been suppressing my emotions in 
order to accommodate others, and 
that my suppression of emotion 
had been worsening my symptoms 
of anxiety. Sincerely exposing my 
feelings to my peers unexpect-
edly eased the restlessness and 
worry that normally overtook me 
in social interactions.

Western culture has taught us 

that it’s abnormal to express emo-
tion. We live in a society where men 
have been conditioned to believe 
that suppressing their emotions 
makes them more masculine, and 
where the expression of emotional 
pain by women has been discour-
aged. It’s unfair that our culture 
has diminished this sense of our 
humanity. Even though a lot of 
people experience a pressure to 
conceal their emotions, people with 
generalized anxiety disorder and 
other emotional disorders, such as 
clinical depression or other mood 
disorders, can be more devastating-
ly affected by the pressure to create 
a façade.

People with generalized anxiety 

disorder are more likely to suppress 
their emotions because they are 
more worried that their emotions 
are unacceptable or inappropriate. 
There have been times when I’ve 
been so worried to show my emo-
tions that my concern has caused 
me physical pain in the form of 
chest discomfort and loss of breath. 
In general, this burden is attributed 
to the development of diseases and 
physical ailments in people with 
high levels of anxiety. Improper 
emotional regulation through lack 
of expression also makes it harder 
for individuals to communicate 
effectively. This leads to miscom-
munications and can result in the 
inability to recognize the emotions 
of others.

Interestingly enough, none of 

my health care providers warned 

me about these behaviors and 
their negative consequences to 
my health. I have been in and out 
of different health systems and I 
have met with multiple doctors 
from diverse areas of expertise, but 
none of them suggested regulating 
emotional expression to help alle-
viate my anxiety. Instead, they all 
strongly recommended different 
types of medications. I finally gave 
in, and I tried one medication after 
another. When the medications 
were not effective, my health care 
professionals urged me to increase 
the dosage. Needless to say, that 
didn’t work, so instead they encour-
aged me to try creatively concocted 
cocktails of antidepressants. Unfor-
tunately, none of these methods 
proved to be helpful.

After experiencing overwhelm-

ing anxiety relief from emotional 
verbalization, I realized I had 
found my alternative to anti-anxi-
ety drugs. I wish I had known that 
communicating 
effectively 
and 

taking the time to connect with 
others would boost my serotonin 
levels as much as the little white 
pill that I took every day. I’m not 
saying there is a better alternative 
to medication for everyone, but I 
think that having open and hon-
est dialogue regularly is beneficial 
for the improvement of emotional 
well-being.

The real kicker is that, in our 

society, it’s becoming more abnor-
mal for a person to show they feel 
something than it is for them to 
feel nothing at all or to mask their 
feelings. It’s considered an insult 
to be described as an emotional 
individual. As a nation, we need to 
start doing a better job at acknowl-
edging our humanity by dimin-
ishing our capitalist culture and 
disregarding the idea that we don’t 
have time for feelings because 
we’re so busy with work. In addi-
tion to this, we need to address the 
emotional detachment that often 
comes in the form of competitive 
nature. We need to reverse the dis-
cernable loss of empathy for the 
betterment of mental and physical 
health of people with and without 
generalized anxiety disorder or 
other emotional disorders.

—Hannah Maier can be reached 

at hannamai@umich.edu.

Acting away anxiety

E-mail yazmon at Eyazmon@umich.Edu
YAZMON ECTOR

Claire Bryan, Regan Detwiler, Caitlin Heenan, Jeremy Kaplan, Ben Keller, 

Minsoo Kim, Payton Luokkala, Kit Maher, Madeline Nowicki, Anna 
Polumbo-Levy, Jason Rowland, Lauren Schandevel, Melissa Scholke, 

Kevin Sweitzer, Rebecca Tarnopol, Ashley Tjhung, Stephanie Trierweiler, 

Hunter Zhao

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

O

ne sleepy morning during my sopho-
more year of high school, my teacher 
posed a question to the class that has 

lingered in the back of my 
mind ever since: “Which 
are more valuable to soci-
ety: the sciences or the 
arts?”

I remember most of the 

kids in my class answered 
science without hesita-
tion. I had much more 
trouble 
producing 
an 

answer, but I settled on 
arts partially to be devil’s 
advocate 
and 
partially 

because I couldn’t imag-
ine a world without art or music or books.

Last week, I attended Dick Costolo’s talk 

about leadership and liberal arts, which 
reminded me of this age-old argument. Cos-
tolo, former CEO of Twitter and a University 
of Michigan LSA computer science alum, pin-
pointed exactly how I feel about the role of 
humanities in education.

As a student who has a deep interest in both 

biology and English, I’ve found that I straddle 
a gray area few students choose to traverse. 
Even though I’m passionate about both the 
sciences and the arts, I’ve had trouble articu-
lating to my peers exactly why I value taking 
humanities courses (except for the fact that 
writing well is an important skill, or that I 
personally like how the two disciplines exer-
cise different parts of my brain, and that I’d be 
bored if I only took science and math classes).

Many of my STEM-focused peers lament 

the humanities distribution requirements 
they have to fulfill for graduation. These 
courses seem to eat up valuable credits that 
could be used to take another science or math 
course, one that teaches skills more pertinent 
to their major or desired career. But when 
students studying the humanities lament the 
science distribution requirement, they’re met 
with incredulity that they would spurn such 
“essential” topics in education.

While Costolo implored students to take 

computer science courses due to their appli-
cability in the global economy, he also noted 
that nearly every discipline — sciences and 
humanities alike — teaches students critical 
thinking skills. He argued that what sets the 
critical thinking in humanities subjects apart 
from that in STEM subjects is that they teach 
us what to think about.

That is, the critical thinking in the human-

ities requires the consideration of multiple 
perspectives and factors that contextualize a 
problem before attempting to solve it.

In the science and math classes I’ve taken 

throughout my schooling, I’ve found little room 
for varying perspectives or methods in course-
work. Sure, there may be several approaches 
to a given problem, but thought processes are 
often restricted by the single correct answer 
that lies at the end of each question. Much of 
the context of science is stripped in practice — 
we’re usually forced to work within a set of con-
trols or a finite set of mathematical theorems.

Of course, science has room for concep-

tual and abstract discussions, but it still lacks 
the interpersonal aspect integral to thought 

in the humanities. And these interpersonal 
skills often are more important in a career 
than technical skills.

The humanities courses I’ve taken encour-

age the accumulation of disparate viewpoints 
in conversation to strengthen a student’s inter-
personal skills. More often than not, it’s per-
fectly OK if a student takes away something 
different from a text than the next student, so 
long as they derive their reasoning from a rel-
evant source. The humanities force students 
to sift through countless details to find what’s 
important, to become adept listeners, to con-
sider experiences outside their own.

We need the humanities to serve as a liaison 

between the world of science and the world 
of human interaction, to check the power of 
science and to force the scientific world to 
consider the ethical and interpersonal rami-
fications of scientific advancements. Know-
ing how to draw a curved-arrow mechanism 
for a bimolecular substitution reaction can-
not teach a doctor to empathize with patients 
of different backgrounds than their own. 
Knowing how to take the line integral of a 
function cannot help engineers develop tech-
nologies that consider a community’s needs.

If we study science for science’s sake alone, 

we run the risk of endangering humanity 
itself. Life-prolonging medications, artificial 
intelligence and genetic engineering are all 
significant marks of human achievement, but 
if used with the wrong intentions, they most 
certainly have the potential to destroy soci-
eties and render life intolerable. The good 
science can do for us resides in our consider-
ation of how these developments will shape 
human life and interpersonal interactions in 
the long term — and this is simply not some-
thing taught in most STEM courses.

Yet students don’t flock to STEM courses 

purely out of interest, but rather pragmatic 
concerns. College, after all, is a financial 
investment, and it certainly is reasonable to 
want a return on that investment. There is no 
dearth of jobs in STEM fields, and often these 
fields lead to lucrative careers — ones that 
can pay off college debt and allow students to 
earn comfortable livings post-graduation.

But for students to boil down which class-

es they take to the market value of the skills 
taught, they forgo classes that can teach 
them empathy or ethics or effective commu-
nication — skills that possess value that has 
no price. Costolo — who made Twitter the 
booming social media company it is today — 
emphasized that his company would not have 
been as successful as it is without the skills he 
learned from the humanities courses he stud-
ied here at the University. 

Society will perpetually juggle the influenc-

es of the sciences and the arts in our everyday 
lives. Students can — and should — choose the 
field that makes them burn with passion, but 
they cannot dismiss the interconnectedness 
of the sciences and the arts and the value that 
each can contribute to their education, their 
career and their character.

Life, after all, is so much more than a dis-

crete set of scientific and mathematical truths.

—Rebecca Tarnopol can be 

reached at tarnopol@umich.edu

Keep humanity in education

E

veryone gives me more 
or less the same reaction 
when I tell them my celeb-

rity 
crush 
is 

Seth 
Rogen. 

I’m 
always 

met with faces 
of pure shock 
and 
disbelief, 

followed 
by 

a 
chorus 
of 

questioning as 
to why. If I’m 
really lucky, I 
get 
hysterical 

laughter. 
Seth 

Rogen 
doesn’t 

have a six-pack, and he’s far from 
the typical definition of “tall, dark 
and handsome.” He’s short if you’re 
not into guys under six foot and a 
little pale, but I truly find him ador-
able. His, for lack of a better term, 
“doughy” body doesn’t put me off. 
If anything, I find him more attrac-
tive for it. He seems less unobtain-
able. He seems more real.

The reaction I get quite obvi-

ously means I’m supposed to fall 
over myself for celebrities like the 
Hemsworth brothers or Channing 
Tatum. If I said I didn’t find them 
attractive I’d be lying. Their chis-
eled bodies and sharp jawlines are 
nice to look at and all, but they’re 
entirely too intimidating. I’d never 
be able to talk to any of them in real 
life. But I think we’ve established I 
can’t talk to men in general so that’s 
not saying much.

The thing about crushes that 

people tend to forget is that they 
are supposed to be based on more 
than looks. There’s a difference 
between finding someone attrac-
tive and having a crush on them. I 
find many men attractive. I sure as 
hell wouldn’t date all of them. Sure, 
pretty men may be dreamy in their 
own right but that doesn’t mean 
other men aren’t.

We’re constantly barraged with 

discussion 
surrounding 
unreal-

istic beauty ideals women face 
every day. The same goes for men 
as well. We don’t think it’s fair of 
men to compare us to Victoria’s 
Secret models so why would we 
compare them to Calvin Klein mod-
els? What kind of message are we 
sending when we fawn over the 
airbrushed men while completely 
disregarding others we deem not 
fitting as an ideal male? I’m not try-
ing to downplay women’s struggles 
with body image, as there are sig-
nificantly more women who suffer 
from body image issues; however, it 
should be recognized that while we 
grapple with how thin our bodies 
are, 18 percent of adolescent males 
struggle with wanting to be bigger 
or more muscular. 

Those kinds of men are few and 

far between anyway — with only 1 
to 2 percent of men having the ide-
alized body type, it’s as unrealistic 
to expect abs on a guy as it is to 
expect a woman to have a 20-inch 
waist. Most of us are going to end 
up marrying the Seth Rogens of the 
world. It shouldn’t be a bad thing to 
be attracted to “normal” men. I’m 
not saying every other man isn’t 
normal. It’s just that Hollywood is 
full of unusually beautiful people; 
that’s why they make a ridiculous 
amount of money by having their 
picture taken or starring in films. 

It shouldn’t be everyone’s auto-

matic reaction to scoff at my choice 
of celebrity crush. But it is. “Why 
Seth Rogen when there are so many 
more hot men to choose from?” 
people have asked.

You see, I’m crushing hard 

because not only is he hilari-
ous, but also Seth cares deeply 
about social issues. He addressed 
Congress two years ago in an 
attempt to raise awareness about 
the lack of Alzheimer’s funding. 

His mother-in-law has suffered 
from Alzheimer’s for almost 11 
years and he has made big bounds 
to help. Seth and his wife began 
Hilarity for Charity, a foundation 
to make Alzheimer’s advocates 
out of millennials. They hold the 
Los Angeles Variety Show to raise 
money and awareness for the dis-
ease. It is the sweetest thing. He’s 
a man of substance with aspira-
tions and a solid dedication to his 
wife and their relationship.

As young girls we’re primed to 

want to find our “Prince Charm-
ing” and he’s usually portrayed as 
the old Ken-doll-like man who has 
a perfectly symmetrical face and 
not an inch of fat anywhere on his 
body. Now there is a “curvy Ken” 
to match his new “curvy Barbie,” 
so we’re making moves toward 
body peace.

Still, the “men of our dreams” 

have no substance. They don’t run 
charity events nor do they have 
ambition. We’re brainwashed into 
thinking these empty shells of 
humans are worthy of our time.

For men, it’s more or less the 

same except they often get their 
ideas of ideal women from porn and 
half-naked models on the pages of 
magazines. Long cellulite-free legs, 
flowing lustrous hair and blemish-
free faces bombard their psyches on 
a daily basis, leading to disappoint-
ment for some when it’s usually not 
the case in real life. 

We should all aspire to be more 

cognizant of who we admire. It’s 
definitely OK to look at a celebrity 
and appreciate their beauty, but 
putting them on a pedestal is far 
from necessary. How about we all 
just agree that we don’t have to be 
exceptionally beautiful to be of any 
worth to one another?

Olivia Puente can be reached 

at opuente@umich.edu

Real men have curves, too

OLIVIA
PUENTE

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REBECCA
TARNOPOL

HANNAH 
MAIER

