4 Thursday, July 5, 2018 The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com OPINION 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 tothedaily@michigandaily.com Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. Y ou know that episode of “Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse” where Malibu has a glitter shortage and all hell breaks loose because Barbie is supposed to attend a Hollywood premiere that night and she doesn’t want her fans to see her without any glitter? I feel like that’s a pretty accurate depiction of how my summer’s gone so far. My “dreamhouse” is a little apartment on Central Campus, and toward the end of the school year, my roommates and I began to allow ourselves to consider the prospect of summer. Summer. The word itself drips with glitter. We all have jobs and internships, of course, but we’re used to being at the library until the early hours of the morning every single day. When you can’t remember the last time you got seven hours of sleep without feeling guilty about it, the idea of having nights and evenings completely void of homework sounds like something out of a fairytale. But now summer’s here. We’re almost two months in, actually. And though our shoulders are tanner and our living room is packed to the brim with box fans we bought from CVS, it doesn’t really feel like summer. Day-to-day life doesn’t live up to the anticipation that the word “summer” carries. Why? My theory is that the University of Michigan has a glitter shortage. When I was in seventh grade, my mom told me I could practice wearing makeup. I couldn’t wear it to school, but I could wear it around the house. Naturally, I spent hours at the family computer watching tutorials from girls with usernames like juicystar07 and itsbl0ndie. When my mom went grocery shopping, I tagged along to journey through the cosmetics aisle. I used crumpled $5 bills I’d earned from babysitting to pay for pink lipstick and blue eyeliner. The first time I was finally allowed to wear makeup to school, I covered my eyelids with silver glitter, just like I’d practiced so many times before. I felt glamorous all day. I wasn’t just another gangling, awkward middle schooler. I had created art on my face that showed I was a stylish, dazzling it-girl. Well, last night, I sat cross-legged in front of the full-length mirror in my bedroom and listened to my roommates laughing and singing as I put on my makeup. Foundation. Concealer. Blush. Eyebrow gel. Black eyeshadow to create the illusion of longer lashes. Thick, dark mascara that my mom got me for Christmas. No glitter. Not even a drop. I’m finally old enough to wear whatever I want and I don’t even wear any glitter? Come on. Adulthood is a total rip-off. During our walk down South University Avenue on the way home after our glitterless night out, my roommate, Shannon, and I asked ourselves why it doesn’t feel like summer yet. “It feels like we’re just waiting for summer to start,” she said. “Like it’s going to be fun and exciting and full of adventure, but it just hasn’t happened yet.” “I think we’re still trying to figure out who we are beyond homework,” I said. “’Cause during the school year, all we did was study and go to class and we never had to figure out who we were and what we wanted to do. And now that we have the time to do that, we’re just lost.” I wouldn’t say that seventh grade was the highlight of my existence, but that may be the last time my identity came from myself and not from my grades or my job or my resume. I knew what I wanted. I wanted more followers on my Justin Bieber fan account on Twitter and I wanted to wear as much glitter as humanly possible. Now, all I want is good grades, and when classes end and I no longer have an ability to earn good grades, I don’t know what I want. How sad is that? The thing is, I’m not the only one who deep down inside is meant to be wearing glitter. How do I know this? Because if you walked down the hallways of Mill Creek Middle School in 2010, I wasn’t the only one with glittery eyelids. I wasn’t the only one whose first taste of independence was the ability to wear as much glitter as I wanted. Before we started spending every spare moment in the library, we all used to daydream about being glitzy and glamorous. When did we become so boring? It doesn’t feel like summer yet because I’m glitter-deficient. That’s bad news. The good news? You can buy glitter eyeshadow on Amazon for $3. Anyone want me to order some for you? ETHAN KESSLER | COLUMN EMMA CHANG Editorial Page Editor EMMA RICHTER Managing Editor Emma Chang Joel Danilewitz Samantha Goldstein Elena Hubbell Emily Huhman Tara Jayaram Jeremy Kaplan Sarah Khan Magdalena Mihaylova Ellery Rosenzweig Jason Rowland Anu Roy-Chaudhury Alex Satola Ali Safawi Ashley Zhang Sam Weinberger Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily’s Editorial Board. All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors. ASIF BECHER Editor in Chief EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS HANNAH HARSHE | COLUMN We have a glitter shortage Hannah Harshe can be reached at hharshe@umich.edu. Protect and serve T he Supreme Court’s latest term recently concluded with a slew of divisive decisions on several crucial issues, as well as groundbreaking news over Justice Anthony Kennedy’s departure from the Court. Overshadowed by these developments, however, was the decision handed down by the Court in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, a case whose implications were eagerly anticipated when the Supreme Court heard arguments late last year. The Court’s 7-2 ruling in favor of baker Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cakeshop, who in 2014 refused to serve a same-sex couple, failed to produce a conclusive standard for the balance between religious freedom and anti- discrimination protection. Regardless of future action, there remains an issue of greater interest that goes beyond the Colorado cakeshop and the gay couple to whom it denied its services: that even in Colorado – one of only 20 states that protects LGBT citizens from discrimination by public accommodations – a couple like Charlie Craig and Dave Mullins could be so plainly deprived of their civil rights and then be rejected after taking their case to court. Following the progression (or lack thereof) of the litigation, it soon becomes impossible to dismiss the great injustice of the status quo. More than anything, the Masterpiece Cakeshop case demonstrates the need to define sexual orientation as a federally protected class. Conflict ensued shortly after Craig and Mullins, a same-sex couple seeking a cake that would suit their marriage ceremony, found themselves at the counter of Masterpiece Cakeshop. The bakery was headed by Phillips, a devout evangelical Christian who refused to make the couple one of his bespoke wedding cakes on the basis of Craig and Mullin’s sexual orientation. Namely, Phillips’ counsel sought to obfuscate his impropriety by framing the case as one of stifled personal expression, with Phillips as a victim at the hands of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. The Court’s conservative justices generally concurred, judging the Masterpiece Cakeshop incident along the lines of a similar Colorado case wherein a customer brought a cake design bearing an anti-homosexual message to a bakery, but baker Marjorie Silva’s refusal to fulfill his order was upheld. The justices’ cry to the supposed double standard the Silva case presents, however, amounts to little more than conservative self- pity. The Colorado Civil Rights Commission sided with Silva precisely because she would have refused the customer’s same design request to any customer. It is not relevant that the man requesting the cake’s message was doing so in light of his own religious beliefs – it was the simply the content of the message, not the identity of the customer, that disgusted Silva, a characterization proven by the fact that she offered to sell him a plain cake and icing bag later so he could implement the design himself. Phillips, on the other hand, based his refusal to serve Craig and Mullins solely on the basis of their identity. As dissenting Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg pointed out, Craig and Mullins were not even able to arrive at their proposed design before Phillips rejected them. This proves that Phillips’ rationale lay with the identity of his customers and not with the content of any services they had requested of Continue reading on page 5. “Regardless of future action, there remains an issue of greater interest that goes beyond the Colorado cakeshop.”