5
OPINION
Thursday, June 6, 2019
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
5
OPINION
I
t’s officially June, which means
two things: The Peony Garden
in Nichols Arboretum is due to
bloom any day, and it’s time to cel-
ebrate Pride. LGBTQ+ Pride month
has gone through many evolutions
since its origins in New York in
1970, where the first Pride was held
to commemorate a year since the
Stonewall riots. The Stonewall riots
are a historical moment often cred-
ited as the beginning of the mod-
ern gay rights movement, and were
bravely led by transgender women
of color, including famous activists
such as Sylvia Rivera and Marsha
P. Johnson. The impact of these
women and other gay rights activ-
ists was the harnessing of LGBTQ+
individuals’ political power, which
translated into the creation of
LGBTQ+ Pride month.
Pride began as a political dem-
onstration, where the voices of the
LGBTQ+
community
demanded
equal rights and protections. Pride
still serves as a crucial political tool,
pushing the importance of LGBTQ+
freedoms and safety — and this is
especially salient when acknowl-
edging the tangible barriers still
stand in front of LGBTQ+ Ameri-
cans. Political and social threats still
exist. An individual can still be fired
in 26 states because of sexual orien-
tation or gender identity. According
to 2017 FBI hate crime statistics, a
surge in hate crimes has dispropor-
tionately affected LGBTQ+ individ-
uals, and even more so those with
intersectional marginalized identi-
ties. These issues are deserving of
political attention and advocacy,
but gradually this political focus of
Pride has expanded into what it is
widely viewed as today: a celebra-
tion.
This isn’t a plea to turn every
visible moment as an LGBTQ+
individual into a rally cry against
oppression. Pride can and should
be used to celebrate queer life.
Pride can and should be enjoyable.
It exemplifies the importance and
impact of LGBTQ+ people across
the spectrum, and brings the com-
munity together in a way that allows
individuals to praise their own and
each other’s identities. What Pride
shouldn’t be promoting, however,
is the commercialization of these
identities to benefit corporations
and promote half-baked awareness
of the issues.
Something
that
I’ve
learned
in my time as a Communications
Studies major is that any aspect of
your identity can and will be uti-
lized as a market. During Pride, the
LGBTQ+ community becomes easy
to tap, with newseeds and store-
fronts flooded with rainbow flags,
while marketers clearly know that
the community’s buying power has
exceeded $1 trillion.
At first glance, the idea of brands
incorporating products that support
LGBTQ+ visibility into their lines
is commendable. Oftentimes, these
products come with some social ben-
efit. For example, H&M’s Pride col-
lection “Stay True, Stay You” donates
10 percent of the global sales price
to the work of the United Nations’
Free & Equal campaign. Again, this
is seemingly mutually beneficial:
I get a cool new rainbow bodysuit
while simultaneously donating to a
significant cause. But the implica-
tions of this type of consumerism
get a bit dicey when considering
that H&M has several high-volume
factories in China, a country with
historic
anti-LGBTQ
legislation
(despite very recent promises to the
United Nations to address LGBTQ+
rights). This type of commercial
social blindness is consistently seen
throughout Pride, like when the
biggest sponsors of city-wide Pride
events are contributing greatly to
issues such as income inequality, an
issue affecting marginalized (espe-
cially those that are intersectional)
identities at disproportionate rates.
With the growth of positive senti-
ment regarding the LGBTQ+ com-
munity, brands frequently attempt
to jump into these celebrations to
make a profit with little found inter-
est in the actual issues.
Wearing or purchasing Pride
merchandise from a big corporation
is not something to be intrinsically
ashamed of. Sometimes, corpora-
tions have a piece of clothing that
you feel represents your version of
Pride, and it’s okay to indulge that
purchase. The issue arises when
Pride becomes a market compe-
tition for who can earn the most
LGBTQ+ dollars without consis-
tently supporting the community.
Consumers need to hold companies
accountable for their political and
monetary actions, and the impact
of these decisions on the LGBTQ+
community. While Pride should
be a time to celebrate, the political
origins of the holiday and the ongo-
ing needs of the community should
remain at the forefront of one’s
thoughts. Now, go buy a rainbow
t-shirt from a local LGBTQ+ sup-
porting business, and happy Pride.
Pride isn’t a brand
ERIN WHITE | OP-ED
Erin White can be reached at
ekwhite@umich.edu
PHILIP EIL | OP-ED
W
hen I was a junior at the
University of Michigan,
I experienced the worst
panic attack of my life. At the time, I
was on spring break from a semester
abroad in Scotland, midway through
a long-planned trip through Spain,
France and Italy. It was, in theory,
the highlight of my semester. But
symptoms that I had begun to
experience back at school in Ann
Arbor had gotten worse. And on this
trip they boiled over, culminating
in a moment in Florence when I
became convinced I was dying,
which sent my heart racing and my
mind whirring out of control. That
moment was followed by aftershocks
in the following weeks, including one
day back in Scotland where I asked
my dorm administrator to call an
ambulance because I thought I was
having a heart attack. The EMTs
arrived and determined that I was
fine, which added a big dose of
embarrassment to my distress.
I share this story now as a 34 year-
old who only recently started taking
my mental health seriously. Despite
flare-ups of anxiety and depression
in my twenties, I spent the decade
after college burying myself in my
work as a journalist and teacher
and ignoring these issues when they
arose. It took another crisis in 2017 —
a case of burnout and depression that
left me unable to work for weeks — to
really wake me up. I’ve since spent
a lot of time taking better care of
myself, and also writing about men-
tal health topics, including anxiety,
depression, burnout, therapy, toxic
masculinity and suicide. The brain is
now one of my beats, as a journalist.
Part of this journey has involved
realizing just how much the college-
aged me could have benefited from
the knowledge I have now. If I had
a time machine, I might send it back
to Bursley or the Brown Jug or the
Big House, circa the mid 2000s, to
whisper a few words in my own ear,
and save myself a lot of future misery.
Alas, I can’t do that. But I can write
something for The Daily, and per-
haps be a bit of help to you.
The first thing I would share with
the younger me — and to you, my
fellow Wolverines — is the simple
message that you are not alone. As
a reporter on mental health, I’ve
learned that anxiety disorders affect
some 40 million adults in the U.S.
and that, worldwide, so many people
struggle with depression that the
World Health Organization calls it
the world’s leading cause of disabil-
ity. While mental health struggles
can feel intensely isolating, that feel-
ing is an illusion. This is a huge part of
being human, and there is much sol-
ace to be found in remembering that,
and hearing other people’s stories.
I would also add that there is
absolutely nothing to be ashamed of
about struggling with your mental
health. You wouldn’t be down on
yourself for getting the flu or pull-
ing a muscle during a pickup basket-
ball game, because neither of those
things would mean you’re a bad or
a weak person. And the same idea
applies to your brain. Having anxi-
ety or depression means that you’re
someone with a human body that is
prone to occasionally malfunction.
It also means that we live in a world
with countless mental health-aggra-
vating triggers, from social media
to climate change to racism to mass
shootings to dating apps to political
chaos and so much more.
If your mind is telling you that
there is something to be ashamed
of because of a mental health issue,
that is a symptom of the issues them-
selves — or perhaps an outgrowth of
our culture’s pervasive and totally
unnecessary stigma. Confronting
that stigma in yourself and others is
a huge step toward becoming a men-
tal health-literate and overall good
person.
College, for me, was the first time
when mental health symptoms real-
ly started to affect my quality of life.
And if you’re experiencing similar
turbulence, the good news is that
there is help for you. There are sup-
port groups, medications, therapists,
self-help books, TED Talks, mindful-
ness apps — the list goes on. Every-
one’s mental health regimen is going
to look a bit different, according to
their schedule and needs and budget.
And it may take you some time to fig-
ure out what works best for you. I’m
still tweaking mine, years after first
seeking help.
But the basic fact is you are sur-
rounded by time-tested, research-
backed, highly-accessible (and fully
anonymous) ways for you to feel
better. The University of Michigan
isn’t just an athletic and academic
powerhouse; it’s also a major center
for mental health treatment. At Uni-
versity Health Service’s online hub
for mental health, you’ll find links
to all kinds of options and resources,
including the office of Counseling
and Psychological Services, well-
ness coaching, the MiTalk and
Campus Mind Works databases and
info about on-campus counseling.
Taking steps to invest in your own
mental wellbeing in college will
place you so far ahead of the game
here at school, and in the post-col-
lege “real world.” Plenty of people go
their whole lives without doing this,
and it’s something I wish I’d done
years sooner.
There is a quote I like from the
pioneering Swiss psychoanalyst Carl
Jung: “Until you make the uncon-
scious conscious, it will direct your
life and you will call it fate.” After my
experiences in the last couple years,
I now look back at college (and many
years after) as a time when my life
was significantly steered by fears and
insecurities and depressive spells
and unacknowledged pain from
my childhood and adolescence. The
choice to finally meet these issues
head-on and start unpacking that
unconscious was a way of taking
more control over my own life.
Far from being an admission of
weakness, addressing my mental
health in recent years has been one
of the biggest sources of strength
and growth and wisdom and
authenticity and happiness in my
life. I go to therapy every two weeks.
I’ve cut down on drinking. I take
more frequent breaks from work.
I’ve cultivated new hobbies and self-
care practices, and taken countless
other large and small measures. In
the process, I’ve become a better
teacher, a better journalist, a better
friend and a better member of my
family and community. I’m simply a
better version of me. (Note that “bet-
ter” isn’t “perfect.” I still have bad
days, and weeks, and even months,
and that is OK).
I hold the University of Michi-
gan professors in the highest
regard. And yet, while you’re in
Ann Arbor, the work you do in
a therapist’s office, or support
group, or mindfulness practice, or
any other mental wellness-focused
space, is just as important as any-
thing you’ll learn in a classroom.
After all, your college education is
only as useful as the health of the
mind that holds it.
Taking steps toward improving mental health
Philip Eil is a 2007 graduate of the
University of Michigan
The good news is
that there is help
for you.