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April 13, 2022 - Image 4

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Publication:
The Michigan Daily

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Arts
4 — Wednesday, April 13, 2022

“QUEER” IS A powerful word, and to

be Queer is a powerful thing. For so many,
art and Queerness are inextricably linked.
The art we were exposed to growing up
informed the way we came into our Queer-
ness, and now our Queerness informs the
way we consume and make art. In almost
everything I watch, read and listen to, I
look for refractions of this part of myself
in order to understand myself better and
feel understood. Queerness means com-
munity; it means self-knowledge; it means
anything that those who claim it want it
to mean. I am unbelievably proud of and
grateful for these writers and their will-
ingness to tell their stories for this B-Side,
for their shaping of it into a fitting reflec-
tion on the infinitely diverse array of expe-
riences Queer people possess, for defining
their Queerness on their own terms.

NEEDY LESNECKI (AMANDA SEY-

FRIED, “A MOUTHFUL OF AIR”) put
it best: “Hell is a teenage girl.” Her own
teenagehood is defined by fawning and
fumbling over her lifelong best friend,
Jennifer Check (Megan Fox, “Dakota”).
Jennifer is cruel, controlling and, by
the end of the film, a literal man-eater.
Even more importantly, she represents
the bisexual monster in the closet. Her
dynamic with Needy is messy, and it pro-
vides a shockingly dimensional look at the
raw and repressed sides of Queer teenage-
hood.

To introduce Jennifer, narrator Needy

word vomits a stream of compliment upon
compliment, only to have her daydream
interrupted by a classmate saying she’s
“Totally lesbi-gay” for her attractive, mean
and cooler friend. This is in the very first
scene and sets the almost ironically Queer
tone for the rest of the film. It almost feels
embarrassing to admit this scene in “Jen-

nifer’s Body” is what introduced me to the
possibility of a woman being Queer. My
own digital presence aside, it indirectly
introduced the word “lesbian” into my
prepubescent dictionary. Queerness was a
completely abstract concept at this point.
As a sixth grader, I didn’t yet know any gay
family, celebrities or friends. There wasn’t
any blatant homophobia in my upbringing,
especially from my immediate family and
close friends, but rather a glaring absence
of anything deviating from heterosexual-
ity. Young and unknowingly Queer, this
was a complete absence of self.

The plot of “Jennifer’s Body” is exqui-

sitely absurd — an unsuccessful indie
band, Low Shoulder, attempts to sacrifice
a virgin to Satan in exchange for unparal-
leled success. Unbeknownst to the band,
their target virgin, Jennifer, is not quite
a virgin, and she refuses to die in peace.
Instead, she is turned into a succubus
with an appetite for (mostly) boys. From
this point on, she eats a variety of men to
sustain herself, often choosing her prey
based on their proximity to Needy.

After the Satanic ritual, she seeks out

Needy. Blood-drenched and delirious,
Jennifer saunters around Needy’s kitchen
looking for a meal of meat. A terrified and
naive Needy repeatedly asks what’s wrong
and tries to dissuade Jennifer from eat-
ing her mom’s thawing chicken. Jennifer
ignores her and vomits a black, tar-like
liquid all over the kitchen. Before leav-
ing, Jennifer pulls Needy close to her and
breathes down her neck, slowly moving
to a gentle kiss and biting Needy’s throat.
There is a brief flicker of temptation — to
eat her friend and occasional sweetheart
— before she asks if Needy is scared and
throws her into the wall.

Horror aside, my own experiences with

Queerness feel more similar to the intense
friendship between Needy and Jennifer
than other pieces of media representing
relatively-realistic teenage love. Lucy and
Amy sleep with the enemy, Megan and
Graham run away together and Esti and
Ronnit find each other again in adulthood.
But those weren’t my experiences, and I
will never get to have that type of story.

The Queer B-Side

A Queer girl’s guide to ‘Jennifer’s Body’

My gay girl playlist starter
pack, from the new to the

nostalgic

SOMETIMES I WISH I had

gotten the gay college experience
I thought I would have – “experi-
menting” with girls until I fig-
ured out that, hey, they weren’t
experiments at all. Instead, I
figured out I was bisexual while
sitting in my childhood bedroom
during the deep quarantine of
the early pandemic. It would be
great if I could paint my quaran-
tine as a beautiful, introspective
time of self-reflection and chal-
lenging my internalized compul-
sory heterosexuality. And it was,
to some extent — but mostly, I
have to admit, I really just had a
lot of time on my hands. Time to
think and ponder and take “Am
I Gay?” tests. (At some point I
realized that if you take enough
“Am I Gay” tests on the internet,
it probably means you are gay.)

Most people can’t pinpoint the

exact date they realized their
own Queerness. As my own real-
ization came during the internet-
steeped pandemic summer of
2020, I guess it makes sense that
I can. Specifically, my Spotify
history indicates a slew of sap-
phic love songs, all liked on July
6, 2020. This includes gay girl
classics like girl in red, Kehlani,
Clairo, dodie and King Princess.
Looking back, I can’t remem-
ber having one big revelatory
moment where I decided that yes,
I was Queer — but clearly, there
was a day when I proclaimed (to
my Spotify, at least) that I was.

So why were these songs so

important to my Queer awaken-
ing? Music is obviously crucial
to a lot of personal moments and
revelations, so it’s not like this
was special. However, given the
quarantine, they were the only
way I could connect to a larger
community. I couldn’t go to
Necto or hang out at the Resi-
dential College. I couldn’t go
to the Kerrytown Markets and
buy nothing but still soak in the
Queer energy of other 20-some-
things with tote bags. I was in
my bedroom, the same bedroom
in which I had considered myself
“straight” for so many years. I
felt like an outsider in my own
life, unsure how to reconcile my
Queerness with the purple walls
of my childhood sanctuary.

This was where I listened to

Taylor Swift and One Direction
— staples of my tweens, teenage-
dom and current playlists — but
in that music, there was no space
for Queerness. The heterosexu-
ality was overwhelming. When
I played back “Love Story,” I
remembered believing that —
although I never dreamed of a
big white wedding — the person
I ended up with would unequivo-
cally be a man. I never thought
to think otherwise. Other peo-
ple were allowed to be gay, and
I wanted so badly to be one of
them; but I thought because I
liked men, there was no other
option. There was no room for
bisexuality until I got to college.
In high school, even in my pro-

gressive college town, even if you
were bi — you were gay: There
was no space for any flexibility
in identity. And flexibility was
what I needed when labels felt so
suffocating.

But even though that long list

of sequentially-liked Gay Girl™
songs felt affirming, it wasn’t
what I had always listened to. It
was a freeing and exhilarating
experience to sing “girls” by girl
in red with the windows down
in my mom’s car, driving along-

side New Jersey farmlands. I felt
seen by the longing Queer angst
of “Ain’t Together” by King Prin-
cess. These all felt like me. But
One Direction’s (albeit, strangely
Queer coded) “They Don’t Know
About Us” felt like me too. So
did “Hey Stephen (Taylor’s Ver-
sion).” I wanted to feel unified,
not like there were disparate
parts of me separated into dispa-
rate Spotify playlists.

But then there were two

things:
former
1Der
Harry

Styles’s Fine Line and Taylor
Swift’s re-records. First, Styles
was morphing seamlessly from
boybander to rainbow-adorned
popstar. After One Direction
disbanded in 2015 and with
the release of his debut self-
titled solo album in 2017, Styles
began coming into his own as
a star. With 2019’s Fine Line,
he embraced a campy, colorful
musical and visual aesthetic.
His songs used overwhelmingly
gender-neutral
pronouns.
He

released “Lights Up” on National
Coming Out Day, complete with a
music video featuring a shirtless
Styles being touched by people of
all genders. “Treat People With
Kindness” is an explosion of joy
and love that feels unequivocally
Queer. Styles himself refuses to
label his own sexuality, in a free-
ing expression of flexible sexual-
ity that felt freeing for me — he
could feel comfortable in his own
skin without putting a label on
that feeling for anyone else.

Taylor Swift, too, was reclaim-

ing her old self and transforming
it into something both entirely
new and sweetly nostalgic. She

released sister albums folklore
and evermore several months
apart in 2020, leaning strongly
into the indie/folk genre and
steering away from her previous
pure-pop persona. On folklore,
Swift sings “betty” near the end
of the album, a song about a girl
that uses feminine pronouns —
one that still makes me shed a
little gay tear if I’m in the right
mood. After her indie-girl pivot,
she began re-recording her old
albums in order to take back con-
trol of her masters from Scooter
Braun. The re-records include
tracks “From the Vault,” which
are songs that didn’t make their
original
albums,
and
recre-

ate album covers in a way that
is tactfully reminiscent of the
original covers without being
direct copies. Each song includes
a (somewhat cheeky, very cute)
“(Taylor’s Version)” addendum
after every track title on her re-
recorded albums. Swift stays
faithful to the soundtrack of my
youth while still feeling true to
who she is now, years later.

Both Styles and Swift claim

their past proudly; Styles con-
sistently sings “What Makes
You Beautiful” on tour and Swift
faithfully re-records every song
she put out when she was 18.
There was room in both of these
childhood playlist staples to
grow into someone with a more
flexible and informed identity,
and I could grow with them. If
Harry Styles still sings his big
One Direction hit on stage with a
pride flag around his shoulders,
why shouldn’t I enjoy a little
“Midnight Memories”? If Taylor
Swift didn’t think it was embar-
rassing
to
re-record
“White

Horse,” why shouldn’t I listen
to it to get a little weepy? There
was room for me, all of me, on my
playlist of music, both past and
present.

Design by Jennie Vang

KATRINA STEBBINS

Senior Arts Editor

EMILIA FERRANTE

Senior Arts Editor

puzzle by sudokusnydictation.com

By Joe Deeney
©2022 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
04/13/22

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

04/13/22

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Release Date: Wednesday, April 13, 2022

ACROSS

McVay, youngest
head coach to win
the Super Bowl

5 Fly high
9 Old NCAA

football ranking
sys.

12 Regarding
14 Coagulate
15 Test format with

options

18 Grassland
19 Using pointe

shoes

around

21 Dojo move
24 Card game

requirement,
maybe

27 Farm female
28 Roman who

defeated
Hannibal

31 Triage areas:

Abbr.

33 Bat specialty, and

what you need to
find in four long
answers

38 Name in “Kill Bill”

credits

39 Military jeep

successor

41 Aid for the lost

around here,
briefly

46 Lowly worker
47 Nocturnal bird

that woke up
Vinny in “My
Cousin Vinny”

52 As is fitting
55 Cocoa butter

confection

59 Sell on the street
60 Series finale:

Abbr.



ramparts ... ”

62 Dire March time
63 Slithery

swimmers

DOWN

1 Longtime Agassi

rival

2 Online GEICO

alternative

5 Photo tint
6 Persian Gulf ships
7 Word shortened

to its middle
letter, in texts

10 Protective

covering

11 So inclined?
14 Large sea snail
16 Bug

implement

22 Jack Ryan

portrayer before
Harrison

23 Holy scroll
25 Book after

Galatians: Abbr.

29 Chit
30 Ancient

Mesoamerican

32 Guy found

running through
the alphabet?

34 Court recitation
35 Little terror
36 Give credit

due

37 Like early

childcare

40 Glossy coats
41 “Scorpion”

42 More pretentious
43 Pummels with

snowballs

45 “Us, too”
47 Handled
48 Watch closely

supply

50 Mekong Valley

language

54 Musical series

set at McKinley
High

56 City with two MLB

teams

57 Possessed

SUDOKU

7
8

2
4

4
9

6
7
5

5
1

7
2

4

7

1
6

2
8

4

6

9

1

7
1

9
2

3
5
6

Sudoku Syndication
http://sudokusyndication.com/sudoku/generator/print/

1 of 1
2/12/09 12:08 PM

WHISPER

“The UGLI has
been especially
UGLY recent-
ly...”

“Final push of
the year! Good
luck!”

WHISPER

By Julian Lim
©2022 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
04/06/22

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

04/06/22

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Release Date: Wednesday, April 6, 2022

ACROSS

1 Bank security

device, briefly

5 Aim high

10 Harvest
14 “Fancy meeting

you here!”

15 Vital vessel
16 Semi bar
18 Shoulder warmer
19 Table parts
20 Region on the

South China Sea

22 Members with

unflinching
loyalty

wife on “Dallas”

27 Maximum
28 HHS agency
29 Exchange need
32 12-Down output
33 “No problem!”
35 ER skill practiced

on a doll

36 Pet-adoption ads,

briefly

38 Part of MB
41 Text recipient
44 Tattoo parlor

supplies

partner, in verse

47 One with many

limbs

48 Facebook

barrage, at times

50 Unconscious
53 “Srsly?!”
54 Media-monitoring

org.

55 “Up First”

network

56 Flu fighter
58 Emotionally break

down

hot!”

64 Bicolor cookie
65 Dinnertime

draws

67 Italian tower city
68 End of the line
69 Burning again
70 Column in math
71 Risk it
72 Walk heavily
73 Pursue

DOWN

1 Micro- ending

break

out”

4 Author Gore
5 Fun time, in slang
6 Fireworks cries
8 Formal

confession

9 Predictors

of most
20th-century
U.S. presidential
elections

nickname

11 Workout

suggested by the
circled letters and
their orientation

12 Pub dispenser
13 Pampering spot

for cats and dogs

21 Above, in poems
23 Dampens
28 Winter mo.
30 Bookkeeping pro
31 Triage MD
34 Craving

put on

40 28-Down number
42 “I wanna look!”
43 Thanksgiving

dinner choice

own

49 Georgetown

Univ. locale

51 Wall Street

regular

52 Ph.D., e.g.
57 Targets for

towers

59 Mythology
60 Caramel-

centered treat

61 Request at the

barbershop

63 Render indistinct,

as an odor

66 Longtime

NASCAR
sponsor

AVA BURZYCKI

Daily Arts Writer

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

“Music is
obviously
crucial to a

lot of personal
moments and
revelations, so
it’s not like this
was special.”

“There was no
space for any
identity. And
what I needed
when labels felt
so suffocating.”

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

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