Category: Opinions

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Stop posting your Shein hauls

HENRY RICHA/The Concordian

The rise of Shein through TikTok and its place in fast fashion today

From try-on hauls to unpacking videos, Shein has been fast fashion’s latest social media star. During the pandemic, Shein had a major rise in popularity as everyone looked for affordable places to shop online, and TikTok is to thank for that.

Seemingly overnight, the app was flooded with videos highlighting customers’ recent hauls from the cheap clothing site. Not only that, it also became oh so meme-worthy, with people posting videos of strange items they found on the site (fried chicken necklace, anyone?) and cringy product reviews.

On TikTok, the hashtag “#shein” currently has an accumulated 44.4 BILLION views, to give you an idea of just how massively popular it is.

As a brand, Shein is problematic to begin with, and that’s without delving into the complexity of Shein’s treatment of workers. It identifies itself as a “real time” fashion company, meaning instead of the average three week process brands like H&M and Zara use to release new items, Shein takes five to seven days. Because of this shorter rollout period, they also use cheap fabrics and their clothing is known for its low quality, which contributes to consumers regularly buying clothing in bulk from the site. 

Shein’s massive popularity has made over-consumption trendy. Shein’s popularity has also brought with it a deeper discussion on fast fashion. Can fast fashion be ethical? Should we be buying from sites like Shein at all? Is fast fashion even avoidable? Questions like these have been at the forefront of debates on fast fashion. 

Personally, I don’t believe fast fashion is truly avoidable in today’s world. Unfortunately, we live in a capitalist-run society, which is to say that mass consumption is all consuming and, frankly, we’re all broke and tired.

The average person can’t afford (and I mean, literally, financially afford) to completely avoid fast fashion. Even somewhat affordable mainstream clothing stores contribute to the problem by promoting mass consumption: Zara, H&M, Urban Outfitters, Forever 21, etc. Not to mention how all these brands are problematic in their own right in terms of mass consumption, labour,environment, etc.. . Even thrift shops end up with these labels continuously cycling through their racks.

There’s hardly anywhere for an average working-class person to turn to where they can buy clothing that’s affordable and ethical. With online shopping becoming the norm and wiping out brick and mortar stores, the fast fashion issue has only worsened. 

Online stores and social media have given a new life to “haul” content online. More and more frequently, people are over-purchasing large amounts of clothing they don’t need on a regular basis for social media content.

Shein’s insane popularity on TikTok has cemented the over-consumption of fast fashion as a trend. It’s become the latest environment-killing, cheap, and easy form of content available to influencers or wannabe influencers trying to grow a following.

Influencers. Ugh. Influencers have glorified haul content and inspire others to copy these same behaviours. Now this isn’t to say that all influencers are awful and want to see the world burn, just that they should be more conscious of how they use their platform. If influencers were to entirely stop posting content that promotes regularly buying clothing in bulk, there’d be a massive drop in the amount of people doing exactly that. The spheres of beauty and fashion have influencers at their core, audiences (quite literally) “follow” their example. 

So stop posting your Shein hauls. Firstly, nobody truly cares about the seven shirts you got for $30. Secondly, you’re feeding into an already problematic company that is one of the largest modern contributors to fast fashion and, by extension, climate change.

This isn’t to shame anyone who’s bought from Shein or similar sites. Like I said, we’re all broke and tired, I’ve been there myself. It’s just to say buy what you need, when you need, not in excess.

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What Nikita Dragun’s placement in a male jail unit can teach us about Canada’s trans inmates’ safety

Graphic by JAMES FAY @jamesfaydraws // The Concordian

Our institutions need to do better

Influencer Nikita Dragun was arrested at the beginning of the month at the Goodtime Hotel in Miami, Florida for felony battery on a police officer, and disorderly conduct.

According to hotel security guards, Dragun had allegedly been “causing a disturbance” and “walking around the pool area unclothed.” Afterwards, “Dragun flung an open water bottle toward the officers and the hotel staff, wetting one of the officers.”

When she appeared in a bond court video the following day, it was revealed that she had been kept in a men’s unit. In the video, Dragun asks judge Mindy Glazer, “Do I have to stay here in the men’s unit, still?”

It has obviously sparked a number of negative reactions on social media. However, what follows is even more shocking.

In the court video the judge seems to be writing something down, hearing but not really listening to Dragun’s request — or at least showing very little interest. Glazer then proceeds to say, “Yeah, I don’t make the rules up there but, they should make a proper accommodation for you.”

What does that mean? There shouldn’t be any accommodations, just put her in a women’s unit. The way it’s phrased also makes me furious. Is Dragun’s right to be in a jail that houses inmates of the same gender as her really an “accommodation?” Because we all know it would not be an accommodation if the inmate was cisgender. It would simply be their right.

According to Florida law, transgender inmates’ housing situations are evaluated on a case-by-case basis. A “transgender committee” made of medical and mental health professionals meet with the inmate to evaluate and make recommendations to the state as to where the person should be housed. These are however only recommendations, and it shows that transgender people’s rights are not fully protected in those cases.

Transgender inmates are over-represented as victims of many forms of abuse in prison. According to the National Center for Transgender Equality, they are ten times more likely to be sexually assaulted in prison.

If this is what happens to a popular figure in the US, imagine what can happen to any other trans person in our own country.

In January 2017, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised trans inmates that they would be housed based on their gender identity, stating that “trans rights are human rights.”

Up until then, Correctional Service Canada (CSC), which governs the federal penitentiary system, had a clear policy regarding the placement of inmates according to their gender assigned at birth.

According to a report on trans prisoners’ safety, “the CSC policy dictated that trans prisoners be assigned to either men’s or women’s penitentiaries based on their pre-operative sex. Consequently, trans women who had not undergone gender affirmation surgery were forced to live in men’s prisons instead of with the gender they identify with. This CSC policy has led to extreme difficulties for these women, who are often subjected to sexual harassment and assault.”

The day following Trudeau’s speech, the CSC stated that they would “consider” inmate placement based around gender identity and expression rather than gender assigned at birth.

Adopted in June of that same year, Bill C-16, An Act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code, protects transgender individuals against gender discrimination. The Bill amended section 3(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act and added “gender identity” and “gender expression” to the prohibited grounds of discrimination.

The Bill also amended the Criminal Code “to extend the protection against hate propaganda set out in that Act to any section of the public that is distinguished by gender identity or expression.” The amendment prevents the federal government from discriminating on the basis of gender, including in its prisons.

Then, in December 2017, the CSC adopted an interim policy to “accommodate based on gender identity or expression, regardless of the person’s anatomy (i.e. sex) or the gender marker on identification documents.” Included in the policy is the right of the inmate to be addressed by staff with the correct pronouns and, if a strip search were to be performed on them, the right to choose whether it be conducted by a male or female staff member.

This sounds really good and progressive in theory. But I have a hard time imagining an institution like the prison — that is founded on militarism, punishment, humiliation, racism and discrimination — to completely change its course of operating because they truly believe that trans lives matter.

My research proved me right on that point. In the 2019 case of Boulachanis v. Canada (Attorney General), the applicant had requested to be transferred from a male institution to a female institution after identifying as a woman. The CSC refused her request on the basis that the inmate would “pose too great a risk, in particular a risk of escape, to be placed in a women’s institution.” Although Justice Grammond of the Federal Court granted her the transfer and recognized that “keeping her in a men’s institution is discriminatory,” violating the interim policy, it is important to highlight how he got to that conclusion.

After clearly stating that Boulachanis is legally a woman, Justice Grammond then questioned whether she should be treated as one: “Stripped to its essentials, the issue is to determine whether Ms. Boulachanis should be treated as a man or as a woman.”

Blatant heteronormativity aside — if Boulachanis is a woman, why are we questioning her right to not only be seen as one, but also be treated as one by the law?

Probably for the same reason that Nikita Dragun was put in a male unit in Florida. It doesn’t matter what Bills, promises or policies they establish on paper, our institutions, governments and society still fail to protect transgender people.

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Hear me out Opinions

Hear Me Out: Stop saying you were born in the wrong decade

JAMES FAY/The Concordian @jamesfaydraws

“Life was so much simpler” is a myth, I promise

If you never said it yourself, you probably heard someone say it at some point: “I was born in the wrong decade.”

The feeling seems more popular than ever now that archival footage has found its way on TikTok and you can see videos like “what was life like in the ’70s” filled with comments saying they were born in the wrong generation.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with thinking that our present time sucks. Between a pandemic, a war and a scary political landscape, it seems not much good has come out of this decade so far.

Not to mention the easy argument of technology and social media. “Wouldn’t it be so much easier in a time when social media wasn’t around?”

But what’s so wrong about technology? It is responsible for great innovations in science and medicine which makes it so that most minor injuries, infections or diseases are treatable and curable.

You’re probably sick of what’s going on with the world right now and yearn for a time you’ve only heard about in stories from older family members or through film.

Does that mean we should go back in time? Like, to a time when women couldn’t vote? Or when racial segregation was instilled in every institution?

No. I’ll tell you now, what you saw on Bewitched, Happy Days and The Brady Bunch is not what living in the ’60s and ’70s was like for everyone.

I’m sick of the romanticization of some founding decades of the 20th century. It’s one thing to talk about the fashion or the history, but to say you wish to have been born at that time just comes from a place of privilege.

From what I understand, the sentiment comes from either of two thought processes: “I like the good parts and never thought through the bad parts” or “I thought about the bad parts and I realized I wouldn’t be affected.”

You might like the music, fashion, or aesthetics of a different time, but you were not born in the wrong decade.

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Innocent man arrested without motive?

CARLEEN LONEY/The Concordian @shloneys

Calling the police into question and their ability to do their job right

A man named Brice Dossa was handcuffed by Montreal police on Thursday, Nov. 3 in the parking lot of Montreal’s Central Market. Police suspected him of stealing a vehicle which was later proven to be his own. The plainclothes Detectives who specialise in car thefts, however, were unable to release Dossa immediately because they had misplaced the keys to their handcuffs and needed backup officers at the scene to release Dossa.

In a video that has since gone viral, Dossa is seen asking officers if he was arrested because he’s Black. While the two officers deny that this unjustified arrest has anything to do with race, many on social media are concerned that this is just another case of racial profiling.

If not, why was the man suspected of car theft and arrested for it by police, prior to the officers verifying who the vehicle belonged to?

In the questionable sequence of events which led up to Dossa’s wrongful arrest, the unfortunate historical trend in which the Black community is faced with unwarranted and unjust policing has, yet again, resurfaced in the headlines.

The video segment of the arrest is truly abhorrent. It calls into question these cops’ ability to perform their duties. 

One major inconsistency in the officers’ discretion was that the car theft under investigation on Nov. 3 involved a vehicle which was reported to have visible signs of damage. However, CBC independently confirmed that Dossa’s car showed no traces of such damage. Yet, when Dossa arrived at the scene where the police were still examining his vehicle for evidence, they promptly arrested him.

Dossa claims he is left traumatized by the experience, which could easily have been avoided with proper due diligence from the police. This puts into question whether law enforcement can ensure equal treatment for all. 

Ironically, this event comes shortly after the Quebec Superior Court ruled in a racial profiling case that police could no longer pull over drivers without a valid reason, as it constitutes a violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom. Officers who are not dutifully impartial in service to the law might finally incur sanctions when these newly-established regulations become viable six months from now.

Meanwhile, instances of police brutality and racial profiling frequently continue to make headlines, yet our premier continues to deny the existence of systemic racism and bias. 

As he claimed in 2020, when addressing protests in response to George Floyd’s murder, “I think that there is some discrimination in Quebec, but there’s no systemic discrimination.” More recently, during the last electoral campaign, Legault again reiterated his stance that systemic racism does not exist. 

It is appalling that the government or law enforcement institutions in this province refuse to acknowledge the pernicious consequences of systemic racism. The foundation for such beliefs — and the inaction that follows — normalizes and legitimizes the abuse of power by the state in ways that undermine democracy, justice and equality for all citizens.

Following Dossa’s wrongful arrest, new policies need to not only be incorporated within the practices of law enforcement, but also should be made effectively operational.  Let’s hope that the recent decision ruled by the Quebec Superior Court will yield change in the years to come, so that everyone is guaranteed equal freedom and safety.

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Hear me out Opinions

Hear Me Out: Coffee isn’t that good — you’re just addicted to caffeine

JAMES FAY/The Concordian @jamesfaydraws

I get it though, coffee is such a mood

Describe your perfect morning.

For me, it would be waking up to light rays of sun hitting my face, my body all wrapped up in a fluffy duvet, to the smell of warm coffee.

Now this might not be what you would answer, but does your perfect morning ritual include coffee?

For the longest time, I didn’t drink coffee. I just never liked the taste.

Now, approaching 26, I can say I’m an avid coffee drinker, but only for a year or so. And let’s be real, if you pour me a cup of coffee, I probably wouldn’t drink it.

My coffee is not even considered coffee for certain people. *cough, cough* Hi, dad.

I like my coffee with a good amount of flavoured creamer and oat milk.

With that being said, I use a coffee face mask religiously and my favourite candle is called Paris Cafe. So, I get it.

For me, there’s also something about getting hot coffee on a cold morning. Which is why I started to wonder if what I liked was really the coffee or if any hot beverage would suffice.

Coffee is different though, and there’s a reason why it’s the drink of choice for most adults in the morning. Caffeine is a central nervous system stimulant that helps reduce sleepiness, which makes it the most consumed psycho-active drug in the world.

Ever since the late 17th century, caffeine dominated popular consumption which corresponds to a rise in the capitalist economy.

Today, with our lives being defined by our work and productivity, it makes sense that a beverage with such effects on the body and mind would be so popular.

However, it’s just not that good. Just admit it already.

If you say coffee is your favourite drink, stop lying to yourself and realize that a part of what makes coffee so popular is the addictive effects of caffeine.

According to a study conducted by researchers from the Université de Nancy on the effects of caffeine on the central nervous system, the human body does not seem to have developed a tolerance to the effects of caffeine, though signs of dependence and withdrawal symptoms have been present.

Coffee addiction is not a new discovery though, and most people are aware that their love for coffee is just blinded by their dependence on it. Although I appreciate the self-awareness, can we stop with the quirky and sometimes cringy “but first, coffee” merch?

How about a “but first, central nervous system addictive stimulant that doesn’t actually taste good?” Just an idea.

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Getting your sh** together with ADHD

LE LIN @spicybaby.jpg

That overwhelming feeling of being overwhelmed, you know?

When I finally overcame my aversion to paperwork, organization, and assignments, I started using a trick my therapist taught me which was basically to stop telling myself that I could just do it “later.” Somehow, I was also supposed to convince myself that I was even capable of doing such tasks.

This is the extent to which I had never done that before in my life: I had to ask my therapist what specific words to tell myself when this kind of work arose. She basically taught me to be my own cheerleader, and I would say things (in my head) like, “Just get it done now, don’t wait. You got this. Just get it out of the way so you can relax!”

That was the fix for a lot of things. I was able to complete tasks, show up for meetings… I didn’t waste entire days and nights online shopping or browsing Wikipedia. I wasn’t writing radical political think-pieces that would never see the light of day, or making concept drawings for my dream house I would someday build. I still did all those things, but only when there wasn’t something more important to do.

That worked for a few months. Eventually, it crept back in. Here’s the thing: this kind of talk doesn’t work when you commit yourself to an impossible quota of responsibilities. Eventually, that time for creativity and research you’re using to motivate yourself, when everything’s finished and you can just chill, is basically never. Things pile on top of things. Soon, the whole concept of “free time” feels like make-believe.

With ADHD, your brain is constantly on the move. What happens when you don’t have time to play with the hundreds of ideas buzzing around in your head? They come out in those crucial moments. Due date approaching. There’s no way you can focus now, not with this much pressure. Let’s do something fun to relax. Let’s just explore this idea a bit while it’s still fresh. And the cycle begins again. 

Staying grounded is so important when you get stuck like this. Here’s a weird thing I do to accomplish that: I smell books. 

I used to hang out at the library as a kid. Kudos to my mom for training the dweeb in me. Since then, I haven’t spent much time in libraries at all, except for studying. One day, walking around in the Webster Library, I decided to walk through the bookshelves instead of around them. 

In that moment, I was sweating after stomping up four flights of stairs. I was tired from not sleeping the night before. I was on my way, much later in the day than I had planned, to find the perfect spot to finish an assignment. This one was two weeks late, and I wasn’t even sure I would be allowed to turn it in. 

Weirdly, memories are strongest when we can barely remember what we ate for dinner last night. When I walked through the bookshelves, I smelled those old books. It’s weird… I felt like I was walking in the front door of the house I grew up in. It reminded me of springtime, my pink birthday outfit, just playing outside by myself and feeling completely free. Raking leaves with my brother in the fall; jumping into the piles after.

It made me remember my days in the library when I was little, sitting in that quiet place and browsing through picture books. I was cross-legged on the floor, in-between shelves, getting lost in the pages of a new world I’d just discovered. I was enjoying the simplicity of the moment, feeling at home with my curiosity and natural love of learning. 

It made me remember why I was at university in the first place, which was to learn. I remembered that I was not only capable of the task, but that these things came naturally to me. I used that reference of peace to motivate me. I knew that soon, I’d get back to that peaceful time, once the assignment was done, once all the assignments were done. That smell grounded me to my core being, and that gave me the focus I needed to continue.

I’m in the middle of that toxic cycle I spoke about before, trying to get back to how I used to be. Take my advice or not (after all, those who can’t do, teach, right?). Here’s what I would tell myself right now, if only I would listen:

1. Do the thing, do it now. Finish one big thing, and you’ll feel like a million bucks. Start there — see where that feeling takes you.

2. Spend time doing something small each day that grounds you. It’s so hard for us to get out of our heads sometimes, and remember how capable we are… We really need that.

Getting your sh*t together is a new column written for students with ADHD, or for those who simply need to get their shit together, from someone with ADHD. It’s a learning process, but in the end, here’s hoping this column helps us all get it together, um, together.

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Hear me out Opinions

Hear Me Out: What Makes A TV Show So Good, It Becomes Bad?

Do you ever wish your favourite TV show just had *fewer* seasons?

Last year, I finally decided to watch the infamous The Office because everyone around me told me I would like it and that I was missing out on an important cultural moment of the 2000s.

I also wanted in on all the inside jokes. I wanted to know who Prison Mike was and how everyone started saying “that’s what she said.”

I had already seen some of the comedy gold that was the fire drill and the first-aid class scenes. They made me laugh so much, I needed more of this.

In short, people were right. To this day, The Office is the first and only show that made me laugh out loud alone in my room. 

I would pause the episode, rewind and get my mom to come because she HAD to see this.

Then, I started to get in the later seasons. It was okay, but I found myself laughing less and less.

What really cut it for me was the moment nobody wants to talk about: when Steve Carrell’s character Michael Scott left.

It was not the same show. It felt like a bad attempt at a reboot or parody. The characters started to act out of character and the storylines were just not as funny.

You’ve probably been the victim of this: your favourite TV show becoming so bad it’s unwatchable.

While I haven’t watched it myself, I’ve heard about the atrocity that Riverdale has become. But I won’t get into that here.

There are many theories I want to explore as to why our favourite TV shows flop after a while.

First, there is the main-character-leaving-the-show complex. Obviously, Michael Scott was the trigger to most of my bursts of laughter. So for me, his departure from the show was a big downfall.

The Office is not the only show victim of that. I also remember how That ’70s Show was struggling after its main character Eric Foreman was no longer there. It makes sense why the storylines were a bit all over the place when he left as he was the one holding all the other characters together. After all, it was in HIS basement that the group of friends would gather in.

The Office was also the victim of too many seasons. This is easily explainable by the sheer success of the first few seasons. We can, again, see this in other shows.

Grey’s Anatomy also found so much success that its producers are trying to milk it until there are no more medical scenarios they can come up with.

This phenomenon is even seen with shows that should only have one season like 13 Reasons Why and You. The former being based on a book that did not have sequels, and the latter which just abused the character of Joe Goldberg too much. Like, seriously, how many times can you actually get away with such sporadic murders and changes of identity?

Overall, TV shows that get a lot of momentum after their first season will now for sure get, according to fans, too many seasons.

It’s like producers are not able to leave a show on a good note and start a new project.

But, at the same time, fans would not be ready either. Even though they are the first to critique a show for dragging on for too long, they are the first that want to know if a new season is coming.

Do you remember a time when you just finished a well-acclaimed show and went on Google just to find an ending explanation, only to see “season 2” as the first suggestion next to the show’s title? Yeah, that’s why producers will never let go of an opportunity to make a new season.

In Hollywood, money talks.

In the end, TV shows with too many seasons just lose their direction, originality, and credible plotlines.

I think ultimately, when a TV show is so good, it is deemed to become bad because of the high expectations we now set for it.

I had hopes for Squid Games when the director was pretty clear that he hadn’t thought about the show having other seasons. But, it was announced in June through Netflix’s Twitter account that the record-breaking show will come back.

Let’s hope this one won’t be milking the idea of a sick and twisted money game too much.

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Hear me out Opinions

Hear Me Out: Adult Friendships As Told By A Former Socially Anxious Child

JAMES FAY/The Concordian @jamesfaydraws

Breaking down the science of meeting people in a post-pandemic world

People are everywhere, and introducing your name, age, favourite colour, and field of study eventually becomes muscle memory, right? But there is something daunting about sharing more than just that.

By now, you must have come to the realization that while meeting people is easy, making them friends is hard.

As someone who had to beg their sisters to order food for them as a child, I sometimes feel that my past fears manifest themselves into life over and over again. Anxieties that once revolved around having no one to play with during recess and being told to “pick a partner” in class creep their way into adult interactions.

I find that the socially anxious child inside me never went away — they now live on, wearing adult-sized clothing. It’s a phenomenon that transpires in crowded lecture halls and house parties alike; and as I grow older, I question the idea of friendships even more.

Vulnerability can be scary, but opening your arms and the doors of your home to others is what builds friendships. The one thing I have in common with my current friends is the moments of vulnerability that we’ve shared: when I show them my weaknesses and they show me theirs. 

When coming face to face with new friends, being vulnerable is the only hard step to overcome. Confiding in people and showing them your weaknesses can be scary, but it’s necessary for human connection.

The past two years of our lives have transformed the way we view friendship and our yearning

for connection. After the pandemic, friendships appear to be a scarce resource that we forgot how to maintain. Being chronically online and out of touch with reality has arguably transformed the relationship many of us have with making friends. Many of us can no longer sit still in a classroom and daily ventures consume more energy than they used to.

How do we overcome our fear of socializing in a post-pandemic environment? How do we maintain a friendship amidst packed schedules and obligations?

More importantly, how many times do we have to bump into each other at the grocery store to go from “acquaintances” to “friends”?

The naivety of our youth makes friendships easy. We don’t think about why or who we want to be friends with. We see the same people at school everyday, have the same idea of fun, and have so little to lose.

The more awareness we gain of our surroundings, the more filters we put in place for the people we let into our lives. This can be very enriching yet lonely and anxiety-inducing.

There are a few things that helped the socially anxious little child inside me, and I find myself

resorting to them time and time again.

First, aim to like people and not for them to like you. You should have a genuine interest in the people you’re friends with while constantly looking for the good in them. This takes the pressure off yourself to need validation and you’ll want to get to know people (bonus points because people love talking about themselves).

I often ask for confirmation of my delusions. There should be one person in every room you can depend on to shake you and tell you, “No, you don’t look stupid in that shirt.” All it takes to break a self-conscious thought in a social setting is to say it out loud, so you can realize that it’s only scary inside your head.

I remind myself that I’m not the only one who feels like this. It may be hard to believe but everyone is in the same boat. We yearn for friendships and companions, and we all get moments of self-doubt and self-consciousness. It helps when you think of other people as… well, people.

Adult friendships are the most beautiful addition to your life once you overcome the scary steps. I found sisterhood with people not related to me, and have people in my life who my children will be hearing stories about. 

We all deserve soulful and healthy friendships. We gain so much from the people around us and for that, we have to train ourselves to put our walls down.

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You’re Not Alone If You Pick A Cone

JAMES FAY/The Concordian @jamesfaydraws

Why a cone is the proper vessel for ice cream eating

It’s time to tackle the world’s most heated and legendairy debate: cup or cone. 

So here’s the scoop. I am a firm believer that cones are superior when it comes to ice cream. And if you’re not already, in a few short minutes, you will be.

The most obvious point is that you tend to get more ice cream if you get a cone. Because of the cone shape, part of the scoop trickles down toward the bottom, causing the server to add some more sweet goodness on the top to get that nice circular shape. With a cup, you don’t get that extra bit, and as an advocate for eating the most amount of ice cream possible, I find that pretty criminal.

If you’re one of those people who just doesn’t like the taste of cones, I counter with this: how does it feel to have a personal vendetta against the environment? Sucking it up and eating a cone seems like a small price to pay for being more eco-friendly. In fact, when there’s no paper protection on the cone, they’re zero-waste (and even if there is, the paper is easily recyclable).

Cups, on the other hand, are generally not recyclable or compostable. And don’t even get me started on the plastic spoons they require. 

What’s more, cones are just infinitely more fun than cups. If the thrill of the melty drip doesn’t bring out your silly side, perhaps the golden bite of cone and ice cream will result in an ear-to-ear smile. 

If you’re still not convinced, I’ll offer this anecdote that, quite honestly, changed my perception of this debate once and for all.

It’s a perfect July day and I had just acquired a heaping cone of dark chocolate ice cream. I’m walking down the street with my friend, enjoying the weather and the cold treat.

Suddenly, a wave of inexplicable clumsiness comes over me. In slow motion, I watch my cone topple out of my hands and onto my beige pants. My friend screams. Pedestrians gasp. But I remain calm. 

I sprint into the nearest pharmacy and purchase some soap. I then make my way across the street to a shawarma place, dodging the customers who can’t look away from the massacre that is my pants. I slip into the bathroom, take them off, and begin working on the stains, fervently treating them with soap and cold water.

Ten minutes in, they’re good as new. The only problem? They’re soaked. Luckily, I have a men’s shirt in my tote bag, in case I get cold. Avant-garde fashion designer that I am, I manage to wear it as a skirt, ensuring that I can continue on with my day while I wait for my pants to dry. It’s most certainly a look. 

At this point, you’re probably asking yourself why I would tell you the magnum opus of cone horror stories to convince you of their superiority. My response is as such: while the great cone-gate of 2022 was less than ideal, everything worked out in the end. My pants are still in commission and I got another ice cream cone to replace my fallen snack. 

You see, I’ve wasted valuable years of my life saying no to cones in fear of making a mess. And when I finally started saying yes, of course there were bound to be some (major) slip-ups.

But, at the ripe age of 21, I’ve learned that worry shouldn’t stop you from going for the things you want, ice cream cones included.

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Hear me out Opinions

Hear Me Out: There’s No Need To Flip The Table

JAMES FAY/The Concordian @jamesfaydraws

How toxic masculinity plays on men’s emotions when watching sports

My friend came up to me the other day and started talking to me about her boyfriend’s sports-watching habits. She said that he becomes so violent when his team loses, that he has to take a 30-minute break before being able to have a conversation with her where he will not be verbally aggressive or loud.

How do I respond?

The short answer would be: send him to therapy. The long one is what I’m trying to unpack in this article.

This got me thinking about the culture of sports and how it ties into men and their emotions.

I love the idea of a community coming together to show support for a sports team, which is an important part of our culture and identity as a population.

In a digital age where we tend to not know our neighbour, literally and figuratively, sports can be a way for people to find communities, as they’re linked with territorial identification. Go Habs go, am I right?

But, was I the only one growing up scared of walking in front of a screen hypnotizing a group of men, or worse, to stereotypically ask them if they wanted another beer or more chicken wings in the fear of getting yelled at?

In a study on football hooliganism, six features are identified in the culture of sports and violence: “excitement and pleasurable emotional arousal, hard masculinity, territorial identifications, individual and collective management of reputation, a sense of solidarity and belonging, and representations of sovereignty and autonomy.”

As a sports fan myself, I understand the feeling of your favourite team winning. But I still cringe at the over-the-top reactions from men watching sports — whether it’s getting up from the couch to scream at the screen or making comments out loud on certain athletes’ performances as if they could hear them. Sometimes they even hug, but only because they’ve been made to believe that this is an acceptable time to show physical affection to another man.

If you’re having a hard time picturing what I’m describing, I’ll refer you to this Pepsi and Lay’s 2003 commercial where four men are watching a football game, taking touching each other in the slightest way too much to heart; but after a touchdown, they break into an orgy of hugs, butt slaps and grabs on the couch.

I won’t get into too much of a rant on homoeroticism and men’s sports, but in what other circumstances have you seen heterosexual men grab each other’s butts than in a football league?

In an even surprising yet probable instance, they also cry.

This cleverly goes against the way patriarchy brainwashes boys from a young age to think that their emotions are not valid or, at least, shouldn’t be shown in public.

Even male athletes crying or showing emotions that are deemed too “feminine” is accepted by society as the context of sports somehow gives it a stamp of masculine approval.

I’m not just saying that from personal experience.

In their study, Heather J. MacArthur from the department of psychology at Hamilton College presented participants with different scenarios of men and women crying in different contexts that were stereotypically masculine, such as firefighting and weightlifting, or stereotypically feminine like nursing and figure skating.

The results showed that men who cried during sports or professions that were deemed masculine were perceived as more emotionally appropriate and emotionally strong than the ones who cried in more stereotypically feminine settings.

Now I’m all for men showing their emotions. It’s just sad that they need an entire sports league in order to do so.

It somehow makes sense why men would cry watching sports because it’s something they are taught to care about.

After all, according to Michael Messner et.al.’s Televised Sports Manhood Formula, “boys are taught that paying the price, be it one’s bodily health or one’s money, gives one access to the privileges that have been historically linked to hegemonic masculinity — money, power, glory, and women.”

In their study, Messner also identified a link between violence and sports as he states that the stereotype of aggressive players getting the prize, and nice guys finishing last is impacting young boys’ views.

This is what concerns me the most about men watching sports.

Although Professor Daniel Wann attributes sports fan aggression mainly to alcohol consumption, he also points out that a personal identification to the team is an extension of the fan himself.

With that narrative, a sports fan watching their favourite team lose can be seen as a personal failure, or even worse, a personal attack from the winning team.

That is where the violence comes in.

Although I don’t personally feel the need to identify with a team so much that it would define who I am, I understand if that’s what someone else is into (though I might cringe a little).

It’s just frustrating as a woman to always be told that our emotions are uncontrollable, when men will flip a table or be verbally aggressive out of the blue because some other men in uniforms’ bodies did not perform well enough.

So now, what do I tell my friend? That her boyfriend is just another victim of patriarchy and that his handling of his emotions is just a result of that? No, that’s much too academic and pointless to be honest.

However, it’s the real answer that I found in my research. Even though it’s no small task, we need to address the general attitudes on gender dynamics and sports before ever getting to the case of my friend’s boyfriend.

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Opinions

How About We Stop Making True Crime Content Our Whole Personality?

Graphic by James Fay

Let’s take a step back and think about the harmful narratives it can perpetuate.

With the amount of controversy and hype — if we can even call it that — around the Jeffrey Dahmer series on Netflix, I couldn’t help but reflect on the ethics of true crime content as a form of entertainment.

It’s nothing new that true crime content is enjoyable to watch for many. It has everything a compelling story needs: good and evil characters, a mystery that needs to be solved and a denouement that can either be frustrating or satisfying.

After all, crime has always been a subject of interest even before Netflix made documentaries or YouTubers recorded podcasts about it.

Although it may seem like a new thing because of social media, vigilantism has always been around. Public executions and the role of the church in presenting criminals as evil made the public invested in crimes in their area.

Today, it has become a genre on TV, a topic of debate, a hobby, a whole culture. With content on YouTube, Netflix, and TikTok, true crime has also created spaces for community discussions on Reddit, Facebook, and blogs.

The casualness with which true crime “fans” consume this content and discuss their obsessions with specific cases is weird when we put it in perspective.

Although being obsessed with serial killers has been discussed before and has been deemed “not okay” in the true crime community, they’re still exploiting someone else’s story.

When I see discussions around whether true crime content production/consumption is ethical or not, the conclusion I sometimes see is that it’s okay as long as we don’t romanticize the attacker and that we give the victim the main voice by focusing our re-telling of the events from their perspective.

But how is that any better for the victims’ friends and family? And who are we to say that we have the right to tell that person’s story?

As someone who lost a friend to murder, I would not like to see a YouTuber trying to make a name for themselves by exploiting her story and plastering her face in their thumbnail.

The topic has been so desensitized that you can now watch a Gen Z college student talk you through someone’s horrible death right before plugging in an ad for a Ring doorbell to keep you safe from being the topic of their next video.

This type of content also tends to over-simplify judicial procedures and due processes in our legal system. It’s easy to make a video detailing all the horrible things a criminal has done to their victims to appeal to the humanity of the viewer and skip over all the steps of our criminal justice system before sentencing.

From having explored it first-hand myself by shadowing a criminal court judge for a year, I can say that the criminal justice system is much more gray and complex than simply identifying guilt and locking criminals away for life if they seem to deserve it. 

It’s also important to make a distinction between real-life criminality and true crime content. True crime content focuses on a very small percentage of the most brutal and sensational crimes because those make the most interesting stories.

The police-reported crime statistics of 2021 released by Statistics Canada shows that violent crimes only accounted for 890 individuals per 100,000 while property and other crimes accounted for 2,219 and 2,266 respectively.

This trend is also presented in a graph as being steady since 1962.

Statistics Canada, Canadian Centre for Justice and Community Safety Statistics, Uniform Crime Reporting Survey

True crime content tends to perpetuate myths about violent crimes that can be harmful to viewers, like the stranger-danger myth that can be responsible for a lot of profiling and false accusations.

This type of content does not explore these nuances, as it is produced as a form of entertainment.

Since it sensationalizes criminality as extremely gruesome and relies on dramatizing truly depraved and violent acts for viewers’ entertainment, it’s impossible for true crime content to deliver an accurate portrayal of these real-life tragedies without throwing audiences off.

It is much simpler to present it as a black-and-white issue and ignore the legal process altogether, than to simplify it in a way that fits the producers’ narrative.

Although true crime content is filled with problematic portrayals of criminality and makes people profit off other people’s stories, watching it does not inherently make you a bad person.

However, I can’t help but think that there is something inherently wrong with the community of “fans” when I stumble upon a TikTok that desensitizes the content. It’s always a young adult white woman reminding everyone of how comfortable she is watching true crime content from her bed, and how that makes her “special.”

What is so wrong with fictional crime series after all?

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Hear me out Opinions

Hear Me Out: Thrifting

JAMES FAY/The Concordian @jamesfaydraws

Thrifting was once like a safari mission constantly searching for the best grail, now it has unfortunately morphed into trophy hunting.

Back in 2013 I was 15 years old, a young lad still in high school trying to find my identity. Now, I’m not going to dive into the trials and tribulations of a high schooler since we’ve all been there, but to take my mind off things I vividly remember going thrifting after school at places like Village des Valeurs and Renaissance, hoping to discover hidden gems waiting to be found.

Draped in between multiple random jerseys and sweaters from someone’s past, I knew that if I pursued the chase and looked deep enough through every aisle I’d be on the prowl, eventually gaining my stride, and scour every inch of the store in hopes to find clothing items that I not only desired, but that I knew in my heart would hold their value.

Walking out of these places my eyes would pierce down into my cheaply priced bag of goodies and as I looked at my freshly acquired loot, with a grin on my face I’d say to myself “what a successful hunt,” discovering a plethora of sports memorabilia, baseball caps, and t-shirts all for the love of the game. A broke high school kid just trying to find nice clothing at a reasonable price.

Now in 2022 I’m 24 years old, an older lad still in university trying to find my identity. That last part of the previous sentence I only mentioned for anaphoric purposes. Yes, I found my identity, and yes, I know who I am, though one hobby of mine I once greatly appreciated has vastly changed in the nine years since I first discovered it.

Thrifting was once formed out of a passion for many to go out on a weekend with friends, look through piles of clothing to stumble on, and find one or maybe two pieces of clothing you can call your own. It has now morphed into some sort of commercialized mainstream cash cow, where curators discover pieces on their own time, sell them or have them set up in a storefront somewhere, and price them for a ridiculous markup. 

Thrifting has unfortunately lost the prowl, seek, and scour mindset, and has now evolved into trophy hunting of sorts. All the desired items are sold under one roof at ridiculously high prices.

Maybe I’m just not in the same mindset as the new generation. Maybe they’d rather have everything under one roof because they don’t want to bother looking through multiple places. Personally, it saddens me when I’m walking in the Plateau and notice long lines at multiple curated thrift stores because I know that these kids now don’t understand what it is to actually go out and discover what you can find on your own. The smell of mothballs and old clothing has been lost in obscurity.

But eh! I get that we all got to get our bag one way or another. We live in a capitalist society so why not take a trend, burn it to the ground, make your cash, and then hop onto the next. I know at this point I’m bickering but damn what happened? All I know is that I won’t be enclosed in one place, I’ll be on the prowl looking for my next “successful hunt.”

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