Volume 16 Issue 2
Erik Beserra
Lockdowniversary

A year ago I stared at the numbers rising on the New York Times website. Every day I found myself feeling more inept as 10,000 became 20,000 became 40,000 became 80,000. I stared at the numbers like a moth at lights. Inept and discouraged. I still feel inept. I now have a tab with the New York Times vaccine distribution map. It is weird staring at this good news. Some part of me doesn’t feel hopeful since this is just what needs to be done. We failed and are now picking up the pieces.

Lockdowniversary
Volume 15 Issue 3
Lauren Mondroski
Dying to Get Outside? A Grave History of Hiking ...

This was before the establishment of large public parks, meaning that if you were a Victorian-era urban American, you most likely spent your time outdoors strolling and picnicking with family, friends, and lovers, all amidst the dead.

Dying to Get Outside? A Grave History of Hiking and Cemeteries
Volume 15 Issue 2
Allison Wallace
A list of good: a good list to make

· Arriving
· The first song you listen to through headphones
· When a good bakery has good tea (the complete experience)
· The crisp, blue outlines of the hills here in Western Oregon

A list of good: a good list to make
Volume 15 Issue 2
Nerissa Wright
Seek Discomfort

Portland is a peculiar white haven, and I come from a melting pot that smells like urine year-round. Both are good, but very different.

Seek Discomfort
Volume 14 Issue 1
Lauren Mondroski
Spoiler Alert: There Is No Coming of Age

Released on August 25, 2020, Haley Blais’ Below the Salt is an album I wish I had during my first year of college. Coincidentally, that’s when I first started listening to Blais, a Vancouver-based singer-songwriter and vlogger whose wacky sense of humor and DIY bedroom-pop bangers resonated with me, a freshman living on her own for the very first time and trying to make sense of the world and herself. That unsure first-year is a senior now, but no less unsure, and I think that’s the point of Blais’ debut album: her label writes, “Below the Salt is a coming of age story that recognizes that there is no real ‘coming of age.’”

Spoiler Alert: There Is No Coming of Age

Volume 15 Issue 3

Jennifer's Body: Eleven years and one Tumblr phase later

In the ultimate act of unmonitored internet access, I made my first Tumblr account at the tender age of 11. I remember stumbling upon One Direction fan blogs and thinking “yes, this is a site full of people who know what’s hip and cool!” For better or for worse, I grew up in the so-called golden age of Tumblr and saw many trends come and go. I first came across Karyn Kusama’s 2009 movie Jennifer’s Body in the form of a GIF on my dashboard. I still remember it vividly: Megan Fox flicks a lighter against her tongue and burns the tip of it to a crisp. Her beauty mesmerized me. Who was this beautiful and totally badass woman? In the years that followed, I absorbed more and more of Jennifer’s Body via osmosis. Despite never watching it, I reblogged quotes, GIFs, and stills as if I had. The movie perfectly fit my middle school teen-angst-meets-girl-power aesthetic, and lots of bloggers who I thought were cool loved the movie, so I went with the crowd.

I finally decided to watch the movie this past weekend and was almost nervous, because I had heard two different narratives about the movie: I knew it was a universally critically panned box office failure, but every single person who I spoke to about it had nothing but praise for the film. Was Jennifer’s Body really as good as my peers said it was? 


Short answer: yes. Long answer: fuck yes.


Jennifer’s Body follows the story of Jennifer Check (Megan Fox) and Anita “Needy” Lesnicki (Amanda Seyfried). Jennifer is the high school mean girl turned boy-eating demon, and Needy is her nerdy best friend. As Jennifer works her way through their high school’s male population, Needy vows to put an end to the bloodbath. 

Jennifer’s Body’s biggest strength is its whip-smart script penned by Diablo Cody (writer of beloved indie hit Juno). Cody’s dialogue is clever without being too clever; even though all of the characters say many witty things off the cuff, they still totally sound like regular teenagersOne of my favorite lines really encapsulates this cleverness: Jennifer threatens to kill Anita, and Anita says that she thought Jennifer only killed boys. Jennifer cracks her neck and replies, “I go both ways.”

Cody’s script allows her female characters to be smart without it being unrealistic, and she shows off all of the layers that make up these women. Although some aspects of the script didn’t age very well–it was 2009, after all–it still remains one of the funniest and smartest horror movies ever made.


While the script is a huge part of what makes Jennifer’s Body so great, so are the performances by the two leads, Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfriend. Fox’s performance as high-school-bitch-turned-boy-eating-demon Jennifer Check is just the right balance of icy and humorous. Even handed the role of the typical high school mean girl, she plays it well.

While Fox portrays the titular Jennifer, it’s Seyfried’s performance as Anita “Needy” Lesnicki, Jennifer’s childhood best friend, that really shines. Needy is the polar opposite of Jennifer; she’s a mousy, nerdy girl who doesn’t attract much attention from boys. Seyfried plays the role of Jennifer’s scared best friend with the kind of teenage earnestness that feels uncommon in most teen movies, especially teen horror movies. While Fox and Seyfriend are stellar on their own, they’re electric together. The chemistry between Jennifer and Needy makes for a captivating story about female friendship–and  queerness–that sucks you in and keeps you rooting for these girls to make it out of this hellish situation with their friendship unscathed.


So, why did a movie this great completely flop at the box office? Many people smarter than I have talked at length about this, but it seems to have come down to marketing. In a retrospective for Entertainment Tonight, Diablo Cody and Megan Fox sat down to discuss the movie. Cody recalled studio execs wanting to market Jennifer’s Body as a horror sex comedy for a male audience without touching on the true focus of the film–female friendship. Fox noted that her image in Hollywood must have contributed to that, and Cody confirmed this with an anecdote. When she asked a studio executive what exactly he saw the point of the movie being, he replied with a succinct three-word email: “Megan Fox hot.” From the jump, none of the people responsible for faithfully representing this movie to audiences took it seriously, and silenced several brilliant women in the name of what they perceived as the focus of the movie. 

Their negligence didn’t come without consequences: Diablo Cody was never given the same degree of creative freedom on a project again, and Megan Fox continued to be mercilessly bullied by the press in a sexist tirade that was already bad enough without a box office flop under her belt. Despite the hardship they both endured, Cody and Fox both look back on Jennifer’s Body fondly. Cody says it’s the project she’s asked about the most, and Fox has said in multiple interviews that Jennifer Check remains  her favorite role. Even though I grew up hearing nothing but praise for Jennifer’s Body, I’m still saddened whenever I hear about all the backlash it faced upon its initial release. However, I’m grateful that it’s found the audience it was always intended for and finally got the following and praise it deserves.


  • You’re eating people?

  • No, I’m eating boys.