WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 1,2012
PAGE 5A
opinion
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As a former John McCain supporter, I'm actually starting to think I may miss Obama with all these new tools running for office.
That awkward moment between your birth and your death.
Apparently kits have made a comeback.
I'm just waiting for Shark Week.
I think guys who listen to Taylor Swift are sexy.
Air IS poisonous, in a way. Oxygen is largely responsible for the aging process.
Just saw a squirrel INSIDE a Wescoe stairwell. They have invaded.
Editor's note: If you think KU is bad, don't ever move to a large city.
Smelly, sick and dirty people should not be allowed this close to me on any bus
On a scale of 1 to Charlie Sheen, what kind of judgement would I receive if I tried to dance while on the elliptical?
I get up at the crack of dawn to defeat the whale in Potter Lake, and you're not even thankful!
My anatomy TA needs to stop comparing parts of the cadavers as food. So far, I will not be eating steak, spaghetti and roast for a while.
To the cute guy who offered me a pillow at camping today, why are there not more nice guys like you out there?
The next person who walks into me while texting gets their phone smacked out of their hands.
GDIs use ramen noodles as currency.
Us fraternity men use beer.
First my favorite desks can't work together, and now my RA got fired #OcupyMcCollum
Just saw a Pepsi truck on campus. I'm surprised the permit booth let it through without blowing it up.
Is all this talk about whales on Potter Lake actually code for something else?
Actually, guy lip singing to Taylor Swift, your chances of getting laid just increased. #turnon #girlsoveit
I wonder if Jeff Withey knows who I am seeing as I scream in his face and jump up and down every time I see him.
tryingtobecasual #doesntwork
It's nice to know that people will give up seats for ladies, even on a crowded
How many copies of the UDK are printed per day?
Editor's note: Around 12,000.
Sometimes I like to lie on the floor and pretend I'm a crumb.
60 degrees on Jan. 31? Is that a flying pig?
Finished all the puzzles with 30 minutes left in class. Now what am I supposed to do?
Dear Route 43 bus riders, I can't hear Dan's stories with all your chatter. Keep it down!
Dating gives men contradictory notions
On the one hand, men are supposed to be the wooers, but are often chastised for their efforts
I'm begging you fratties, don't make a response video to the Mizzou fratties.
Romantic comedies are my favorite types of movies because there is never anything in them that haunts my dreams or makes me hide my eyes behind a blanket. They are composed of funny, cheesy and sweet scenes woven together into a happy ending.
As a man, it is hard to admit that I enjoy this genre, especially when these movies are classified as "chick flicks" and, when mentioned, make most men shudder and try to pretend that they, like Keanu Reeves, have no emotion. There is a spark in these films though. It is almost magic when main characters change through a montage of scenes and music, making mistakes at first but eventually bettering themselves. It is hard to admit that I like this transformation but, like butter, it makes me melt.
Recently, however, I watched "A Walk to Remember" and noticed something that startled me. The male in the film is at first a jerk, so in order to make up for his misakes, he bends over backwards for his newly found love. He changes his entire life, stops playing his punk music and even calls her his "angel." While women swoon over
the preciousness of these moments, I can not help but notice that the girl in the film is just waiting to be swept off her feet.
If you aren't familiar with the film, the guy asks a girl to go to a cemetery with him, then lays down a blanket and proceeds to have a picnic with her among the graves. The music swells, their noses touch and before anyone knows it, there is a scene of the next day leaving the imagination to wonder what teenage fornication may have occurred.
The girl in the movie puts forth no effort to woo the male whatsoever. I always thought that the complicated road map of relationships was composed of two-way streets. Apparently in the movies at least, it's a one-way highway.
Nobody likes to be in a one-
sided relationship. It is scary to be the one who cares more about the other person, because you are the one who has everything to lose. Romantic comedies are special in that they usually work out in the end, when the same situation in real life would never work.
I propose that, as a people, we try to see why that guy posted on your wall and somehow got your number. Perhaps, he saw something special in you and truly cares about your well-being and wanted to take a chance. This act of courage shouldn't always be chalked up to creepiness; in the movies, it is the sweetest thing in the world. But who am I to say? I am just a guy who enjoys romantic comedies.
If I tried to take someone with me to have a picnic in a cemetery, I would be deemed the creepiest guy to have ever creeped. Movies set a confusing expectation for men. In movies, men give it their all and are immortalized for their sweet antics, but in real life, men are chastised for similar efforts. What do women want from us?
Jon Samp is a senior in human biology from Lawrence.
Illustration by Ryan Benedick
Valuing beauty over health can carry a dangerous price
Toward the end of last semester, I noticed a mole on my right thigh was growing in size, changing colors and had an irregular border and asymmetrical shape, which fit most of the criteria for melanoma.
Eventually, I couldn't ignore this anymore and I had to get it checked by a dermatologist. He agreed that the mole looked awfully suspicious and immediately took a biopsy, promising results within a week.
I spent the next week kicking myself, almost convinced that I had a cancer that was completely self-inflicted.
Staring at the patch of skin the doctor removed, I came to the realization that I did regret something: I regret the hours I spent in a tanning bed, trying to fit an image than I just wasn't.
I was born a redhead with light skin that burns easily and lots of freckles. Growing up, very few people looked like me and because of that, I always assumed I was ugly.
So, I pretended as if my genetics were something I could change and I just tanned (and occasionally burnt) the crap out of my skin
And the beauty magazines I bought as a teenager reinforced this belief, associating pale skin with ugliness, dullness and lifelessness.
for years so I could feel confident "in my own skin" so to speak.
Not only did I tan to get that darker-skin-with-the-sexy-glow look (even in mid-winter in Kansas, which really doesn't even make sense), I grew addicted to the endorphin fix tanning gave me.
I did all of this completely aware of the consequences. I knew that every time I lay in a tanning bed I was increasing my chance of getting a disease that could possibly kill me. In fact, indoor tanning before the age of 35 increases the risk of developing melanoma by 75 percent, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer.
Eventually, sometime around my sophomore year, I finally decided it was time to break my habit. I decided that I looked awfully dumb in the middle of a Kansas winter with sun-kissed cheeks, tanned skin and strawberry-blonde hair.
I decided that it was time to embrace my natural pale skin and
quit using the little money I had on tanning packages and lotions I thought I needed to feel good about myself. I realized that tanning is an industry and the media want us to desire a tan because they make money from it. I decided that I could get endorphins from other, healthier sources, like exercise.
Like most bad habits, as soon as I stopped tanning for about a month, I didn't really miss it. Much to my surprise, I got just as much attention from guys when I was pale as when I had that "healthy glow." It turned out, I didn't need to be tan to feel good about myself. (Self-tanner helped a little, too).
Luckily, the results on my mole came back negative and I'm cancer-free, for now.
It's a cultural norm for college students to do self-destructive things to our bodies (drinking, smoking, drugs), but few of us take the time to actually think about the long-term effects of our actions.
And, looking back, I do regret that I damaged my skin and risked the future of my health for the sake of my appearance. To me, that just isn't worth it.
Mandy Matney is a senior in journalism from Shawnee.
CAMPUS CHIRPS BACK
Follow us on Twitter @ UDK_Opinion. Tweet us your opinions, and we just might publish them
What is the worst school mascot in the Big 12?
PapaSheahon
©UKR. Beanin an awful tie between the mutant human/unoriginal cat Willie & the unoriginal yellow felt w/ hand drawn sharpie stripes Truman
graciediane
@UDK_ Opinion I can't really imagine calling yourself a "Horned Frog" is that exciting... #TCU #welcometotheBig12
plrappel
©UK Opinion Mizzou's, it looks like Hobbs if he was addicted to crystal meth.
gmhawk13
@UCK Opinion Any
mascots in the Feline
category suck.
LITERATURE
Questioning life's purpose
"The Fault in Our Stars" confronts how the universe reaches out to us
The best-read novel, at least in my judgment, is the one that successfully detaches its themes from itself. By that, I mean upon finishing the last page, the reader does not necessarily reflect on the novel itself, but immediately begins to assign whatever provoked emotions or thoughts the story produced to his or her own cosmos. One such novel is newly released "The Fault in Our Stars" by John Green.
The story features Hazel, a terminally ill 16-year old girl who struggles to see the heroisms in her battle with lung cancer that those close to her praise. She detests attending her cancer support group until she meets a boy named Augustus at one of the meetings.
Augustus, or "Gus," is a cancer survivor, though he lost a leg in the process of treatment. Gus is a nearly perfect character—almost too perfect. He is attractive, charismatic and spontaneous, and he also has a fondness for poetic metaphor.
Early on,
I feared
that the novelmight be another
shy-girl-falls-in-love-with-impossibly-perfect-guy story, but, as it progressed it became apparent that author John Green is so much more sophisticated than that.
Hazel and Gus are brought close together by a mutual obsession with a fiction novel that
also happens to be about a cancer-stricken teen written by an eccentric author named Peter Van Houten. Frustrated with the unanswered questions the book raises, the two decide to fly halfway across the world to ask Van Houten for answers.
However, the answers they find are not quite what they anticipated, and soon after they return from the trip, everything changes. The last few chapters of the book are sure to test the tensile strength of your heartstrings, but through all the tragedy, there are some beautifully
crafted messages, ones that make all of the misfortunes in the characters' lives somehow bearable.
While "The Fault in Our Stars" is laced with witty humor and young love, Hazel's illness prevents the reader from ever feeling truly comfortable. I think this tension enforces Green's message that fate is not a thing to be feared, but instead met with open arms. Hazel rejects the notion that death should be a pitiful and sugarcoated eulogy.
Instead, she feels that, in an existence where people want to be
here people want to be noticed by the universe around them, the "universe" only wishes to be noticed by people. Through the mediums of disease, love and nature Hazel realizes the universe is only trying to reach out to her. To me, Hazel's theory shows that it is only when we are confronted with our fates that
we are most lucid and alive.
"The Fault in Our Stars" is quite frankly one of the best stories I've ever read, and its rave reviews are fully justified. As a reader, I felt more invested in Hazel and Gus's relationship than those in many other books I've read. Green's story is funny, tragic, melancholy, inspiring and most things in between. Should you decide to pick up a copy of "The Fault in Our Stars" the next time you go shopping, you will be greatly rewarded.
Joshua Moreland is a junior in accounting from Lee's School, MO.
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