A collective groan of discontent resonated within our campus as snow began to plummet from a pitch black sky over the weekend. Bravely pressing on, hundreds of scantily clad party-goers stared meteorological disaster in the face, determined to follow through with their highly anticipated “sexy lobster” outfits in celebration of Halloween. Hundreds of suspect characters took to the streets in jubilation despite apocalyptic weather conditions. While Halloween this weekend was a test of survival, the spooky holiday is best known for inciting fear into hearts young and old. Fear manifests itself in both explicit and implicit ways. Whether we find ourselves cowering behind a blanket, hoping a cinematic villain won’t stab his victim, or in minor heart palpitations before receiving pivotal news, it’s a feeling that paralyzes us all.
I was overcome with this fear when I discovered someone had purchased underwear belonging to Queen Victoria for a princely sum of 10,000 pounds. The auctioneers were thrilled, remarking that their selling price far surpassed their initial expectations. These aren’t your typical briefs either; however, that would have been mortifying enough. Here are a pair of huge ‘bloomers’, reminiscent of Bridget Jones’s “granny pants,” multiplied by a factor of 50. Irony becomes painfully apparent as a monarch notorious for her austerity and intensely conservative worldview is being remembered for her underwear. Historical undergarments being flaunted to the public like moth-eaten clothes dating back to years forgotten, relegated to the bowels of a bargain basement. Suitably terrified at why you would want to preserve such an . . . intimate relic of history, I was also perplexed. I thought fear was reading about a horrific 16-foot python guzzling down a live deer in one swift motion. I assumed it was a feeling of agonizing suspense as a Japanese politician, Yasuhiro Sonoda, gulps down water extracted from near the Fukushima nuclear plant to prove its sterility. Yes, these were different flashes of fear, triggered by a variety of frightening scenarios, but they did not call into question our sanity.
What does beg the question of our rationality is a dress conceived by Studio Roosegaarde, V2_Lab, and designer Anouk Wipprecht in the Netherlands. The project has been christened “Intimacy 2.0”; evidently the days of beating around the bush are over. Loaded with sensors and foils which conduct electricity, this contraption is marketed as a dress which ‘flirts for you’. A quick fix solution for our generation’s instant gratification mindset. All you have to do is don their creation, which resembles a hideously ineffective space suit, and begin your search. If you happen upon someone you like, the invention picks up on these electric signals and the dress becomes transparent. Forget any playful mystery remaining in the art of flirtation. Witness the brutal bludgeoning of witty conversation and saucy stares turning sour. If this dress finds itself becoming a mainstream product, expressing interest in someone will become, quite literally, transparent. And quite honestly, some images are better left unseen.
Nevertheless, Queen Victoria is not the only one who has hung her dirty laundry out to dry. A wave of incredulity, shock and disbelief resonated around the world as a headline broke: Kim Kardashian has filed for divorce from Kris Humphries. Within hours, social networking sites and wider cyberspace was generating varied opinions, reactions, comments and questions regarding the split.
Marital bliss for the two had only lasted 72 days, before imploding in a mess of broken hearts and egos. A fear realized when a fairytale comes tumbling to the ground for the whole world to witness. Her marriage had kicked off in spectacular fashion with a television extravaganza, combining family drama with equally dramatic color schemes and costume changes. Under such a hefty weight of public scrutiny, where does a persona end and a real person begin? Kim Kardashian reportedly sold the rights to her wedding for approximately $18 million. Since her marriage lasted 72 days, each hour earned her about $10,358.80. Perhaps we can finally conclude that money, even obscene amounts of it, can’t buy you love, but only time.
A man in Europe once buried himself alive for 150 days in order to beat a world record. He managed to remain underground for almost double the duration of Kim Kardashian’s marriage. In fairness, at least she didn’t pull her phone out of her wedding dress and commence texting a friend at the start of her own ceremony, to her father’s confusion. Which, believe it or not, actually happened in 2009. As Halloween comes to a close, a friend hurrying back to warmth watched as her sailor hat blew off her head and onto the street. Before she could move, the hat was mercilessly crushed under the wet tires of a car. Here’s hoping that our perception of human relationships and sentimentality won’t be subjected to the same dire treatment.
Sofiya Mahdi is a sophomore in the College of Arts & Sciences and a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. She can be reached at sofiya21@bu.edu.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
