I won the playwriting contest; I got into Harvard; my parents announced we were moving away. My father’s firm had given him an option of early semi-retirement, and they’d always wanted to live in the country. After June, I wouldn’t be coming back to Swarthmore anymore.
I suppose that is part of why we didn’t patch things up. But maybe some summer vacation wouldn’t have made a difference. Bad blood between girls tends to stay bad.
ISABEL WEST
College Application Essay
DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS AND ME
There is something called double consciousness, where you are aware of yourself as a normal person but also that people see you in a category like black. It’s like there’s two of you and it’s very painful. WEB Du Bois in his bestselling book The Souls of Black Folk was the first person to note this phenomenon and give it a name. When I read The Souls of Black Folk I really identified with it. This is because even though I am not African American I am a woman and also Jewish. People put me into categories too.
When my boyfriend asks me why I am being so emotional, is it because of my period, when the theater director at school asks for boys to carry the stage sets, when my parents won’t let me walk around in Central Park by myself, that’s sexism. These are people who see me as a woman. In addition there are things that are not a direct impact on my life but still send me a message about what our society thinks a woman is. Where I live, New York City, there are a lot of billboards with women on them but not that many women in positions of leadership, like the mayor, for instance. What kind of message does that send a young woman like me?
I come from a long line of strong independent women. My mom and dad met at Harvard Business School. My dad says my mom was even smarter than him and got higher grades. They got married and had my sister and me. My mom was not happy in her career so she chose to stay home and raise my sister and me. It was her choice. That’s what feminism is: a choice. She raised us to be strong independent women, and it worked. My sister is going to Columbia.
I want to always follow my path. Right now my path is to go to [insert name of school here], be a premed, and then go to medical school while pursuing my dream of being a model. When I’m a breast cancer surgeon I will also design a line of sportswear for active women who want to feel good and strong even if they have had cancer. There will be swimwear for women who still have their real breasts or reconstructive surgery after cancer and also swimwear for women who have had mastectomies, but choose not to have reconstructive surgery because that was their choice and I will respect it. I also want to get my PhD in history.
I’m going to be honest. When we were assigned The Souls of Black Folk in Social Studies class at first I didn’t want to read it because it seemed boring and like it was written a long time ago (1903). But after reading it I see that there are actually a lot of similarities. Not much has changed. We all want to be free to be seen just as a normal person which is actually a very rare thing when you think about it. To be seen.
Dear Isabel,
Thank you for sending a new draft of your college essay, which I found powerful and moving. I especially like what you wrote about different messages you’ve received about what it means to be female. Do you think you could be even more clear about how these messages affect your sense of self?
Your writing about your mother is beautiful. Have you ever talked to her about her choice?
I think this represents a big step forward for you with your college essay. You’re writing more personally about your individual life experience. Do you know what the word “intersectionality” means? If you want to keep Du Bois in your paper (which I think you should—it’s terrific!), you might want to look up this word. Maybe you can write a paragraph about it for me before our next meeting?
Keep up the good work,
Rose
Dear Rose,
Thank you for sending along your new draft, which was an absolute pleasure to read. You’ve finally found a way to drill down to who Lacie is as a character. I can see her so much more vividly—you’ve managed to capture so many of her quirks. And the scenes from her point of view give the novel real depth. They burn and sing. She has come brilliantly alive.
Another thing I love: in this draft, adolescence, and all the shifts it brings, is even more minutely rendered. The intensity of the friendship between the two girls is finally caught in all its nuance and complexity. Fantastic work.
I think we’re getting very, very close. As a final step, can you elucidate more clearly the narrator’s mental map? To sleep with your best friend’s boyfriend is such a radical act of betrayal. Help us understand her state of mind. I think that will help complicate this tale of feminine backstabbing, and give your draft the final polish it needs.
Really looking forward to discussing this with you!
All the very best,
Portia
I read the letter once. Twice. And then again and again, as if it might dissolve from my screen. I couldn’t believe it. Four years I had been trying this and that, inventing and reinventing, trying to get somewhere, and finally, finally, I had gotten it right. I had scored. She loved this draft. When we talked on the phone, I could hear the energy, the relief in her voice. We were back.
There was only one hitch: Complicate this tale of feminine backstabbing. I wasn’t sure I liked this note. Why did we all have to stand shoulder to shoulder, anyway, like some Dove commercial or Beyoncé video? Wasn’t this injunction to female solidarity just evidence of how generally weak and fucked women were? Only the powerless had to band together.
Besides, the truth was that I liked Ian. What else to say about it? He intoxicated me, just as Leo had, and it’s not that my actions had nothing to do with Lacie, but I was also in the thrall of lust. Why was that not reason enough? A guy who desires madly, who can’t help himself, who commits betrayals and risks everything, is legible to us—why was the same thing either incomprehensible or pathological when it showed up in a woman? Why couldn’t it just be about sex?
No, I thought. This was a note of Portia’s I would reject. No need to clarify my narrator’s “mental map.” It was already so gloriously clear.
Then, just like that, almost too fast, though I had been waiting and waiting for it, Ian wrote. Picking up my phone to see if Isabel had replied, I saw the text for which I’d yearned:
Dinner tomorrow night?
* * *
—
He chose Song, a Thai restaurant in Park Slope so unhip there was no chance Lacie would ever grace its doorway, a fact I pointed out to him not long after we had ordered our noodles and curry.