Stories of Your Life and Others

Cathy Minami, third-year student:
Anyone who says the calli movement is good for women is spreading
the propaganda of all oppressors: the claim that subjugation is actually
protection. Calli supporters want to demonize those women who possess
beauty. Beauty can provide just as much pleasure for those who have it as
for those who perceive it, but the calli movement makes women feel guilty
about taking pleasure in their appearance. It's yet another patriarchal
strategy for suppressing female sexuality, and once again, too many women
have bought into it.
Of course beauty has been used as a tool of oppression, but eliminating
beauty is not the answer; you can't liberate people by narrowing the scope
of their experiences. That's positively Orwellian. What's needed is a
woman-centered concept of beauty, one that lets all women feel good about
themselves instead of making most of them feel bad.
Lawrence Sutton, fourth-year student:
I totally knew what Walter Lambert was talking about in his speech. I
wouldn't have phrased it the way he did, but I've felt the same way for a
while now. I got calli a couple years ago, long before this initiative came
up, because I wanted to be able to concentrate on more important things.
I don't mean I only think about schoolwork; I've got a girlfriend, and
we have a good relationship. That hasn't changed. What's changed is how I

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interact with advertising. Before, every time I used to walk past a magazine
stand or see a commercial, I could feel my attention being drawn a little bit.
It was like they were trying to arouse me against my will. I don't necessarily
mean a sexual kind of arousal, but they were trying to appeal to me on a
visceral level. And I would automatically resist, and go back to whatever I
was doing before. But it was a distraction, and resisting those distractions
took energy that I could have been using elsewhere.
But now with calli, I don't feel that pull. Calli freed me from that
distraction, it gave me that energy back. So I'm totally in favor of it.