My professor fondly refers to me as an "overachiever". He encourages me to apply to top tier universities that cost more than my annual household income. "You never know," he says, "the scholarship packages might surprise you."

You must understand, dear professor, that it isn't just the cost of attendance that is deterring me from applying to universities like Harvard.

I am a Pakistani citizen, raised in Saudi Arabia, who attended a Canadian high school prior to transferring to an American community college. I, along with most of my other classmates, never wrote the SAT or ACT.

For low-income families, every dollar spent with no immediate gratification is a dollar wasted. Why spend $55 writing the SAT when that money can be used for health insurance?

The international median household income is around $10,000. In fact, if I was a US citizen I would be eligible to receive a Pell Grant. Yet, despite this as an international student I am ineligible to obtain a fee waiver to write the SAT, which is a requirement to apply to most elite American universities.

How can America's top tier universities take pride in being global institutions when the majority of the world's population is ineligible to even apply to them? How can they boast about having a student body comprised of the best students when they were selected from such a homogeneous applicant pool?

Standardized tests are a racist and classist method of selecting students. The College Board's own data proves that wealthy and white students perform better on the SAT than students of other demographics.


When elite universities require students to submit their standardized test scores, they effectively discourage poor students from applying. It is no wonder America's elite schools have very little socioeconomic diversity.

I simply cannot fathom why universities require transfer applicants to submit scores for standardized tests meant to be taken by high school students. What purpose do they serve?

My transcript, resume, essay, and recommendation letters are proof of my work ethic and academic achievements. I performed as well as I could in the institution I attended with the resources I had access to. To give another applicant preference over me based on standardized test scores is penalizing me for being an economically disadvantaged foreign student.

If America's elite institutions seek a more diverse student body, they must waive their standardized testing requirements as they discriminate against underprivileged prospective students.

"Wow, that sounds like you!" One of my friends noted. Most of the other people in the thread seemed to agree with him. His comment made me smile. Although I wouldn’t consider myself a hijabster, I was glad my friends thought I was stylish.


Then, it happened.

The negative comments started pouring in.

"Umm…isn’t the point of a hijab to be modest and not attract attention to yourself?" My male atheist friend remarked.

"Yea, I have met girls who wear a hijab with tight jeans and it just doesn’t make sense. How is that even modest?" My female non-religious Hindu friend chimed in.

"You can’t wear that with a hijab. It still attracts boys. She is beautifying her face." My male Muslim friend offered.

Soon the entire thread took a dramatic turn and went from praising hijabis for being modest yet stylish to bashing “hoe-jabis” for making a mockery off an important religious symbol by wearing “slutty” clothes in the name of modesty.

& throughout this entire encounter, I sat next to my computer screen, a cup of hot Kashmiri chai in my hand, wondering when I will finally get a chance to live without having to justify my attire to every single person I interact with on a daily basis.

The third week of the first month of 2016 started with the death of a legend. 69 year old David Bowie lost his battle with cancer. His death unleashed a series of anticipated news articles, interviews, videos, and gif sets celebrating the man Ricky Gervais referred to as a "Rock God".

His death also resuscitated and popularized this post, a nostalgic memoir of Lori Mattix, who lost her virginity to Bowie when she was only fourteen years old. Mattix did not regret her sexual encounters with Bowie. She fondly referred to that period as the highlight of her life.


Herein lies the problem.

There is a significant difference in the brain development of someone who is entering early adolescence (as Mattix was, at the time of the abuse) and that of someone who is already an adult. This is why a fourteen year old should not have sex with a twenty-six year old. While Mattix may have agreed to having sex with Bowie, as a child, she was incapable of consenting to him.

As a young teenager, Mattix was exploited and abused by several powerful men. In fact, her relationship with Jimmy Page is the classic example of an abusive relationship between an adult and a minor. Yet, she still refuses to label it as such.


Survivors react to abuse in different ways. Factor in the differences between the way people viewed female sexuality in the 60's and 70's to the way it's viewed today and things get even more complicated.

One must remember, however, that the age of consent in the 1970's was sixteen. Mattix was one of the famous "baby groupies", christened as such because it was no secret they were underage. Page even kept his relationship with her hidden from the public eye. He was well aware that it was illegal.

Mattix's recollection of her relationship with Bowie is deeply disturbing. "I was really special. I knew it the night after I lost my virginity to David Bowie, when I went to see his concert at Long Beach Arena." She says. This is the typical behavior of a child abuser. They create willing victims by making them feel special and loved.

One should not be surprised that Mattix refuses to acknowledge what happened to her is rape, even if it fits the legal definition of the crime. Her abuser was rich, powerful, and influential. Their sexual encounters gave her fame and happiness. None of that excuses Bowie's actions. None of that will change the fact that he had sex with a naive young girl who was incapable of consenting to him.

Treat David Bowie the same way you would treat any other statutory rapist without Bowie's fame and wealth. Strip him of his sainthood. He may be an influential musician, but he was not a saint.

Transcript:

I read “The Beauty Myth” by Naomi Wolf last week & this passage pretty much sums up the premise of the book:

The books and films they see survey from the young boy’s point of view his first touch of a girl’s thighs, his first glimpse of her breasts. The girls sit listening, absorbing, their familiar breasts estranged as if they were not part of their bodies, their thighs crossed self-consciously, learning how to leave their bodies and watch them from the outside. Since their bodies are seen from the point of view of strangeness and desire, it is no wonder that what should be familiar, felt to be whole, become estranged and divided into parts. What little girls learn is not the desire for the other, but the desire to be desired. Girls learn to watch their sex along with the boys; that takes up the space that should be devoted to finding out about what they are wanting, and reading and writing about it, seeking it and getting it. Sex is held hostage by beauty and its ransom terms are engraved in girls’ minds early and deeply with instruments more beautiful that those which advertisers or pornographers know how to use: literature, poetry, painting, and film. (Naomi Wolf, “The Beauty Myth”)