Nora Battelle

Adjusting to norms, my core aesthetic

Photo by Ian Holloway There’s something about winter that makes me want to look boring. Spending these first dreary months in New York, amongst masses of quick-moving black swathes, I want to sink into the sleet and the rain and buy a
January 29, 2015

Dapper Dudes

I was sitting around a Sharples dinner table avoiding the 5:00pm darkness today, seeing my friends scarfing down carbs in sweatshirts. Winter is coming. And when the cold hits, one of the first things I want to abandon when relinquishing my fluffy
November 20, 2014

Halloween: costume and community

I have always loved Halloween. When I was little, it meant spending long thrilling days on elaborate cardboard constructions with my family – notable products of our labor were my furry pink telephone and tooth costumes. I played dress up around the
November 6, 2014

The little orange square: fashion and divestment

On September 21, around 200 Swarthmore students joined the group of 40,000 marching in New York at the People’s Climate March, one of the largest displays of group action against climate change to date. Many of them had little orange felt squares
October 23, 2014

Wearing each other’s clothes

There is something uniquely appealing about wearing other people’s clothes. I spent the night in a friend’s room in Palmer, and when I woke up alone in her room the next morning, with an invitation to borrow her clothes for the day,
October 2, 2014

Mushroom tones

Jackson Hart ’17 arrived 20 minutes early to our interview, but had disappeared by the time I was set up for the meeting. He wanted to be interviewed outside in the sun, where the pink stone in his ear glittered impishly. Tucked
September 18, 2014

Who’s that girl?

In the summer months before freshman year, all I thought about was “college” (in scare quotes because, to me, college was basically a scare-y quote). I was incredibly stressed and I channeled that stress by focusing on the only things I knew
September 4, 2014

Fiction: At the party

Open up the longing I am offering you; give me that velvet you wrap around your head with sickening tightness; let me pull on the strands I see you left hanging off, so that you’ll look down at me and rip me
May 9, 2014

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