Sam Penn / Daily Nexus

As an indie person at UCSB, I feel it’s so important to highlight the lifestyle and life choices of an Indie in the UCSB community, as we are so often marginalized by the many frat, srat and basic white (I am also white) people on campus. In this community it is more important than ever to project your indie-ness to show naysayers you do actually exist and you also shaved your head like that on purpose.

As for me, my overgrown armpit hair is actually meant to provoke conversations on hyper-femininity, and my long leg hair is like that because all my friends are doing it. If I didn’t have my septum piercing how are people supposed to know that I bring my own mason jar to Cajé?

My closet? Yes, it’s full of only thrifted men’s t-shirts that I wear ironically. Why do you ask? Yes I did apply to small liberal arts colleges on the East Coast, and no, I didn’t get into any of them because they didn’t recognize my absence in senior year classes as “good grades.”

As an indie person at UCSB it’s also deeply important to instill a strong, wildly unsettling Instagram presence so that people know you’re actually truly this way. This is why my profile picture is a pixelated photo of one of the Rugrat babies (idk which one, I never saw the show). Some of my favorite pictures to post to fully convey the strength of my indie are blurry photobooth pics of me pouting like a sad squishy baby with those blue birds above my head, zoomed-in pictures of a finger cut I got after opening a La Croix and many slides of candid photos I took at a party that are good because I took them on film. Which makes me a creative. It’s also important to caption everything with a very intimate inside joke that only you will understand.

In terms of clothing, I exclusively shop at the I.V. trading post (it’s free, but you have to get to their pop ups early or else they’ll have nothing but Pink velour sweatshirts, which aren’t cool yet!). I like to arrive to the pop up a day in advance and camp out to be sure I’m the first to get what I need, which usually culminates in a multi layered, multi-patterned outfit that I like because it challenges gender norms. By challenging gender norms I mean people look at me and think, “It’s too hot for that girl to wear five turtlenecks.”

The 68 block is the real Isla Vista, and all my friends live on the cool streets (Trigo, Sabado, Sueno, in case you didn’t know). My apartment has six or more people, but we’re not sure and we’ve never counted! It’s super cute inside because we bought all the furniture from Urban and Ikea and also Goodwill, of course. We only go to band parties and we LOVE Rolling Rock – no, I don’t think it tastes bad. I smoke a lot of ‘good’ weed or none at all because it makes me CRAZY and I won’t tell anyone how. Ketamine is fine, though; it numbs me to the brutal force my skinny body has to endure in all the mosh pits I get into.  

As I wrap up my piece, I just want to do a quick shout out for my upcoming documentary, “Girlhood,” about college-aged women finding free expression than I am producing and editing myself. It includes interviews of all of my friends, filmed with a video camera from 2001 that I bought for $500 in a thrift shop in Silverlake. Also, my Dad owns Nissan.

 

Avocado Feminist harvests her own nut milk and wants to travel the midwest but mostly for the photos.

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