rickroyal

As with most colleges, my undergrad college had a literary magazine. It was headed by the creative writing prof., edited by a student of his choosing, and basically unknown to the general student body. During my junior year at the college there was a desire by the then current editor of the literary magazine (a gorgeous and brilliant girl with whom I'd always loved to have classes) to get more submissions for the magazine and get the magazine a little more notice around campus. Her plan to do this was to have flyers put up that would call for submissions to the magazine. What was most interesting about her plan was the picture she used on the flyer.

It was a b&w pic of a woman wearing a tight white t-shit that said "submit." The pic showed the woman's lips slightly open but cut off below her nose. The woman was holding her arms in from of her, and the pic cut off at her waist. It was a sexy pic that grabbed the attention of anyone walking by a kiosk to which it was stapled. Which was a problem, of course.

In a matter of days the flyer became something of a hot issue within the literature program. It seemed as though all of my classes during the week that it was put up gravitated towards talking about it. I recall one shrill detractor calling it an "invitation to rape," and others saying it was demeaning. A male friend in class said that they were looking at it wrong, that it was saying that the reader should submit to the woman, not that the woman should submit to the reader. They didn't buy it. And I questioned if they'd find it less offensive it it was a man wearing the shirt; and they said that would only make it worse.

The college allegedly threatened to take the flyers down, which only caused people to steal them from the kiosks for something to remember this minor scandal by. Alas, I was too late and never got one. Two weeks later there was an environmental protest and the whole thing was forgotten.

The one question I never got an answer to was: who was the woman in the photograph? An anonymous torso and lips calling for submission. I had my suspicions. I asked the gorgeous and brilliant editor, and she just smiled coyly, neither confirming nor denying. But she did say that now everyone knew there was a literary magazine on campus.