Control is NOT Love

By Gillian Ludlow - If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m referencing the relationship of Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey from New York Times Bestellers’ list, Fifty Shades of Grey, written by E.L. James. Before I get too far into this, let me address that I am not a prude in any way, shape, or form. I am aware of what the bondage/discipline and sadomasochism or sadism and masochismlifestyles entails. I don’t find it offensive and I’ve read erotic romance novels before on my own accord. My qualms with Fifty Shades of Grey do not lie with the BDSM itself. It’s the characters. My irritation lies with them and how their relationship works on a day-to-day basis. Anastasia “Ana” Steele is shy yet intelligent girl. At the beginning of the trilogy, she says that she is a “pale, brown-haired young woman with blue eyes too big for her face.” She also More...

Derriere Duty

By Fay Funk - “Miss. Miss. Miss! MISS!”There is a man shouting urgently behind me. Did I drop my wallet? Maybe my cell phone? Is he in some sort of trouble? I almost turn around to talk to him, but some part of me, some cynical part of me I haven’t seen recently tells me no. No, don’t turn around, it’s not what you think. As I continue down the street I hear the man say behind me, with a grin in his voice, “I just wanted to let you know, you have the fattest ass I’ve ever seen…” At first I’m shocked. He shouted at me like I’m on fire for that? Then extreme humiliation. Then anger. But the longest feeling is the uncomfortable awareness of just how big my ass is, the mental cataloging of every calorie in the past month that has contributed to the size of my ass, the number of miles on the treadmill it will take to make my ass smaller. That part I’m still thinking about, a week after the incident.  More...

Down the Drain

By Sarah Schwister - The number of people attending college has surged in the past four decades, increasing 32 percent in ten years alone. However, the ideal of the perfect college experience has changed. People are not longer going with the goal of becoming well-rounded citizens of the world. They attend college for pre-professional majors such as business, nursing, and accounting. What does this change mean? Clearly it means a change in what people are studying. There has been a steady decline in the number of humanities majors across the United States, going from 30 percent to 16 percent of all majors from 1970 to 2003, with the number of business majors jumping from 13.7 percent to 21.9 percent. Why the change? Students feel that majoring in business will ensure a job, especially during a recession. To save money, many schools are downsizing their less popular departments. At many campuses, this includes the More...

I Am a Skinny Girl

By Courtney Barron - I'm a size 3. Poor me right? I can fit into cute outfits, look “acceptable” in a bikini, and I don't know...do "skinny girl things" that only we skinny girls know about, things that keep us skinny and, no, you're not invited! I learned to value my skinny figure growing up, especially when people would say, “I hate you Courtney, you're so skinny.” Clearly I had something other less skinny girls wanted to have. But why did they want it? Probably because, like me, their favorite Disney movies growing up all had beautiful thin princesses who always won their princes. Maybe because our Barbies all came with tiny little matching outfits for their tiny little waists. Maybe because our favorite singers and actresses were all tall and thin creatures like the ones in every ad ever made. Our perception of what is beautiful clearly comes from our society relentlessly conditioning this into us from an early age. There is no disputing that. Now let me just say this skinny thing is not by choice on More...

Martinez The Pescado

By Jonathan Harris - Carlos Martinez sat tired in his wheelchair, on the edge of the fishing boat. He did not understand why after so few years he’d returned to such a condition. His beautiful wife had left him, his magnificent home was sold, and his employees who had despised him now had reason to after they were dismissed. His father was stood on one side of the boat, happy to have him back. Just one week prior, Carlos Martinez had been running, with ninety-thousand fans chanting his name. Now he sat immobile in his wheelchair, legless. Carlos had not always been a star; in fact he had not always had legs. Barcelona FC, that was his dream, it was the role every boy in his village dreamed of: playing football for what they believed was the greatest team in the world. Yet Carlos was chair-bound until the age of seventeen. The other village boys would often mock him, calling him ‘el pescado’ meaning ‘the fish.' Carlos had gained this name for two reasons. Firstly, because he was not More...

Pro-Beatles, Anti-Boys, and Utterly Insane

By Gypsy Mack - I have been homeschooled all my life, so I know nothing of the horror and trauma of public middle school. I honestly do not have any moments where I was really embarrassed (though I did go through a phase where I got embarrassed whenever my dad talked about his imaginary “corn cob jacket” in public). I do, however, have my own tales of middle-school-age strangeness. When I was eleven and twelve, I was a judgmental and slightly insane girl. I had a close-knit group of friends, and I was strongly opposed to building new More...

The Joy of Home

By Katie Hicky - London doesn’t have much of a skyline, but I could just see the Shard from my window. I’ve always been a bit of an amateur adventurer, a toned down adrenaline junkie. I like thrill rides and taking some risks. I was lucky as a kid; my parents took me all sorts of places. I went to Europe first when I was twelve. I think that might have been where I really got the bug for moving around. I’d been to a few places around the States before that: Florida to visit grandparents, Virginia Beach and the Outer Banks in North  More...

What I Found While Hiding

By Hannah Harlow - The night I met the stranger in the woods, I was ten-years-old and involved in an intense battle of Kick the Can in my own backyard. Though the sun had gone down, the sky retained remnants of light and would for hours late into that summer night, a spectrum of navy with pinpoints of stars, the trees black against the blue. I felt safe. I’d never felt safer.  We were three houses on a hill, surrounded by miles and miles of forest. Between the three families we were six kids, all boys except me, the youngest. If we rounded up some other neighborhood kids we could have an epic game of Capture the Flag at the Birdwood’s house nearby, but that night it was just us and so we settled for Kick the Can. Our house was built into the backside of the hill, so that when you walked in the front door you were on level ground, but by the time you got to the back of the house on the same floor you were fifteen feet up. We used to place one of my dad’s empty beer cans on the back corner of the More...

America's Most Womanizing President

By Jane Jones of Ravishly - If asked to conjure the image of a lustful U.S. president, most of us would probably picture one William Jefferson Clinton. But soon-to-be-released letters remind us that Slick Willie is practically a monk compared to our 29th president, Warren G. Harding. He died in office in 1923, after serving just over two years in the office. But Harding seems to have made the most of his short time—at least in terms of presidential hanky panky.

A Sordid Presidency
Harding was no stranger to scandal. Having won the 1920 presidential race with the largest popular vote margin in presidential history—based  More...

It's not the merkin that's evil; it's how you use it.

By Ghia Vitale - Ah, the days of Queen Victoria…the pre-Romantic era romanticized through the lens of modernity, shrouded in its own mystique of a signature culture so different from our own. The most radical contrasts between then and now lies within the realm of beauty ideals and sexuality, namely female sexuality. Rumors about the Victorians' paradoxical prudishness still abound: Society at large condemned masturbation as unhealthy and sinful unless performed by a trained professional, someone who knew how to properly operate a vibrator. 

Still, despite publicly stigmatizing female sexuality, the Victorians also secretly reveled in it and regularly produced porn extreme even by today's standards. While I believe in the healing power of orgasms, the Victorians probably would’ve been better off doing the job themselves instead of forcing their genitals into More...

Fixing a Safe Plate

By Gillian Ludlow - Over the last two years, I have encountered a variety of reactions from strangers, co-workers and friends involving my constantly-evolving diet.At the age of 21, I was diagnosed with food allergies. Now let's shutdown a common misconception. You CAN develop food allergies at any age—you don't have to be a kid. You are more likely to grow out of your food allergies if you are born with them, however, it's not like food allergies are restricted to a certain age. More...

Memorializing Grandma in Pixels

By Fay Funk - Over the Fourth of July weekend I came across The Atlantic essay “She’s Still Dying on Facebook” about viewing a dead Facebook friend’s account long after she’s gone. It was heartbreaking, sweet, and very relevant. Death in the digital age creates a whole new set of issues to examine, and it’s unfamiliar territory. I have dealt with it myself. Last year my grandmother died of cancer. Her Facebook account still exists—both actually, she had two. Her death opened up a sea of complications about online presence, questions of perspective, the wishes of the living versus the dead, and generational differences. 
How do you view your Facebook? Do you use it to communicate with your friends or to share your opinions? Is it a tool for self-promotion? A place to stalk crushes? Do you think it’s stupid or fantastic? And just as importantly, how do other people see your Facebook? What will it represent to them when you die? Is it a collection of all your most significant life events and More...

Dust

By Deniz Zeynep and Neely Johnson - There she was: her left foot stood on top of her right. The frayed ends of her red flannel shirt dusted the tops of her thighs as she watched the truck disappear among the dust clouds from the gravel driveway. The crackling rocks under the tires were a rumbling thunder that echoed in her stomach. As the sun finally peaked its core past the clouds and into her eyes, she squinted away remnants of mica and salt. She bent down to the ground, her weight on her right foot, to grab a chunk of the broken driveway with her left hand. The gravel felt sharp and hot as she More...

Gypsy's First Caravan

By Jessica Reidy - My grandmother is a Gypsy but neither of us had ever been inside a caravan. There is a history-rich reason for this, appropriate for Roma & Traveller History Month, but I will get to that later. This status changed for me when my husband and I went back to Europe to visit friends and family, and enjoy the most gorgeous and love-filled wedding we’ve ever been to. One of the options for accommodation at our dear friends’ wonder-wedding was The Gypsy Retreat: two caravans, one for sleeping and one More...

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The Quail Bell Crew

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• Christine Stoddard - Editor
• Deniz Ataman - Managing Editor
• Kristen Rebelo - Art Director
• Ghia Vitale - Assistant Editor
• Jessica Reidy - Outreach Editor
• Sarah Sullivan - Editorial Assistant
• Alex Carrigan - Staff Film Reviewe
• Fay Funk - Staff Writer
• Zack Budryk - Staff Writer
• Raquel Lynne - Staff Writer
• Laura Steadham Smith - Staff Writer
• Luna Lark - Staff Writer
• Sorcha Patricks - Staff Writer
• Christine Skelly - Staff Illustrator
• Sarah V. Smith - Staff Set Designer

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