I can’t tell you how much it warms my heart to think of this younger generation when I hear about stories like this one:
Lawrenceville School Student Body President Maya Peterson’s Instagram post of her dressed in L.L. Bean boots and a Yale University sweatshirt, casually holding a hockey stick, did not go over so well…
“You’re the student body president, and you’re mocking and blatantly insulting a large group of the school’s male population,” one student commented on the photo, which boasted hashtags like #romney2016 and #confederate.
She’s only a senior in high school and she’s already infuriating men to the point that they’ve called for her resignation. At that age, I could infuriate at most two or three men at a time. On a really excellent day, I could make a man feel like absolute warmed-over garbage in AP Lit, if I was feeling in particular need of sharpening my claws on something male. But this! This is varsity-level Frightening White Men; I was barely on the frosh/soph roster.
What makes things even more delightful is that this is perhaps the mildest joke in the world. Here is the picture that flung a hundred lax bros back on their mortified, teeny-tiny little butts (via The Root):
That’s adorable. That’s the mildest, most charming joke I can think of making at someone else’s expense, and I once found a three-page note in my locker sophomore year from my best friend Nicole’s boyfriend Jeff explaining how I’d made him cry the day before.
Here are the type of jokes that girls and students of color were presumably expected to shrug off during that same school year:
Those students said that they had been called things like “Negro amigo” or “n–ger.” They said white male students had called black students on opposing basketball teams “Trayvon,” apparently after the unarmed black, 17-year-old who was killed in Florida in February 2012, among other controversies.
This is, I believe, the closest we will ever get to a scientific study establishing that straight white men are born without a sense of humor; mocking the unjustly murdered is one thing, but putting on a Yale sweater and smirking is a bridge too far.
Why can’t white boys just take a joke? Lighten up, sweethearts. It’s all in good fun.
“Yes, I am making a mockery of the right-wing, Confederate-flag hanging, openly misogynistic Lawrentians,” Peterson replied. “If that’s a large portion of the school’s male population, then I think the issue is not with my bringing attention to it in a lighthearted way, but rather why no one has brought attention to it before…”
This is the best and the most wonderful girl in the world. She is a Valkyrie trapped in mortal form, and if she wants to have my job after she graduates college, I would like to make her a formal offer right now.
Tensions also rose when Peterson and 10 of her black friends posed for her senior photo proudly holding up the “black power” salute. The backlash from that photo is what, apparently, prompted Peterson to do the “Lawrenceville boi” photo.
“I understand why I hurt people’s feelings, but I didn’t become president to make sure rich white guys had more representation on campus,” she said. “Let’s be honest. They’re not the ones that feel uncomfortable here.”
Excellent; now that you understand how and why you hurt men’s feelings, you should be able to do it even more expediently the next time.
Tags: can’t you guys take a joke, heroes, humor, Maya Peterson, misandry, prep schools, racism
Who are these delicate little pricks?
SUPER SECRET TRICK TO NOT BEING AN ASSHOLE 74% OF THE TIME WHEN YOU’RE THE MEMBER OF AN HISTORICALLY PRIVILEGED GROUP: If someone is calling you (or, let’s say, people like you) a whiny baby, don’t prove them right be going and being a goddamn whiny baby.
OH MY GOD plz expound on this 3-page note from Jeff.
I am not even worthy to comment on Maya Peterson.
I’d also like to hear more about AP Lit takedowns.
I am picturing that scene out of 10 Things I Hate About You.
Same. Except the poem she eventually writes is full of murder.
seriously can we get a copy I’ve provoked that kind of reaction I think once ever in my life and it surely wasn’t from a teenage boy who’d sooner die than admit to crying
Yes. I got to the note and thought “MARRY ME.”
What’s fantastic about the article is how the kids seem to follow a racist script for attacking black leaders they don’t like, namely, they’re all like “She couldn’t have possibly been elected. Must be fraud.”
Word? I swear I’ve heard that exact thing somewhere else…
#mayatruther
Maya Peterson, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and that Mongolian teen eagle huntress from a while back are the patron saints of The Toast. MATRON saints of The Toast.
Goddammit this is the TRUTH!!!
Fucking YES.
Don’t forget Malala.
And Brittney Griner
and Kristen Stewart
Goddess bless her beautiful heart and mind and soul. I wish I had been a tenth as perceptive as she is when I was in high school.
Incidentally, the “Trayvon” thing reminds me that the depths of high school students’ (ok, largely boys’) depravity have no limits. My junior year of high school, a guy on the football team admitted that he’d been hazed by older boys on the team, which had involved forcing him to mimic sexual acts with a banana. There was a massive investigation and subsequent news coverage. As if that wasn’t bad enough, for that whole year, opposing teams threw bananas at our sports teams. You know, in a spirit of friendly competition.
That’s refreshing – throwing bananas as a reference to sexual harassment instead of the old standby, racism.
My high school wasn’t racist because it was only white kids.
Oh, wait…
My highschool featured guys who liked to unzip their pants and touch people under the table with their nuts or spit a hocker in your food when they got a cold and they still didn’t have a patch on these Klan-assed motherfuckers
What the hell is wrong with that school, or maybe how did it still manage to be right enough for her to be elected president (pending longform birth certificate investigation I guess)?
The answer to both questions: loud rich white boys, and pissed-off everybody else.
From the buzzfeed article:
“‘There was outcry for Lawrenceville to release the voting data for her presidency, because popular opinion was that she was not actually elected,’ said David, a 2014 graduate. ‘I’d still like to see those numbers, is all I’m saying.’ (The numbers were, in fact, released.)”
I’m sure the birth certificate question is not far behind.
She was smart (obviously) and pitched to minorities and underclassmen, who according to the Buzzfeed piece were usually ignored by the other candidates.
Ugh. I haven’t thought of this in years, but while I was in marching band in high school, one of the schools we played against had a football hazing scandal involving teabagging the new players, and kids started throwing bags of tea at football games against them. Sexual assault: hilarious joke!
Our scandal also involved teabagging but the banana stuff clearly had higher shock/entertainment value. :-/
Bananas also hurt more when they hit you in the eye.
My own school experience feels much milder after reading the responses in this thread; the biggest school-wide incident we had to deal with was some guy styling himself ‘the poop bandit” who wrote his name in the men’s washroom with . . . well, you can guess.
“Omg people are laughing at my stupid Facebook photos 🙁 wahhh wahhh”
Bless this girl for making fun of these guys. She’s my new damn hero.
Looking forward to 2038 and the beginning of the Peterson administration.
Peterson in 2032!
Jesus Christ, those assholes got off LIGHT.
I cannot possibly explain how much I am in love with Maya Peterson right now. Bless her.
You could fill up like a dozen white privilege bingo cards just from reading the buzzfeed article, and then another dozen from the comments.
Oh shit, we should make those.
Where do we get the white guy privilege bingo cards, because those would be hot sellers here in Washington DC, the Capital of WGP
Someone make these so I can throw money at them.
One of my favorite pasttimes when I see internet fuckery is googling “[nature of the fuckery] + Bingo”. Tumblr has Bingo cards for your EVERY need. This one (courtesy of socraticgrant.tumblr.com) seems to have most of the relevant squares:
Make them in a convenient size so you can check them off on the go when you’re going about the world. When you get Bingo you win a prize from the Matriachy!
Or turn them into PDFs and play on your smartphone/iPad!
ah yes the cultural treasure that is the L.L. Bean duck boot.
I’m from Maine; can I still love L.L. Bean and still cheer heroes like Maya Patterson?
They’ll keep your feet nice and dry from the tears of the oppressed privileged white male.
(but really, I looove my Bean Boots)
It’s OK. I am a big, angry, fierce feminist. But 12 years of shoveling New England snow have solidified my deep appreciation for Bean ducks.
Oh, I am a big believer in the duck boot! I was trying to make a joke about the difference between it and other items that get culturally appropriated and didn’t quite pull it off.
Maya Peterson/Tamika Flynn 2032! GET YER YARD SIGNS NOW.
I AM NOT LOST
I AM FOUND
… is Tamika Flynn that student from Nightvale who lead a revolt or a real person who’s story I missed? I’m sorry, is my nerdy podcast life showing?
Yes, totally a Night Vale reference, I am mixing my badass ladies of color (both real and fictional) into the world’s most perfect presidential ticket.
haha got it I’m into it 🙂
Exactly whom I was thinking of, too. 🙂 TAMIKA FLYNN IN THE FLESH
Oh man, she’s fabulous. Please never stop pissing off white men.
Yes, this white man sez, and YES again.
Can we talk about literal garbage-person “David,” a 2014 Lawrenceville graduate whose body and mind and soul are composed of actual noxious refuse?
“What if people were running around in KKK costumes?” asked David, who said his friends complained to the administration about the “Black Power” photo. “That’s what I call left-wing extremism.”
Peterson’s Instagram photo “violated the spirit of the Lawrenceville community,” David said. “It was hateful. It wasn’t inclusive. When I think of Maya Peterson, I don’t think of someone who is an avid proponent of progress or of inclusiveness. I think of someone who is hateful. She had a hateful spirit.”
How can we live in a world in which more Davids are being made? If all the Davids are 70-year-old white men, okay, at least in a decade or two we will be free of their loathsome kind. But to think that this David, after vomiting his way through 4 years of frat parties at the Ivy of his choice and being made Executive VP of his dad’s company, will then live probably another 60 years… it’s enough to dampen the spirits of even the most joyful man-slayer.
Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot that this was not David’s first appearance in the article. Here are his thoughts on the legitimacy of Maya Peterson’s election as student body president:
“There was outcry for Lawrenceville to release the voting data for her presidency, because popular opinion was that she was not actually elected,” said David, a 2014 graduate. “I’d still like to see those numbers, is all I’m saying.” (The numbers were, in fact, released.)
Before David, I had not known it was possible to hate someone so deeply on the basis of 80 words they had spoken.
I’d like to see those numbers…
David…Trump, perhaps?
“is all I’m saying!” uh huh yeah that’s all your saying my ass
My friendly misandrist advice to David: Dude. You graduated. Stop talking to the media and let it go. (David will probably not let it go; entitled white men never can.)
But now people on the internet are going to be meeeeeaan to him, by quoting things he said and saying those things are stupid, which as we all know is worse than every other kind of oppression put together times infinity.
BUT WHAT ABOUT THE MEN???
Douche Bros like this will linger for eternity defending their private boarding schools (aka, their usual refuge of privilege, which they are know defending against the incoming hordes of *shudder* minority applicants).
Until we tear them down
Don’t tear them down, they will serve as useful holding and re-education facilities come the misandrist revolution.
Oh, I thought we were tearing the douche bros down. With claws of red. Is that not right?
But I have sparkly pink nail polish. Will that suffice?
DAVID DOESNT EVEN GO TO THIS SCHOOL!
He just has a lot of feelings.
Well, we can always hope he drinks himself to death at Dartmouth. It happens to a few of them every year.
I think we should all band together and donate a massive amount of money to her. I don’t care what she uses it on, but hopefully it will be some sort of glorious receptacle for male tears that she can carry around for the rest of her life.
she goes to lawrenceville im gonna go out on a limb and say that shes probably set for money (think gilmore girls)
That’s not so clear. There’s a lot of talk in the article about how some students of color rely on scholarships to attend Lawrenceville (and how garbage white boys assume that all students of color are on scholarship, and of course proceed to inform said students of color that they should be grateful to white men for making their attendance possible). I don’t think Peterson’s family’s financial situation is discussed.
the Buzzfeed article reports that her family paid full tuition.
Sorry, you’re right. For some reason, I had thought that part of the article referred to a different student.
I’d still send her a cool $20 if it meant she’d keep calling out bullshit.
I will GLADLY BUY the parenting guidebook that her parent’s write. And if she writes a teenager’s guide to satire and self-esteem, I will buy copies for any teenagers I know.
Yeah, she needs a book deal stat.
I recently went to see Gloria Steinem speak on a college campus to a sold-out crowd, and after her talk, she took questions. Of the maybe 20-25 people who lined up, I think FOUR were girls under the age of 18, and two were middle school students. Middle school students! Middle school girls bein all, “I’m thirteen and I want to help, what can I do for feminism?”
With Maya Peterson leading them, we’re gonna be okay.
thats brilliant and wonderful. The Toast sponsors The Youth. Can we make this a thing? Where do we start?
As a Youth myself, I can tell you the answer is ALWAYS college tuition. And maybe sometimes food.
Aw, yes! Yay! I hope those girls get exposed to intersectionality and the shortcomings of Steinem’s particular brand of feminism.
Yeah, I feel the same way but didn’t know exactly how to express it in my original comment – she’s certainly far from an ideal icon. But I’m still glad they were there.
The school has its own instagram account and the top picture is GOLDEN. http://instagram.com/thelawrence1881
You can see why it would be so hurtful to make fun of those people!!
…. I can’t even with this today.
Its basically the inspiration for a Ralph Lauren ad campaign
Maya Angelou has left us BUT MAYA PETERSON LIVES
I want to keep rooting for her so so bad! But I also hope she takes time for herself if she needs, because so often (as many Black activists have pointed out) we’ll cheer them on and tell them that they’re doing the right thing when they receive threats and inappropriate consequences from folks, without taking into consideration the exhaustion and soul-breakingness of enduring that.
Related to that, the article talks about half-naked photos of her in her room were leaked and man, that’s just so fucking horrible. There’s so much terribleness wrapped up in that action.
It’s like this is the first time those bros have been made fun of.
I am sitting here all sorts of choked up and just so grateful that smart women are speaking up. Maya is a treasure and I am loving The Toast so hard right now!!
I went to college with a Lawrenceville alum and he posted this on Facebook yesterday. Now I really want to hear more about his experiences there because he is a black male and I wonder what his time was like.
The article talks about how minority students are always accused of being scholarship cases, and while I deplore the fact that 1) that is a question ever, at all, to people who ostensibly don’t belong or 2) is something that would even need to be mentioned, I love the fact that it mentions that Maya’s family paid full tuition.
I mean, of course they did.
My college roommate who went to a similar school on scholarship talked a lot about trying to stay under the radar of the “legit” prep-school types.
Yeah. Just the idea of having to stay under the radar of the legit prep-school kids – it’s gross.
I went to a private liberal art-y college and while there were definitely the kids whose parents cut a check for full tuition every year, they were in the minority. To the point where our school usually had to tout what percentage of students received some type of scholarship assistance.
mocking the unjustly murdered is one thing, but putting on a Yale sweater and smirking is a bridge too far
I wish I had any trouble at all believing that there was an uproar about this mild, amusing photo, but of course I cannot doubt it for a millisecond because when did the most centralized demographic population in the history of the modern world not howl about the smallest supposed slight from those their privilege marginalizes?
Full disclosure: I have some family connection to Lawrenceville (and by “some family connection,” I mean there’s a building there with my last name on it, in honor of a relative whose life work was at Lawrenceville, and we have several generations of graduates in the family) and this does not surprise me even a tiny bit.
I just want to commend the attention to detail that extended to the fucking CRITTER CHINOS. Well done.
Man, I wish I was even half as aware and articulate as Maya Peterson is NOW, much less when I was 17 years old. This entire affair just smacks of ignorance and racism, because let’s face it, if Maya were white, this wouldn’t even be a news story. What she did was innocuous at worst and obviously shown a much needed light on what privileged, humorless assholes she has to deal with on the daily.
Seriously, the second to last quote is just gold and better than anything I could come up with on a good day.
Maya Peterson, please be president. Always.
And who wants to put money on how many of these humorless bros dressed in blackface last halloween? EXACTLY.
East Coast prep schools. So presh.
I’m pregnant and was already considering naming my unborn child Maya. THIS SEALS THE DEAL.
brb, emailing this to my 13 year old daughter. Here’s your newest role model, dear!
Praise Maya. Misandrist heroine. May I have half the courage she has in her tiny left toe.
SHE HAS BEEN FORCED TO RESIGN. THIS IS AN OUTRAGE.
Straight-up palace coup, she should withdraw with the treasury and rule the student body in exile
WHAT? Oh, fuck no. *headdesk*
Proving once again that white dudes could never last a single fucking day in literally anyone else’s shoes.
She is a woman of valor.
HOO BOY, IT FEELS REAL GOOD TO COMMENT ON THIS ARTICLE WITHOUT WAITING FOR IT TO BE APPROVED
It’s weird though, I feel kind of on the fence about this whole situation. If only some of Maya’s whiny baby classmates could tell me about how she’s too aggressive, maybe I could be convinced that she’s actually bad and not the greatest person in America
Oh well!
It’s sad that the Toast’s technical difficulties are slowing down comment approval. I had to try like five times to post this.
they’re not! If you’re having trouble logging in through Intense Debate, that’s a separate issue.
Dude no it’s the thing where the trolls try to post repeatedly, changing the wording slightly every time, wasting their entire night. I hope you did not spend time checking my assertions! I feel guilt!
Commenting after a long lurkerdom to report that I live near this school, and they have a golf course, a full-time curator for their historical football paraphernalia, and a small sheep farm.
I want to write to the school’s board and tell them how bad this makes them, and our entire town, look. (*Not because how this incident _appears_ is the most important thing about it, but because it might be the only thing to get their attention, and shame can be a powerful weapon against racist & sexist behavior even if it doesn’t impact racist & sexist beliefs)
I hope you wrote that letter!
Followed your link here from Twitter, Mallory, just to make sure you never approved those whiny-ass comments from Maya’s classmates. I can’t believe I doubted you for even a second. Stifle those morons!
Maya Peterson is a golden goddess who makes us all look like trash in comparison.
Student Body President of MY HEART.
Thanks- she is amazing!!!
Mayas mom
Yes and we named her after ms angelou!!! She lives on
#mayasmom
Just literally high-fived my computer screen at this: “I didn’t become president to make sure rich white guys had more representation on campus.”
Just literally high-fived my computer screen at this: "I didn’t become president to make sure rich white guys had more representation on campus."
I don’t get the joke though. I mean I get that she’s dressed preppy but the hockey stick? This image doesn’t mean much to me. Which is to say, I don’t understand how it could possibly be construed as offensive, can someone explain that (I’m not asking rhetorically).
It’s amusing to think of Lawrenceville in the context of Dink Stover and The Tennessee Shad and other rebellious lads, back in the day, but I’m brought back to earth with the knowledge that they’d be the ones upset and offended at the notion of non-[white males] mocking [white males]. It’s a shame that National Lampoon stopped being relevant or funny back in the late 70s. The situation cries out for a solid parody of Owen Johnson’s work in light of the present-day dynamics.
(I have the horrible, horrible compulsion to tell you that my cousin (we are African American) is called Chad. I KNOW, I'm that person, I'm SORRY. 😀 )
(If it helps any, I've just remembered that he is in college now and no longer five years old, and freaked myself out.)