Elizabeth Beggan Portfolio

I have two sisters. One twin sister, who, besides stealing my jeans and wearing my shoes, is my best friend. And my older sister, who is 15 years older than me, makes her 34. Growing up I never realized how truly lucky I am to have two sisters. When my older sister Tina got her license, we spent a lot of time going back and forth from the mall shopping for clothes or testing citrus scented perfumes. During these mall trips it was common for the older lady behind the cash register to tell the three of us how lucky we are to have something so special, sisterhood. 

In books and movies sisterhood is clearly defined. Although it can be complicated, like when Amy burns Jo’s rough drafts, and then has a fun snowball fight with her in the backyard, it perfectly encapsulates that sister drama and how quickly we can get over it. It’s interesting to think that something as old as sisterhood is timeless in its ways. The bickering, the fighting over the last cookie, or singing too loud in the shower is what any sister has gone through no matter the time period or age. 

As we grew older, I started to realize that maybe our geeky older sister wasn’t so geeky, it was her 21st birthday party that gave me this epiphany. Before then, Clare and I would be carted to her color guard performances with Tina in the car with bright purple eyeshadow that would glimmer in the light and a long flag that matched. We would sit and watch with the summer birds chirping in harmony and with the night turning those birds into lightning flies that we so desperately wanted to catch. 

I guess it could be seen as out-of-the-blue and random that for my defining moment I chose to write about my sister’s 21st birthday. But for me, and I am sure for a lot of younger sisters, it was nothing short of defining. 

Our house during this time was being completely redone. Blue tapestries filled the floors as if it were a rug and the smell of paint somehow lingered in the air even after everything was done. But those renovations didn’t stop my sister from having her iconic 21st birthday party. 

It’s 2014 and the scene is set. David Guetta made many appearances through the speakers, red solo cups filled with pink whitney, and there were enough cupcakes on the table to feed the whole neighborhood. As a young girl, my mom thought it was a bad idea for my siblings and I to be present while the guests were there so we were stowed away in the bedroom along with the coats while watching Disney. 

Like any curious girl who also loved David Guetta and cupcakes, I planned my escape from the room so that I could see what “older kids,” did for birthday parties. I wanted to know if it was anything like mine. Naively, I was expecting it to be similar to mine at the time. A princess cake with bows and crowns everywhere, and when I turned into the kitchen I was shocked that it wasn’t. Tina had invited both boys AND girls to this party and left the glittery purple eyeshadow behind. 

At ten years old, I had realized that my older sister was cool. She was wearing a black cocktail dress with 4-inch heels that, to me, added a sense of sophistication and style . I was looking around at familiar and unfamiliar faces and when they got close to me, their breath reminded me of my uncles on the Fourth of July. 

For the 20-minutes that I was with everyone and away from the coats, I saw who I wanted to be. My older sister. The one who was no longer the geeky, quirky, and dorky sister blossomed into a 21-year-old who was able to go out without mom or dad and have boys at the house. 

This moment for me shifted how I viewed my sister, and I no longer looked up to the girls on tv or in the magazines. Even now, I look up to her as my biggest role model and a woman I aspire to be like. Now that we’re older Clare and I are able to do things with her that we could have never imagined, like wearing a cocktail dress and 4-inch heels and going to get drinks. No matter how old we get or how far away we are from each other, the bond that I have with both of my sisters remains, and I know that I will always have two dates to a happy hour forever.

DISCLAIMER: I have yet to date one myself, but I’ve come pretty close.

“Loser” boyfriends, the term we’ve all been hearing about and hopefully not experiencing ourselves. The conversation/intervention with your best friend about her “loser” boyfriend is a cannon event for many friend groups all over the world.

To start, we should probably define this “loser” boyfriend for the sake of the article and to avoid sparking any confusion, but rather specify. He is lazy, unmotivated, hopefully has at least a minimum amount of hygiene, is not very thoughtful, spends his time with his other loser friends, and finally, probably can’t imagine his life without his first love, Mary Jane. 

At first, these charming and seemingly obvious uncomplicated men can be attractive. You like how mysterious and unbothered they are and decide to give it a chance. He shows you his cool music and you like his “chill’ vibe. Two weeks pass and you find yourself buying your own flowers because he couldn’t. 

But you are so surprised! He seemed so nice and deep, but in reality, when you take off the rose tinted glasses you spy a loser. The signs were there, and like most relationships, especially in the beginning it is difficult to finally admit to yourself what you didn’t want to before. You are dating a loser. 

The question I keep asking myself is, what is sustaining the attraction?

“I dated a loser because he caught me at a bad time,” says a dear friend who shall remain anonymous. 

“I dated a loser because I was looking for the beauty and found the beast,” Kristina Hagen recalls about her dating life before she met her now husband. 

Is the attraction just his muscles, or is it deeper than that. Some women find themselves giving into this “loser” boyfriend because maybe he makes her feel more confident in herself or has the “fix it Felix” mentality that some of us can’t seem to shake off. 

Olivia Rodgrigo said it best when she said, “I am my fathers daughter so maybe I could fix him.” So even A-list celebrities are going through the same thing. Just look at Madison Beer when she dated Zack Bia! (that was insane)

Being around a loser you can’t help but feel better about yourself when listing anything you have ever done. And sometimes, that feeling overpowers any other. 

All reasons are no fault of yours. As women we are naturally more drawn to men to bring out the nurturing and supportive sides of us. But when it gets to be too far is where we need to take off those rose tinted glasses. 

It’s easier said than done to break it off with him. I know a friend who has tried to break it off with her loser boyfriend a whopping 3 times! So I hope it’s easier for you than it was for her. Putting yourself first is the most important part to remember. Sometimes when you dig yourself into a deep dark hole, you lose sight of the light and sunshine of the hope of finding a man who is not a loser. 

You deserve a charming prince, who buys you flowers and takes you on nice dinner dates. A man who isn’t annoyed when you decide to play your favorite music in the car and sing along terribly. Your friends and family love him and he impresses them with adventurous stories and accomplishments. You need to remember your worth when in a sea with plenty of other fish, pick the carrier of caviar, not the slug. 

I first heard about Joan Didion through a classmate of mine. We were sitting in class and the assignment was to write a short 500 word article about any topic. She chose to write a review/critique about the new Didion & Babitz book written by the well-known Vanity Fair journalist, Lili Anolik.

Let me begin by saying how notably cool this girl was therefore anything she said or did I took as a passage from the Bible or something. I admired her dyed red hair and her really girly shoes paired with the most amazing jewelry that rang together while she was typing. The type of jewelry that if you asked where it’s from she would answer with something like, “it’s my grandma’s from Italy,” or “ I found it in this tiny antique shop in Rhinebeck.” She had the best insights on anything and obviously whatever she said I indisputably listened.

She and I have discussed books before and found that we enjoyed the same writers and genres. After reading her assigned article, I decided to start with Eve Babitz.

It seemed a little personally intimidating to suddenly find myself reading Babitz and Didion. The only thing I really knew about them was that they were both considered the “literary it girls” of their time (besides of course, Gloria Steinem).

Joan Didion was a familiar name because of how established she is in the journalism world. She is considered one of the journalists that opened the door for combining fiction writing with real-life stories. Writers like Didion, Hunter S Thompson, Norman Mailer and Gay Talese were all names that I admired, so diving deeper into Didion was effortless.

Despite meeting Joan Didion first, I started with Eve’s Hollywood. My first impression of it was the cover with the author posing in an artsy way and the fabulous bright pink spine of the book. From what I found in my research, she was a cool party-girl, and I consider, way ahead of her time. The book is composed of more than a dozen essays that stayed consistent in her clever, in-touch, and madcap writing style. I would easily consider this my favorite Eve Babitz book out of the three that I read. Her writing is just so candid and dances on the line of flirtatious and playful.

Babitz often mentions Virgina Woolf in her stories, going on frequent tangents about how every woman should read her books and how influential she is in her writing. Noting that A Room of One’s Own clearly highlighted the historical context of women’s struggles for freedom – both creative and independently. The main point of the book, from what I gathered when I read it in high school, was that women needed “ a room of their own,” to produce great art. This resonated with her deeply and something she was a strong advocate for.

She gives the reader a well rounded and detailed account for what the L.A. scene was during the 60s through Eve’s Hollywood. These themes definitely individualized herself from other writers at the time. Topics like sex, drugs, partying, impulsive travels, and straying away from society’s expectations were accounted for in her series of essays. No topic or essay overstayed its welcome, her accounts could last pages or even just one paragraph. She found meaning in everything, and not the kind of meaning that could seem pretentious or prejudice but instead, more obvious and direct.

Babitz is able to bounce between high society events and taquito stands on the side of the road seamlessly. Her tone throughout leaks its way into other novels she writes such as Slow Days Fast Company and Sex & Rage.

Although I did thoroughly enjoy Slow Days Fast Company as well as Sex & Rage which, by the way, is simply the best title of a book I have ever read, nothing beats Eve’s Hollywood. Sex and Rage is a non-fiction novel about a young woman on the hunt to find creative relief in moving from L.A. to N.Y.C. in the 1970s.

I found myself wanting to like this book much more than I actually did. The book was at an inadvertent plot standstill, with the main character Jacaranda unlikable and self-destructive. In the 245 pages, Jacaranda was just drifting through life and gave an honest story of a young woman’s journey.

Even still, through this slow and monotonous book, Babitz’s writing still shines through and is the reason I kept reading. Her insights about friendships, relationships and professional endeavors were candid and appreciated.

Slow Days Fast Company is another love letter about L.A. and although she clearly has love for it, her observations about the city’s culture are trustworthy. She writes in this sort of gossipy and cool tone that makes you wish you were somewhere you’ve never been. My pen was constantly underlining witty and charming remarks she made about the world around her – “ women who dance with their eyes closed, smiling, are as near to heaven as you can get on earth,” she writes.

I particularly appreciated how real and in-touch with the world she is even though hers is flooding with lavish parties and people. Eve Babitz reminds me of the kind of girl that you meet in the bar bathroom and when she tells you to get bangs…you get bangs.

Before I went to my Disneyland of a Barnes & Nobles, I attempted to research which Didion novel I should start with. There were many different answers to my question and after a bit I realized – it doesn’t matter, I’ll start with whichever one I want.

In my opinion to start Joan Didion is to start with Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Now granted I only read two of her books as of right now, Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album and opened a handful of her books and found that every sentence I read almost read like a rhythmic song.

Didion often refers to Ernest Hemingway, crediting his stories as direct inspiration for her writing style. She was drawn to his “iceberg” theory that suggested that the majority of meaning and impact is conveyed through what is left unsaid. To further her inspiration, Didion used a type-writer to rewrite his stories to thoroughly understand the rhythm of his sentences – focusing on the structure of long vs short sentences within paragraphs. She adopted these habits into her own writing while also navigating the linguistic labyrinths of the English word.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem is simply a masterpiece. It’s the Mona Lisa of literature, it’s that pair of perfect jeans in denim disaster, it’s a young woman’s guide to livelihood. I won’t compare it to the Bible, but I might. I won’t. It’s my Bible.

There are a total of 20 essays in this masterpiece each divided up into appropriate sections. Life Styles in the Golden Land, Personals, and Seven Places of the Mind – all relating to life in California during the 1960s. In one of her first few essays she’s taking you for a drive through a Northern Californian neighborhood, describing the streets, restaurants, stores and frequent faces. It felt as though I was sitting right there in the passenger seat with wind blowing in my hair and Joni Mitchel on the radio.

I found that Slouching Towards Bethlehem, in its consistent prose writing essence, was not one sentence short of perfection. I drowned myself in her insightful and observant way of writing. There is no doubt in my mind that she was one of the most observant writers that I have ever encountered. Not observant in the way of just simply pointing out the color of one’s hair but pointing out the anxieties and contradictions within different subcultures and historical moments.

Her essays frequently explored cultural shifts happening in America such as celebrity culture, the amplification of hippie-counterculture, and political discourse. She thoughtfully captured the underlying contradictions and uncertainties of the times with clarity.

My favorite writing done by her has to be her collection of Personals. I personally think her writing and perspectives thrive in this section. From explaining why she keeps a notebook to her experience with self-respect, she is truly eye opening. Her anecdotes about how she lived her life are truly refreshing and have since then shifted my outlook on life.

The White Album in my opinion is the more intimate and vulnerable version of Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Through this series of essays she captures her personal struggles with topics like marriage, writing, and even migraines. The first line of the very first page has now become one of the most memorable quotes she’s written, “ we tell ourselves stories in order to live.”

Many of her essays stood out to me and I was constantly underlining/dog-earring the whole book. Her essays almost feel like diary entries because of how vulnerable and real she is with readers. One particular essay stands out to me – In The Islands. She describes the hotel she’s staying in, the weather, and most importantly her recent filing for divorce. Sentences such as “quite often over the past several years I have felt myself a sleepwalker,” and “a place belongs forever to the person who claims it the hardest; remembers it obsessively.”

She shows the realities of her life, good or bad. Her melancholic disposition reflects itself clearly, reassuring me that it’s okay to sulk in my own sadness. Joan Didion is thoughtful and reflective in any endeavor she finds herself in, personally inspiring me to follow suit. It is a privilege to have gotten to know her through her writing in complete understanding. She’s the voice of all that has, or hasn’t necessarily changed to anyone unprejudiced enough to listen.

Fluorescent lighting is unforgiving in any sense, especially when there are several students leaning against the walls, waiting for their amazon packages. Impatiently. The smell of packing tape and cardboard boxes are familiar, but still disliked, although it goes well with the blank white walls. It’s awkward and for no good reason, hotter than any other room on campus.

Chewing gum, the sound of keys swaying back and forth, and the occasional friend standing with you, giggling as you wait for your name to be called. Without the giggling, it’s easier to hear the quaint buzzing noise that floods students ears. When not calling names and handing packages to half thrilled students, the woman at the front desk can be found outside smoking a cigarette in any weather condition. The small and yet effective mailroom reminds me of how foreigners might picture an American DMV.

When leaving the mailroom with one more thing you needed, or at least one thing you thought you needed, can make an okay day – better. There is a mutual understanding that the level of curiosity dramatically increases once you step foot in the mail room. The second a package is brought up from the uncharted abyss of deliveries from the back, eyes are on you and your delivery. 

Finding out where someone fuels their shopping addiction somehow satisfies that intrusive curiosity we all undoubtedly have. There is a hidden beauty about the mailroom, for a second we get a glimpse into our classmates’ lives that we otherwise wouldn’t get.