Studs for Studs

Hello, my name is Sammy Hallal, I’m a 22 year old pharmacy student by day and fashion enthusiast by night. Since Studs have been making a comeback and can add a nice touch to any piece of clothing, their connotations with bikers, punks, emo kids at the mall, cowboys, elvis, and elvis impersonators are slowly dispersing into the realms of high fashion and have eventually reached the mass market. Indeed, some hot-shot designers such as Givenchy and Prada have already featured studded shirts in their collections.

Givenchy

  
 

Prada

 Since it’s high fashion, most of you can’t afford these shirts unless you’re a millionaire, sleeping with one, or a prostitute (the kind that receives “business” from politicians and/or athletes). But if you’re like me, a broke college student, chances are you can’t afford these either.

Therefore, for my first article (and maybe only article, considering how lazy I’ll get)for my best friend’s online ‘zine, I will be providing you a step-by-step guide on how to embellish your own shirts with studs along with pictures for those who don’t feel like reading. (Yay, illiteratism!)

Step 1: Get studs (obviously) and other necessary tools.
This step is pretty simple since there are only three main ingredients for creating your own studded entrée.

1) Studs: gold, chrome, or any other color of your liking.



 I got these at Mood Fabrics, for $3.95/bag.


2) Pliers, or some other metallic tool not usually used in clothes making.

3) A shirt, or any article of clothing.

Step 2: Since these studs come with spikes at the bottom, you simply puncture the spikes into the area of the shirt you wish to embellish.

Step 3: This is where the pliers come in. After puncturing, simply use the flat edge of the piers or any other heavy metal to fold the spikes inward, locking the stud in place. It’s best to use a tool instead of your fingers to avoid cutting yourself and bleeding everywhere (although blood may add a nice dark, sadistic design if you’re going for the “I’ve just been stabbed and/or mauled repeatedly” look).

Step 4: Repeat steps 2-3, aligning the studs in whatever pattern your heart desires.

Here is me, “professionally” modeling my own DIY studded shirt.

After following these simple steps along with some TLC, you will have your own personally designed studded shirt without having to make a down payment and/or sell an organ for the expensive alternative.

By Sammy Hallal

Getting Christian Grey’d Isn’t All It’s Slapped Up to Be

If you have recently come into contact with any (horny) females between the
ages of 15 and 55, chances are you’ve already heard about this century’s great
literary masterpiece, Fifty Shades of Grey. Of course if you haven’t, I’m sure merely
mentioning the fact that the story originated as a Twilight fanfiction under the
author’s clever pseudonym “Snowqueens Icedragon,” will give you a pretty accurate
idea of the novel’s quality—


IT. IS. GREAT. Duh! Just like Twilight, but replace the whole vampirism thing with
sadomasochism. Oh, the taboo!


I mean, besides E.L. James’s ( a.k.a. Ms. Icedragon’s) deliciously repetitive use of the
word “deliciously,” colorful expletives such as “Holy Moses!” and “Double Crap!”,
and admirably bold disregard for linguistic realism (her Seattle-sprung protagonists
apparently have a British vocabulary)—the overall storyline of a romance between
brooding and dangerous young man Christian and charmingly innocent and maybe 
slightly Asperger-y chick  Ana is just SO captivatingly original, I couldn’t help but inhale
 this book in a day! Oh yeah, plus all that sexy, violent sex stuff. I would TOTES let 
Mr. Grey tie me up and do to me what he would. Sure, he might leave me bruised 
and crying, but that’s OK because he’s hot and rich. And seeing as hardware stores
across the country are quickly selling out of bondage supplies, I’m obviously not the 
only lady who’s been roped in by Grey’s appeal (LOL, get it? Rope? Ok).
Genius marketing people also have a bunch of Fifty Shades products in the works,
including makeup and bed sheets—not to mention the movie that everyone in 
Hollywood is supposed to be starring in. Wow, thanks to this novel S&M is finally kitsch.
I’d even bet that come Christmas, teenage girls around the world will be able to
wake up with their very own Saint Andrew’s Crosses under the tree.


But while everyone’s been salivating over this new erotic concept called “BDSM” or
something, I’ve been wondering why we should confine that dominant/submissive
relationship to the bedroom. That’s just boring. If you enjoy being controlled in
private, wouldn’t it be way kinkier to be controlled in public, too? Uh, YES! That’s
why my favorite feature of this endlessly deep and multifaceted novel is how
Christian not only takes over Ana’s sex life, but pretty much her everyday life
too, which actually seemed to make their affair even more hot and heavy. Having
your boyfriend control everything you eat and wear and do must be SO liberating!
And since I’m usually the bossy bitch in relationships, I longed to feel the rush of
servitude. That’s when I decided I wanted to get Christian Grey’d.


No, not bound and gagged, that’s far too passé. All I wanted was what every
other Fifty Shades fan wants—for some perfect, psycho rich guy to demand I wear
gorgeous new clothes, drive a gorgeous new car, and eat all the gorgeous food he’s
bought for me. Finding a guy like that in the real world was harder than I thought,
so I just had to settle on my boyfriend, who, luckily for me, happened to be flying in
from the UK for a visit. Since he’s all like, sweet and English Gentlemanly, I had to
make one last demand before handing over the reins and that was demanding that
he made demands. “You know, just to spice things up, babe! What could go wrong?”


Food
Christian has some sort of weird deal with food—he’s always ordering Ana stuff
she doesn’t want and making her eat all of it, even if it’s making her feel physically
ill. But it’s romantic because the meals are all expensive and it shows that he cares.
But Christian isn’t English like his stand-in, Martin, and so he probably doesn’t have
disgusting tastes when it comes to food. Martin, on the other hand, puts ketchup,
mustard, and mayonnaise in his pasta, while I usually stick to things like grilled
tofu and brown rice. Needless to say, I was worried about my meal options, but
when I was told we’d be having dinner in Little Italy, I was somewhat relieved. But
I certainly should not have been. We walked and walked, passed all the expensive
but adorable tourist trap restaurants on Mulberry until we reached a dumpy little
stand on the corner, selling pastries. Martin ordered two cannolis, gave me one,
and said that was dinner. I gasped. I was horrified and he knew I would be. I’m sure
any normal person would have found this fine, maybe even delightful, but I hadn’t
eaten anything remotely unhealthy in like, 11 years. However, I knew that eating the
cannoli would bring me one step closer to Fifty Shades nirvana, and so I did it. It was
creamy and gross but not so bad. But when I had to eat a burger a few days later,
my first bit of red meat in years, I had so many questions about the cow that would
never be answered. Was it free range? Did it eat only organic grass? I cried after the
burger, but I knew this was all for the best.

Clothing
No girl will ever turn down new clothes, especially not this girl. Who cares if
they’re picked out solely by your boyfriend? It worked out pretty well for Ana—
Christian has such great taste. And I thought Martin did too, and he probably does,
but I guess the power started getting to his head. At first, when he brought me to
the elite and exclusive SoHo area of Manhattan, I thought I was in for a fairytale
shopping experience at real classy places like Bebe or Armani Exchange. But once
again we walked straight passed all those stores as Martin led me into the neon-
vomited discount stores where everything is cheap spandex and sequins. My pained
expression was met with a devilish grin and before I knew it, I was being handed
zebra-print leggings and a glittery Union Jack tank top. “I want you to wear that and
pledge your allegiance to me and Great Britain,” my not-so-Christian captor ordered.
I was beginning to question this little exercise.

Hobbies
Christian makes Ana participate in his favorite hobbies such as (as we know) masochistic sex but also
helicopter-flying. My boyfriend likes videogames. So instead of taking me on a dreamy ride above the
city in a private helicopter, Martin took me to GameStop. Um, videogames are only romantic when Lana
Del Rey is singing about them. Anytime else, they’re boring and make my brain dizzy. He kept me by his
side as he slowly, agonizingly browsed his way around the entire store, looking carefully at games he
doesn’t even have a console for. Talk about masochism—he was clearly taking pleasure in my misery
and boredom. When he started to actually play a game on one of those in-store systems they have in
that God-forsaken place, I wondered if the hatred I then felt for my boyfriend would be released later
that night in a raging romp in a bar bathroom. FYI, it wouldn’t.

Health
Considering the challenging physical rigors he likes to put his women through, it’s really no surprise that
Christian requires Ana to be in the utmost shape. That means no smoking, no excessive drinking, and
no drug use. HA! As if sex can even occur without engaging in one of those activities first. But also, it
means a serious workout regimen to keep the body in fighting form. (Eww, sweat?) So, while he may
be a hypocritical chimney-smoker himself, Martin has never really liked it when I occasionally steal
a cigarette or five from his pack of reds. Blah blah…”Bad for you”… blah blah…”Hole in your throat.”
Whatever. But he banned cigs and alcohol for a few days and then actually made me go jogging with
him on a particularly humid day—just a ploy to add insult to injury, I’m sure, or maybe make me sweat
out all my “toxins.” ANYWAY, the whole physical-exertion thing just wasn’t working for me, so after a
pretend-faint and some expert dry heaves we ended our workout with a nice cup of Irish coffee and a fresh-lit smoke.


Socializing
Ana usually has to address Christian as “Sir,” or “Mr. Grey,” and while it may seem super-sexy when it

conjures up memories of that little thing you had with your high school science teacher (didn’t we all?

We did…right?), it doesn’t feel so right when you’re calling your basically same-aged boyfriend that,

especially in public. Try holding his hand and sharing a frozen yogurt cone in the presence of a bunch of

little kids. Now say “Thanks for the yogurt, sir” in between licks and lip-pecks so everyone around you

suddenly thinks you’ve got some sort of Rumer Willis/Ashton Kutcher situation going on. Awwwwkward.

Servitude/Submissiveness
All Christian really wants is for Ana to submit and fully serve his pleasures—so essentially, he’s a
guy. Although Martin was making me do a ton of stupid shit that he wanted me to do, none of it
really seemed to meet his needs—or mine, for that matter. When I explained this to him, he said he
understood and that he would make me serve him. Was it wrong that I was guiltily excited? BUT LONG
STORY SHORT, all I ended up doing was make a lot of sandwiches while wearing that stupid itchy British
flag shirt and massaging his feet while he watched three-year-old reruns of Family Guy. Believe it or not,
none of this was sexy.

What I learned
Even though the naïve and impressionable literary heroines of late make being completely controlled
by a man seem totally fun and romantic, every lady must accept the fact that men cannot be adhered
to and that we’re the ones who must run the show. Or else you run the risk of dates at GameStop and
a lifetime of sandwich-making in slutty clothes. I took the reins back from my Christian Grey—maybe I
should have never handed them over in the first place.