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Has this ever happened to you?

You’re talking to some clean-faced girl in a long skirt with braided hair, and you say something slightly left-leaning. It’s nothing crazy, just that you think healthcare should be free, or that we should increase the minimum wage or that Kamala is “brat.” Her eyes suddenly go wide, and, after a slight intake of breath, she opens her mouth to do the unthinkable. She disagrees with you.

Wait, what? Cottagecore lesbian-types like her should be all over whatever liberal policy you half-heartedly endorsed. I mean, what kind of stuff does she believe in, if not mandating that everyone drive a Prius by 2027, or something like that? You look to her Nalgene for clues.

Your eyes scan the weathered stickers coating the plastic. You look for an Irish 4 Reproductive Health sticker, a PrismND sticker, a photo of Hillary Clinton captioned “Thug Life,” anything that will connect her to liberalism. But to no avail. Instead, you come face-to-face with a sticker asking you to choose life, a black-and-white doodle of Fr. Sorin and the words “Jesus, I trust in You” in pastel pink letters.

It hits you like a ton of vaccines. This isn’t a crunchy granola cottagecore democrat. This is a trad wife-in-training.

It all becomes so obvious. Those eight necklaces she’s wearing? All of them are either crosses or medallions dedicated to saints. Those rings? One is a promise ring, one is a silver Claddagh ring, one is a mini-Rosary, one has the Our Father written on it in Latin, one is another Claddagh ring but in gold and, oh my Ginsberg, is that an engagement ring? Girl, you’re 22! You should be at the club!

She finally finishes explaining why you’re wrong about defunding Chick-fil-A or something. You cough awkwardly to relieve the tension. She dodges your cough because she’s unvaccinated. You politely mumble a defense of your initial comment, but your heart isn’t in it. You feel betrayed by this faux-cialist. You claim to have a class to escape the tense atmosphere and run to the Gender Relations Center to recover.

Every day, dozens of Notre Dame students like you end up in situations just like this, yet the administration is silent. I propose we take matters into our own hands and ban the following until this scourge of misunderstandings ceases: long skirts, long hair, sandals, kombucha, homemade sourdough, the color forest green, people from the Pacific Northwest, Noah Kahan, Christianity and women.

Just goes to show you should never judge a book by its cover. Sometimes that copy of “The Feminine Mystique” is really the Old Testament in disguise.