Have you ever sat in your room for hours researching a topic most people ignore—planes, serial killers, how fences are made, etc.? What makes these seemingly random topics so compelling? A fixation can be overwhelming; it can take over everyday thought and impede decision-making. That might seem unhealthy, but really that depends on the person. These five Sequoyah students explain their innate and peculiar fixations on people, colors, numbers, and health-conscious thinking, and how they show up in everyday life.
While “obsession” can feel negative, many Sequoyah students describe their interests as obsessive or extreme. They vary from the color pink to Steph Curry, and each one lasts a different period of time. Laidy Silverman ’28 reports her fixation on the color pink and biohacking. Ben Cox ’28 and Cohen Pistello ’29 marvel at “Stephen Curry, the greatness of Stephen Curry, how incredible he is,” says Cox. Eurus Wang ’27 elaborates on her connection to the color white and the number 25, while Millie Haberman ’27 explains her reverence for feminist theorist Hélène Cixous.
Oftentimes, interest in a person comes from idolizing them, which is the case for Cohen Pistello, Ben Cox, and Millie Haberman. Both Cox and Pistello describe Curry’s ability to “do no wrong,” admiring not only his achievements in basketball but also his personal life: “He's a beautiful man with three beautiful, amazing kids with a beautiful wife and an amazing brother,” says Pistello. In Haberman’s case, her connection to Cixous is less of an obsession with her life, and more of an appreciation for her works as a feminist theorist. Haberman describes reading and adoring Cixous' pieces in her junior year for “her pieces about how we use language to describe women, how language has inhibited women from writing in the past and how our way out of patriarchal constraints is through language.” Haberman explains that, in contrast to Cox and Pistello’s fixation on Curry, her connection to Cixous is centered more on how she helps Haberman understand herself.
For students Laidy Silverman and Eurus Wang, the colors pink and white mean more than just preference. “If something does not come in pink, at least a 90% chance I'm not getting it,” says Silverman. Even in terms of more mandatory things like taxes, the possibility of there not being pink paper is a strong factor to take into consideration. Silverman self-identifies as a “pink supremacist,” someone who—if possible—would “hire a pink person over any other color of person.” The reason for this obsession is that she finds pink visually pleasing. Similar to Silverman, for Wang, this inclination towards white has a lot to do with feeling calm in one’s brain. Wang says that her nervous system is “always on alarm,” and that the color white tends to slow things down and put her at ease.
Silverman and Wang both, in addition to their color obsessions, have something else that hops through their brains. For Silverman, it’s biohacking, or attempting to “hyper optimize [her] life to fit a perceived aesthetic standard [she is] obsessed with.” Similar to her love of pink, Silverman’s need for biohacking has to do with peace of mind and forward propulsion. Silverman remarks that, “If I'm doing something that's difficult and things around me are pink and I know that in the morning I've had something that was good for my gut and currently I have a weird olive oil on the tips of my hair…I'm constantly progressively moving towards being healthier and being better.” Self-improvement and a progression towards total pinkness completes Silverman, but Wang’s fixation on the number 25 has more to do with superstition than anything. Wang was born on the 25th of August, sparking her connection. She also highlights that 25 is a perfect square. Even the mere fact that she gets to exist in this world adds to her appreciation of her birthdate. These factors led to her getting a chest tattoo that says 25. Wang explains that she often checks the time to calm her nervous system and, at least three times a day, each time Wang checks the time, “It's going to be [something]:25.”
It is, of course, possible that some might share these students' fascination with basketball players, feminist theorists, colors, health reconfiguration, and numbers, but many of these students claim an appreciation exceeding most. Cox’s close spiritual connection to Curry—partially because Cox “was born on the 30th and he's number 30”—is special because he doesn’t think “the average Steph Curry fan has as much love and dedication to him as I do. I would do anything for Steph.” Cox clearly surpasses most with his first-name basis and utter devotion to “Steph.” Pestillo similarly illustrates Curry as his idol; in an award-winning observation, Pestillo says that “the worst thing that Curry's ever done was he was scared of the homeless people that were trying to live in his house, so he kicked them out.” Many wouldn’t even know that has happened, but Pestillo not only knows but ranks it as the “worst thing” Curry’s done, a high bar for a tall man. Haberman is fully aware that her love for Hélène Cixous is not the most common fixation; however, that does not take away from the uniqueness of her obsession. She contemplates that, with her fixation on Cixous, “I'm often thinking, would Hélène Cixous agree with what I'm about to do? Then it's weird, and it's probably an extreme obsession rather than a regular liking.” Silverman is in a state of pink where she “eat[s], sleep[s], breathe[s] pink.” Pink, while a common favorite, has never been loved the way Silverman loves it. Wang, on the other hand, explains that her relationship to white and 25 is “basically having a favorite color and a favorite number.”
Origins of obsession tend to fluctuate for each person, whether it has only persisted for a year or throughout their entire lives. Cox describes a scene of him playing basketball with his father at the ripe old age of three and a half and hearing tales of Stephen Curry. Haberman explains that her fixation is newer, considering she only learned about Cixous last year in her Fem Lit class. Wang has been obsessed with 25 for as long as she can remember; however, her obsession with white is fairly recent. Silverman claims she was “born pink.” She recalls stories her parents told her of failed attempts to get her to wear “cool millennial optimist silver outfits” while she preferred “princess dresses and pink,” a characteristic that she believes meant she was “born to be a monarch.”
The core values, motivations, and the way these students think seem to be centered around each of their fixations. Cox and Pestillo venerate Curry; he is practically all they talk about—according to a student in the same advisory as Cox who has known him since 3rd grade. Haberman likes Cixous’ writing to the point where she believes that “at a certain point, [her] words are so formative to how I figure out more about myself that they're always going to be meaningful to me.” Cixous helped Haberman learn about herself, forever connecting her to the theorist. Wang steadfastly understands that her connection to white and 25 is too ingrained in her life, unlikely to ever fade away. While Silverman can see herself letting go of biohacking, as she did with serial killers and Trader Joe’s Rice Krispies, she is simply pink.