Pretty in Pink

To enter Greenough 212 is to forget the world of classes, tests, and adult responsibilities. There are no textbooks or backpacks on the floor; there is no trash waiting to be taken out. Pink tulle material decorates the door handle. Songs from Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” float from a laptop, which rests on a desk wrapped entirely in pink crepe paper. Colored Christmas tree lights adorned with sparkly pieces of candy line the molding and the drawers. Colorful flower pots sit in the corner, next to a purple parasol. The floor lamp is ornamented with silver chiffon butterfly wings. Printed patterns of pink and red lipsticks and compacts dot the bedsheets. Even the CD holders and the crutches leaning on the wall are painted pink.

Yet to Lauren A. Jacks ’05, the occupant of 212 and a true Southerner who hails from Byhalia, Miss., the room is nothing special. “It’s just a room to me. Back home everyone has their rooms like this. I’m really kinda boring.” Evidently, her suitemates feel otherwise. “Everyone likes to come in here and sit when they’re stressed,” says Jacks. A confessed purple and pink lover who has practiced crafting since she was a kid, Jacks’ prime specialty has been the creation of Barbie dresses.

Jacks has always taken interior decorating seriously because according to her, “The atmosphere of a room can completely change your mood.” When it finally came time to make the trek north to nasty, undecorated and decidely non-pink Cambridge, and ultimately to her freshman dorm room, Lauren found little to work with. “When I first walked in here I was crying because it was so ugly.” A quick trip to Pearl Art in Central Square, where Jacks picked up the pink crepe paper and some pink paint, remedied the situation. She was relieved that the Freshman Dean’s Office took her demands for a single seriously, because someone else’s orange bedspread in the midst of her pink would have spoiled everything.

Unfortunately, however, not everything is perfect in the world of 212. “I despise brown and I despise my floor,” laments Jacks. The view from her window, which she refuses to shut, is also an issue. Apparently, in the room across the courtyard from her room lives a “gross long-haired man,” who often wears nothing but baggy gray briefs.

However, things will only improve from here: Lauren’s parents are visiting next weekend and bringing more craft supplies, a bed skirt and (you guessed it!) pink curtains. Now she can look forward to completing the room’s transformation from sparse dorm to fairy tale h(e)aven. Hopefully the man in gray underwear will take the hint and get his parents to bring some curtains too.