Who are you trying to impress with your wall hanging?

If you’ve seen any halls or student houses in Brighton, chances are, you will have seen the monstrosities that are wall hangings. Usually decked out with mandala, elephant, and ohm designs, these flimsy pieces of fabric can be  nabbed for a few quid off eBay or in Camden market.

Don’t get me wrong, I can see the appeal. Lots of  landlords don’t permit posters, and they’re a cheap way to cover up huge patches of mould. Let’s face it, Brighton is a pretty mouldy place to live. But they’re simply unforgivable.

If you walk past halls and see a room with a wall hanging, it seems fair to assume that the resident has Dirty Harry clothing and never washed it before wearing because *~vintage~* .They also pretend to like house and grime music. 99 per cent of the time, they also have dreadlocs and about 20 piercings, and like to display empty alcohol bottles in their kitchen or even bedroom to let people know that they mean business.

Students at Sussex are mainly left-wing: if you’re a Tory at Sussex you’re probably lost. Lots of leftie students seem very keen on calling out forms of cultural appropriation such as bindis and feather-headdresses on white folk. I’ve heard many a Sussex student say that other cultures are not costumes. So why are so many of you insistent that cultures are cute little home decorations?

A wall hanging is insensitive. You don’t see Bhuddists or Hindus slapping pictures of Jesus, Mary and Joseph all over their dorm rooms, but apparently agnostics, atheists and even Christians can cover their rooms in little Bhuddas and Hindu deities just for their “aesthetic” to make their room look vibesy. The sort of people who have  wall hangings are likely to be Philosophy undergrads who think this sort of nonsense is deep.

You don’t even look cool if you have a wall hanging. You look the same as the rest of us: like a broke student with a mouldy room. Except you also look like the type who doses up on ket alone at 10am and pretends to enjoy drinking port and/or playing backgammon.

Who are the type of people to have a wall hanging? The answer is simple: People who are fake-keen on philosophy and classic lit, pulling a quote out of their asses or strategically placing a Kant book on their bedside table every time you want to impress a potential shag, then going back to rewatching I’m a Celeb when their lover leaves the next day.

Wall-hanging fans tend to also be yoga-nuts. They collect incense (which sets of the fire alarm on a weekly basis), and insist on instagramming everything with #namaste and #ohm because they went to one yoga class five years ago and insist that within that hour, they somehow found their mystical inner self.

If you have one of these pieces of “art”, think twice about what your wall hanging says about you. Say goodbye to your tie-dye.