Bloody Mary put on some bloody clothes Women experience discrimination based on their clothing1/22/2019 With Halloween and costume parties all around us, I’d like to say one thing to the young women who choose to wear low cut shirts and short skirts, be safe sweetie and I love you! Often times, when Halloween approaches many women are harassed due to the more revealing nature in their choice of costumes. There are more demeaning words that women are called but the point is, women are often discriminated for what they wear. For many, getting cat called while walking down the street on Halloween is to be expected, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be or that we should normalize this behavior. Halloween is supposed to be a fun time for everyone, to dress up and just be a little weird. The fun is immediately ruined for women, because if they post a picture of their costume and immediately your comments will be flooded with name calling and people asking “is that appropriate?” Women should be allowed to wear whatever they please without worrying about what people may say about their bodies. Women tend to face more discrimination then men on their looks. In some settings women are required to wear makeup to appear more professional, wear pants despite increasing warm temperatures that would make shorts the more comfortable option, and wear heels whether or not that is the logical choice for their workplace environment. Women, men, and everyone outside and inbetween should be allowed to dress as they wish in whatever makes them feel comfortable. However, there are limits. Don’t go around naked and in a professional setting wear clothes that reflect that. What needs to change is how we view women’s bodies and later discriminate against them. Remember, Halloween is a day where people are meant to defy social customs and dress as something radical, so let them. Stop making comments on other people’s bodies and enjoy the freedom to express yourself through fashion. Happy Halloween!
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On November 17th, Billings Senior High held TWIRP, standing for The Woman is Required to Pay, at the Depot in downtown Billings. TWIRP was organized by the Senior High’s cheerleaders in mid-November. This year was the cheerleading coach Shaundel Krumheuer’s fourth year organizing the event and third year attending.
At the end of the night Magnolia West and Brady Cady were crowned Queen and King. The other candidates included Makayla Heiser, Blair Stapleton, Clara Bentler, Shelby Kiekover, Daniel Schnetter, Hayden Yarbrough, Malcolm Wildenberg, and Conrad Hope. “The younger kiddos really like to get involved ‘cause they haven’t been to a dance. And a lot of the older kiddos like to be involved because they know what a lot the dances are like.” Mrs. Krumheuer said of her cheerleaders. The decorating for TWIRP started at eight in the morning and went until around noon. It takes “Forty-five or more people setting up and it takes like four hours to put up.” “Because we do a lot of decorating for it, we started in September, picked our theme, and started ordering things,” said Mrs. Krumheuer. The cheerleaders have a lot of freedom in planning TWIRP and chose this year for it to be the BSH Gala, reminiscent of the Met Gala. The dance was “classy and sophisticated” and that was only amplified by having it held in the Depot for the first year. Though the Depot was hesitant to hold a high school dance at first, they were pleasantly surprised by Senior High’s students good behavior and it is possible that future dances may be held there again. The cheerleading team put a lot of effort into the dance and it’s one of their main fundraisers for the year. The proceeds go back to them to pay for expenses like, travel, pom-poms, shoes, and much more. YouTuber at Senior Documents His Everyday Thoughts and Opinion
YouTube has become a platform for any person with a recording device to find success. Some use it to make their own skits come to life, some document their daily lives, and many more. Senior High has its own YouTubers, one of them being Wyatt Gutierez. Gutierez’s channel varies and can be considered as vlogging, a video documentation of a person’s life, thoughts, feelings, opinions, and interests. Gutierez considers his content to be, “Not the good kind,” but his 147 subscribers disagree. Gutierez started his YouTube channel, Bag of Bees, last October. Gutierez said that, “I’m gonna continue this channel until the day I die.” Gutierez works hard to keep his posting on a regular biweekly schedule, but there are occasions where he doesn’t manage to get it out on time. “I’m either too sad to upload or just too lazy. And so I just don’t. But I try.” Views are very important to a YouTube career and Gutierez’s most liked video is called, “I Farted at Christina’s House and Now She Won’t Hang Out With Me. It’s at like 388 views I think.” To say the least, Gutierez’s channel is unconventional. He posts a wide array of videos, from talking about capitalism to ranting with friends about any subject that may come to mind. The name of Gutierez’s YouTube channel is also unique, where most prefer to do a spin on their name, Gutierez’s comes from something different. Bag of Bees comes from when he thought, “Applebee’s sold apples and bags of bees. It wasn’t until I was like twelve that I realized they didn’t. And then, there’s a Tyler the Creator song that says, ‘I’m feeling flier than a bag of bees’.” This summer Gutierez began selling merch for his channel but differently than most people. “It was 200 bucks to make all the merch. And so then I made it. And then I was like, ‘I don’t wanna charge people for this.’ Cause that’s wack. Like, I don’t need money or anything. And so I was ‘I’m just gonna give it out for free.’” Friends of Gutierez and followers of his channel enjoyed a free black shirt with ‘Bag of Bees’ written across it in yellow. In a world of people striving to be different Gutierez is truly leaving his individual mark on the world. It will be interesting to see where Gutierez goes forward in his life, his YouTube channel documenting the major points along with him. Anyone will be able to see Gutierez’s unique perspective of the world from the lens of a camera. When discussing the issue of the immigration crisis, I seem to get the same answer. When I would argue in support of refugees seeking asylum (don’t worry, I’m sure we’ll get into that in a later issue), people would ask me, “But what if they’re a terrorist?” The answer to me is simple. I think of the people who are fleeing the terrorists. I think of the people from the war torn countries, from places that are facing the most horrendous famine to date. I think of the people who are hurting and are in search of a better life. I hope that they might find it here.
I understand that there is so much to be frightened of in our world, how tragedy seems to be right at our front door step, but you have to imagine, tragedy has already struck these people coming to our country. More than 50,000 children have died of starvation in Yemen, according to the Chicago Tribune. Yemen is one of the countries included in the Muslim ban. Instead of helping these people we decide instead to bar ourselves off from them, to fear them. The caravan traveling across Central America is made up of mostly people from the country of Honduras. This country has the highest murder rate in the world. 59 out of every 100,000 people will be murdered, according to the Overseas Advisory Council. These people are trying to escape the persecution that they are facing in their home countries. Yet, we deny them entrance and give them a label: evil. I see a solution: empathy. We must understand that these people are not that much different from us. If we act with kindness, I believe that we can make the world a better place. It’s a cliche belief that has been said a thousand times by people with far more influence than me, but I believe it. There are so many things that are filled with hatred today. Maybe if instead of being scared of the villains that could walk through our doors, we could have empathy of the people who have lost their homes. There are bad people in this world but there are good people as well. I choose to believe that there are more good and that I’ll help leave behind a better place by being a little kinder. We need to stop seeing others as ‘them’ and instead as ‘us’. Sierra Burgess is a Loser was a forecasted success. For the most part, it was, but members of the LGBTQ+ community pointed out that the show fell victim to an old Hollywood trope: queerbaiting.
Queerbaiting is when a show or movie portrays a character that falls into the LGTBQ+ community but is never outwardly labeled to be a part of it. Instead, the show will say that the character is experimenting, doesn’t like labels, or is going through a phase. The ambiguity of sexual orientation can be demeaning to communities that take pride in openly expressing themselves. In recent years, Hollywood seems to have answered the call for more queer characters in movies such as Love, Simon and Atomic Blonde. Love, Simon, for instance, was an instant classic but people called for more. The audience wanted a story that wasn’t centered around a white cis (a person who identifies with the gender that they were assigned as at birth) gay male. More and more people asked for non-cis characters, people of color, and female love stories. The blockbuster movie Atomic Blonde almost succeeded in doing such, but became distasteful once they fell into an old hollywood trope, killing off one of their few queer characters. Sierra Burgess is a Loser was a beautiful story, but left the audience wanting more representation. They made a character that the bisexual/pansexual/queer community could relate to and then gave away what made the character empowering to so many people. The movie focuses on a love story between a girl and a guy, but the only real connection the audience sees is between the two female characters and the love they share for one another. While anyone loves a good boy-girl love story, when you make it where the connection is more intimate and beautiful between the females, one cannot help but to see the love story as unrealistic, due to the lack of chemistry between the male and female leads. Instead of giving the audience small clues to pick up on that a character may possibly be part of a community that is under represented, movies need to begin having their characters take pride in their identities, as do others who identify themselves as such. At the beginning of the year Katie Rehberg became the new theatre director at Senior. Her responsibilities entail, supervising drama club and directing the fall and spring productions. Mrs. Turley, the previous theatre director, will still be teaching the theatre class, a one semester class held in the spring. Ms Rehberg took over the position of director with grace and immediately getting to work on the fall play. With a several week delay in the auditions, the show is now on the road! Gossamer, a book originally written by Lois Lowry, was chosen as the fall play.
Gossamer is about a Dreamer called Littlest One, played by sophomore Allia Schneider. “I’m the youngest of the Dreamgivers. I get to break some rules,” said Schneider. Littlest One gets to help another character called The Boy by giving him good dreams instead of nightmares about when his father abused him. Performing a play is difficult and takes a lot of energy. Schneider said she’s scared of forgetting her lines but is “just excited to get on the stage again.” Schneider also said that her biggest challenge in this is, “honestly, just not procrastinating and actually practicing.” It seems this year there a more new students joining the theatre portion of Senior High, with majority of the cast of the play being talented underclassmen. Those who go to the plays are sure to see a lot of new talent these upcoming years. As the play takes off, Rehberg started a fundraiser for the drama club. She has started pledges for grades, where friends or family members can pledge so much money to a students’ A or B grades at the semester. Co-president of the drama club and veteran of the theatre department, Magnolia West, is working hard with the drama club with fundraising and planning events for the year, also plans on participating in the spring production. Though auditions for the school play are advertised to the students, some still find it difficult to hear about them. The best way to get involved with the drama troupe at Senior High is to check for the auditions on the school calendar or stop by room 220 after school on Thursdays where they often have their drama club meetings. In this day and age of almost every citizen having a camera in their pocket, moments of injustice have been documented and posted for all to experience. In a country where many had the comfort of ignorance to believe that their nation was great, just, and equal, now are forced to face the truth: the nation’s racist past isn’t in the past. It’s ongoing and the road to better ourselves is still being built. The history of racism in this country still affects the current tragic events that are still happening today.
Recently, people have been calling for memorials dedicated to Confederate leaders from the Civil War to be torn down. Confederate flags being flown representing the states ‘history’ are being labeled as racist. Those fighting to keep the flags and the memorials are those who say that the Confederacy was fighting for state rights. That is not the case. The Civil War was a fight over slavery. It was a fight over whether or not they would be free, not a state’s right to choose. W.E.B. DuBois, a civil rights activist, said in 1928 that pardoning Robert E. Lee, Civil War Southern general, for his actions was wrong, saying, “Either he knew what slavery meant when he helped maim and murder thousands in its defense, or he did not. If he did not, he was a fool. If he did, Robert Lee was a traitor and a rebel - not just to his country, but to humanity, and humanity’s God.” Robert E. Lee wasn’t fighting for his home state or states rights. He knew what the purpose of the war was for, keeping those of darker skin under wealthy landowners’ thumb. This racial history of continued oppression has many people finding the term ‘reverse racism’ offensive. Reverse racism is when white people are supposedly discriminated against. Racism requires a history of oppression and that hasn’t/doesn’t exist for white people. At this moment in time racism cannot be acted out against white people because, “Racism equals prejudice plus social power plus legal authority,” said Jeffery Robinson, Deputy Legal Director of the ACLU. Instead of yelling reverse racism, Robinson said the at the moment what they could be experiencing is prejudice. Robinson asked that white people help those in the minority saying, “White people: recognize it, listen, educate yourself, broaden experiences, take action.” It’s the job of those with privilege to help those without. You may not have gotten the choice of having privilege of how you use it. |
From:My articles from the Bronc Express. ArchivesCategories |