4 — Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2021— North Pointe
Plus size d iscrimination
BELLA YOAKAM
Physical appearance is the first thing humans process when meeting a new person. In a world where prejudice and bias are prominent, this creates the issue of judging or discriminating against someone who looks different than the “standard” human. But who is that person? Answer: they do not exist. Society pushes a beauty standard on everyone from the time they are a kid, specifically, “skinny” is correct and “plus size” is wrong. When our brain strives so constantly to be supermodel thin, it can unconsciously demonize people who aren’t. This is plus size discrimination. Victoria Secret holds perhaps one of the most known fashion shows every year, featuring their “angels” in a variety of lingerie. Until recently, angels were not to be above a size 12, and are required to
EDITORIAL
be between 5’8” and 6’ 9’’. This alone is problematic, only tall skinny women are shown as “sexy.” What did the plus size girls think? Because of the shape of their bodies, they can’t be beautiful in society’s eyes? Perhaps this was noticed, because in 2019, Ali Tate-Cutler was featured as the brand’s first “plus-size” angel. Great right, finally getting representation? Except Tate-Cutler is a size 14, the average size of a woman in the U.S.. Victoria Secret is so fat-phobic that they branded an average woman as above average. Not only would this damage young girls perception of their own bodies, but it creates a widespread discrimination against average sized and above women. They aren’t pretty or skinny enough to be models. It isn’t only the fashion industry that has this bias. In fact, it reaches smaller scales, such as school dress codes. At North’s homecoming, at least three plus-sized girls got dress coded for wearing dresses that were “too revealing”. However, they were wearing dresses cut the same as those of tons of “skinny” girls. Just because of the shape of the teens’ bodies, their dresses were deemed inappropriate for them. This is called skinny privilege. Thin girls can get away with low cut tops, exposed midriff or short skirts. But the same things on thick girls are “showing too much,” but really there is just more to show. It isn’t inappropriate to have a larger body, nor is it bad. It’s just different. Can we step up and stop our discrimination against plus-sized women? Beauty is in everyone, no matter shape or size. Show our thin, thick and average girls some love.
Common sense stalls in the girls’ bathroom By Grace Rossman SECTION EDITOR After a summer of construction, students returned to school to remodeled first and second floor bathrooms. Out with the 53 year old pink restrooms, the new and modernized bathrooms seem almost perfect. However, even with the expensive bond given to our school for improvements, the girls’ bathrooms are missing something so elementary, that it’s beyond frustrating. Even the old and outdated bathrooms had trash cans that allowed women to dispose of feminine hygiene products, and despite the attractiveness and cleanliness of our new bathrooms, some may still prefer to journey to the third floor to be in the almost historic bathrooms. Without a trash can in each stall, girls have two options, neither of which are desirable: to flush their feminine products down the toilet, or bring them to the singular trash can outside of the stalls. The former has been advised against, and has resulted in signs in the stalls informing girls that these products can cause plumbing issues. So, in reality, the lack of places to dispose of products is a negative for everyone. The money they could spend providing trash cans in each stall will instead be spent unclogging toilets and solving plumbing problems, an issue that the administration brought upon themselves. The latter option, and the only other solution, is simply a
KAITLYN BARR
violation of privacy. With the stigma surrounding periods, not every girl wants to carry a feminine hygiene product from her stall and throw it away in the communal trash can. Additionally, it is a sanitary issue. A used feminine product should not have to leave a stall and end up right next to the expensive and sparkling hand dryers. The hand dryers are both an area where students place their hands, and where germs are being blown around by the powerful air dryer. Trash cans in our stalls should not be considered a luxury. For a school that is working on an exorbitant construction project and can afford to add unnecessarily extravagant sinks, fashionable marble tiles on the walls and up-to-date design choices for our new bathrooms, I believe they can afford small metal bins for the seven stalls in each of the girls’ bathrooms.
YOUR TURN: How has the construction impacted your learning environment? By Grace Cleary & Parker O’Neill INTERNS
SENIOR ANDREW SLIWINSKI: “I find it distracting. I can hear power tools all the time ,and it is a little disorienting for me, especially when it is hard to get to my classes. I have one stairwell already closed, and I just find it inconvenient for me and most people.”
JUNIOR VICTORIA SCHAAF: “It is really noisy. It is extremely loud and in some of my classes the tools bang on the floor. It is really irritating.”
SENIOR DARIAN STEVENS: “For the past couple of days, I have class with Mr. Gilleran, and there is constant banging, sawing and movement directly next to us that’s being a distraction.”
FRESHMAN MARIA CASTRONERO: “I don’t think it really has. I mean, it took a while to get used to and find everything and stuff in the school, but it was pretty easy after you found all of it.”