with student drop offs

Fashion: it is everywhere we look. It is how we politely function as a society/civilization and keep our body warm and protected from the outside world. To some people it may be to just avoid nakedness, but for others it is to express themselves and their highest self identity, while telling the story of both us and our history. Each sock, neckline, jewel, shawl, button, sleeve length, and texture can classify yourself into a specific group and movement. Your style can cultivate a progressive change, such as women starting to wear pants in the mid-19th century to demonstrate their desire to feel equal to men.

Despite knowing the significance of a piece of clothing and style which can dictate various ideas, society norms have limited our personal self identity to our assigned gender from birth. Before the last few hundred years, men have been known to wear skirts and long dresses such as in ancient Greek and Roman times. But more recently, women have worn one thing and men have worn another. Society completely ignored the possibility of a person existing as neither a man or a woman. Anyone that went against this norm were instantly criminalized and discriminated against by the dominant culture, never intersecting, and never questioning why we were raised to dress one way solely based on our gender. Never questioning why our genders have one style to pertain to, and why we have to follow them. Why do I have to wear a dress because I was born a girl and have to exhibit femininity? If I identify as a boy and want to wear a blouse, why can’t I? These are the questions many designers, influencers, and brands have thought of, and have happily contradicted them.

Many designers have fashioned articles of clothing that go against the “gender norm”. Harry Lambert famously dressed Harry Styles in an elaborate dress when he appeared for Vogue’s first male-solo cover. In the accompanying article, Styles stated, “Clothes are there to have fun and to play with.... I’ll go into shops sometimes, and I just find myself looking at women’s clothes thinking they’re amazing.... -anytime you are putting up barriers in your life, you’re just limiting yourself.” Another international artist breaking the same barriers are k-pop sensation BTS. They have been known for redefining the line of masculinity and femininity through their clothing, music expression, and performance techniques. One of their many non-traditional photoshoots include one in 2016 for Singles Magazine where they wore dresses, lace, and fishnets, which are considered “feminine”. Lastly, the creator of the #degenderfashion movement is writer, activist, and public speaker Alok V Menon. They are known to speak out against the limiting images of normalized masculinity and femininity. With this, they express their self-identity by dressing themselves with bright and unique pieces without the barriers of gender in mind, simply creating outfits for creativity and style.

This movement is taking a step toward needed gender-neutrality that has been long overdue. Fashion is a source of the ultimate individual artistic self-expression, and degendering it will bring style to it’s highest potential. What we wear as we know it, can cultivate a progressive change.

If I identify as a boy and wantto wear a blouse, why can’t I?

S C H H A I N G

By: Phoebe Piserchio; Staff Writer

On September 3rd, 2021, Marvel Studios will be releasing Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, their franchise movie featuring an Asian American superhero. Actor Simu Liu, starring as Shang-Chi, is excited to share his movie with the world. After famously tweeting, “Hey @Marvel, great job with Cpt America and Thor. Now how about an Asian American hero?”, in 2014, it came to no one’s surprise or disappointment that Liu is now starring in this role. He and his other cast members including Crazy Rich Asian star Awkwafina and director Destin Daniel Cretton are stirring with excitement, ready for the long overdue Asian representation in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. “Because we’ve been celebrating a lot of firsts in our community — when ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ came out three years ago, we celebrated that as the first studio movie with a predominantly Asian cast in almost 25 years,” Liu says. “I’m looking forward to the moment where we no longer celebrate firsts. We’re celebrating seconds, and thirds, and fourths, and fifths. So I’ll take this moment for what it is… But I hope that there are many more just like it afterwards.”

As fans’ excitement starts to grow nearer to the release date, more questions start being asked. Disney CEO Bob Chapek states that Shang Chi will be an “interesting experiment” with the film only being released in theaters, as opposed to also on their streaming service, Disney+. However, Simu Liu, being protective of his movie, eventually bounced back and tweeted in response, “We are not an experiment. We are the underdog; the underestimated. We are the ceiling-breakers. We are the celebration of culture and joy that will preserve after an embattled year. We are the surprise.” Liu later explained how he wanted to get the message across and show how fired up he is for the movie. He continued to say, “...It’s truly going to change the world.”

Despite Simu Liu’s great effort in promoting his movie, the same cannot be said for Marvel Studios. Marvel fans are upset with the lack of promotion on their part for Shang Chi. Many say that the little advertisement is “racially motivated”. Unlike other recently released Marvel films including “Black Widow” and “What If…”, fans say Simu Liu is promoting his movie more than Marvel Studios themselves. “We, Asians, get our first ever Asian-led Marvel film and @marvel isn’t doing anything to promote it. Tweeting a poster isn’t enough…” (@widcwfilms on Twitter). The Asian community has been waiting for their representation, and when they finally get it, Marvel is doing the bare minimum to promote it. And while many fans are aware of this, there are others that simply don’t care. A select number of fans say the movie is “unimportant” and that they won’t watch it because it doesn’t have any of the “original Avengers.” Because of this negative energy, other fans on social media are doing their best to take matters into their own hands and promote the movie. As an Asian-American, it’s about time we see Asian representation in this popular film franchise, and I am looking forward to seeing much more to come.

TAINMENT

Kaliya Williams, Staff Writer

Ever since the start of school, the traffc in the student parking lot has become drastically worse. On average, getting to school every day takes me around 10 minutes but once I approach the student lot, I get stuck in a line of cars, adding an extra 10 to 15 minutes to my commute. This line of cars causes chaos and traffc every morning for students, to the point that many students are arriving late to class due to the unpredictability of traffc. Why are so many cars rushing to get into the lot and why has it become worse this school year? Upon entering the parking lot it becomes clear many of the students in the cars aren’t actually driving, they are being dropped off by their parents.

Understandably, many students cannot drive yet and need rides to school. However, is our current student drop-off system effective? Many of the students who park in the lot are new to driving, so being stuck in traffc and coming in late to class is an additional stress. I can also understand the perspective of parents wanting to drop off their child as close as possible to school, but is that really necessary? I would hope all Mills students are capable of walking an extra block from the student drop-off lane to get to class. I see the student parking lot as somewhere students can go to park without the hassle of waiting for traffc to clear or sitting and waiting for each parent to stop in the middle of the parking lot just to drop off their child and watch them walk all the way into school. The stop-and-go traffc can also lead to an unsafe environment prone to accidents. I’ve seen many parents driving with no caution for the many students walking through the parking lot and even stopping in the middle of the lanes holding up student traffc.

Talya McDonald (12) and Ciara Whipple (12) both agree student drop-off creates additional traffc every morning but think the problem could be mitigated if parents could properly use the student drop-off lane. Micheal Duer (traffc director) also stated he believes this is becoming an even larger safety issue; with many parents coming through the lot trying to fnd somewhere to drop off their child they often block handicapped parking spots, stop in the middle of the lane blocking traffc, and drive carelessly. These unsafe driving habits can lead to potential accidents or injuries. Not waiting for their turn, speeding, or double parking is not an uncommon occurrence for many of the drivers in the lot. Duer has suggested an updated layout for directing traffc in the mornings. There is a lane attached to the student parking lot designated for student drop-offs. However, the large majority of parent drivers either don’t know about this lane or choose not to use it.

Considering the alternative plan to reduce traffc, there should be a turning point in the near future. Students and parents can follow the plan for traffc reduction and orderly driving in order to shorten student commutes to school and reduce the possibility of accidents.

How Useful Is a Planner For School?

Tiffany Xu, Staff Writer

How useful is a planner? A planner is a notebook that acts as a personal organizer with an agenda with pages to write down everyday tasks and events. There are pages containing yearly, monthly, and weekly calendars. Some fancier planners even have extra blank pages, an address book page, and pages for notes. The compact size of most planners makes it effortlessly easy to bring it around everywhere you go. With the world beginning to open up and everyone returning back to school, daily life has gotten busier than staying at home for online school. Planners are a very useful tool now that everyone has much more activities to attend to. Not only do planners help with tracking your schedule and tasks, they also help with your health and reaching your goals. Planners can help with staying on track. The detailed pages of a section for each day can come in very handy for assignments and tasks from school or other places, such as outside work and tutoring places, chores, and any extra tasks you would want to get done during the day. Writing things down in your planner can help you make sure you always stay on task and focus on fnishing all your assignments. For bigger events such as upcoming tests, due dates, hanging out with your friends, or even appointments, you could use the monthly calendar to write it down so it is easier to remember. This way, even if you forget when your doctor’s appointment is, you’ll always know that you can look back at your planner. Writing down your everyday errands can also make you more organized and can enhance your productivity and time management. Time management is key in life, especially in high school, because time is limited, and a lot of activities need to be fnished. Before having a planner myself, I would go through each class mentally, fguring out what work I’d have to do before going to school the next day. Sometimes, this wouldn’t work; I’d forget my homework and due dates. Now with a planner, I can always stay on top of things and can stay organized...

Cont. on Thunderbolt Website Romanticization of High School

Katelyn Chang, Entertainment Editor

As a teenager, the transition to young adulthood is usually marked with classic Hollywood movies including Mean Girls, Clueless, and Bring it On. This, combined with more modern takes on teen movies, specifically To all the Boys I’ve Loved Before and the Kissing Booth, all of them have one specific theme in common: High School.

Being a junior at Mills, I’ve hardly had a complete High School experience, even with COVID-19. However, even then I can come to recognize the blatant falsehoods of what it means to be a high school student featured in mainstream and Hollywood media. The parallels that can be drawn between the movies and reality are almost baffling. The issue with the frankly fairytale style depictions of High School is that it forces this narrative that being a student is a one dimensional experience focused only on one’s social life. Taking for example “Mean Girls”, the iconic lunchroom clique scene is a trivial and entertaining depiction, but unrealistic in real life. In reality, while groups of people may be divided based on interests and friend groups, it’s not as serious as having a real life “Plastics”.

As for life as a high schooler in the real world, it’s much less entertaining. There isn’t a lot of free time to hang out with friends 24/7 or plan something like a kissing booth. Rather, students are sleep deprived, stressed, and focused on success rather than their wellbeing. In American society high school is portrayed in part by these movies as a dream like four years of your life where you can live out your teenage years. Even believing this fallacy myself, once I was thrust into high school, I began to see the differences in reality. Freshman year was the most similar to what is depicted in Hollywood, but later as an upperclassmen, I feel what many of my classmates do regarding the actual lifestyle of a high schooler. For the majority of upperclassmen students, and especially those in their junior year, free time is spent studying, studying, and even more studying. While living the perfect high school moment can be a part of student life, the bigger impact is that there is simply more to it than that.