The Yelleti Times

  Words are weird. They are random sounds that serve as symbols to represent…everything. In the essay, “Words Don’t Mean What They Mean,” Steven Pinker explained how we always manipulate words to show and hide certain messages while establishing relationships with whom the words are intended. This made me think about lies - when telling a lie, people not only manipulate words but convey an incorrect message.      What if someone lied to themselves and made themselves believe that it is true? I’m not talking about if someone I trust lied to me and I believed them; I’m talking about if I lied to myself to avoid coming to terms with something but believed. For example, I order a larger plate of noodles for dinner and tell myself to save half of it for lunch tomorrow, whereas, at the moment, I will almost certainly eat all of the noodles. Another example is if many red flags are present in a relationship, but someone does not have enough strength to believe and admit i...

  “I Want a Wife” by Judy Brady opened our eyes to the unjust expectations of a wife. In families, women are demanded of so many things, but they are deprived of many resources required to fulfill these demands. A large example of this is women’s clothing lacking legitimate pockets.      Typically, you will see more women with purses than men. Women need to carry phones, keys, etc. just like any man. Men’s clothing has large pockets suitable to hold these essentials, but women’s clothing does not. Growing up, I thought fake pockets were on my clothes because the clothing companies needed to save cloth and money. However, it was not until recently that I found out that there is a deeper history and meaning to what is thought of as a “pocket-sized problem” (no pun intended). Prior to the 17th century, both women and men carried bags with them. In that century, however, things started to take a turn. In an attempt to increase convenience, fashion industries began to i...

    Saying that I love the movie Encanto is an understatement. Although there is a large room for improvement, in all of Disney’s 98.5 years of existence, I have never seen Disney female protagonists break gender roles/stereotypes to this extent. To answer question prompt #6, which asks to “examine a popular movie in terms of gender roles,” I will be analyzing some of the main female characters in Encanto - Abuela Alma, Mirabel, Isabela, and Luisa - from a gender perspective.      There has been a significant pattern of male supremacy in former Disney movies. Most of the time, a male individual is the head of the family. Take Chief Tui from Moana and Hua Zhou from Mulan as examples. They are both perceived as the backbone of their families - their wives are rarely present. Additionally, in the 13 main Disney princess movies, the company chose to leave six mothers off the screen, leaving the male in charge of the family (other than in Cinderella, where the...