Issue 1Winter 2014-2015

Adviser: Kelly BURR

Editor-IN-cHEIF:Adam Raber

eDITORS:Karimy Jutila

Allie Mcneely MierauAngel Ayala

Taylor WhiteAlli Gordon

Brie MakaBaliDanny Perle

Karina RodriguezLauren Lee

Macee Grisenti

Bulletin 25255 Toledo Way

Lake Forest, CA 92630

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.Margaret Mead

1

Zinc Cafe & Market, Laguna Beach. FOODIEWe all have that one friend who pulls out their smartphone and snaps a picture right before they are about to eat. When classifying people as “foodies,” the cliche instagram picture may pop into mind, but it is time to look beyond that. What are “foodies” you may ask? “Ally’s Kitchen”, a website catered to food lovers, says foodies “...are a unique, to say the least, group of humans. We characterize them as nutritionists, the gluten-frees, the vegetarians, the vegans, the grillers, the bakers, the cupcake makers, the Southern belles, the jams and jellies, the hell braisers, the BBQ kings and the canning queens, the ethnics from Italian, Mediterranean, Indian, and Mexican to the Brits, the Slavs, the Middle Easterners—then of course, there are the many pockets of cuisine in the expansive parts of the good ol’ USA.” (www.allyskitchen.com). Our youth are now vividly aware of what they are putting in their bodies and they have almost every resource to do so. “L.A. Foodie” is a website that utilizes Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc. to share reviews and pictures of restaurants, cafes and food trucks. It is one of the countless websites people may look at

By Allie Mcneely-Mierau

when scouting for somewhere to eat. On top of that, they also provide a newsletter that may provide information on events, podcasts or anything having to do with food in the Los Angeles area. You don’t necessarily have to grow up with foodie parents or a great-grandmother to know good food or what angel hair pasta may be, because the Internet has now made information accessible to anyone and everyone. Want to learn how to cook? Simply just search on YouTube how to make your favorite cuisine dish or how many scoops of frozen yogurt to put into your smoothie. We are looking at foodies as a generation that is looking past the plate. Let’s start with Yelp, a website that has over 139 million monthly visitors and over 67 million local reviews in California. This website not only offers hours or reviews of a business, but also contains one of the single most common thing someone may look for when

THE MODERN DAY

“Social media is changing the recipe for how teens eat...” Media Post

2

Cucina Enoteca, Irvine Spectrum

be served. Each characteristic may contribute to why they are choosing that restaurant or café over another. Out of human nature, people want to share what they are eating, wearing or doing and social media has been the motivating force. Marketers have to start thinking of their brand as shareable experiences, not just products or services. If something isn’t worth sharing, is it worth buying? This socially-driven mentality is something that has been instilled in our youth thanks to social media. Media Post, an online publishing resource, s tates, “Social media is changing the recipe for how teens eat,” because teens are hungry for social currency. In 2012, Mintel reported that teenagers spend almost half of their money, a whopping 49% on food and beverages and easily a quarter of it (24%) eating out. Restaurants ultimately have to be socially savvy to draw consumers in. A big shocker to anyone? I don’t think so. But whether you may be a full-on foodie or unpretentious food lover, food’s transformation into a youth-culture phenomenon has singularly taken over our generation. Our youth has transformed our food culture one picture at a time.

Zinc Cafe & Market, Laguna Beach.

“We are looking at foodies as a generation that is looking past

the plate...”

Fig & Olive, Newport Beach

Allie Mcneely-Mierau

HUMANS

“[I’ve had the hardest time forgiving] my dad because he left my family and I while we were going through hard times. He now wants to come back in our lives.”Maya Spitzer

EL TORO HIGHSCHOOL

“Getting my dog [was my happiest mo-ment]...he’s a happy dog and he makes me happy…”Joseph Shuirman

“...being able to experience life in gen-eral; being able to have a loving family that supports me, and being able to have an education and being able to do the things that I love.” Cole Peloquin

“[I’ve enjoyed] making a lot of friends and all my experiences like sports and stuff like that.”Alec Bourg

Looking into the life of El Toro ChargersPhotographed by Taylor White, Karina Rodriguez, Brie MakabaliWritten by Taylor White, Karina Rodriguez

OF

“Who in your life have you had the hardest time forgiving?”

“What has been your happiest

experience in life?”

“What has been your happiest experience

in life?”

“What has been your happiest

experience in life?”

“Sophomore year I was a really lonely person and I went to HSM Summer Camp and I made like fifteen or so different friends that are great people and just grew on me and we’ve been friends ever since.”Mattias Carbajal

“I want to be able to look at myself in the mirror when I’m older and say that I am truly happy.”Michael Biedebach

‘[I struggle with] de-pression and suicidal thoughts. I go to ther-apy for it. It’s hard for me to open up to my parents and friends to help me out with this. They know, but it’s hard to talk about it with them.’”Kira Tedtaotao

“WHAT IS YOUR GREATEST STRUGGLE RIGHT

NOW?”

“WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST GOAL

YOU HOPE TO ACCOMPLISH?”

“WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR

HAPPIEST EXPERIENCE?”

WHAT IFTHEREWAS AWORLDWITHOUTGENDER?

Written by Adam Raber

It’s the oldest heteronorma-tive story in the world: boy meets girl, boy and girl fall

in love, boy and girl get married, then boy and girl join the baby-making busi-ness and, through their consummated love, create a screaming bundle of joy. About five minutes after the initial oo-hing and awing, a metaphorical starting pistol is fired: let the genderizing begin. From then on, the hospital begins to cover the baby with pink or blue: bal-loons, blankets and even 8-mile-esque beanies. For a lucky few the genderiz-ing begins even earlier, the moment your parents hear about which set of private parts you are sporting. They au-tomatically plan their trip to the Home Depot paint section to begin work on the baby’s soon-to-be nursery. This is all pointless of course, seeing as most babies don’t even develop the ability to see color until six months out of the watering hole. But it seems to

give parents of today a sense of com-fort, knowing that because their child is a boy and that he will automatically like trucks and tool belts, or that their deli-cate flower of a daughter will be natu-rally inclined to play with some type of barbie dream house at one point or an-other. This not only allows your parents but also the world to pigeon-hole you from the second you take your starring role as a human being. The expectation of our children is that they will grow into strongly gender-aware beings.

Young Children are ‘Gender Detec-tives’ as explained by Carol Lynn Mar-tin and Diane Ruble (2004). Because of the constant in-your-face divison on what boys do and what girls do, you’ll find by the age of 3 or 4 most kids are beginning their descent into seeing the world in halves: who women are and what they do and vice versa for men. Through gender pronouns, clothes, and toys, kids develop a keen sense of the gender schema through social learning. Soon after this epiphany, the concept of gender forces children to compare themselves with what being ‘feminine’ and/or ‘masculine’ means, which is problematic, in and of itself. Because there is no way that every kid is going to fit the male and female expec-tations perfectly, they are human be-ings first - with definitive personalities. Unfortunately, most societies prefer to look at gender first and foremost, then afterwards will proceed to let you be a

human being if it is convenient. These gender ideas are so ingrained into our culture and into our brains that most people forget that gender is really only a concept, and that it is not as definitive as we believe it to be. People presume that this is how we all naturally are, when really this is simply a socially constructed role. Most arent even aware that sex and gender are different--with sex being what you are biologically born as, whilst gender is what has been socially constructed for

you. We are told how we should act and blindly follow it, without anyone really ever asking why. Most societies, if not all, believe that gender is an imperative and required idea that our world could not exist without. It is as though gender and cul-ture are in some type of spit-and-shake-hands binding agreement, with most not even knowing that sex and gender are two different things. It begs the question, one that leaves gender role fanatics quivering in their seats: what if there was a world without gender? A common concern against this idea is that without gender, everyone would suddenly become these identical blobs dressed in all grey with potato sacks on our feet, like that fondly remembered Fairly OddParents episode. But in our world of male-female binary, the gen-der structure we already have forces us into complying with an extensive list of do’s and dont’s. It already makes

us all too uniform. If these ‘rules’ and structures disappeared, then we would venture forth into a world of diversity. It could free the Genderqueer, intersex, and trans people of our world, allow-ing them acwceptance and love, rather than stares and ridicule. We would feel able to dress and act how we pleased, not thinking that it may be considered unmanly or uneffeminate, but simply everyone is just acting like who they are and who they want to be.

Additionally, Raising children in societies that adhere to rigid gender roles, with fixed ideas about what should be considered “masculine” and “feminine,” can actual-ly be detrimental to their physical and mental health, according to a study conducted by Dr Maria do Mar Pereira from the University of Warwick’s Department of Sociology. Many people like gender. In all honesty, it has its basic mechanical purposes. It tells us who we are, our roles - and who would want to give up even a sliver of guidance when so often we are searching for our place? Even I must admit, currently gender is very import-ant to our identities. Studies have shown that without it, some could suffer from a feeling of discomfort and uneasiness otherwise known as “gender vertigo.” But I don’t think this would be an impossible feat to overcome, and the re-sults would be worth it in the end: an insur-mountable feeling of freedom, full of pos-sibilities not weighed down by social con-structs. Now I must make myself clear, I’m not saying that once you finish reading this you must go to your closet and burn anything that resembles the cliche boy-girl binary. This idea is not a first prior-ity by any means, and to most it is still simply that - an idea. But one that still needs to be discussed nonetheless. These schemas are so intensely believed and carried out that peo-ple literally die from them. One in twelve transgender people are murdered versus the cisgendered statistic, which is one in 18,000. Cisgendered is defined as those who ascribe to the gender they were assigned at birth. Much of this ideol-ogy is plagued with critics who compare it to the faulty “colorblindness” belief system, where people say we should ignore race all together, because we are all the human race or some-thing like that. While the racially discriminated and the gender discriminated could learn a lot from each other, it is not exactly the same. Pretending race doesn’t exist erases a person’s heritage and culture while dismantling gender really destroys... what? If anything it would just make shopping a lot easier.

The first step to this utopian concept is lessening the aggressive rulebook as to what is acceptable for how cis-gendered boys and girls to act. Sweden is already one step ahead all of us: only just a year and a half ago a gen-derless preschool was opened trying to promote gender equality; they banned the words ‘him’ and ‘her’ and any books that promote gender stereotypes. Lets not pretend that people are all that accepting of boys and girls entering each other’s territory. Gloria Stei-nem once wrote, “We’ve begun to raise daughters more like sons… but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.” Perhaps one day that state-ment will be as pointless as saying “let’s raise blondes and brunettes the same way we raise redheads.”

We must, as a society, truly question what is being told to us. We need to ask why a boy isn’t allowed to wear nail polish, even though nail pol-ish is awesome and looks cute on any-one; why women are always presumed to be ‘man-ish’ for hav-ing a short haircut when really, maybe they just want some-thing easily manage-able without it taking away how people see them as women. Why are we so obsessed with these labels that so often constrict us? Will we ever find our way out of this urge to label? I wish I had the answer. But I do know this: we are hu-mans and that is what we are first. We have thoughts and feelings and dreams and as-pirations. Some of us are loud and outgo-ing while others are shy and timid. Some of us love art and others are fascinated with the inner work-ings of space. We are individuals not just a strong boy or a pretty girl, but just people.

These roles are outdated, and we don’t need them any-more. One day, very far into the future, I can imagine a world full of people allowed to be simply the beings they feel they are, instead of it being seen as masculine or feminine; it would just be what it is. Call me an idealist, but a world that isn’t telling us how we should act based on what kind of body we are born into, well, that sounds like a world that would truly be free.

Boys Cross Country“It’s been an up and downseason with the team; injuries have been a factor but we’ve really come together to do well in CIF.”MMichael Biedebach, junior

Cross Country

charger spirit

#etbulletin

#whyistayed

The “why I stayed” hashtag that trended on Twitter several months ago arose as part of a national conversation on domestic violence that had been triggered by several stories of NFL players getting away with beating their wives with little to no consequences. The hashtag was started by several women who had stayed in abusive re-lationships, and were saying the reason why they stayed in said relationships.The hashtag was heavily criticized by the media and on social media. Sev-eral commentators raised the point that domestic violence wouldn’t be a problem if battered women sim-ply left their abusive relationships. In addition to this, those who used the hashtag were denounced on social media and on news shows for de-fending the men who abused them.

“The reason why some women choose to stay in an abusive relationship is because financially, they don’t know if they’re going to be able to make it on their own.” said Andrea McAllister, Di-rector of Development and Communi-cation for the domestic violence orga-nization Laura’s House. “At one point, they loved the person, so it’s hard to end the relationship. And for those who have kids with the abuser, they would mourn the loss of the family unit.” Indeed a study conducted in 2010 involving 262 women who report-ed psychological abuse by their male partner. Of those surveyed, 54 percent reported that their part-ner had positive qualities, while 21 percent reported that their partner had significant positive qualities. “We encourage people not to be

judgemental because there’s mul-tiple reasons why {women stay in abusive relationships}. My recom-mendation would be to listen, and to offer resources, tell them that there are places to get help, and that they can have a healthy relationship through counseling and education.”

Ravens running back and former Rut-gers standout Ray Rice holds hands with his wife Janay Palmer as they arrive at the Atlantic Country Crimi-nal Courthouse Thursday morning.

By Daniel Perle

Even in high school, there are abusive relationships. One in three

adolescents in theU.S. is a victim of physical, sexual, emotional or verbal abuse from a

dating partner, afigure that far exceeds rates of oth-

er types of youth violence. If you or a friend are in an

abusive relationship, please visit the teen section of the

Laura’s House website.

#whyistayed

LetterFromTheEditorDeAr Readers,As I sit here writing to you, I find myself at a loss for how to even explain how equally tumultuous and amazing this year has been. I have been in journalism for four years and this class has had such a profound effect on my life and the person I have become dur-ing my time at El Toro. From my first year be-ing just a freshman who almost got kicked out of the class, to now being a senior and the current editor in chief of this publi-cation, I can say I am truly proud of what we have done here. We present to you El Toro’s first ever magazine, taking the place of the previously distributed newspaper. Within the first day of this year I realized that creating this magazine was not go-ing to be a simple task, considering we only have a staff of eleven, and started off the year with only 200 dollars in our bank ac-count. If this wasn’t already a bit discour-aging, we had been placed into a different period with another media class. This even-tually became too difficult to manage, re-

sulting in us being moved into a very obscure room in the upstairs science building. When I look back on it I almost want to laugh at the amount of hurdles we faced on a daily basis. I would like to pretend as though I always be-lieved we could publish this without a prob-lem, but there was a time in which that wasn’t the case. I feared that perhaps my dream for the past two years to create this publication was simply just that - a dream. There was so much going against us, but eventually I saw the talent in my staff and new adviser and decided that failure was not an option... and I probably had too much pride to have let this ‘little class that could’ be defeated. Above all, we thank our readers for be-ing the ultimate inspiration behind every-thing we do. Every story written, every photo taken, and every layout designed has been for you. We hope you enjoy the magazine we have created and cannot wait to take on future issues knowing that you all will be there to support us.

Written byAdam Raber