Be a man!

It's very funny how society has a way to get into your head. How stereotypes end up ingrained into your system without you even noticing that they're there.

A couple of days ago, I was taking the metro to go to school and there was this guy walking in front of me and he was wearing this sort of furry black sweater that you could only possibly imagine one of the characters in Legally Blonde to wear. And the thought that sprung up in my head as a reaction was "How gay". And that made me stop and think.

I've always felt uncomfortable when other people used that expression because, one, I find it pejorative for homosexuals and, two, it makes assumptions about stereotypes and about what you should look like if you want to fit into a category or another.

And here I am using it myself. And just to make it clear, while I don't have homosexual tendencies myself, I have nothing against them (I mean I've been going to the Gay Pride for two years in a row now and I have gay, lesbian and bisexual friends). So how did I get here? Three years ago, I went into an incredible furry because I heard someone in school insult an emo and then a friend told me about the "Hit an emo day" circulating on the Internet. How did I go from defender of social justice to a member of society following the unwritten rules and adopting the prescribed stereotypes?

Is that a part of the process of growing up? I really hope not. Is it because of the people I've been spending time with in the past few years? I doubt it, since I always ended up chastising them whenever they used this expression. Maybe their influence was to trivialize the expression in my eyes (a bit like the fact that hearing about war, death and destruction on the news all the time has the effect of making them seem commonplace..."Oh another soldier died in Afghanistan today, ok what else is new?"). Maybe. Somehow, I slightly feel like I'm slipping into the world of 1984 and that my mind is being taken over by Big Brother. Or maybe I'm just a bit too paranoid. Maybe.

But what intrigues me even more is the stereotypes themselves and how they seem to be harsher on men in general. A woman can act and dress like a man, but besides being seen as tough or, worse come to worse, a dyke, it will never be seen as something pejorative (that's another thing I don't get...why is it a lesbian can call herself a dyke, but when anyone else uses it, it's all of a sudden offensive?...anyway going back on topic). However, if a man starts using skin creams and wearing scarfs and bags, he is gay. In a way, I think that this is an indication of the fact that we still live in highly patriarchal societies where everything that exudes masculinity is good (unless it brings to confusion about the person's gender, but that's another story), but femininity can only be displayed in certain cases and even there, with moderation (best example, Legally Blonde). I think that might also explain why lesbians are more accepted in society than gays.

Anyway, and all that has been brought about by a sweater! My mind really overreacts sometimes hahaha.