STEREOTYPES

I invigilate final exam at my workplace this morning. As I was going through the name list of the candidates and collect their attendance slips I stopped at one particular candidate. He was appropriately attired, neat short haircut, clean sneakers and tailored pants with a cute cardigan over a nicely pressed white shirt. A regular boy's attire. The only problem is 'he' was suppose to be a GIRL as stated in the candidate's list. I checked her/his IC and he has 'BINTI' on it, and yes, her/his photo in the IC looks exactly as the person in front of me. S/he looks very much like a boy, only smaller than most small boys his/her age. So, I asked her (out of curiosity - wether she knows or not her gender) of her gender and s/he shyly answered "girl".

With the establishment of women's lib, we oppose whatever is deemed 'stereotype'. We do not want girls to be stereotypically socialized to become daughters, girlfriends, wives and then mothers. we want them to become engineers, pilots, fire fighters. We want girls to be able to do all the things that those with balls can do. we support gender equality. little girls should not only be given dolls, make up kits or cooking sets to play with but should be given stethoscopes, guns, trucks and cars so that they can see themselves to be at par with boys if not better. Whenever a woman makes a milestone achievement - become the first senator, bank governor, vice president, prime minister, astronaut - we all go gung-ho about it.

Those many centuries fights are not vain, we are harvesting the fruit of labour now - WE ARE EQUAL BEINGS. Now, we see that more and more women actually ACT like men, THINK like men, and some even BELIEVE that they ARE MEN. They want to have girlfriends like their brothers do, they do not want to be called girls' name like Lisa, instead they want to be known as Li. They don't like the bulging chest, so they wear bandage across them. They claim that they can offer girls what men can offer, if not more. An arrogant claim, i would say ;p

Thinking back, I think it wasn't such a bad idea that I was given dolls to play with when I was small - when I don't have any say in the toys I can get - because eventhough I play male sports in my adolescence days with my nephews, somehow i know that i m still a girl, and that i will be a wife and probably a mother. I know for a fact that I can never be a boy, a husband or a father :))