英文的personal essay和所謂的academic paper寫起來感覺還是有差的。如果你太無聊才會繼續讀下本篇的more。請不要中計。(逃） 因為沒什麼有趣的，寫完以後發現其實是一篇很cliché 的練習文。
I wrote the paper for my summer writing seminar class. I was once told that i was the sloppieset girlfriend ever. hum…i am still me these days.
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“Excuse me, Sir, that is a lady’s restroom!” I heard a Korean waitress voice passed over my shoulder as a kindly reminder while I was walking toward the bathroom. I was surprised but then quick turn back to her with smile, “Yeah, I know. I AM a girl.”
I remembered my childhood favorite color was pink, not the aggressive hot pink but the soft light pink that’s mellow. Whenever I was role-playing with my sister, I would always put a pink cloth around my head as pretend that I have a long pink hair. For me that was the most beautiful thing. And in my sketchbook, I would use pink to draw things that I consider as more prestigious than the others. Pink was my color of honor. For me, Hello Kitty was the way I defined myself.
Culturally, the eastern society has its tradition of preferring boys over girls. In earlier days, having a baby boy meant that he would become the working force in the family. Also in the male-dominated social norms, a daughter who got married is seen as “water that spills out of the house”; she doesn’t belong to the family any more while the son continues to maintain the bloodline of the family. Even though both of my parents were both from very traditional Taiwanese families, I was lucky to grow up in a very positive environment where they thought girls were as good as boys. This was not always easy since my grandfather was very vocal about wanting a grandson. Instead of asking me to act more girlish, quiet or young lady-like, my mom cared more about my manners and interactions with others: politeness and sincerity. She would only yell at me occasionally that I needed to behave like a girl if I’d gone too wild chasing my cousins with plastic guns and swords in the yard.
Through out my childhood to early teenage years, there was a period of time that I didn’t really care about my gender. The only time that I would notice that I am a girl was during the days I had to wear skirts for school and the time we had sex education in health class. The only difference I could recall now was that I seemed to drop my color interests in pink and turn to purple. The pop culture at the time gave me the feeling that pink was too girly. I began to see “being girly” as the sign of weakness. For me, pink didn’t represent the happiness and enthusiasm anymore. Instead, it meant girly, weak and powerless, just useless decoration on arms of men.
Despite of my change in the taste of color and rising awareness on the popular culture’s cliché of portraying woman, I never really wish I were a boy. The only thing I would want to protest was why girls HAVE TO wear skirts for their uniforms. Wearing a skirts means you have to behave like a lady and can’t running around with it. For me, it felt that I HAD TO behave much more carefully than I normally would. It was definitely a burden for a carefree soul like me.
As the oldest child in the family, my parents never expressed how they wished me to behave. They never discouraged me from doing whatever I loved: studying math, reading science books, and fixing computers — things that was normally be seen as for boys. To look pretty was never the priority in my agenda. And since I’ve always just worn old clothes from my cousins, I never really had the problem of most teenage girls — looking for another perfect dress. Being a layback person, t-shirt, shorts, and jeans become my dress code. And for my own conveniences, there was no skirt in my closet. I once overheard a conversation my aunt has with my mother. She was blaming her that I was not girly enough, “You should buy Sophie skirts to wear. Don’t you see my daughter? You should ask her to go out party more often.” My first reaction was bursting out to laugh. What from the earth that you could ask me what to wear? Thank god my mother was always strict in disciplining her children, but she never forced me to wear stuff unless it was a very very important occasion, which rarely happened.
But no matter how open my parents seemed to be on the gender issue as they claimed, for the older generations there still seemed to be a set of rules or social norms of what a girl should be look or behave like. It wasn’t until I got into high school that my mom would force me to go to mall to get some new girly shirt so I don’t just look like blob. They would say, “Sophie, if you keep dressing so sloppy like this, how would you ever get a boyfriend?”
After coming to United States, I always felt inferior because English wasn’t my first language and so I was not able to show others my confident self. Ironically, when I tried to laugh at my parents’ old way of thinking of what feminine should be like. I was falling into the trap of cultural norm while I didn’t want to admit it. As an alienated teenager, I couldn’t help overreacting. I didn’t feel attractive. I didn’t feel that I belonged to any group. I didn’t feel there’s anything in me was valuable or unique. In order to get through these negative thoughts, I felt that I had to do something to fix myself. I wasn’t sure if I was inspired by my mother who always had short hair and wore long pants. As a superwoman in my world, I unconsciously thought that I didn’t have to be feminine to prove I am a girl. So, I decided to cut my hair really short and wearing more in unisex clothes. That was my way of interacting with this so-hard-to-fit-in world. I still disliked pink at the time and I couldn’t stand when Britney Spear and Christina Aguilera were on MTV trying to pretend they were all innocent and cute. It was also during that period of time, my color preference had gone from purple to more earthy colors: blue, green, yellow and brown, they made me feel more real.
Before I went to college, my mom started to talk to me about topics she never brought up before: things like wanting us to be able to have economic independence so we don’t have depend on guys. For years I’ve been her daughter and I’ve seen how she has been sacrificed herself. She put all her energy and youth in the family, the children, and the work, but showed us so little about her true herself. She would always be the last one to sit on the dinner table because she wanted us to eat first. She would always be the last one sit on the couch to rest for a busy day because she always had to make sure she took care of the housework and everybody. If you asked me what her hobbit was, I couldn’t really give you an answer other than cooking. However, she didn’t want her daughter to be like that.
Looking back on my high school years, I realized that I was trying to act out so I could feel strong enough to resist the norms to protect myself. I wanted to be different. It’s like those punk teenagers who need to dress themselves up in very gothic or dark way to prove that they were different while they weren’t. I was no different. And it was after coming to Cornell, my perception of what defines feminine has changed. I was able to meet people who were confident with themselves and didn’t bother about the stereotypes. It’s about finding the people that can communicate with the right frequencies.
Walter Benjamin once said, “To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright.” Whether the exterior world appears thriving or quiet, I’ve realized that to be confident, to feel attractive and worthy to others doesn’t really have to do with how I dress as long as I feel comfortable and to be honest with myself. For me, gender or sexuality is not a way to label or judge anyone. Whether we are male or female, gay, lesbian, bisexual or even transexual, it shouldn’t be our destiny for cultural expectations. Coming this long way from Hello Kitty, antisocial outcast, and then just comfortable with who I am, I finally came across the metamorphosis of my gender (un)awareness.
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