Adding to Stereotypes

This morning when I was walking to class, I saw a guy wearing a backpack that one of my female friends had in high school. I thought to myself “why is he wearing a girl’s backpack?” Immediately, I thought back to class and our discussion about hair and “gendered” or “feminine” hairstyles, and our first reading and how it talked about gender stereotypes and how we’re forced into them from birth because of our sex. There is nothing saying that men and women can’t carry the same backpacks or have the same hairstyles except the rules that society has placed on us. After my thought about his backpack I told myself that I shouldn’t think that way, and he can carry an backpack he wants, and I usually do think that way, but in that moment I thought back to how my female friend had the same backpack and convinced myself that a guy shouldn’t have the same one. That goes to show how engraved gender roles and stereotypes are into our brains from the moment we’re born.

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