Appearance, Assumptions, and the Weight of Stereotypes

In this life, people will always believe what they want to regardless of what you do, tell them or the situation. Stereotypes have been in our world for as long as I can remember and funny enough, people are just fed up of trying to prove them wrong so guess what, we have just found a way to deal these stereotypes or avoid them as much as we can.

You’re likely to be stereotyped anywhere you find yourself and sometimes it might even catch you off guard. How funny it can be. These occurrences can be both good and bad depending on the situation. I have been stereotyped so many times in my life and even on the daily basis and I can say that not all of them were good. But hey, I always know to put people in their places when they try to cross the line.

There are differ types of stereotypes depending on who you are and even where you tend to find yourself. Personally, I most common stereotype that I have been attributed to will have to be the gender stereotype. It’s funny how everyone just assumes that all women are the same. Can you believe one time I went out to get a phone case and this man literally picked a pink and childish case for me. I told him I wanted a different one and he goes like, ‘aren’t you a lady? All ladies like pink’. I mean , this actually wasn’t something I was going to take offense with but it was funny how people could just sit down and think this way. At the end of the day, I bought a black case but I still don’t think that would have changed this man’s mentality that all women love pink. He’s probably even think I’m a weird kind of woman.

Another gender stereotype type that is most common also that I think that every woman has encountered is the one where people say that women are supposed to perform house chores like cooking, cleaning and all of that while men sit by and watch. This I must say I a very back dated mentality and the fact that so may people, especially men have made it their goal to stereotype women with this doesn’t make sense. Maybe it’s their way to get away from helping but with me, you can never use this stereotype on me. I grew up in an inclusive home. Everyone I my house took part on our daily activities and also the maintenance of the house regardless of their gender. My brothers can clean, do the dishes and even more and so can I. And so it doesn’t make sense for some man or guy out there to try to tell me this.

For so long, I’ve had to explain to so many people that I’m not from the Northern part of my country. I’m a Ghanaian, born and bred in the southern part of the country. But the tricky part is, I’m a Muslim. For so long, people have had the mindset that every Muslim is from the north which is not the case. The fact that I’m a Muslim doesn’t mean I come from the north or I must come from the north. I’ve had instances where people have even tried to argue with me about my lineage. Like bro, what do you even know about me. At this point, I don’t even try to talk much when issues like this arise because what at all can I say to convince someone about where I’m from and how is that even going to benefit me.

There’s actually a lot more I could talk about when it comes to stereotypes but I would say these are the major ones for me.

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all images belong to me.

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