Stereotypes: A Short Story

The danger of a single story is that they let the powerful downgrade the weaker because they create stereotypes, they can hurt the people, and no one gets represented from the culture.

2006: A group of smiling faces greeted back at me, like the pretty, welcoming American Girls at New York I dragged my mom to see with me. “Yes!, did you see that? I got sweet, one point for me!” I exclaimed with my tiny fist pumping up and down and my butt wiggling from the excitement I could not contain inside of me. As the condensation from the fresh rain beaded up on the surface of my water, forming lopsided smiles droopy eyes, I blew hard and long; I consumed the biggest puff I could huff and puff, enough to blow down the three little pigs’ brick house. I slashed one tick mark and smiled proudly when there were no tick marks on the other side. The seven-year old me cackled softly as I sneakily slashed one more tick mark. A single sweet

On the drive to the dorm Theresa and I talked about what I would wear, “Definitely that cute denim skirt and your white tank top and your wedge sandals.”

Amused by the implications of the chorus the students frantically waved their hands, while the 1965 Buick speeds along the Golden State Freeway. A blond-haired blue-eyed well-dressed young man is leading the sing along as he secretly heads to an unknown location. In unison, the students sing out with laughter as the vehicle moves rapidly along the freeway. The front seat is crammed full by means of four extroverted seniors, who are well on the way to intoxication, the vehicle, reminiscent of a well-packed can of sardines is a sure traffic violation and no doubt a serious accident waiting to happen.

I loathe math. Numbers are extraordinarily dull. They don't have any depth. In high school, math felt irrelevant. When am I going to need logarithms? When am I going to say to myself “I sure am glad that I had to memorize the unit circle, I use that so often”? But as much as I detest numbers, they explain who we are. Numbers can’t lie, so who better to tell us who we are.

What are stereotypes?Can they hurt people?Or even help someone?Well stereotypes are generalizations that everyone puts any given group of people under, now saying this from personal experience i find that there may be both positive and negative effects of others doing this. The ways i have experienced stereotypes range from my own parents to random people like teachers and peers, what i got the most was that I was childish and immature from mostly my Dad and that “typical teenage boy” from my teachers also even i told myself i was more mature than the peers around me.

To a young me, the world was black-and-white. The virtuous will remain good while the immoral will stay wicked, no shade of grey existing. The notion that humans can change their nature was ludicrous. Living in a society where sorting human beings into stereotypes is the norm only served to reinforce that idea. One day, though, the action someone who should stand for justice forced my eyes opened.

Once upon a time a beautiful young girl by the name of Anastasia lived in a small village in England with her family. Anastasia was 20 years young and she blossomed with creativity. Anastasia’s physical appearance was very attention getting. She had long, blonde, wavy hair. She had beautiful blue eyes that were as blue as a robins egg. Sometimes when she would walk in town men would stop and stare at her. One time when she was walking to the farmer’s market, a boy on a bicycle was watching her and he ran into a telephone pole! Anastasia did not look for attention but a lot of it was drawn towards her because of her beauty. People would pay close attention to her when she was out and about, but when she was in her hometown people would talk

I was especially bored. I knew it would happen again. Addison was competing in a Glamour Girl pageant, but I had to go. I knew she would win and I was proud of her, but I had to practice the clarinet in my school band. Suddenly the announcer calls out my identical sister, Addison Hand, onstage. She had won $500 plus a 6” tall trophy. Addison and I are exact opposites except for our faces. She is an extrovert and popular and I am an introvert and nerdy. She came off stage acting so surprised that she won. “Great job Addi!” I said running up to her. She ran right past me into the arms of her boyfriend, Brady Anderson. Brady is a cute high school stereotype boy, plays football, gets bs and has the cutest girls in school being his girlfriends.

At age 16, I have a lot of expectations to meet and stereotypes to battle. I am a hard working student who has the grades to show for it. I am the calculus team member who goes to every competition. I am the animal lover that aspires to be a marine biologist. But I am also the math team president who would grab a novel over a book full of problem-solving techniques. I am the introvert who likes to talk in class. I am the perfect debater online who gets too worked up face-to-face to ever engage anyone in person. I am the scholar that wants summer to last forever.

Many individuals agree that at a given point in life they have committed some form of prejudiced. Even with a difficult aspect of understanding stereotypes. The best thing to do can be to give people a chance when it comes to judging them. One of the following examples occur to myself in my first year of college. However, throughout life I always never showed prejudiced not even a small amount. Although, each day can be different the best option seems to be understanding of others. In a more detailed version the prejudiced seem as I misinterpreted against African American classmates. Soon my understanding about appeared extraordinary, and change my perspective towards black individuals in a broader picture. In my experience the following event occur, mainly because it is human nature to discriminate and label just by the looks of someone.

I wonder if other people from here also encountered such a...peculiar thing like I have. She wondered to herself in front of the mirror. Rachel was busy flicking her orange hair to another side of her face away from her eye that was bothering her once she woke up. Her red egg was nested by her in the bathroom. She’d look like she wasn’t paying no mind to it but she couldn’t help but to shoot her eyes at strange egg every so often as she was getting ready for the day. She likes to prepare herself in the morning before dawn even if it wasn’t a school day. Her daily routine consisted of doing school assignments the day she gets it, spending time outside for jogs then coming home looking at prehistoric documentaries (even some that she had already

But today she added another crown jewel to her accessories department by sliding into a pair of the "IT" shoes of the season-- these Gucci 'Princeton' mules.

She was wearing a cozy grey long coat, with a polo neck grey sweater and yes the famous long boots. Her looks were perfect and

As I walked out of my nine-story apartment complex, I saw an interesting array of faces. Mixed genders, some male, some female, all very different deep down inside. I study their faces, wondering what it'd be like to walk a day in their shoes. Some people are like open books, you can look at their facial expression and instantly guess what their emotions are, yet others are like locked diaries. You can't tell what they're thinking and you'll probably never know. I shake the thought out of my head as I rummage through my pathetic excuse of a handbag, pulling out my most recent bank statement. Thirty-two cents to my name. How do I live like this? My train of thought is lost as my mind ponders elsewhere. Do you think people can tell I'm a broke