When Gingerpeople come out of the oven, we are gender neutral. We are not given a specified gender until our frosting is applied. (And let us pray that we are frosted by an adult because kids are usually the culprits of creating ugly gingerbread.) I was never given a gender-specific frosting, but I have always been classified as a man. People always classified me as a man because of my plain look. All gingerbread women had elaborate clothes, with lots of frosting details. Men, on the other hand, had very plain white frosting outlines, if at all. So, I was classified as a gingerbread man because of stereotyping. This situation reminds me of the piece "Black Men and Public Space," because although I have no major effect on my society, I am stereotyped in it. I have to take care of my family because I am a man. I have to fix up our home when the table and chairs crack, because I am a man. And I have to be called a man everyday when I just want to be called Gingy. My family is looking up to me to be the man, but I just want to be me. As a man who has fought society to be myself, I can truly say that the best thing to be is yourself.
Gingerly,
Gingy
As always Gingy, I appreciate your tailored outlook on life's many injustices towards ginger people (and I make a point not to say gingerbread men). Your didactic analyzation skills should be shown to the world and not discredited simply because of the yummy ginger cookie they come out of.
ReplyDeleteI love your comparison of frosting to male stereotyping. I found it so unique how you could call attention to society's assumptions of the gingerbread always being a man and relate it to the decorative (or lack of) frosting. So cute and well done!
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