sunday
Posted August 24, 2008
on my way home while waiting for the bus, a young boy and his mother loomed in the horizon, and they stopped just short of where i was sitting. she was the typical sporean mother, middleaged and with a slight paunch and with mother pants; he was the typical sporean child, lonely and myopic. so i heard her inquire the child as to what colour he was fond of. to which, the reply came with a proclamation of pride, red! the mother reacted in immense disgust and appallation, and much to his chagrin, chided him for liking a GIRL's colour. now, since when did a particular wavelength of light become associated with the gender roles that society has placed upon us as women? anyway, in a fit of what seemed to be a scarcely concealed effort to regain her faith in her son's sexuality, she posited whether he was a fan of the colour pink. to this he exclaimed, eee that's only for girls! much to her relief, they went on their way to wherever they went. a clandestine profiling of them both by me showed how deeply ingrained these 'values'were. the boy was clad solely in varying shades of blue, while the mother herself donned only 'female' colours.
this is preposterous. a throwback to the confucius times? a tokenistic one, nonetheless, but still stinging of the subjugation of women. and sporeans like to think of themselves as open minded and liberal. what sad and restrictive and oppressive role has this poor woman been forced into? clearly cowed by men, she has become a mere housewife(not that there is anything wrong with that) and furthermore takes that role of perpetuating stereotypes onto herself and hence propagating and imposing these prejudices onto her next of kin! this woman must be stopped!
