Personal Narrative: Gender Stereotypes

The first time I can remember being a gendered being is when I was eight and my family was moving into our new house. Since we were moving my parents were buying new blinds for the whole house and had picked them out for my younger brother and myself. Our parents took us to Home Depot to make sure that we liked the colors they had picked for our blinds. My brothers blinds were a baby blue color, while mine were a rosy pink color. Once I saw the color, I turned to my parents and asked: “Just because I’m a girl I have to get pink blinds?”. My parents were stunned into silence while the Home Depot worker looked on in a mix of shock and amusement as I went off about how not all girls, myself included, had to have all pink everything. I remember
I loved watching football to the point that it was almost an unhealthy obsession. I would watch all the games on Sundays with my Dad, I could name all of the players and their positions on my favorite team the New York Jets and could name every team in the NFL just by looking at the team’s helmets. That being said, if I could play football I 100% would have in a heartbeat. One day, my aunt called my Mom saying that my older cousin’s football team needed new pee-wee cheerleaders for their team and had thought of me. Luckily enough my parents actually let me have a choice in the activities I participated in instead of forcing me into anything I didn’t want to do. When my Mom asked if I wanted to cheer for my cousin’s football team, I said no and that I rather play football. The answer I got was: “No, little girls don’t play
I didn’t understand why only boys could play these sports and why I couldn’t. Why did I have to be stuck in skirts and dresses just cheering along the side when all of the boys in my family were allowed to play all of the sports I wanted to play? It didn’t make any sense to me because I knew just as much as they did, if not more, about the sport as they did because I had learned from them, or had even played with them in backyard versions of the sport. After being told I couldn’t play football it made me more determined to be athletic and play sports to try and prove myself. However, even then I could only play the girl’s version of any sport I was allowed to play which meant there were different rules and always differed from anything that boys