Be Who You Want No Matter What You Are

Emma Watson, the new United Nations Women Goodwill Ambassador has spoken a lot recently about the stereotypes of women. She speaks to how young girls are taught to want to be princesses and fairies. This general assumption does not always coincide with gender. More and more we see guys liking girls toys and movies and girls wanting to be worriers from a young age. Or at least I do when I babysit.

What I am saying here is that just because of what gender we were born into doesn't mean that we choose all the same interests as our given gender. If we stopped categorizing work as "a mans job" or "women's work" and let people work in the field that interests them we could capitalize on everyone's strengths.

I do not particularly call myself a feminist because the effects of this have not had impact on my life. Very rarely, if ever, does being a girl impact my opportunities. However I do notice the stereotypes in the adult/ working world. Also this is no longer confided to just females. Recently a movement of males who believe that they receive judgement for being more sensitive or "girly" makes them inferior have risen up. This group has materialized partially being called "bronies" which is specifically a group a grown men who like My Little Pony because it has good family values and a positive message. I think that we as a society need to stop thinking of people as defined by these predetermined gender and instead let people redefine what it means to be a man or a women.

~Sahale

Would Smell as Sour Sweet By Any Other Name?

I believe that the title Sour Sweet has a double meaning. On the simpler side its refers to the Chinese restaurant that the Chens run. Lily complains when Chen says that they will be serving sweat and sour pork as their staple dish because that is what the english like, but Lily complains about its authenticity to real Chinese foods. I believe this is a metaphor for their lives in England. They are having to learn how to adapt themselves and their cultures to fit into the society a little more.

I believe the second meaning of this title goes a little deeper than the food and talks about the ups and downs of the immigrant experience. They have particular highs when their business takes off or when Man Kee is going through school. However they struggle with how they fit in, and the authorities that they look up to. In particular they struggle with the triad and their authority. Right now Chen is potentially in a life threatening situation because he borrowed money from the Hung Family awhile back. This stems from the fact that Chen did not take a tradition english route like a loan to getting this money but instead trusted the other group from Hong Kong having more in common with them than anyone english person.

~Sahale

Chinese Food For Thought

In the past few chapters we have seen Lily and occasionally Chen disregard England's rules and regulations such as licenses, paying taxes and census. Do their irresponsible feelings of non commitment to these economic and social responsibilities stem from them feeling like "the other" and therefore have no self imposed duty to participate. Or are these actions derived from the fact that  they truly do not understand these systems. When Lily proposes her plan to cheat on taxes, is this because she does not understand what the taxes truly do, or does she plan on cheating, not because she doesn't understand, but rather that she doesn't feel as if she belongs and therefore has no need to pay the fines that accompany that. Furthermore, does their refusal to fairly participate in taxes and driving regulations separate them farther than if they abided by British laws. We often find the Chen's living in their own personal bubble and are viewed from outsiders with many stereotypes. Are some of these assumptions self imposed by the Chens while they pretend to not speak English to the census director, plan on cheating their taxes and drive recklessly on the roads while being unlicensed.

~Sahale

TBT

Meet mini Sahale and Connor. This picture was taken before I was in school so that must have been back around 2004. Well, one could agree that my ballerina class was indeed a class, and to be taken seriously. Just kidding, we played with magic wands and ran around like fairies. That however did not stop me from thinking I would really grow up to be a ballerina and CONSTANTLY dressing like one. My brother thought he was quite the badass. Together we we stereotypically represented our genders, while also being an unstoppable duo, despite our opposite costumes. That night we feasted on all our candy!! 

~Sahale 

The "Other" in the Picture

3 years ago my family and I went to Beijing China and then later traveled down to a more southern region called Guangzhou. We went there to visit my sister who had been living there for a year and continued to live there for another year teaching english to preschoolers as a second language. While she was there she learned to speak Mandarin as well. We were so proud of my sister for going on this great adventure and we wanted to see what it was like for her so we got on a 14 hour plan.

While there, I was constantly confused by the rude public behavior. When there were lines, the majority would cut in front of you, when there were crowds, everyone was pushing and when there was only one seat left, people fought over it. At first I was astonished and insulted at their behavior towards me and each other. Over the course of the trip, I found myself not fighting it, not joining, but not even worrying about it when it happened to me. I realized this was something my sister had to do every day when taking the subway to work. People were not singling me out in the community in this aspect, they were pushing everyone.

I was singled out in many other way however. People had two different responses to me and my family. Some of them were amazed by my sister and I's blonde hair and would stop us on the street motioning a "clicking" in the air which we eventually figured out meant that they wanted a picture with us. The first time I thought this was very strange, but again, over the course of the trip I came to accept selfies with stingers as the usual.

The other response we receive was the term "gwai low" which is a very derogatory term for foreigner or westerner that directly translates to ghost person in Cantonese. When people treated us like this, we didn't respond with hate but rather ignored it because we knew we had done nothing wrong. None the less, these attempts to single us out of the community prohibited us from truly viewing the experience from a locals perspective. Being stopped to take pictures, while somewhat flattering, also pointed out our differences and made us the "other". The fact that we were such a distraction in every environment was exhausting.

~Sahale

Nation of Wimps

I think when discussing our generation being far  wimpier than previous generations we are talking about that fact that we can't stand up for ourselves, or live in an overprotected home. I do not however think the policies of AYSO apply here. I think that having a league that has the motto of "everyone plays" is a great idea. It cultivates a love of the sport at a lower level of play, commitment and pay if you cannot reach the standards of any of those three. I think competition is healthy and we should have to compete for what we want because that is what it is will be like for the rest of our life, however that doesn't have to start on the soccer field in 1st grade.

Our generation has parents that micro manage our work, brew over our safety when we are not home and check our electronics. The term bullying now is something that is used in everyone kids vocabulary but how many of those kids are bullied to the extent that others in the past were with physical violence. This is not to say that kids now are not still truly getting bullied and that electronics have made it easier to do so, but that those cases are few and far between. Yet 83% of girls and 79% of guys say they were bullied either in school or online. This is most likely not true but a combination of parents overreactions' and kids melodrama causes situations to escalate quickly to so called "bulling" when in fact this is an overreaction. Bulling often stems from competition and I believe that competition is healthy and necessary to teach that life isn't always fair and you need to really go after what you want if you have any hope of achieving that goal. However this does not always need to be present in Kindergarten soccer tournaments. 

I babysit a lot of kids in my neighborhood and whenever I babysit on Saturday the kids will still have their soccer jerseys on so I ask them how their game went. You can just see their face light up when they tell you that there team won and that they score. They don't understand that the other team won too, they are just so happy that they feel like they did something good. This is a quality that high school soccer is lacking. When we are losing, we get down on ourselves and walk away kicking ourselves for the miss pass instead of being elated by the goal that we or our teammate score. Encouraging kids to play a sport not to win but to love it is extremely valuable and does not make them wimps. 

~Sahale 

I have been thinking about this week's blog post of what time I have tolerated great injustices for my own personal convince and when I have stood up against it and walked away. I would like to be able to say that I boycotted Apple or Hershey products when it came out that they used unethical ways of producing them, but sadly I cannot. I did not do anything about it, but instead went along with my daily life, texting on products created in sweatshop like conditions and snacking on the sugars of child labor. 

To find times when I walked away, I looked at situations that had popped up that were a little closer to home, a little smaller scale. I am proud to say that when people around school or on the weekends, begin to talk poorly about my friends, I simply walk away from the conversation. I refuse to participate in bad mouthing my friends so I remove myself from the situation. 

Sometimes as we discussed in class, walking away isn't always the 'hero" move but I believe while there might be better options like standing up for them or voicing your disapproval, walking away is better than staying. When you do nothing about it, you are silently saying "I think this is okay" which is why I could never stay and here my friends bad mouthed behind their backs. 

~Sahale