Pink?
Looking through the selection I saw a nice fluffy bright comforter with pinkish-orange stripes and a white background. I imagined myself waking up atop of it with the warm bright sunlight making it glow. In my first dorm, with two other strangers this comforter would bolster my mood and caress me as if I were still an infant.
When I was a child my mother once told me how she always loved school. She would wake up in the mornings with a lunch box of beans and tortillas and head out to school alone. Unlike back home school had toilets and books. Once school was done she would sometimes head down to the textile factory and wait for her dad to get out of work. After a few hours of waiting with no success she would walk home to find him in the kitchen finishing a big bowl of beans and tortillas then heading out back to work to harvest beans. While her dad was away her mom was at church and she was left with her ten siblings in the three-room house.
When she came to the United States from Mexico she was told that she was being taken to Disneyland and that afterwards she’d be able to go back home. Soon the story changed and she was told that she was going to stay with her oldest sister in the U.S. to study at a local high school. She did, for almost a semester until her older sister decided that as a woman my mom should learn to take care of children so she pulled her out of school and forced my mom to clean her house and watch over her children. When my mom’ high school called, and questioned her disappearance her sister told them that she ran back to Mexico and won’t be coming back any time soon. Before my mom, her sister had had several other housekeepers whom she verbally harassed to the point that they’d quit and never come back. With my mom, she had her very own housekeeper who had nowhere to go. A housekeeper she could verbally and physically harass until things were done to her specifications. Although her experience was short, my mom missed high school. She missed joining the tennis team for the first, having books to read, and talking to friends every day. In the first days of school she read most of the textbooks given to her and was eager to learn more. That was all taken away when she was coerced to learn how to fulfill archaic gender roles.
After seeing the fluffy comforter, I exclaimed that I wanted that one because I thought that its bright colors would lighten up my day and comfort me every day I went to sleep. No! my mom said and tried to convince me to go with traditional boy colors such as dark blue or dark grey. Relentlessly I said that I wanted the bright colored one because it’ minimalist floral design appealed to me until my mom finally explained that it was a comforter for girls and that I should get for a guy’ color. Confused, I asked my girlfriend why I couldn’t choose the bright colors and she said that I could but if I did my roommates would probably think I’m gay. Taken aback I insisted on trying to get the comforter I initially wanted until my mom threatened to tell my father. Any argument ceased and I was forced to settle into the traditional dark blue for boys.
Once my mom got proficient at fulfilling the tasks imposed on her by her captor she was given fake documents and force to work at a factory that specialized in making plastic bottles in addition to the onuses given by her sister. The only way my mom was able to escape the grasp of her sister, with much resistance, was by marrying my dad and starting a family of her own.
One reason that until this day my mom holds no grudges against her oldest sister is because her oldest sister was forced to do the same in Mexico by their mother and their mother was force to do the same by their grandmother. In turn, societal gender roles had imposed a revolving door of institutionalized injustice to occur to not only my mother but my mother’ mother and so on.
In Mexico, rigid gender roles permeate throughout the lower working class. Like her mother and my father’ mother once my mom was married she never continued her education nor was she ever obligated to work. The only obligation forced on her by society was to take care of her children and keep a clean home. The role of sustaining the family commonly fell on the man of the family and any signs of femininity would be mocked as a sign of weakness. As such, out of necessity and to show manliness many men like my father and grandfather worked multiple jobs. When I showed my preference for bright colors and a floral design my mom interpreted it as a sign of weakness and readily tried to change my behavior. Although not as harshly as her sister did to her she tried to socialize me to fit into the rigid gender roles apart of the lower working class Mexican society. Unlike when my mom was young, socialization into strict gender roles isn’t as prevalent in the U.S. and Mexico so although my mom forbade me from buying a pinkish-orange comforter I will likely buy a similar one given the chance.
The mere existence of gender roles is a blight to society because it prevents individuals from being who they naturally are. Without gender roles it is very likely that my mom would have been able to get a proper education. If these injustices were to be ignored, then society as a whole would suffer and many people would go through marginalization. The struggles my mom faced due to socialization shouldn’t be allowed to occur to anyone else.