Gender stereotyping

Now that I have removed almost all my photos from Flickr which has announced that they are going to delete all my photos (the moment SmugMug took over Flickr, everyone knew it was the beginning of the end and now the end has come), I get to see a lot of my photos which have hitherto been buried under a pile of other photos.

Like I've said, every photo tells a tale - that's the beauty of taking selfies. And you should never conceal your face because the face tells more of a tale than other parts of the body.  For example this photo tells me a lot about gender stereotyping. When I was a boy, most of my clothes and toys were what the world has dictated a boy should have. Blue was my favourite colour and you could never catch me wearing anything pink. For some reason pink was taboo. I always thought it was just a natural thing but of course that's nonsense. It's gender stereotyping that the whole world seems quite united on. Every maternity hospital issues blue blankets to newborn baby boys and pink blankets to girls.

In this pic which was taken in Taiwan, someone suggested that I should pose in a sea of flowers. We were all trying our hand at taking artistic photos and someone suggested this would be artistic. But one can tell from my face that I felt uncomfortable and a little sheepish.

That was in March 2013 (as the date stamp tells us). Today, I am no longer affected by such gender stereotyping. I have no qualms about posing with flowers - the more, the merrier. But I still won't wear a pink t-shirt and it's got nothing to do with stereotyping. It's a matter of taste. I just don't like the colour. The colour pink is a representation of the neither-here-nor-there indecisive dithering that I dislike. I like a bold red or a pure white but a mixture of the two that produces a half-hearted tentative pink is just not my cup of tea. I may have abandoned gender stereotyping but I still have good taste.