Recently, I have seen and heard things that give me hope for the next generation. Young people who are not letting society define them and taking charge of their own identity. It is everything I hoped for as I looked on to the next generation. To have more license to define themselves and explore who they are from an earlier age without as much of the judgement of society. Brave young people who confidently announce who they are and take what ugliness that brings them, but never losing their truth. It is a new day for the human race. What is most important to me is what this means for little girls. What this means for queer children.
I did not grow up in a world like this. My generation has come a long way. My generation was inundated with stereotypes and double standards and unrealistic expectations. When I stopped moving and really noticed these stereotypes for the first time, I went to middle school and high school in Southwest Virginia. It was a new world for me and everything was glaringly apparent. This city made me ask a lot of questions that I had never thought of before. Why was it weird that I liked playing sports even though I was not on a team? Why did it seem there were nearly no queer kids at my school? Why did everyone tell me I was lucky to be skinny or, worse, assume I had an eating disorder? It is because my generation expected women to look a certain way, act a certain way, and stay out of certain pursuits. It is because kids feared for their safety if they even hinted at the idea they might be different. I think because of what we grew up with many of my peers swore to work hard to change things so this generation could have it a little better. We succeeded to a point.
These days I love seeing characters like Rey in Star Wars: The Force Awakens leading franchises as their main character. People keep trying to say that people would not watch movies or TV shows with a female or minority lead. That is false. Look at Star Wars VII with its three lead characters being a woman and two men of color, one of which is canonically homosexual. Look at shows like K.C. Undercover on Disney with Zendaya Coleman at the helm as a character who is strong, but still flawed, and her own type of person. This alone gives me hope.
On top of all this, there are young 'celebrities' who are stepping out and claiming their identities and defining them their own way allowing room for the growth that will come as they grow older. Young women like Amandla Stenberg and Rowan Blanchard who are schooling older feminists in intersectionality while also exploring their own identities as queer women. Something I love is how each these two young women did not make a big deal about who they are, they just are. Rowan defined queer for her to mean not labeling sexuality, just existing. I think that is perfect. It is something that I think is what you should be allowed to do as you grow through life. People are ranting that these young women are too young to know anything about these things. That they do not understand what they are talking about. Guess what, they have time to grow and they seem to understand a lot of this stuff better than older people do.
I will love watching as this continues and young people take the lead of these fantastic characters and people and define themselves rather than allowing others to do it for them. I want the next generation and the next to feel less of the pressure to conform to anyone's standards but their own. I want there to be a day where that pressure is gone for good.
No comments:
Post a Comment