Let’s avoid spoilers. Please watch this video first, and then we’ll talk.
Have you watched it? Good. (If you haven’t, it means you don’t care about spoilers, which is
just another way of saying that you’re deeply masochistic). (No, but really, if you don’t watch it then it’s difficult to keep up with the post, if I were you I would click on the video straight away). (Okay, whatever, do as you please).
What happens during this video?
It happens that all the time we are convinced that the protagonist is a man.
We see this person using shaving cream and razor blades, drinking liquor, snorting cocaine, and then they leave the house and go eating a huge hamburger. They drive up to a disco, smoke, drink
another 3 or 4 glasses, begin to annoy several girls touching and trying to kiss them,
start a fight with a guy breaking a chair on his back, devastate the console, enter the
the men’s bathroom, vomit in the middle of the street, enter a strip club and finally take
a girl home and begin to have sex indisputably. Then, finally, they look at the
mirror.
And we see this blond girl completely naked and with heavy make-up.
And then it hits us.
We suddenly understand that the protagonist has always been her, a woman.
In fact, we’ve been given a clue in the video, almost immediately.
In an early scene we see the bed. Have you looked at the sheets? Pink satin.
That detail, that we would normally think of the bedroom of a girl, is
completely ignored. Why?
Hypothesis A: because humanity is overrated and we are very distracted.
Hypothesis B: because all the behaviors that we do see are extremely stereotyped and
included in those that we categorize as “men’s actions.” And whatever, pink satin is not important.
I think both are true.
And, as a woman, I think it’s very sad for a man to be categorized in that way. It’s upsetting to know that if a
person thinks about someone who drinks, takes drugs and harassing, they automatically guess that “it has to be a man”.
When I say that gender stereotypes don’t suit to anyone I mean exactly that.
The woman is usually portrayed as fragile and naive, but the man is not doing any
better.
Stereotypes cage and force us into a partial view of the world where we ourselves
decide whether to wear blinders or not. But the reality is much more varied and less predictable.
For example, I’d never put those horrendous sheets ever.
