gender - personal.

Growing up, I have always wanted to be exactly like my brother. I started to wear his hand-me-down clothes and I also started acting like him. I would go with him and his friends to play soccer or baseball. I always wanted the boy bike or the boy dinner plate. It was not necessarily that I didn't like the girl stuff, I just wanted to be exactly like him. Communication scholars may argue my case is an interesting one. It is common for a female to acquire the cultural stereotypes of a little girl, such as wearing pink and playing with dolls; however, these scholars do say you are influenced by your surroundings, and for me that was my brother. 

Always following in his footsteps, I tried to play every sport he did. He played baseball, so I played in the boys little league. He played soccer, so I played on the boy's soccer team until I moved up to a competitive league. He golfed, so I took golf lessons. Obviously, you can see the continuous pattern. Even though I was too young to realize it at the time, I still do not know how my mother felt about me playing with boys and basically acting like one. However, there is one question left. Why would my participating in boys sports not be socially acceptable? The answer is simple. I was born a female and therefore I should partake in the generalized female gender stereotypes. As I mentioned in the gender-artifact blog, we can surpass stereotypes when we step outside the norm and decide to be different. And this is exactly what I did. 

When I was in second grade, I realized there was one sport my brother played that I did not. This sport was ice hockey. One day while watching one of my brother's games with my mom, I said, "I want to do that too." Sure enough, she enrolled me in skating development and three months later I was signed up on an all girls hockey team. Now, you might be saying this was different for me because I was finally playing on an all girls team. Well, it was. However, unfortunately there are not many second grade girls willing to go against the stereotypical norm of "dancing" or "gymnastics." Therefore, I played on an all girls team, who played against all boys teams. The best part about stepping outside of the box and being different from every other little girl is I found a sport I loved. I learned to be different and loved doing it. And most importantly we became good enough to beat the all boys teams.