I suppose I am the cliched white girl at first glance. Starbucks cup in one hand, iPhone in the back pocket of my super-skinny jeans and the inability to make it through a single day without quoting "Mean Girls," I fall into the stereotype quite easily. I even had the blonde hair and blue eyes, though in my case, the blonde waves didn't come from a bottle. If you were to look past the obvious exterior, though, then I am a bit of an oddity in the standard sense of the world. In the opposite hand from the Starbucks, I am usually carrying my Latin textbook or some classic novel. My lock screen on my lovely iPhone 6 is the exterior of the TARDIS from "Doctor Who" and the unlocked background used to be the TARIDS interior (I thought I was so clever). I can quote nearly every line from "Harry Potter" — the books or the movies — and am the proud owner of the Sword of Gryffindor and two pigmy puffs dubbed Fred and Tonks (both of whom I demanded a naming ceremony for upon their adoptions in Diagon Alley).
On of my best friends is your stereotypical girly-girl, with an impressive — if slightly unhealthy — obsession with makeup. She is a singer and loves wearing pastels and high-waist shorts. She loves cats and decorating and crafting, and squeals loudly at cute things. She is also a physics major and one of the most capable math students I have ever encountered.
My little brother of 15 (the “little” is relative considering he has shot up to six-foot-two) is your classic class clown: popular, handsome, sporty and of course, obnoxious. He can’t manage to hold a straight face for more than 10 seconds, and he is that student we have all either known or perhaps been ourselves that the teachers pretend to hate for disturbing the class but truly love for their wit.
My brother has countless friends and rarely spends more than an hour or two away from his Xbox (with the exclusion of school and sometimes sleep) where he yells loudly as he plays with said friends. He is also a gifted honors and magnet student at his high school and happens to be very near a child prodigy at the piano. He also taught himself to play guitar and can play a considerably well on the sax and oboe. He also happens to be one of the most empathetic and kindhearted human beings in my life.
We are all walking stereotypes. We all fall into clean-cut groups: geek, preppy, popular, sporty, artsy, nerdy… but we all are much more than just those one word caricatures. One word cannot possibly cover all the complexities and details of a human being. I will not lie and say I do not stereotype. Of course I do. We all do. It’s just the way our brains work. We see something new, we familiarize ourselves with it a bit and we label it. But there is more under the surface that we can’t forget.
It’s fine to sort someone into a box in your mind if it helps you figure out what sort of person they are; the problems only start when we expect people to stay in their designated boxes. I know I don't stay in my box. Sometimes I come across as preppy; sometimes I seem sporty; often times I seem quite geeky, though I am a bit artsy as well. It just depends on which side of me shines through on a particular day, much like the turning of a cube to a new side — see what I did there?