Sidenote: This story is entirely fiction and made out of my own opinions and ideas.

After exiting the subway station, I finally made it to the entrance of the large department store, and not knowing what I wanted, walked in slowly, looking around. I saw the salespeople attending to the other customers, looking at me, and then continued their work. This lasted for several minutes, but I continued until I reached the young men’s clothing section of the store.

The walls of that part of the store were a dark gray, with some sort of rap music in the back, giving off an "urban" type of atmosphere. I then started to look at the clothes, pitch black shirts with skulls, already visibly-worn black, gray, and blue pants, heavy black and brown leather jackets, and gray and red shirts having large white font covered all over them. All of it was fine to me, but just not my style. I then went over to the general men’s clothing part of the store.

The light was much brighter and the atmosphere a lot wider as I walked into the more colorful side. While the young men’s side had resorted to more of a black and gray mix, this side had bright blasts of purples, navy blues, and maroons. The pants over here had solid nice colors, such as a fancy beige or a light blue, without any rips or fades. The shirts even had collars, with the shorts next to them that had boats on them. I finally found something that was more my style. I just that second found a nice pair of white shorts, and a white shirt that had dashes of black and brown. I couldn’t wait as I walked fastly towards the fitting rooms.

My skin was too dark for the shorts and shirt. I came to this disappointing reality as I saw the bright white short pocket patches end, and the rest of the short cloth continue in the mirror. My dark skin was covered by the white pocket patches but blatantly stuck out against the rest of the smooth white cloth that stopped at my knee. The shirt I wore made it even worse, as the material was even thinner, pretty much advertising that the shirt wasn’t right for me; I might as well had bought a see-through shirt.

I was about to ask a salesperson for help when I saw a woman across the hall tearing up while talking to a saleswoman. The woman held a dress firmly in her hand and was asking for a larger size, but the saleswoman told her they didn't have any sizes bigger than that. The woman grew more frustrated as the saleswoman recommended her stores that had more varieties of “plus-size” clothing. She ran out of the store in tears and distraught; it was the first time she had the confidence to go clothes shopping in months.

The same saleswoman turned to me 2 seconds later and was in shock as she saw I was holding the white shorts and shirts. “Why sir, you are in the wrong section! The young men’s section is more your style” she said as she was pushing me towards that side of the store. “But I don’t like the clothes in that section, they don’t fit my style” I tried to say, but she was persistent. “That boy over there would fit more into these clothes than you, they’re more suited for him,” she said as she pointed towards a young guy across from us, whose skin wouldn’t have shown through the shirt.

All at once the painful truth hit me, I stood in between the two sections of the department store, black and white, I was in the middle. The style of the dark young men’s section was not to my liking, but I virtually got kicked out of the light general men’s section, because of the color of my skin. Since I had the skin color of a dark caramel, I was immediately thrust into a box by society, about what I should wear, and where should I be.

I was told that I didn’t belong in the nice side of the store since people of my color could not “fit” into that “lifestyle”, and instead, I was thrust back into the dark, exactly where society pictured people like me to be. At that point, I had enough and confidently walked out of the door nestled in between the two clothing sections.

I was 14 when I was first stereotyped, and this was my first experience.