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Thursday, December 13, 2007

The fixed mentality

The parents, with their 2 children, enters Royal Sporting House to get a new pair of shoes for their 6 year old son.

The son tries on the new shoes while his 4 year old sister tries on a pair of soccer boots off the shelves.

Daughter: Mommy, see, this soccer shoe fit me just nice!
Mother: No girl, you are not a boy and only boys play soccer. Now put that back!

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Why is it that every mother thinks this way? Soccer is not a game for boys and men or rather the male species. It is also a sport that female can play and can play it equally well. In Singapore, 90% mothers think this way and disallow their daughters to be in this sport. They always have and keep this stereotype that soccer is only played by the males. In this country, soccer is seen as a sport that will turn a lady into a manly woman or into bungs or just man which is not true! Well, it may only be true only to some but not all.

Time and again, mothers stereotype and emphasize on the point that a lady will be like a man if she plays soccer. I hate it whenever I hear people saying that girls can't play soccer and worse when they say that the girls who play soccer look just really like men. Like I've said, it's only to some not all. Not every female soccer player wana be a man, no. That isn't the case at all.

" An assumption unusual in psychology today is that the subjective human being has an important value which is basic; that no matter how he may be labeled and evaluated he is a human person first of all, and most deeply. " Carl Rogers, 196

Afterall, we are all humans and so people should stop trying to make assumptions as well(in this case). I wish all mothers would have a change in this mentality.

Out,
Marj

10:55 PM