Once upon a time, I went to a very conservative Christian school. This school was actually very good in education, but, as you might guess, it had some problems. I knew, it was a fact in my mind, that gay people were all oversexed, would hit on everyone of their desired gender, and loooved converting innocent straight people.
At this same time, I was hanging out with this group of girls, all older than I was. I don't remember now how we all knew eachother, but it was a loosely linked set of maybe 15 girls. One day, one of girls was relating a story about how a security guard someplace had been hitting on her, or maybe just talking to her and trying to say she should go talk to some of the guys at wherever she'd been at the time. And, she said, she finally told him she was gay, and he was actually very accepting about it, although curious, asking her questions about it.
Me, on the other hand, I was flabbergasted. She was gay? I found out later that I was the only one surprised, she'd been out a while. But, but, I knew her! I had a hard time thinking of her as oversexed, and she'd never hit on me-- wait, yes she had. She got me flowers on my birthday. But when I saw it as an innocent, non-flirtatious gift, that's where it ended. She was just a normal girl, wow.
I remember sitting in classes the few days, just thinking about this, completely blown away that, oh man, something I'd been taught had just been proven very wrong.
Similarly, years later, I had a good friend online, and her weight came up in a conversation with me and a few others, probably talking about dieting or health or somesuch related topic. She's... see, I hesitate to describe it, because it's still so negative in my mind. Long story short, some experimental antibiotics caused her weight to balloon from a healthy size to morbidly obese. At one point she was telling me that she'd lost about 300 pounds so far-- and hoped to lose another 100 or 150.
But I know I'd be really angry about someone describing her as "fat," even though I have no qualms about describing my rotund cousin as such. In my head, I try to defend this, saying that a) my cousin is a bitch and b) the "gland problem" that caused her weight was cleared up by 5th grade or so. I point out to myself that she doesn't seem to realise her size, being a cheerleader in high school (boys behind me at pep rallies describing it as too horrifying not to watch), worrying that her pregnancy would show. My own thought on finding out she was pregnant was to be aghast that someone had sex with her, and yet when I drive over and visit my friend and she tells me about her vacation with her boyfriend and all the condoms they went through, I laugh with her, not at her.
Maybe, to me, fat describes an attitude. Maybe I'm just a big hypocrite.
Lately I had been wondering what a friend of mine does for a living. I know her husband has some manner of high-end office job that sometimes entails travelling about the country, but while she might have a time conflict with a gaming night or because she's taking him to the airport, dropping the kid off at school, I couldn't remember her ever having a time conflict due to work. I don't generally consider myself nosy, but this was beginning to bother me -- how was it that I'm her friend but have no idea what she does? Surely she must do something, right?
I finally found out within the past week, and I've been having a smaller-scale version of the "Oh man. Wow." reaction I had to finding out that gay people weren't evil.
She's a mom. She's a writer, too, and recently published(Amazon got my copy to me a few days ago, and I loved it), but firstly she's a mother, a stay-at-home mom. (As an aside, her kid's 11 or so and is one of four kids I've met whom I don't want to shove in a barrel in a dark basement until it matures.)
She's very different from my perception of most stay-at-home-mothers, primarily because other stay at home mothers I've known seem to have few to no other skills and I suspect they stay at home because they never considered anything different. Rather, she's intelligent, an excellent writer and an excellent cook, with hobbies outside the home.
I still think most stay-at-home-moms, especially the ones who go online with screennames like Billysmom and momof4 (Don't you have a name outside of your children? Is your motherhood all that defines you?), made a career choice about as much as a high school drop out "chooses" to flip burgers the rest of his/her life.
But, I can't look down on her. I'm certainly not saying, "Wow, I used to like and respect you, but I found out you don't have a real job." I'm saying "Wow, I'm really surprised to find out this person I like and respect is a stay at home mom, and goes against all these stereotypes I have."
Or... "Huh. Wow."
