Acceptance…

Acceptance…? A topic that’s constantly in the headlines of the 21st Century; Accept Gays and their rights, accept the migrants into your boarders, accept the right to freedom, accept everyone for who they really are… and we’re making progress, our world and society is gradually becoming more and more accepting, and that’s great! But in my eyes. No matter how much we say it’s the 21st Century and that things are changing and that we live in an accepting world, we don’t…. and as far as I’m concerned we never will… As long as people are free to feel and think independently, there will always be opposition. That’s just how the world works, people are entitled to believe what they want to believe. A little incident made me realise that today.

My brother has recently been seeing this girl, lets call her Jane. Jane is a fashion student at a college, so she’s really into clothes and makeup and all that kind of stuff. Well, My brother and Jane were hanging around one time and she thought it would be funny if she did his makeup; wing-liner, red lipstick, the whole lot. And of course, as expected, when she was done they took funny selfies and snapchatted them to a couple of friends for a laugh, because why not? No harm done. Right? Wrong.

One of these photos made a special appearance at one of my family’s dinners a couple of nights ago. Me and my parents all laughed, my brother went a bit red in the cheeks and that was it, no more talk about it. Until today when I was alone at home with my mum. I was sitting there reading a book, not even talking to my mum when she brought up the picture completely out of the blue. She brought it up lightly at first, then started to pummel me with questions about what I knew of the photo. I was taken aback wondering why she would care about the photo, so I asked. And then I got it. She began to go on about what would happen if this photo were to reappear when he was going for a job interview or something, and how that would be a massive red flag to the employer. She then dropped the analogy of David Cameron or Obama, if a photo of them like this were to surface, would they still be in office next week? I got angry and went on about how they would and how if this had any relation to transsexual people I would explode, because she has no right to have prejudices against them. But thinking about it a bit more, am I being naive to think that if photos like these were to surface of David Cameron, and that they have connections to being a Transsexual, he would get kicked out of office? Because of possible speculation that he wasn’t in fact heterosexual?

I have always seen my mother as a very accepting person in the aspect of sexuality, and if I were to ever come out as gay that she would be whole heartedly supportive of me, and she would… for me. But for my brother? My dad was apparently “horrified” by the photo. He didn’t want to see his only son in this light because it was demeaning his masculinity. I do a lot of acting, and I go to an all girls school, so on lots of occasions I have had to dress up and act as a guy… Is that demeaning my femininity? According to her, apparently not… So its alright for me to look like a guy but not alright for my brother to look like a girl? I honestly don’t get it, and that is me being naive, but it’s true.

So if you say you’re accepting of people and who they are, but a guy putting makeup on his face for a laugh with his girlfriend is unacceptable then what does “accepting” really mean? And if small detail completely change weather or not you are accepting, then will our world and society ever become truly accepting?