Old Standards Die Hard

Everyone deserves to be accepted and loved. This is the main reason we've been fighting stereotypes for so many years, generations after generations. The idea of acceptance to all and not categorizing people according to their personal preference seems extremely tempting. However, this temptation did not prevent stereotypes from emerging and controlling people's perception of what is considered "self" and what is considered "other": What is seen as more, and what is seen as less.

Luckily, in the past few years, stereotypes of traditional images have been rejected; considering how they did not go broad enough to unify and include everyone. However, old stereotypes have been only replaced by new ones that only resemble different visions of social standards. The whole ideology of "don't become another brick in the wall" turned into "we can remove this one and replace it with another, maybe in purple!" Even though there are millions of extremely demanding stereotypes, there are specific ones that we can consider the highlight of the decade:

"Curly hair, don't care"

For years and years, the beauty industry only promoted the straight locks; since it was considered a beauty standard. However, recently, girls have been rocking their natural hair and the whole beauty scene has changed. Great of course! The problem is, another stereotype has emerged, where straight hair is considered "boring" and "uninspiring," while curly hair is a trend. Why can't both be equally accepted and we all can give our hair a break?

"Body positivity"

There's no ounce of justice in judging people based on the shape of their physical appearance. Still, for the past decades people have branded slimmer bodies as the ideal ones. Fortunately and lately, bigger figures has been more accepted and celebrated. Alas, the society proved to only accept specific bigger shapes with unrealistic standards; this has put women under a brand new pressure of slimming their waist, enhancing their curves to a specific shape, and spend fortune obsessing over removing cellulites and stretch marks. Not only that, but also skinnier bodies started to get hated on and bashed. Hence, a completely substandard mentalities has emerged, with expectations of what a female body should look like. Men also have got their share of harsh criticism and social standards, that make masculinity reserved for a man with muscles all over his body, tall enough, large enough, or else he wouldn't be considered as attractive. Talk of the double standards!

Old rules, modern rules:

The Egyptian society has been really conservative for ages: gender roles, obligations, traditions, etc. Lately, the situation has changed to be more open, modern, and revolutionary. With the new wave of modification, hate has emerged from the old school supporters. However, after some relief of acceptance and understanding, the hatred started again from both parties. The conservative groups see others as loose and absurd, while the modern society views them as boring, futile, and sterile. As if the sky would fall if different ideologies co-existed next to each other.

Of course these are not the only examples; people are still shamed and taunted for their own choices in life. Even trying to break stereotypes has created new ones as a result! This, ironically, opposes and contradicts the main goal of unity and utility, that has got distorted by creating more categories that exclude people and stereotype them again. For instance, people with former social "privilege" traits have been degraded, however, not to an equal level to everyone else. The meaning of equality itself has been biased due to the establishment of new standards based on favoritism, where life is still made of black and whites, but orange is just the new black. Where some are still considered the standard and others are the wannabes.

Preferences should be a personal matter, based on individual expectations and images. Therefore, the idea of generalizing preferences to create another new superiority system, which stereotypes people and then plays favorites, is what everyone has been trying to fight for so many years. Is it really this important to have social preferences as a collective entity? Instead, we need to understand that everyone is enough. Everyone is worthy, beautiful, and valid. This is exactly why we should stop being another brick in this wall. Maybe, after all, we need to establish a brand new wall: A wall that doesn't keep people apart, but unifies them together.