My high school classmates loved to hate the football-playing, cheerleading prom couple. Given that sentiment, a universal one if you believe teenage movies, I didn’t understand why those same people got voted into royalty year after year, at high school after high school.
I was mystified by other things, too: Why so few people listened to anything other than pop music. Why only a few sports got mainstream attention. Why people went out to buy latest fashion when their old clothes still fit and looked great – maybe better, depending on the newest trends. Why dress for conformity when you could dress for your body type and personality?
Why did millions of millennials grow up to decorate their homes in monochromatic palettes of gray?
On a recent winter day, my thoughts were deep and heavy like the snow I shoveled. The way the brain does when the hands are busy, my mind set about answering questions that nagged at me. Given our diverse talents, cultures, and interests, how are so many people persuaded to play by the same Playbook for Success?
A sad and simple answer came to me: Conformity is safety.
As a kid, I was fascinated by people whose lives were different from mine: My fellow bus rider whose dad was in the Air Force and lived in Massachusetts (a difficult but satisfying state to spell as we practiced on the bus). My neighbor who took me to a Native American Pow Wow. The regular customer at my parents’ restaurant who walked using arm braces and still managed to have an ornery grin as a grown man.
I was also enthralled with the lives of fictional people. I was curious about all the places Carmen San Diego went (and quite jealous, if I’m honest). I liked books about smart girls, and I was encouraged to read them: Nancy Drew and her friend Bess, the entrepreneurial Baby Sitters Club, the American Girl dolls whose stories were so different from mine, but all gathered under that same title of “American.”
As I shoveled, I recalled my earliest sense of my own privilege. I was a soft-spoken blonde girl with blue eyes who developed crushes on boys, got good grades, and eventually became a cheerleader. At a glance, I fit the mainstream image of All American Girl, even as I knew from all those dangerous books that there’s no single right way to be an American Girl. In sixth grade, I remember learning about Hitler’s Aryan race and feeling guilty that, for no earned or sane reason, I would have been deemed worthy of surviving. I simultaneously felt relieved that I would be spared so that my mom wouldn’t suffer horribly.
Being in the In Crowd – or appearing to – is safety.
Today, that truth is shouted by ICE agents unlawfully kidnapping – and now, murdering – citizens and refugees. These neighbors are targets because they don’t look or speak like the popular All American – even though most of America doesn’t actually look or speak like that stereotype.
Being in the majority – or pretending to – is safety. That truth lives behind the fear in the eyes of the trans folx watching their state government write laws to denounce their existence and limit their rights.
Conformity is safety. And so I find myself swimming in feelings of immense gratitude for the people who proudly stand in their difference. Those who live out loud: My trans students who teach me the vocabulary of transitioning into their truest selves. My high school boyfriend who asked me out and dumped me a month later because he couldn’t pretend to be straight. My colleague who shared her story of growing up as an asylum-seeker in the United States. My ESL students who taught me phrases in their own language which notably always translate to something familiar in English.
I’ve been able to grow in empathy for so many walks of life, to fall in love with the widely varied, yet somehow matching quilt that reflects the nuance and repeating patterns of humanity.
It didn’t feel brave to simply be who I was growing up. But many of those I’m closest to, or have been inspired by, have had to be brave. Because of their courage, my life has been wildly enriched. I’ve learned moving traditions, discovered wellness strategies a Western doctor won’t prescribe, made vividly colorful memories, tasted flavors that I can’t replicate in my own kitchen no matter how hard I try, and danced to beats that transport me beyond my rural Midwestern upbringing.
Human living can look so many ways, and I want to see, know, and love as much of it as I can. My deep thanks and respect to you who don’t conform or shrink into safety, and therefore share the gift of your life with me. You inspire me to courageousness.
–Lindsey Rudibaugh