So, it came to me recently that people are actually really judgemental. Shocker, I know. This may not be your noteworthy, move mountains, change your life epiphany, but bear with me. I came to this conclusion after being stood in the front room of a house inhabited by a bunch of rough and tumble rugby boys. You’ve probably just formulated your conclusion on the way this house looked and the way these boys chose to go about their lives. Funnily enough, this is my point. I was wearing blue Vans, grey jeans and an oversized shirt over my under-sized body. ‘Are you going to go and write an essay in Starbucks now, Gen?’ I’m asked as I’m about to wander out the door. You were thinking it too, I assume. Classic ‘white girl’. The fact that I knew exactly what he was getting at shows how run of the mill this stereotype is. Here is my introduction to me. My name is Genevieve Mae Osborne. I’m 19. No, I’m not French. My Dad got my name from a hippy he met on the train in his college days. I’m Cornish. No, I do not have six toes. Yes, I do write essays but I prefer the silence of my room to the hubbub of a multi-branch coffee chain.
I’m an English student. I like words and history and I love that people can express themselves in so many vivid and creative ways. If you do science or maths or geography then I applaud you. I will put my hands up and say that my brain struggles to comprehend the complexities of the subject and that I admire your ability to do so. If I tell people that I do English they, and I say this from experience, will tell me that they don’t see why people do English and that they bullshitted their way through their GCSE. No. They regurgitated the answers spoon fed to them by their English teacher months before the exam, as we all did. We memorised and repeated and exam markers up and down the country commended us, along with thousands of other students on the fact that we knew ‘Curley’s wife had no name due to the attitude towards women at the time’. Trust me, English gets harder after GCSE.
When I finish my degree, I want to join the police. Then why am I doing English? It’s what I’m good at and it gives me options if plan A goes down the metaphorical drain. This whole plan has provoked mixed responses from ‘That’s cool’ to ‘I can’t see you doing that Gen, I can see you doing something behind a desk’. I want to help and influence people. I want to give back. I do not want to be sitting behind a desk with a tree’s worth of papers and one of those funky back supports as my spine struggles to support me through another day of admin. That life isn’t for me.
Other things about me. I do yoga, I wear make-up and I like to shop in Jack Wills. If, however, you put me in front of a sales assistant in Boots who wants to know if I would like bronzer balls or bronzer powder I will blush an unattractive shade of pink and look at my older sister who seems to know what I need better than I do. This is because I’m a firm believer that I’m still going through my awkward stage. I’m a 13-year-old rattling around in a slightly too big 19-year old’s body. I don’t understand why I’d want my brows to fade out towards the centre or my cheekbones to reflect even the slightest bit of light…I still do it, don’t get me wrong, but don’t ask me why.
Due to this baby-elephant awkwardness, club nights aren’t especially my scene. The odd night of screaming song lyrics can be a laugh, but it’s not something I don’t do at home on my own anyway. I guess the added bonus of a night out is the brief moments of motivation from the crowd of drunk girls in the toilets. They have the power to make you feel great about yourself whilst busting for the loo. It’s an odd yet not completely awful combination. My idea of fun is romping around Dartmoor with walking boots, getting soaked not to the point of ‘drowned rat’ but more rat found in the remains of the Titanic. This is then suitably followed by a quick Costa visit. That doesn’t make me a ‘white girl’. That makes me a human tinged blue and in need of a caffeine intake.
I’m irritated by chewing and the way some people cough and stereotypes. It was this last irritation that made me want to write. I can’t stop people chewing or coughing but I can try and prove that this ‘white girl’, along with everyone else put some kind of box, is still different. You could spend the morning kayaking with one ‘white girl’, the afternoon reading to the elderly with another Caucasian female and then finish the day curled up on the sofa watching the Bourne trilogy with another woman of pale complexion. Along with making you seem very good with the ladies it would also prove that, whilst they may all be wearing the same brand of high-street shop shoes, they are all surprising and unique in some way. This blog isn’t me bashing you over the head with how you should treat people like you want to be treated, or how judging a fish on its ability to climb a tree will always make it stupid. I hope to make you laugh, I hope to make you question and I hope to make you think whilst I update you on my own little world of randomness and observations. On a final note, yes, I am fully aware that coming at the world through my eyes in the form of a blog is very ‘white girl’. I’m as ‘white girl’ as it gets and as happy as it comes.
Over and out.
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AS WHITE GIRL AS IT GETS 