Wednesday, December 31, 2008

on stereotyping

Big Steve and I saw Quantum of Solace this afternoon as our New Year's Eve's event. (Not sure what the title means, even yet.) We are not eating out til Easter (yah right) and plan to lose a ton of weight, get fit, save money, and what the heck, get younger. (Since we are on a roll...) So our big plan was to go to the show, eat at home, and play scrabble. Whoopee!~

S0 here's the good news. There was a Canadian character in the movie. A Canadian spy. (Not sure we have those.) An intelligence agent. A gorgeous woman. Yah Canada. Not the burly butch/fem/Mountie we sometimes envision, falsely I might add. So the last sexy woman spy in the movie was a Canadian. A sexpot gorgeous woman. Intelligent. I am likin' this.

Now, all the previous gorgeous women spy's in the story have been, surprisingly, well, can I say, violent? Sitting cross legged in their little black dress, something happens to annoy them and suddenly they have you thrown across the room, spiked in the neck with a 4 1/2 inch heel and begging for mercy - without themselves having so much as a maladjusted bra strap. (Of course those fake boobs STAY PUT!~)

But the Canadian spy? She is sitting in her little black dress, and finds she has been taken by a bad person, is asked to leave the room, and .... well, she does it! She tip-toes softly to the door and obediently leaves the room!

Friends, there's more! It gets worse. The stereotyping grows, and as she quietly QUIETLY closes the door she murmers, "Thank you." ARGH!~ I know I know - Canadians are polite. Canadians are reticent. We apologize when someone crashes into US! We help little old ladies cross the road. We are almost, well, British.

No one in the theatre got the joke - you Americans! But WE GOT IT. We knew we were being mocked. We knew we are the butt of yet another ethnic joke.

Sigh. That is how it is being a foreigner in a foreign land. Abuse. Mockery.

Just wanted to make a point of all this. Just wanted to say that Canadians have feelings too. And thank you so much for listening to my rant. I feel much better. Hope I didn't offend you.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sorry you had to put up with that mockery. Sorry we're so meek. Thank you for sharing your feelings. Sorry you felt you had to rant because of us. - your fellow Canadian

Krissi said...

I've never thought of Canadian women as butch, but maybe that's because I grew up close enough to Canada to have that debunked before it was, well, bunked. And maybe because Portland has the most lesbians per capita, and a lot of butch looking women walking around those American streets. No joke.

We Northwesterners are rather stereotyped a lot, too, I've learned. We're just crazy, radical left-winged, dreadlock-totting, recycle-happy, organic vegan eating hippies...who get rained on all the time. I didn't hear the term "The left coast" until I heard it from someone here at Asbury. But what can I say. Today I learned that for the first time all of the West Coasts senators are Democrats and most of those senators are women.

I will say this. I've probably known a lot of Canadians without realizing it, but the two I've known the most are you (a great representative;) and a friend in Oregon who had the most beautiful dreads I've ever seen and couldn't take a bad picture if she were dying (I have many amazing pictures of her). You Canadians are doing well in my book!

Anonymous said...

Jake Hiebert said:
So sorry that you had all these feelings pent up inside you. But now that you have left them out I am sure you feel a whole lot better, and I didn't even get offended.

Linda said...

Ahhhh, don't feel bad Marilyn, some of my best friends are Canadian.