“I’ve read this script and the costume fits, so I’ll play my part…”
This line from one of my favorite Lumineers song haunts me. There are so many amazing things about the openness that the Internet has brought to our lives. But yet, many of us still stepped into roles that were handed to us. Not custom designed. Optional, but not easy to avoid. Writing your own script requires a lot of energy, and to some degree, a significant amount of charm, talent or privilege.
The song is set in the past, but it is still true today, in 2021, that avoiding the “normal route” is not a simple matter. I am absolutely delighted to see more openness about sexuality, from self-defining identities, to parsing out sexual versus romantic attraction, and the broadening of gendered constructs. But the “script” many of us were handed looked like this:
{Girl, at school}
Random nosy person: “Hey, which boy do you like?”
Girl: “huh? I guess Adam, because he lets me borrow his eraser all the time and is nice about it.”
“Well, do you want me to tell him you like him?”
Girl: “I dunno, why?”
“Well, because then he could be your boyfriend?”