sparks
“You can’t do that.” You can’t do this.
a e r ’ u o Y Because +
Girl..
T
hat tingling sensation you get when you do something exciting or meet someone new for the first time -- that’s the feeling Amanda Cheng, a Chinese American junior studying anthropology, got when she finally went on an adventure of her own. “You can’t do that because you’re a girl.” How many times do young women have to hear this statement as an excuse to restrain them from doing something they want to do? This has been held against her too many times, Amanda says. When Amanda was a teenager, she took a chance with her mom by asking if she could venture off to Los Angeles to visit family and friends, but to no avail. “I asked her why not and her reason was because I’m a girl,” Amanda says. This definitely wasn’t the case for her brother. Amanda reminded her mom that her brother flew to Texas by himself when he was only 9 years old. According to Amanda’s
mother, he was allowed to “because he’s a boy.” Against all odds, this particular rebel made her way to wherever she wanted to be once she hit college. “I’ve gone to a bunch of different places that I couldn’t go before, met so many people along the way, and felt things I never thought I would have. It’s thrilling to just let go and do what you want. I probably seem like a bad daughter for thinking this way,” Amanda says. In a world dominated by restrictive gender roles brought forth by society’s agenda of conformity, there are still hopefuls out there rising against this socially constructed notion. These revolutionaries are the ones rattling the rusty chains of not-yetknown go-getters to break away from the rules that bind them. Amanda is one of them. Many “traditional” Asian American families tend to follow a cult-ish rule when it comes to their views on how typical boys and girls should act. This could go terribly awry once two different worlds collide and