We have ingrained stereotypes. We cover this word and gloss over it with the word trope.
We happen to try to clean up that word so often and seperate it from statistical patterns and harmful bigotry, but it’s far harder to do.
Because it's safest for me to pick on white Americans and food, let's look at something:
The stereotype is whites can’t cook. It’s not true, not automatically. There’s a lot of factors:
- The younger generation has less time to learn.
- Desperation food, where you’re learning to mask undesirable flavors is not a middle-class habit.
- Much of the Midwest has close access to slaughterhouses and grass fed beef, or plenty of pork farms. Access to higher quality meats calls for cooking that doesn’t overpower the natural flavor. (Hence steak and potatoes over beans and rice.)
- Different cultures focus on different parts of the meal and a lot of white cultures like Germany, Sweden, ect. focus on breads, cheeses, desserts, stored meats. The casserole is what you soldier through before you get to the pie.
- If you’re not raised on heat, you can’t stand hot food. A lot of mild spices taste hot if you’re not used to them (black pepper).
But the thing is that Cajun food is white-domianted food. Of course, since 1/5th my local population is black, and we are Cajun dominant, a lot of blacks cook Cajun food.
So this means that some of the northern dishes I still make are bland, or I’ve added things to them because I can’t stand the lack of flavor. Or I just go full native to myself and cook like a Cajun.
So if I was writing a story about a Midwest child and bland food, likely the kid would be white. No one would think much of it if they went to any PoC friend’s home and they had good food. But if I reverse the roles, I’d probably get a criticism on believeability because “whites can’t cook”.
Excuse me, I can cook.
And God help you if you choose a dish that might get “cultural appropriation” yelled at you. Yes, I actually get to see arguemnts about food backed up on whose culture does what, regularly.
When you’re not exploring the mental emotional state of connections, empathy, indecisiveness, all the things that make “your female character relatable”, sometimes it’s easier to go with a male character. It sucks because that means very few female characters are relatable to me. Not like I can’t do empathy or indecisiveness, but it’s not a place I wallow in. You know why I order the same thing off the menus of places I frequent? Because if I’m choosing something I’m not used to, I’m indecisive. But if I just order what I normally eat, then I can interact with people.
But if it’s something that bothers you, you write it as if the character is male without directly stating that they are, and then 1st edit, you expand on female traits, see if it still feels right. Writing is the one place where you can change everything about a “person” without their past mattering: because you’re writing that, too.
