Pressures to Conform

Summary


I recently made the decision that I had held off making for the last few months. The look on my 10-year-old son's face as he walked through the door after coming home from school settled the issue. He had endured yet another day of being called a "mushroom" and a "mush-head" because he has sported a mushroom hairstyle since we came from India in January.

I would love, for example, to wear Indian ethnic attire to school. When I asked fellow East Indian colleagues whether they ever wore sarees to school, one said only for Halloween and the other said that it would look too "unprofessional."

I feel, however, my position as substitute teacher is too precarious for me to wear my sarees. The last thing I would want is to be pulled up for turning up at work in "unprofessional" clothes. Since I do not have the courage to defy conventions and expectations, the only compromise I have made in my attire is that I wear trousers with my Indian tops.

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Extract


Pressures to Conform

A boy, his mother and the difficulty of multiculturalism

By Deepa Narula

I recently made the decision that I had held off making for the last few months. The look on my 10-year-old son's face as he walked through the door...

See the full content of this document

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