Touche Cliche ― The Book of Cliches

-diversity & shit

24. diversity & shit

Hi.

I don't know how to start this chapter, um. So, thank you for seven hundred reads, it's mind-boggling that a trashy author like me could get that much. Sorry this chapter is late, shit has been going down in real life and I'm a hot mess.

Anywho, enough about my life, here's today's chapter. This was supposed to come out on the 4th of July but who the fuck cares anymore?

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I'M TRYING MY BEST.

There is a prominent trend in main characters that I've seen on Wattpad. That trend is a hot yet 'nerdy' caucasian chick with brown hair and blue eyes or 'orbs'. Like, why? Why is this the description for *most* YA protagonists on this platform?

Why are they conventionally beautiful with absolutely no flaws? I'm not saying you have to have them looking like something from the Goonies, but can't they have some flaws or imperfections? Like a stomach that's not completely flat or not having a ludicrous thigh gap? Here's a list of so-called 'imperfections' that you could give your main protagonist:

___ eyes that are too far apart.

___ thick thighs (what's wrong with thunderthighs? i love mine)

___ a̶n̶ ̶a̶c̶t̶u̶a̶l̶ ̶p̶e̶r̶s̶o̶n̶a̶l̶i̶t̶y̶

___ a crooked nose

___ scars

___ dimples (why does nobody in ya have dimples? they're adorable)

___ moles (i have way too many moles)

___ gaps between their teeth (*sweats*)

___ body hair (armpit hair and pubic hair as well as hairs on your arms and legs)

___ eye bags 

___ cellulite (personally, i don't have it, but 90% of women do and it doesn't matter if you are skinny or not, if you have the genes, then you have it.)

___ stretch marks (they can be caused by growing and losing weight; not just gaining weight)

___ boobs (as the saying goes, big boobs fill hands, small boobs fill hearts)

Alright, that's enough. I hope you get the point. Moving on, I spoke about blondes in the previous chapter and I will bring up the same point once more. 

Why are...

___ blondes the devil?

___ brunettes the shy, yet beautiful girl?

___ red heads fierce scottish women?

___ black haired people extinct (despite it being the most common hair colour)?

___ and anybody with unnatural, dyed hair punks?

Seriously, hair colour doesn't dictate how a person acts. Like, I know they say 'show don't tell', but damn.

Then we have eye colour, something that is just completely mind-boggling to me. As I'm sure everyone knows already, the most common eye colour is brown because the allele for brown eyes is dominant over all the other eye colours. So, you'd think with it being the most common eye colour that the majority of characters would have brown eyes, right?

Wrong. Most of the Wattpad protagonists that I read about are described as having blue eyes. There isn't a problem with blue eyes, but why the fuck does everybody have them? I know a lot of people will say that brown eyes just aren't interesting but, just with every other eye colour, there are some gorgeous people with brown eyes.

So, here's a quick description that I wrote to show people that brown eyes aren't boring...

❝Her eyes were like the depths of Charybdis; looking into them made one feel like they were being pulled into an intoxicating whirlpool that, although you knew it was addicting, you couldn't pry yourself away. Like a siren's call, you were drawn into the brown pools, desperately trying to take in every detail from the small golden flecks surrounding her dilated pupil to the way the sun shone and reflected off of the glassy lens.❞

Eh, it sucks, but whatever. 

Next, we come onto race. Woohoo. It's strange reading Wattpad stories nowadays because I always approach the stories with two ideologies in mind. First is that the whole cast will be white and there won't be any Asian or Hispanic or black character in sight. Second is that the main character and the main love interest will be white, but there'll be an obvious, stereotypical token black or Asian or Hispanic character so that the author can say that there book features diversity in it. 

As a black person, it sucks. 

It's not because I won't sympathise with a white main character or that I want to project myself onto the main character. I just want to read about my own culture for once and be like 'oh I do that, that's apart of my culture'. 

It's sad that I have never read a book with a Hispanic main character. So, let's change that.

First, I want to define the words 'Hispanic' and 'black' and 'white' and 'Asian'. Those words are blanket terms for nationalities. 

So, a Hispanic person can be Venezualean, Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican, Bolivian, Ecaudorian, Peruvian, Costa Rican, Colombian, Dominican (and I mean Dominican as in from the Dominican Republic not Dominica, they're too different places) and so on and so fort. 

An Asian person can be Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Turkish, Thai, Afgan, Lebanese and so on and so forth (Asia encompasses both the Middle East and Far East). 

A black person can be from any number of the Caribbean countries (like I am) or any number of the African countries.

And a white person can be from Scandinavia, England, France, the Slavic Nations and Canada and America. 

So, choose any one of these to make your character, but, whatever you do, don't enforce toxic stereotypes. I know, it must be hard to write a character that is a completely different race and culture than you. Let's say you want to write a Puerto Rican character, but have never been to Puerto Rico or met a Puerto Rican person? 

The answer is to do your research. What's the Puerto Rican culture? What language do they speak? What do they look like? What's the history of Peurto Rico and how can this influence our character?

My point here is, whatever you do, don't use stereotypes. They aren't cute, they aren't a good look. 

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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: Sun, 7th Jul at 9: 23 PM