On gradually and unintentionally morphing into a stereotype

Taz Rasul

On a Facebook questionnaire application Claire Meehan from school finished the sentence “Taz is most likely to
break the law by…” with “protesting about the environment, or some shit.” I have not once in my life voiced my
opinions to her about the environment, or some shit. She assumed this because I’m a Cambridge-attending, Guardian-
reading, socialism-empathising, Oxfam-working, World Challenge-completing, Boosh-watching, Ellen DeGeneres-
loving, license fee-supporting, PPS-studying, stylistically cavalier, sexually nonchalant, politically-correct, pink-
haired vegan. It’s like I’ve fallen into a dressing up box and climbed out as something Cathy Tate’s advisors rejected
for being too cliché. So who can blame Claire for seeing the sequence “ABCD…” and presupposing an “E” (for Emily
Davison, naturally) would follow?

I guess it’s quite vain of me, but I am concerned about the way in which I am perceived. That, I can say, is not
following the stereotype. I am happy to recount to people endlessly all of the different stories of how each of these
features came about. That way I’m more reassured that people know I had different motives for every biographical
marker, and not just some end goal that I am striving towards of Ms. Holier-Than-Thou Hippie. The way that I look,
act and speak feels like the agglomeration a series of coincidences, rather than the unfolding of one big, pre-planned
result. Whether for your benefit or (more likely) mine, I will elaborate upon this statement.

The veganism: No, I’m not trying to draw attention to myself. I’m not looking down on you because you don’t care
about the struggle of the gentle cow or the plight of the bee. I don’t give a crap about animals, actually – I may not
want to eat them, but I shan’t be recruited into animal activism any time soon. For me, it’s ‘casual veganism’, because
it’s based on no ethical principles whatsoever, just a whimsical desire to give myself a challenge. Procrastinatory
reasons, if you will. I’m presumed to be a walking encyclopaedia of the inhumanity of modern pastoralism. In reality,
it’s through non-vegans and often even non-vegetarians that I’ve learnt about my “cause”, in their attempts to engage
me in discussion about issues I ostensibly should care a hell of a lot more about. I now know, for instance, that
livestock production creates more greenhouse gas emissions than the transportation industry. This is a beautifully high
horse no doubt, but one that I’d only be able to ride in on retrospectively. And I don’t want to. My aim is not to feel
superior to you, so the people who take a knee-jerk dislike to me once they find out I’m vegan can fuck off.

There are a number of other things which usually reflects a person’s great thought and ideology, but which in me seem
to be very contingent and accidental. Pink hair, for instance. It’s quite hard to fail at dyeing your hair red, but I
managed to do that, twice, in the space of twenty four hours. Judging by my past experience of reliably constant “epic
fails” I’m scared that if I try to rectify this mishap another time some fantastical horror will happen to me and I’ll be
left looking like Geldof or Bono. It’s a pure coincidence that pink hair denotes a queer, left-wing, atheist feminist –
honest.

Not everything I do is unintentional, of course. My half-baked ideas about being nice to the environment and living in
a lovely utopia void of discrimination and inequality of opportunity aren’t circumstantial or arbitrary. I really do
believe that vocationalism should be as well-respected as academia; that people who don’t recycle are selfish; and that
wealthy parents can pass on unforgivably advantageous life chances to their undeserving children (note: by
“undeserving” I mean “as deserving as anyone else”). A mix of intentional and unintentional vicissitudes have
seemingly turned me into someone whose interests, attitudes and inclinations one can suss out from just seeing me
across the street. If it isn’t obvious to you by now, I take this quite negatively. But it’s entirely self-perpetuating. If
Cambridge awarded one grant to the kid who is the most shameful parody of herself then I could possibly win it, and
selflessly invest it in the feeding, clothing and educating of a Kenyan orphan with six younger siblings and a cleft
palate. I have gradually and unintentionally morphed into a stereotype, right under my own (upturned) nose.