A Theme of Identity in How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, Or Halfie

In the short story, How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, Halfie, there are many different forms of identity that can be taken from the story as a reader. This short story is about a boy who is about to go on a date with a girl. In these short few pages of the story, he describes a “dating handbook” about the girl he is about to go on a date with. With every ethnicity he is thinking that the girl is going to be, he has a separate set of standards he is expected to follow. He explains a different set of rules he has to follow if the girl is brown, black, white or half (mixed). Yunior, the boy who is in the main character in this short story, lives in New Jersey in a low-income home. We know this because he explains how he has to hide his “government cheese” when the girl comes over his house. This shows us how he has to hide his true self to impress the girl he is going to have over. Yunior is hiding his real identity because he is afraid to show who he really is and he does not want to seem like a loser to the girl he is going on a date with.

In the short story, Yunior talks about having a set of standards he has to follow in order to please the girl he is going on a date with. At the beginning of this story, he talks about where he is going to have to hide his government cheese in his house when she comes over. He explains how based off where she is from, that will depend on where he hides it. He explains that if a girl is a certain race, he should use certain etiquette on his date to please the girl. I feel as though he is trying to change who he really is to make a girl happy. He is doing things that he normally wouldn’t do to just to make the girl happy. He is changing his true self because he may be afraid of what the girl will think of him. For an example, he says “Clear the government cheese from the refrigerator.” If he was not scared to show who he really was, he would not have to worry about hiding it. I feel as though he should not care what she thinks of him and if she really loved him, she would not have his living situation bother her.

In the short story, I think the readers can think about Yunior’s identity from many different perspectives. The story definitely tells us a lot about how we perceive others in our everyday life. In our world today, especially this generation, we have many different stereotypes that we associate with different races and nationalities. We can even generalize stereotypes with different sexualities and age groups. These stereotypes, although not all at accurate, stick with people and when someone sees someone else that fits under a category, they tend to stereotype them to the things they hear about them or just think about. This story is a perfect example of how we perceive others. When Yunior was talking about his different actions he was going to take depending on the race of the girl, it shows how we all sometimes use stereotypes in our everyday lives to make decisions. Whether those decisions are big or small, they still play an important part in our life.

Another thing related to this short story is not only how we perceive others, but how we perceive ourselves. When Yunior talked about hiding his government cheese and the pictures of him with an afro, he has some sort of an insecurity about himself. We may perceive ourselves different than others think about us. Even though Yunior was embarrassed about where he lived and the things he had in his house, this made him completely change the type of person he was for a girl. If Yunior kept up the things in his house that made him feel uncomfortable to have around with a girl there, she could have not been weirded out or even have laughed at it. He might have thought that his house was not the way she wanted it to be, but he took those stereotypes he had about girls with different races and applied it to how she would think of him as a person. Every day, we may feel a certain way or feel insecure about ourselves. Other people around us may like us, no matter what our flaws are. Lastly, I feel like we should not act a certain way, especially towards certain races, just to please others, or even ourselves.

Lastly, I feel as though people should not care how others think about them. Yunior really took time to think about how he was going to plan on his night, just because he cared about how this girl perceived him. He also based his actions off of the race of a girl. I believe that no one should change who they are for someone or feel a different way about someone because of stereotypes put out there about them. Everyone should be the way they are and not change their identity for anyone, including Yunior.