Shrek is S.A.F.H.

What is normal? From slight diversions from the norm in physicality, sexuality, and spirituality, how different is acceptable, and how “normal” should we even try to be?

My friend sent me an extensive definition (urbandictionary.com) on what a hipster is. The words ‘different’ and ‘unique’ were repeated as positive attributes of hipsters – their fashion, their music, and their attitudes towards the “mainstream”. Why the hate on the mainstream? Is everyone else missing out while they wear their Abercrombie tank tops and blast Wiz Khalifa on weekends?

As it turns out, the mainstream is much more warped than I previously believed. In a Marie Claire article on women’s “numbers” (the number of people they have slept with), women with numbers ranging from zero to 100 explained their outlook on sexuality and lifestyle.

You would expect the two extremes to be a bit nutty (in this case a religion freak and a woman who regularly attends sex parties), but the women with numbers somewhere in between seemed just as lost in the mainstream as the rest. Take a 30-something-year-old woman who has slept with 6 men, and has been in an 11-year relationship. Seems pretty normal, right?

Turns out, behind these numbers this woman is secretly more attracted to women, even though she has no intention of leaving her boyfriend – and the father of her two children. I guess normal is never so normal after all.

With some people- you get what you see. This makes things easy, but unfortunately these people are rarely worth knowing in the first place. While hidden issues or insecurities are rarely the winning scavenger hunt find, they are part of what makes people complex, and in that nature, just as normal as a self-proclaimed anarchist who shoe gazes in his spare time.

According to Shrek, “Ogres are like onions. Layers. Onions have layers. Ogres have layers.” “You know not everybody like onions. What about a cake? Cakes have layers.”

In this situation, Shrek is clearly a hipster. He realizes that many things in this world have layers to them, as do people, but he specifically is something not many people enjoy. He likes to think of himself as an acquired taste.

Donkey prefers the mainstream. Cakes are delicious, who doesn’t like cake? The cake might have something gross hidden on the inside, like carrots. But who would bother to hide anything bad in an onion?

A hurdle applicable to both my mainstream and hipster brethren is best worded by Donkey: “You’re so wrapped up in layers, onion boy, you’re afraid of your own feelings!” So don’t get fat on cake or let onions make you cry too much. Whether mainstream or not, people are people, so you better check yourself before you wreck yourself.