“Nice purse on wheels, Johnson”.
“You put your eyeliner on in there”?
“Can I borrow a dress and heels from your backseat”?
Cooper Johnson was a senior at St. Joseph High School that made the decision to buy a 2013 Mini Cooper, and no one wanted to let him live down buying a car for girls. The stream of insults was endless throughout our last year of high school, and had Cooper not been well liked and a good sport about the situation, there may have been far worse consequences of his mental health. But even on the coldest winter mornings where frostbite was easily contracted from the walk between the student lot and the front door, there would be one or two faithful souls with window markers writing “Pussy-wagon” on his windshield. No one realized that the simple choice to drive a mini cooper would cause this situation. It didn’t matter how fuel efficient or cost efficient it was, the stigma surrounding this car was enough to make him a target of gender association. Whether it be the style of the car’s body or that is sits no higher off the ground than an couple inches, the fact that this model of car is associated with feminine ideals changed Cooper’s entire image as a hormonally driven high schooler, and his options were to either hibernate and get his diploma online, or laugh off the jokes along with the rest of us–and the fact that his name was also Cooper exponentially increased the supply of jokes.
