Stereotypes Of My Father

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Appearance-wise, my parents are poles apart. Everything one is, the other is not. My mother, who was born and raised in the Philippines, has olive-toned skin; dark, thick hair; deep brown, almond-shaped eyes; and has a petite, slender frame. My father, however, is from the United States, and is tall, blue-eyed, light-skinned, and possesses a burly figure. Needless to say, there are visible distinctions between them; these range from the more overt disparities found in their skin color and height, to the more specific variations such as in their nose structure. These variations are manifest in my physical appearance—I exist as the amalgamation of these dissimilarities made tangible. It is the negotiation between dominant and recessive traits …show more content…

As will be shown, hair color, texture, and hairline are all areas of genetic exploration.
An overt partitioning exists in the hair coloring on my mother’s side of the family against that of my father’s side. Among my mother’s relatives, black hair runs rampant. This may be of no surprise given the pervasiveness of dark hair among Filipinos. From the observations I have made from my travels abroad, the typically recessive hair colors, such as blonde and red, are nearly nonexistent in the Philippines (while certainly not impossible, the presence of such colors are anomalous in this country). As far as my father’s family goes, blonde and brown hair colors are the most prevalent, unsurprising given the melting pot that the United States is. Indeed, my mother possesses black hair and my father has blonde (although now grayed) hair. Between the two, my mother possesses the more dominant …show more content…

Despite my inclination to reach for my flat iron to produce straightness, I have naturally wavy hair. Again my parents present a binary when it comes to hair texture: my mother has thick, curly hair while my father has thin, straight hair. Again, my mother possesses the dominant trait as opposed to my father who has the recessive trait. Unlike hair coloring, however, the mixing of genes among my parents has the result of incomplete dominance, manifested in that I have the intermediate phenotype of wavy hair. A similar Punnett square, in which my mother possesses the CC genotype and my father has a ss genotype, would result in a 100 percent chance of me having wavy hair. Both of my half-siblings mirror my father in that they have straight hair. It is worth noting that in contrast to the previous points, I do exhibit an instance of a recessive trait in my hairline. Whereas my mother has the dominant widow’s peak, my father has the recessive trait of a straight hairline. Despite my lack of a widow’s peak, it is possible that I could still carry that gene which could potentially be passed down to future

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