Ladies and gentlemen, let me greet all of you good afternoon with a big kiss. Do you feel odd to see a man like me giving a kiss in the public? I just want to prove one point -- that we all have a very clear picture of what a man should be like and what a woman should be like. In the next few minutes, I am going to prove to you another point -- that these stereotypes are useless or even harmful.

To demonstrate how these stereotypes work, let me tell you a story. When I was in the university, a friend in our class told me that he once was almost unexpectedly kissed by another man. He never told me who he was. But I always suspect he must be that weird man in the same class who always wore all those feminine colors like purple, green and yellow. He especially liked scarf and other accessories usually not used by males. His hands often rested like this. When he made a point, he waved his hands like this. Although it is very unfair, most of us would just call those men wimp, sissy, or ever guy.

How about atypical women? If a woman spends more time in her work than in making herself beautiful and likable, people usually think she is not feminine enough and call her career woman or iron lady. I even heard somebody suspecting her picky lady boss to have problem with her sex life.

This is how the stereotypes work. A lady is allowed to be indecisive, weak, dependent, irrational, ignorant, easily panic, emotionally vulnerable, but she is not supposed to be careless about her appearance, dominating, too noisy or dirty.

On the other hand, to be a real man, it is quite OK for him to be rude, insensitive, dirty and noisy, but he cannot be weak, show his emotion and affection, or like needle work or other feminine hobbies. I think it is totally nonsense. In fact, most psychologists found that there are not too much real differences in the characters of the two sexes, and most of those real differences are results of the environment rather than in-born qualities.

Gentlemen, do not ever believe that you can't be warm, sensitive, affectionate, and careful about your appearance just because you are a man! Ladies, do not afraid to be decisive, rational, courageous, independent, dominating and even successful in your career!

Let me tell you some of my little secrets. Because my wife's hands are allergic to detergent, I often wash dashes at home. I also share a few other home work with my wife, like ironing clothes and vacuum cleaning the floor. I do not drink or smoke, I prefer vegetarian foods and soy bean milk. When I am moved by sad movies, I let my tears go. Do you think I am sissy? I never worry whether these behaviors would make me less a man.

Of course, I know very well that a masculine man or a feminine woman is very often attractive for the opposite sex. So much so that some men go to the extreme and try to be macho, and some women cross the line and become sissy. Unfortunately we see too many youngsters in Taiwan trying to show their macho sprites by smoking or speeding on motorcycles. I found that even more mature men also have this problem. For example, in an all-male meeting, when a quite attractive lady came, I was surprised to see all the men who never smoke in the previous meetings started to smoke fiercely. I feel sorry for these people who have to tie their own dignity to such a superficial thing worth $50 NT a pack.

While for sissy lady, I remember listening to a lady spending 5 minutes on the phone to ask her boy friend to pick her up, using the most unnatural soft and sweat voice in the public. "Please come, Nggg, please, please ...". That was one of my most sickening experience.

You may say "not too many women do this", but there are a lot of women spending hours in taking care of their physical appearance but never caring about keeping a healthy mind or an attractive personality. I always believe these women will end up with those men who care only about their appearance, which everybody knows, would not last very long.

What I want to say is -- we have to jump out of this rigid sex roles and also be careful not to superimpose these sex roles to our children. The ideal man or woman is one who displays either masculine or feminine qualities depending on situations. In modern society, you will be much happier and more successful if you try to be 100% of what you can be rather than only half of yourself, trying to be masculine or feminine. Ladies and gentlemen, let's liberate our own minds, do what you want to do, forget about being masculine and feminine!

Toastmaster of the contest.