Tamie wrote about feeling like people were putting her in boxes.I started pondering ways that I put people in boxes, both unintentionally and completely consciously.
Image via WikipediaFor some reason I started thinking about people with tattoos. My picture of a person with a tattoo includes someone who is laid-back, politically aware, down with me not wearing a bra, and all about LGBTQ rights. I don't think I'd ever actually put that picture into words before, it wasn't quite on the surface, but it was there.
My next thought was that somebody else's picture of a person with a tattoo might be more along the lines of someone with an American flag on the lawn, some experience with the military, lots of muscles, and a Harley.
Of course I realized immediately how limiting both of those pictures were. Someone can be both patriotic and pro-LGBTQ (see the flag image from Wikipedia for proof;)) All sorts of people without tattoos drive a Harley and are politically aware and laid-back. :) Etc. And it certainly highlighted the impossibility of describing a person with a few short words.
When I think about the pervasiveness of stereotypes and/or the behavior of putting others into neat little boxes that we've constructed, I wonder how much of all of this is straight up evolutionary. Our brains are such categorizing machines -- and in fact, it's one way to assess a young child's development -- can you put all the green things/animals that walk on four legs/things you can eat together? You can see how this skill would be helpful evolutionarily speaking. These are the berries that Sam ate right before he died, the sun is in that part of the sky -- it will be dark and cold soon, the people who are on that side of the hill trade with us frequently, the people who live in the valley are easy to anger, etc.
Clearly, these days stereotypes do amazingly more harm than good, across the board. I wonder how we can combat the tendency to put people in boxes -- maybe our brains need new ways of categorizing....
hey, you provoked some thought in my frazzly mind this evening :) can't remember if you read nurtureshock, particularly the chapter about talking about race/ethnicity with kids - and that natural tendency to categorize and stereotype.
ReplyDeleteI have been contemplating a tattoo in that same spot as the photo - but then keep changing my mind because I don't want people to categorize me in a certain way. hmmm... need to read Tamie's post now too!
It's so interesting to hear your thoughts in reaction to my thoughts! Interesting too to think about it evolutionarily, which I pretty much never do. Good stuff; thanks for posting!
ReplyDeleteElise, I did read Nurtureshock a while ago. I didn't think about that chapter, though. Perhaps I should re-read it. And your thoughts about the tattoo make sense to me. It's such shame, eh?
ReplyDeleteT, Thanks!