Proving Some Stereotypes Wrong

Another Video about getting rid of harsh judgements

An example of how just clothes can change the entire way we see the same person

Editorial Post

A few summers ago, I was helping out at a day camp for younger kids. While I was passing out craft supplies, one little girl looked up at me and calmly asked, “Are you wicked?” I was a bit shocked by this; I had no idea what I might have done to make her think that. I told her no, I wasn’t at all. She then explained what had prompted her question: the fact that I was wearing all black, and wicked people wore black. It made sense. In the world of black-clad Disney villains and children’s book antagonists, she could very well think dark clothes equaled evil. Even so, it bothered me that I didn’t have to do anything but look a certain way just to be accused of being a bad person. And it’s not just children judging like this. It’s not just the people wearing black being judged. The sad fact is that we tend to take one look at what someone is wearing and peg them as being a certain way immediately. Though great progress has been made against racial and sexual stereotypes, there’s still a large amount of prejudice against style of dress and how it contributes to how we see people.   
For example, mass media projects certain characteristics as going along with certain types of style. Watch almost any teen horror flick and you can easily see prime examples of style stereotyping. The bleach-blonde  in fashionable clothes will be attractive, popular, and possibly dumb. The jock in college-guy dress will be strong, athletic, and either heroic or about as dumb as the blonde. The geeky guy with the big glasses and button-down shirt is smart but timid, and occasionally annoying. The goth girl with heavy eyeliner  and black lipstick is sullen, mean and immoral. I could list more, but you probably get the idea.       

Though not always displayed so plainly, media enforces belief in stereotypical behaviors and roles for various styles. It’s easy to “form judgments about others based on portrayals in video games, in stories, and on TV,” agrees a 2011 article from ParentDish.com. It’s simple for us to believe these stereotypes because media is all around us. It’s easy for the media to keep showing these images because it’s profitable, and people like laughing at caricatures of style.  While these examples on the television screen may seem harmless enough, they can lead to flash judgments on real people that could lose them jobs, friends, and respect depending on who’s  looking.            

In addition, stereotypes are learned when we’re young, and are therefore very hard to let go of.  Part of the reason stereotypes exist so persistently is that we learn them starting about as young as we learn to read and write. “Social scientists believe children begin to acquire prejudices and stereotypes as toddlers,” reports Test Yourself for Hidden Bias, an article from the website Teaching Tolerance. This site provides more articles and guides for teachers and workplaces to try to reverse the negative effects of stereotyping learned so young. The story I told at the beginning is a prime example of small children being influenced by style stereotypes. Some work has gone into taking away racist and sexist influences from around children, but very little thought has been given to how they’re taught to see people wearing certain clothes. Looking back at the influence of the media, look at the wardrobes of villains vs. heroes in children’s books, TV shows, video games and movies. This gives young people an idea of what role others dressed similarly to one or the other play in the world. Contrastingly, if there are styles that children aren’t exposed to, they’re likely to see them as frightening or unsavory. Either way, the intolerance we learn early on affects the way we view people around us throughout our lives, and can severely limit us on who we select as good or bad, trustworthy or not, responsible or irresponsible.   

Furthermore, people can be judged as having a certain way of life just based on their clothing before they even speak or act. Some of our most well-known fairytales can illustrate this, like the prince in Beauty and the Beast denying an old, raggedly-clothed woman shelter from bitter cold because he saw her as unclean and repulsive. Later, he finds out she was a lovely enchantress in disguise, and begs forgiveness upon seeing her more pleasant and powerful appearance. In corporate marketing, too, these assumptions get a lot of use in ad campaigns.  Think about medication commercials that pay actors to say a few lines standing in a clean, white lab while wearing a clean, white lab coat. This projects to potential consumers a feeling of security, that they can trust the information because the actor looks professional and knowledgeable. Even if they notice the fine print at the bottom telling them it’s not a real doctor, the image is what tends to stick and sell the product.  Or, take a look at a Ford truck ad that focuses mainly on young to middle-aged men wearing slightly roughed-up working clothes talking about how trucks have been essential to many generations of their hard-working family.  The whole look of this ad is made to appeal to the working class, hard-labor sorts of people. Do the men shown on screen necessarily  have that sort of lifestyle outside the filming  studio? Possibly, but more than likely not. However, they serve a similar purpose to the actors in lab coats: they portray a certain type of person to get at a certain type of  audience of consumers, and the main way they’re recognized by their audience is through their clothing.

Our first impressions of dress also appear quite often in everyday life and encounters. My mother’s office used to be located in the Veteran’s Association Hospital. Sometimes, she went to a little coffee shop in the hospital cafeteria just to get something warm to drink, never really paying a ton of attention to the workers until one day, when she got up near the counter and saw a young man with multiple piercings, all-black clothes, and tattoos pretty much from the neck down. She was a bit intimidated by his appearance and overall style, but nonetheless she ordered her coffee. To her surprise, both while she was ordering and while her drink was being made the man was quite sociable, polite, and funny. He was just as friendly all the other times he was working at the coffee shop when my mother went back. He proved the stereotype of the goth, tattooed person being mean and rough wrong.  Another incident occurred when I was walking around State Street with a few friends on a weekend just for fun. There was a group of African-American men in about their 20’s ahead of us on the street dressed in sagging pants, large shoes, and over-sized shirts and hats. Expecting to just walk right past, I didn’t even notice at first when one of them called to me and said, “Hey! I love your purple hair! And your shoes! You’re like a rock star!” I turned around and said thanks, rather taken aback, especially when his friends agreed. I and all of my friends were then given high-fives by them, and we all walked away a bit surprised by the encounter. People dressed in the sort of “gangsta” street style are labeled as being disrespectful or possibly even criminal, but in our experience, these young men were nothing like that. Neither my friends and I nor my mother would have known how these people really were if we didn’t give them the chance to show it.

The other side of my argument believes that some stereotypes are true and natural, and are helpful in knowing who to avoid and who is safe to be around. Throughout this essay I’ve described instances where stereotypes are proven false, and many more can be found if we’re open-minded and paying attention. Yes, stereotypes are based on truths and yes some people do fit them. However, despite these facts it is unfair and unjust to simply assume, without further evidence, that they fit into the stereotype. In some rare cases, giving into that belief may even be unsafe. Ted Bundy was a young, charming man with a career heading for success in politics. Most of all, he was well-dressed and handsome. He was also a serial killer. Bundy committed at least 23 brutal murders, luring his victims, girls as young as 13, with his attractive and well-groomed appearance. While this is an extreme example, it proves particularly vividly the point that initial judgements are often incorrect, and we should be careful about how much of an impact we allow them to have on us and how we think.

In truth, we will never be able to completely erase stereotyping. It’s a part of us and of our nature as well as our culture that we cannot simply fix. We will always have an immediate response when we look at someone. However, what really matters is not what that first impression is, but what we do with it once it’s there, in our minds. Instead of allowing that split-second assumption to color the entire way we see a person, hold it back. Allow the people themselves to write their own definition of who they are through words and deeds, not what they wear and how they look. If more people in the world can learn to do this for each other, then many more will be surprised at who they might find when they’re willing to look past the clothes.