Stereotypes Stretching Across Cultures (HMS)

 Stereotypes are universally known as being a definitive form of a stigma attributed to someone or some group. But how can you define someone’s character without really getting to know them? This is a question that I think is deserving of a legitimate question because, quite simply, no one wants to be placed into a stereotype.  Grouping individuals by race, gender, religion and politics are often all huge victims of stereotyping.  But something that I want to focus on has to do with what I study in my major, Anthropology.  I can thank my teachers for what I have learned through the Anthropology department, because now I truly know what it means to be culturally sensitive.  Stereotyping different cultures is a huge problem all around the world, and it’s no different or less concerning than any other type of stigmatizing. If anything, I think it is a more detrimental type of stereotyping because it furthers the gap between cultures and individuals from different places.  As Walter Lippmann put it, "All strangers of another race proverbially look alike to the visiting stranger. Only gross differences of size or color are perceived by an outsider in a flock of sheep, each of which is perfectly individualized to the shepherd"(Lippmann).

I feel that it’s honestly difficult for the average person to recognize cultural stereotyping, mainly because it is just another form of national character.  And I don't just mean American culture, because cultural stereotyping happens to every single culture.  However, we are often raised with the idea that America is the greatest country, and it is sad to say that a lot of people stick to that idea as if every other culture in the world is inferior.  We can be so narrow as a culture in ways that harm us if we refuse to open our minds to what else is out there.  To extend that idea, we as Americans have a lot of negative stereotypes as well.  We are considered obese, lazy, and extremely materialistic.  And as an American I can easily say that that is absolutely true of many, and also absolutely untrue of many.  That is the problem with stereotypes; they dumb you down to one personification when there is so much more to see.

I can think of a TON of other huge stereotypes on different cultures, just to put this point into perspective that is hard to deny.

·      Arab and Muslim’s = terrorists

·      Italian = seductive, over the top

·      Southerners = rednecks and racist

·      Northerners = rich and snoody

·      African American = outside of the United, all are poor.

·      Asians = all good at math, all bad at driving.

·      Jews = cheap and greedy, big noses.

·      Irish = drunks or red headed

·      Mexican = all immigrants

·      German = likes beer, cheese and sausage

·      Amish = no fun and strange outfits

As offensive as that list is, you can apply it to so many people and their thoughts when they look at the average ‘non-American-looking’ person.  And when I say ‘non-American’, I just mean that many people don’t take into consideration that the United States is a huge melting pot and many American born citizens come from a different ethnicity.  Sure, it’s easy to generalize cultures into these categories because some of it can be considered true, but it doesn’t make it right to leave it at that.  It is completely unfair to take those stigmas and not even consider individual people in these cultures.  Obviously not every American is obese, lazy and all about materialistic items.  So it makes perfect sense that obviously not every Asian person is good at math and bad at driving.  It really should be pretty self explanatory, but I wanted to bluntly look at some of these huge (and false) stereotypes because it represents a lot more than we see.

I think Walter Lippmann phrased it well in his book "Public Opinion" as he says, "For the most part we do not first see, and then define. We define first and then see. In the great blooming, buzzing confusion of the outer world we pick out what our culture has already defined for us, and we tend to perceive that which we have picked out in the form stereotyped for us by our culture".  We literally do not know any better than what we see every day as mistakes in stereotyping others, because it happens constantly. It is in our up-bringing and schools, media and elsewhere. We have to be educated on what is wrong and right in this area and that starts in the home, I believe.

The media is a HUGE contributing factor to why we have such a high stigma placed on other cultures.  What we see on television is so insanely limited to what it’s really like in other cultures, or worse, what we see is often false.  The kinds of limited coverage we see on huge news in other cultures makes you realize how skewed the media is.  When I studied abroad in Italy last summer, there was hardly any news on any channels anywhere. Then again, it was during the Olympics, but I was shocked at how much news we watch here in America.  So my point with that is we are not the only culture that views other cultures differently by nature.  What we see on commercials about African people are that they are impoverished and helpless.  What we see in the media about Asians is that they are very technologically advanced.  What we see in the media is what molds our minds to understand what other cultures are like, when in reality there is so much more.

A big contribution to the woes of stereotyping cultures deals with stereotyping them in gender as well. It is known that we see women placed very low in value in many countries set apart from our own.  Cordelia Fine explains in her book "Delusions of Gender" what it is like to have a cultural outlook that is gender biased.  "Neurosexism reflects and reinforces cultural beliefs about gender- and it may do so in a particularly powerful way. Dubious 'brain facts' about the sexes become part of the cultural lore" (Intro).  In the same way that we are pretty much hard wired as babies on what it means to 'be' a girl or a boy, we have very skewed perspectives about how seriously some cultures view their women. In muslim societies, women have so little self expression that it sometimes drives them to extreme protest and danger. In China, little girls are so unwanted that the male population is disturbingly high, and women are auctioned off by their families for marriage.  However, there are still a lot of cultures out there that praise women very much, and whole societies live as matriarchal communities. 

We place these very limited attributes on entire cultures because of what we see through the media and little experience with interaction.  Although I spent 8 weeks in Italy this summer I didn't come home saying that all Italians are obsessed with food, loud, aggressive  etc.  I can definitely say that some of the stereotyping was true, such as they drive fast and have poor manners sometimes.  But that's sort of my point about stereotypes as well is that sometimes they really are true, and that's fine.  It just becomes a problem when that entire culture is forced into one kind of category to represent everyone involved.  I think that it is time to stop misrepresenting what is shown through the media about other cultures, but that's a huge fish to fry and an argument that has been happening for years.  I will end once more with a quote from Walter Lippmann that pretty much sums up this argument, "If we cannot fully understand the acts of other people, until we know what they think they know, then in order to do justice we have to appraise not only the information which has been at their disposal, but the minds through which they have filtered it".

Stereotypes in sports (JL)

There are many stereotypes in our society today, and I will be focusing mainly on athletics and the stereotypes that surround athletes, especially women. In today’s society, sports are extremely important to the majority of the country. From basketball to tennis, we all have our favorite teams and most frequent assumptions of the sports. These assumptions typically concern what team is better and who will win, but our fans today also assume a lot about the gender identity of the athletes playing the game. Men’s sporting events are more frequently watched over women’s sports every day. I asked myself why this is. I feel the stereotypes women have (such as being inferior to men, less competitive, etc.) physically follow them everywhere they go, especially into the world of sports. 

Society structures our gender roles for men and women to follow; men are forceful and competitive and women are shy and reluctant. According to Kristin Wilde, once a female steps out of her assigned gender role she will then be labeled. For women to even participate in sports automatically makes them different. Different in the sense of, that being a female does not constrict me from what I want to do. If a girl wishes to play basketball or volleyball, she will. There are thousands of girls who quit or don't even try to play sports because of the stigma they receive from their peers. For example, my sister went through this stage in High School. She felt different because the girls would judge her for doing something to "manly" and the guys thought she was a lesbian. So she quit and it was a shame because she did enjoy playing. I agree with Wilde, the social contrasts placed on females when they participate in sports are a hard one to break. If a girl plays volleyball, she is seen as a normal girl playing sports, but when that girl plays football, a primary man-dominated sport, she is socially prosecuted. 

One particular female athlete, Holley Mangold, is an Olympic weightlifter. She is my size, and I am a big man. She lifts in the heavyweight category and her story was once on MTV's True Life. Her brother is a NFL lineman and she grew up always doing what he did. However, because she is a female athlete, she receives a lot of criticism for her decisions. Here is her story...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4rjjCSVCMc

Sports are socially segregated by gender and very rarely are they crossed. The stigma a woman athlete has if she crosses the line the assumption that she is a lesbian. Abusive slang words are thrown around about her simply because she wants to play a sport with men. As a result, it is rare to see women play football with men collegiality or professionally. I have experienced this, when my female older cousin played high school football and received a lot of back lash and disapproval from her friends and some family because of her participation. I also have a cousin who plays sports professionally and she is a heterosexual female. These cousins are on different sides of the family and do not know each other, so they did not go through the same hardships that each other endured. Additionally, another cousin of mine is a professional volleyball player in California. She also models when she isn't playing. Each of my cousins look completely different: one is a model, while my other cousin fits your stereotypical role of a “butch.”

The sport that a girl or a woman plays really depicts how they are perceived and judged. For example, one cousin plays volleyball, a traditionally dominate female sport and the other played football, a traditionally male dominate sport. Women are not valued in our sports culture all the time by their athletic abilities, but are more often than not judged by their level of attractiveness. As you can see above, those are my cousins and one is more likely to be accepted and praised by society as an athlete than the other. My cousin did work hard and did not use her looks to become professional, but it seems once she became professional, her popularity increased. My other cousin was not as athletically gifted as the volleyball player and could not become a professional, but she continued on and recreationally does karate and other sports.

The stereotype here is that women are inferior to men in sporting competitions and are only good for the eyes. There is also an assumption that men do not watch female sports for the play, but they only watch for the “show”. Another stereotype is that all women who play masculine sports are lesbian. This is not always the case and this happens to both genders. A person’s heterosexuality comes into play when the sport they choose to play in does not meet society’s criteria. It is viewed that if a woman excels at her sport she must be a lesbian because regular feminine women could or would not act masculine enough to excel. To counter that, it’s viewed that men who do not do well in sports are not masculine. The idea that ‘since sports are what guys do, they should be good at them,’ this is another false stereotype that is placed and attached to sports and gender.

Men are more harshly judged with their decisions with sports than women are. If a male runs cross country, he tends to be smaller and skinnier compared to a male that plays football who has more body mass. Even though both men may play sports well, the one who runs cross country is viewed as feminine because he does not fit society’s criteria for what a man should look like and do. I find that most feminine sporting events are not as closely watched as men’s. Men play football and football has a massive event known as the super bowl, the super bowl is world known and people who do not even watch football tune into the game. But, what do women have? Is there a sport in which women have their own equivalent of a super bowl? No. There are professional leagues for women playing sports such as the WNBA (Women’s National Basketball Society) but we so very rarely see any games on ESPN. Take the March Madness obsession with male basketball and the extreme popularity that comes along with it; now compare it to the women’s March Madness and its popularity. There is no comparison. Men’s college basketball is so much more marketed and viewed by the country. In almost every newspaper across the country, there was a bracket in which you filled out your champion for men’s college basketball; in the meantime, the women’s basketball tournament was going on at the same time and the bracket was never given out in a mass production like the men’s brackets were.

In conclusion, just because a female sport is less marketed less than a male’s sport, it doesn't necessarily mean that it is more important or that we as a society should respect them any less. One way to prevent this stereotyping is to market both equally or have equal representation in the media. More famous celebrity athletes could step up and speak on behalf of respecting both genders of athletes and focus more solely on the sports that they play. 

She Gets Everything She Wants

What is a stereotype? According to the sociological definition of the word, a stereotype is, "a simplified and standardized conception or image invested with special meaning and held in common by members of a group."  

One of the largest organizations one could identify several different stereotypes is in a high school situation. In a high school, you can see groups known as preps, jocks, emos, goths, and nerds.  Some of these groups of individuals are grouped together by choice, while others are thrown together and almost forced to be with one another.  

A "nerd" is one of these stereotypes that is forced to hang out and associate with other "nerds."  The, I guess you could say "definition" of a nerd is someone who does not conform to society's trends, and one who is often extremely intelligent but rejected with others because of their academic abilities.  If every other person is going to reject you and not even associate with you, why wouldn't one hang out with others that feel and are treated exactly the same way?

According to these classifications of intelligence and wanting to succeed in every subject, in high school I very well could have been a "nerd."  In fact, jokingly, I have been called such names before.  Many people never believe me when I tell them that I was Salutatorian of my class with a 3.9 grade point average, it almost seems like that fact should be completely impossible.  Along with making every grade as high as I possibly could, in high school, I also played every sport in which I was allowed.  I absolutely love fitness, being active, and competing (still do today), and I was known everywhere for being successful in volleyball, basketball, and softball.  On top of all of these athletic sports, I had a large group of friends.  I was (and still am) categorized into three different so called "stereotypes" and people did not understand that.


When reading papers about an individual having multiple stereotypes, or being in multiple social groups, I came across a finding that really shocked me, and sort of rubbed me the wrong way.  Robert J. Rydell, Sian L. Beilock, and Allen R. McConnell collectively conducted and wrote a that I came across, and what I perceived from the writing is that if an individual fits into more than one social stereotype, they are using each stereotype as a sort of crutch in order to fit in with different social groups.  If a person was in one group and did not feel fulfilled, then they would try to get into another social group, especially if they believed it would better themselves to do so in the long run.  

I completely disagree with this concept.  In high school, I did not try to force my way into multiple stereotype groups just to feel like I was socially adequate and "fit," and I did not hang out with these "stereotypical groups" just so I could somehow better myself in life, or whatever else it may be, it was simply because I liked doing the things these other individuals also liked.  Honestly, I think this is what all of the "stereotypical" ideologies originate from, it is not about the need to fit in, or the need to succeed and better some part of your life, it is only about sharing common interests with another individual or group.  After that, it is  all about the social ideas that are pushed in to our heads from the day we are born.  The snide and rude comments do not help the cause of stereotypes either:

"She's just a spoiled brat."
"He's dumber than a box of rocks."
"It's because they're rich.."
"Her favorite subject is science? What a NERD!"
"Oh he's in our group, we can just sit here and do nothing."
"Look at those scars, EMO!"
"Yes! I have an Asian lab partner!"
"She never eats lunch, she must be anorexic."
"All the popular kids drink 24/7."
"What a band geek."

To end, some more stereotypical comments from Mean Girls.

http://hpl.uchicago.edu/Publications/papers_reprints/JPSP_2009.pdf