Ranthropologist

Blog

  • Straightjacketing

    Straightjacketing

    The purpose of a straightjacket is to hold its wearer immobile so that she is unable to harm herself or others. It restricts movement so that arms cannot flail and balance cannot be easily kept. It can eventually induce a sense of calm in its irrational and/or panicked wearer, subduing her into a more manageable state. For some, I would imagine that the straightjacket becomes a source of comfort. It allows the wearer to feel that she is being cared for and watched to make sure she stays out of trouble. She believes that those who put her into the straightjacket have her best interests at heart, and eventually the wearer may choose to spend more and more of her time in the jacket.

    The straightjacket analogy is an apt one for those who voluntarily lock themselves in to a particular ideology. The straightjacket of beliefs keeps the wearer calm and gives him a sense of control over his world. Those who constructed and applied the jacket are clearly looking out for the best interests of not just the wearer, but everybody. Alas, this is only comforting when we are surrounded by other people who are wearing the same jacket – that is, those who believe what we believe. When we are confronted with those who think differently, the world can again become a remarkably frightening place, and we retreat to our belief jackets and take comfort there, wrapped immobile in our own ideas.

    This is a false comfort. The straightjacket may be soothing and familiar, but it restricts our ability to engage with other points of view. Remember, the straightjacket is meant to calm and immobilize a person who is a danger to himself or others. The analogy starts to break down if you take it too far, but I think it is safe to apply it to the idea that we may be so accustomed to our jackets that we don’t even realize we are wearing them. Instead, those with whom we disagree or by whom we feel threatened are the ones we think are, or should be, wearing the jacket. This is to protect ourselves, not them. It is much easier to believe our ideological opposites are crazy and dangerous than it is to acknowledge our own jackets. I believe we need to step away from the straightjackets and take our chances with the sometimes frightening, irrational, and crazy world as it is. If we engage with others perhaps we will see that they are not as dangerous as we thought – and vice versa.

    Sadly, even when people are faced with evidence that what they thought to be true actually isn’t what they thought, they remain straightjacketed in their beliefs and will turn to increasingly strident rationalizations for maintaining their original belief. I recently felt the restraining pressure of my own straightjacket when I made the mistake of immediately accepting a conclusion in a news story that aligned neatly with my already formed beliefs. The case of actress Daniele Watts being detained by the LAPD for alleged inappropriate sexual behavior in public was presented as a matter of clear racial discrimination in this article from Jezebel. I read the article and was instantly outraged. I posted the article to Facebook and defended my position that the LAPD had acted inappropriately by essentially accusing Watts of “kissing while black,” in particular because the man she was kissing was white. It turns out, based on new information, that I had knee-jerked to the wrong conclusion. The investigating officers were answering a call from a member of the public who believed Watts and her husband were having sex in public. The responding officers requested both of their IDs. The husband, Brian James Lucas, complied. Watts did not, claiming that since she had done nothing wrong she was not required to present ID. This is technically true in some circumstances in California, but not when officers have reason to believe a crime may have been committed, which is the case when a citizen makes a call to the police. Audio recorded by the responding officers shows that Watts immediately escalated their request into an accusation of racial discrimination. She ended up in handcuffs as the officers verified her ID, and then let both Watts and Lucas go on their way.

    When I heard the audio I immediately realized I had made a mistake. I do not believe that there was any racial motivation in what happened. I am open to new information on the incident potentially changing this conclusion, but based on other things I have read I do not believe the LAPD officers were acting on bias. I also believe, not incidentally, that just because there was no apparent discrimination or bias in this case does not mean that discrimination and bias by cops never happens. I ABSOLUTELY believe that it does. But I do not want to let that belief straightjacket me into thinking that every single interaction between a cop and a person of color is discriminatory, or even potentially discriminatory. As I am so fond of saying to others, you have to gather the facts. You have to get context. As your opinion forms it must be provisional and await further evidence before solidifying. I did not do that in this case, and I am ashamed of myself for it.

    My mistake has been a lesson to me about recognizing my own straightjacket. It is hard to escape our own places of comfort but it is vital that we do. Remember that the straightjacket is NOT for comfort – it is meant to restrict us. Don’t let your straightjacket lull you into a false sense of security. Instead, we should shrink from ideological straightjacketing and learn to be comfortable in a world that is sometimes infuriating, frightening, or irrational. We need to keep our minds free.

  • Shifting Perspective: Word Power

    Shifting Perspective: Word Power

    Consider the following brief life histories of two 18-year-olds:

    A was a sullen, withdrawn child. She seemed predisposed to depression early in life, and caused her parents concern when she would run through their house claiming she was being chased by invisible monsters. She had school friends, but at different times in her young life she considered a doll she made out of leaves; a rock; and a small glass bottle to be her closest friends and most prized possessions. By the time she reached sixth grade, her parents were divorced. A lived closer to the working class part of town than the upper middle class areas many of her classmates inhabited. At 13 she was smoking pot with older kids in the neighborhood and was busted at a local discount store for shoplifting. In high school, A held her own but had some difficulties. Math in particular gave her trouble, and she nearly failed freshman algebra, chemistry, and geometry. She participated in very few extracurricular activities and seemed to shift deeper into depression. At one point an incident with a kitchen knife and a suicide threat caused her parents to seek professional help for her. By 15, A had a boyfriend who was already out of school and spent most of her time with a group of older boys, staying out with them until the morning hours. As high school drew to a close, A’s guidance counselor told her that she would not gain entrance into the state university system because of her poor math grades. A did not apply to any colleges during her senior year. After high school graduation she found a low-level job as a receptionist.

    B was a precocious child who was reading adult fiction by second grade. In fourth grade she was allowed into the school-wide spelling bee – typically restricted to 5th and 6th grade students – because she had already completed the spelling and reading lessons through the 6th grade level. Junior high school saw B widening her circle of friends but also maintaining a reputation as an exceptionally bright student. In 8th grade she missed making the county spelling bee by just one word. By high school B was enrolled in honors courses and did well in them with little effort. She was one of only 3 students to earn the highest possible grade on the Advanced Placement exam in English. B was also an accomplished athlete, earning MVP honors for her performance on the swim team during her sophomore year. She participated in clubs as well, including the French Club, Key Club, and Oceanography Club. Her friends were mostly honor students who spent their free time enjoying board games and role playing games. During B’s senior year, her guidance counselor called her to his office to tell her that her score on the verbal portion of the SAT exam was the highest one of his students had ever achieved. At graduation, B chose to spend a year working at a local art gallery and saving money before starting college. She was accepted into a small but prestigious private college the following year.

    Now that you’ve considered the stories of A and B, where do you think they will each end up in life? A sounds troubled, while B sounds accomplished. A has been involved with drugs, crime, and older boys, while B spent her school years studying and participating in extracurricular activities. A was a mediocre student who was discouraged from college by a guidance counselor. B was an honors student who was praised by a guidance counselor and admitted to a prestigious college. Yet, A and B are so very much alike – so alike, in fact, that they are the same person: me.

    That probably wasn’t much of a twist for those of you who know me. The point I am illustrating here is the power of words. The details you pick out of a person’s life story can cause you to view them as a hero or as a villain; as a troublemaker or as a model student; as having a dead end path in life or as being on the road to a successful future. As I’ve said before, humans are pattern-seeking animals, and we don’t often look for all the contextual information we need to flesh out our first impressions.

    The power of words to change our views is something we should be very aware of. It is relevant to so much of what we hear, see, and read in the world today, particularly in news reporting. I bring this up because of the different ways in which people are represented and how subtle those word choices can be. This pertains, in the moment, to the case of Michael Brown (and a few years ago, the case of Trayvon Martin). What we read is what we see, and both of these dead black teenagers have been portrayed as potential thugs and gangsters (and also as angelic innocents). There are multiple examples of how the power of words shapes our perception of events. If you want to find them, there are many articles and commentaries you can read about how people of color are portrayed more negatively in the media than white people.

    I don’t particularly feel like dissecting the racial divide that still exists in our society in this post. Mostly I wanted to engage in the exercise of writing about my own life in two different ways. I challenge you to do the same, and to ask yourself how you might be portrayed if you were the subject of media attention. It behooves us to remember that every single person is more than a single event, a single photograph, a single conversation. They say there are two sides to every story – I say that’s the minimum. Let’s try to consider as many of those sides as we can.

  • Logical Fallacies: The Straw Man

    Logical Fallacies: The Straw Man

    Over the past year, I have been increasing my consumption of online news from a wide range of sources. I am the first to admit that many of my sources come from a particular point of view. I make no secret about being politically liberal, and I feel that I hold my own very well when arguing for my positions. That said, I have started to become uneasy about how many people – myself included – can be easily led to accept an idea or an argument when it is tailored to support a specific ideology. This is why I advocate so fiercely for critical thinking and for exploring all sides of an issue. The thing is, it takes work to understand the other side, and it’s easier to accept the building, and then the tearing down, of the straw man.

    I want to say from the outset that obviously not every argument for or against a position is based on the straw man fallacy, but it is frequently deployed, especially in the online debates that take place in the comment sections of the many sites I read. The danger of the straw man is that, for people who don’t do the work to explore the opposite side, they can accept the straw man as the actual position of the opposition. So what is the straw man? This is the fallacy of misstating or misrepresenting the other person’s position, and then making arguments that refute the misrepresented position. Essentially, it means that you are not actually refuting the other side; you are refuting your misrepresentation of the other side. This can be quite deliberate, or it can be inadvertent, but either way it does not serve the debate.

    You see straw men all over the internet landscape, from mainstream news to social media to political sites, advocacy groups, and even charities. It is so much easier to win somebody to your position if you create an easily understood and fearsome straw man and then talk about how desperately it needs to be destroyed. The problem is that most arguments are much more nuanced than the opposition will present them to be. Now, I firmly believe that there are some arguments that do not deserve anything beyond an initial hearing. For example, the idea that to be balanced, news outlets must present both (or multiple) sides of an issue can have the unfortunate consequence of giving air time and the veneer of credibility to ideas that have absolutely no merit (for example, the views of young earth creationists – or to be honest, any creationists!). However, this is not what I am talking about with the straw man. The straw man is not an idea with no merit like young earth creationism; it is an idea that does not actually represent the opposition’s point of view but it is presented as if it does. A terrific example of this is the abortion debate. The straw man for pro-lifers is the idea that the pro-choice crowd is advocating for the heartless murder of cuddly babies. On the flip side, the pro-choice side creates a straw man when it says that pro-lifers are anti-woman and want to see women dying in back alleys with bloody coat hangers between their legs. Obviously I’m exaggerating to make a point, but I think you can see why straw men like this could rally people to a cause.

    So what am I arguing for? Critical thinking, as always, but specifically I am asking people not to use the straw man. Take the time to try to really understand what the other side believes. Be open to listening (even though it may only take a few minutes to realize that you have good reasons to disagree). Don’t disrespect your opponent by inaccurately simplifying and/or twisting their position so that it’s easier for you to knock it down. I think this sort of thing is what divides us. It leads to screaming headlines and outraged reactions as straw armies rise and fall.

    I hope it’s obvious that I realize there are people who believe in and will support some truly terrible, offensive, misguided, and/or frightening ideas, and those are the real positions worth fighting against. But what good do we do when we get people riled up over something that doesn’t actually represent the other side? How can we process, debate, and try to create actual change in the world if we aren’t discussing what other people actually believe? Is it really satisfying, in the end, to burn up all that straw and leave the real man alive and kicking? Or is it that we are afraid to contemplate that the other side may actually not be as awful as we make it out to be, and we will have to engage with an argument that may be well developed and defensible?

    This is a tangled collection of ideas, to be sure. I want to reiterate, if it’s not clear already, that falling prey to – or deliberately deploying – the straw man fallacy against another’s position does not mean that the actual position is worth defending! But you still need to aim your attack at the other side’s actual argument. There is too much sound and fury over all our cultural conflicts already to waste time building and destroying straw armies.

  • The Limits of Tolerance

    The Limits of Tolerance

    Dictionary.com defines tolerance as “a fair, objective, and permissive attitude toward those whose opinions, practices, race, religion, nationality, etc., differ from one’s own; freedom from bigotry.” Bigotry, in turn, is defined as “stubborn and complete intolerance of any creed, belief, or opinion that differs from one’s own.” Those with progressive or liberal points of view are frequently accused of hypocrisy regarding their use of the word tolerance. When a liberal speaks out against a practice or belief that they oppose or with which they disagree, those on the right will often cry “Whatever happened to tolerance? Your rejection of my beliefs is intolerant!” While this may sometimes be the case, I want to argue that there is a difference between intolerance and disagreement.

    One of the first things I teach in my classes is the concept of cultural relativity. This idea proposes that all cultures should be evaluated on the basis of their internal belief systems, rather than by the belief system of the observer. This means suspending judgement of practices that one may find confusing, frightening, or even abhorrent when viewed through one’s own cultural lens. The reason cultural relativity is so important for anthropologists is that we aren’t seeking to judge cultures; rather, we are seeking to understand them. It is extraordinarily difficult to learn about and analyze a culture if you are unable to set aside your own cultural values. That said, it is impossible for anyone to be truly objective when analyzing the behavior of others. We all see the world through our own unique lenses, and those lenses are ground and polished in the laboratory of very specific cultures and experiences. The challenge for the anthropologist is to try to see through the lens with as little distortion as possible.

    Although we strive for objectivity in our work, I want to make very clear that there is a difference between the anthropological practice of cultural relativity and the concept of moral relativity. Moral relativity proposes that any cultural practice can be seen as moral when judged by that culture’s standards; therefore, even the most seemingly horrible practices can be excused through the application of moral relativity. I cannot stress enough that this is not what anthropologists do. The point of cultural relativity is to try to understand a culture’s practices from the inside. You can find a behavior unacceptable – the practice of female genital cutting comes to mind – and still try to understand it from a culturally relative perspective. What this means is that, rather than rejecting the behavior as immoral and depraved – which are culturally loaded moral judgements – you attempt to understand why such a thing is done in this particular culture. You cannot reach any sort of objective understanding if your default position is to judge the behavior as wrong. And if the practice is indeed harmful, what hope can you possibly have of helping to change it if you don’t understand why, from that culture’s perspective, it is done in the first place? But again, here’s the important thing: understanding something from a culturally relative perspective does not mean you have to find it acceptable.

    What does this have to do with tolerance? I think that tolerance is very similar to cultural relativity. You may not agree with why somebody does something, but you can still accept their right to make their own choices about how to live and, ideally, attempt to see things from their point of view even if you disagree. This applies to all sorts of behaviors, including religion; education; jobs; political ideologies; sexual practices; leisure activities – take your pick. And as long as a person’s choices about how to live don’t have an impact on anybody but that person (and, potentially, those who agree with or consent to the same behaviors), then the choices fall under the umbrella of behaviors that can be tolerated. However, the moment that somebody’s choices begin to negatively impact others, then tolerance no longer applies. Female genital cutting, for example, is not tolerated in the United States or many other parts of the world, even though those who practice it have valid cultural reasons for doing it (and in this case valid simply means that they are culturally applicable reasons, not necessarily that they are reasons that are morally acceptable).

    Liberals are frequently accused of being intolerant of conservative viewpoints. This is certainly sometimes true; in fact, I would hypothesize that no person or ideology has a monopoly on tolerance (or intolerance, for that matter). Sadly, people of all political persuasions can be found ridiculing each other’s belief systems and falling prey to the many logical fallacies I’ve already written about in their attempts to prove the other side wrong. But I have to admit that I bristle when somebody tosses out the “whatever happened to liberal tolerance?” hook. This is lazy rhetoric at best and fails to offer any substantive reasons for why the person tossing the hook may disagree with the allegedly intolerant point of view. Here’s the crux of my argument: being tolerant does not mean agreeing with and/or accepting everything. To me, it means that as long as somebody’s beliefs or choices directly impact only those who believe and live similarly, then I’m happy to tolerate those choices even when I (sometimes vehemently) disagree. I’m a vegetarian, but I tolerate meat eaters. I’m an atheist, but I tolerate the religious as long as nobody attempts to convert me or use their religion as a cudgel (e.g. I do not tolerate violence in the name of religion). I’m a liberal, but I tolerate other political ideologies, even though I may debate with people about them. Hell, I’ll even tolerate intolerance to a degree – for example, if you are a small bookstore owner and decide that under no circumstances will you sell books by Hillary Clinton or Al Gore because you think they are liberal nut jobs, then more power to you. That decision, while arguably intolerant as far as accepting contrary ideologies is concerned, still has no direct impact on anybody but the bookstore owner. What I will not tolerate are beliefs or behaviors that limit the rights of others. So if you lobby for putting prayer back in schools, I will not tolerate that. If you believe that LGBTQ people are not entitled to the same rights as cisgendered people and you attempt to limit those rights, I will not tolerate that. If you attempt to limit the practices of people with whom you disagree (e.g. attempting to block the building of a mosque in your community) I will not tolerate that. If you discriminate against a person because of their race, nationality, religion, sexuality, gender, etc. I will not tolerate that – and I certainly won’t tolerate allowing those practices to be codified into law. In short, if your behavior actively infringes on someone else’s rights, I will not tolerate that. You have the right to believe what you want, but you do not have the right to force those beliefs on others.

    So stop throwing out the easy and lazy label of intolerance, whether you are liberal or conservative. Instead, focus on trying to understand the other person’s point of view even if you disagree with it. Practice cultural, but not moral, relativity. Accept that reasonable people can reasonably disagree about things. But don’t expect to be allowed to infringe on another person’s rights. That is true intolerance.

  • Death and Life on Facebook

    Death and Life on Facebook

    A friend of mine died yesterday. I knew it was coming. He had already beaten a different kind of cancer once, but this one, in a different part of his body, was fast-growing, virulent, and untreatable. I learned of his diagnosis, earlier this year, the old-fashioned way – someone told me about it, in person. This man – Steve – was closest to my uncle, but as someone who had worked first for, and then with, my uncle since I was in my early twenties, I definitely considered him a friend. When news of his death came yesterday, again it was the old-fashioned way – my mother called me to tell me. When I hung up the phone my first urge was to post something about it on Facebook, but as my fingers hovered over the mouse to click to the page, I stopped. I thought. I started to cry. And I didn’t write the post.

    What stopped me from sharing this life event with my social media circle? My first thought was that it wasn’t appropriate. Steve and I did not share many friends on FB, but we shared a few, and I didn’t think this was the way they should find out if they didn’t already know. My second thought was that it’s not the way I would want to find out, either. I tried to assess my initial desire to post about this loss right away and what I hoped to gain from it, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this issue is more complicated than I thought – and more complicated than I want it to be.

    This isn’t just about death or other bad news; it’s about sharing our lives in general. As those of you who read my blog already know, I have an uneasy relationship with social media. Obviously I use it, but I am ambivalent about it – sometimes deeply. There is nothing inherently wrong with sharing news about our lives, and the positive thing about sharing the news of my friend’s death was that I would get comforting words from other friends in return. That’s a good thing… right? Of course it is. But can it also be a bad thing? Is our urge to share on social media right away, especially when it comes to deeply personal news, something we should always do? Of course not. But when do we know? This is the tricky part, because I think this line is drawn in a different place for every person. It makes the Golden Rule – do unto others as you would have them do unto you – uncertain. And because social media is ubiquitous, and because the posting habits of others are out of our control, sometimes things we wouldn’t share about ourselves get shared anyway.

    When I thought more about Steve’s role in my life I realized that if it weren’t for Facebook I probably wouldn’t have had much interaction with him at all over the last several years. I would see him in person from time to time in social situations, but we didn’t have a one-on-one relationship. So when I saw and friended him on FB, it was an opportunity to reconnect with somebody I had always enjoyed seeing. Steve was deeply, brilliantly sarcastic, with an acid wit and a tongue to match. He was quite liberal in many of his politics, and once we became FB friends we would trade private messages with links to political cartoons or articles that we would laugh over together. Sometimes he would engage in sparring matches with some of my friends in the comment sections of some of my political postings, making sharp points couched in jokes and eye-rolling mock disdain. I always loved to read what he had to say. I will miss that very much. But I have to ask myself: what would I have to miss if it weren’t for the fact that we reconnected on Facebook? In other words, if it weren’t for FB, I probably would not have talked to Steve for years, and I would not have had an online relationship to miss. That would have been a shame. But I have to ask myself: if people didn’t have social media, would they have more incentive to maintain the relationships that are important in their lives? Would we reach out to people more frequently in person if we didn’t see them online?

    I don’t know the answer to that question. The reality is that I have reconnected with people on FB that I most likely never would have seen or talked to again if it weren’t for social media. Looking back on my life pre-FB, how often did I feel the urge to find some of the people I am connected to now? I have to be honest and say that I probably didn’t think of them at all. However, once this venue became available to us we had a way to look for people, and we could give in to the novelty and the curiosity to find out what people from our past might be up to now. But again, the hard, honest truth: my life would not be any worse if I had never reconnected with some of these people; and I don’t think it’s necessarily better because I have. This is not meant to be a slight; to me, it’s simply reality. The people who are the most important to me are the ones I know, and have always known, I am going to see again. They are the ones I will contact personally if I have something really important to share. They are the ones I can count on if I need them when something bad happens. I don’t want to discount the value of online interactions in general – like most people, I enjoy the likes, the shares, and the comments on what I post. But I think it has become too easy to rely on electronic feedback to provide us with the squirt of dopamine that reassures our brains that we have been noticed and validated. My fear is that we will think this is enough, and we will not nourish the relationships we have with people in the real world.

    This post probably seems hypocritical in some respects, because in deciding not to post on Facebook about the death of my friend I felt inspired to write this post talking about the death of my friend, which I will shortly be posting, via Twitter, on Facebook. But this isn’t about Steve. It’s about making sure that I keep my online interactions in proper perspective. I value the interactions I am able to have because of FB but I don’t, in the big scheme of things, think I will be missing anything important if I decide to back away. If I want to have actual relationships with people, not just digital interactions, then I think I will ultimately have to back away.

    In your memory, Mr. Marchetti. I enjoyed having you as a friend in the real world and the digital one, and I will miss you.

  • Bikini Bodies

    Bikini Bodies

    In my last post, I wrote about tolerance of other people’s beliefs. I want to continue that line of thought but focus this time on tolerance of other people’s appearance. I have gotten into the habit of calling myself on my initial, gut reactions to how people look. It’s a sad truth that people react immediately and viscerally to how others appear, and will form a snap judgement of that person based on what they see. That initial judgement may not last, but it is always there, and we seldom, if ever, pause to unpack the unconscious, culturally dictated assumptions that undergird our reactions. In anthropology, we call this ascribed status.

    Ascribed status is technically defined as a status that one cannot help possessing, like gender, race, or age. It is something we cannot change. This contrasts with achieved status, which is, as the name makes clear, a status you can achieve. This can be good – earning a degree – or bad – earning a criminal record. Ascribing status is exactly what we do when we unconsciously size somebody up just by looking at them. The problem is, the status we may ascribe to someone may not be a status they actually have. Some stuff seems so obvious – of course that person is male, obviously that person is Black – but we often make mistakes. How many of us have been mistakenly ascribed with the wrong racial or ethnic category, the wrong age, even the wrong gender? When I was a student at Humboldt State, many people assumed I was a lesbian because I had short hair and wore nothing but hiking boots, jeans, and flannel shirts! This kind of automatic ascription becomes quite problematic when you add in all the assumptions and stereotypes that accompany it. So, for example, if you see a dark-skinned person, you ascribe to them the race of Black, which in turn may make you come to some other conclusions about this person – for example, that the person is socioeconomically disadvantaged, likely uneducated, probably criminal, and potentially dangerous. Now, I am very deliberately choosing inflammatory examples, but the reality of the way our society enculturates us means that stereotypes – especially negative ones – can be very deeply imbedded. Even if we don’t consciously realize or acknowledge our reactions (and I think many of us don’t), they are there. It doesn’t mean we act on those reactions, but we have them nonetheless. We make similar assumptions based on a person’s assumed gender, age, and many other aspects of their physical appearance. In fact, I think it might be more accurate to rename ascribed status to assumed status.

    We have come to a place in our culture and society where we have been taught that certain ascribed aspects of a person should not be subjected to assumptions and stereotypes. For example, we are not supposed to judge a person for their race or gender. Yes, racism and sexism still exist, for certain, but people are now routinely called out when they engage in racist and sexist behavior. It is not socially acceptable to make racial jokes or use racial epithets, and it is illegal to discriminate based on race (or gender, sexual orientation, age, disability, etc.). The same is becoming more and more true of disability and sexual orientation as well. Yet if we are honest with ourselves, I think we should all – and I mean ALL – admit that we still harbor unconscious reactions to people that, if we make ourselves aware of them, should probably cause us to feel embarrassed or ashamed of ourselves. I know that when I see someone and have an automatic reaction, if I stop to examine my reaction I am often surprised at the stereotypical assumptions I will still, unconsciously, make.

    As always, I believe there are important evolutionary underpinnings to this type of reaction. I’ve said before that humans are pattern-seeking animals. It is beneficial to categorize situations that might be harmful or threatening so that we can recognize them if they occur again. Both individual and group survival are enhanced if people learn to recognize and avoid danger. This extends from things as simple as avoiding poisonous plants and dangerous animals to things as complex as learning how to speak and interact with others in social situations. As animals we are always striving to keep ourselves out of trouble. As humans, we recognize that trouble can easily be caused by other humans. Unfortunately our pattern-seeking propensities can lead to mistakes, where we see patterns where no pattern actually exists, or where a situation may be perceived as more threatening than it actually is. This is a nutshell version of how stereotypes are formed: we see an apparent pattern of behavior by a few people, and based on their appearance, group membership, culture, or any number of other characteristics, we ascribe those behaviors to every perceived member of that group. Thus, some Black people are criminals; therefore all Black people are criminals. Of course, none of this stereotyping takes account of the myriad and complex cultural and institutional systems that contribute to the stereotyped behavior in the first place; that’s too nuanced for a pattern-seeking reaction that evolved in a paleolithic time when other groups of humans could, indeed, be extremely dangerous to your own group’s survival. In that time, better safe than sorry could have mean the difference between life and death, so it’s better to mistakenly think a safe thing is dangerous than the other way around.

    This is all a long introduction to my real topic: the ascribed statuses that come along with people’s bodies. We aren’t just concerned with skin color, age, or gender – we are concerned with overall appearance. What characteristics do you ascribe to a fat person? What is your visceral reaction when you see an overweight person in public? Is it a kind one? I doubt it. What about when someone is skeletally thin? How about if they have funny hair, or unfashionable clothes, or a bunch of piercings and tattoos? What are your assumptions? I think that physical appearance is one of the last things it is still acceptable to ridicule publicly – especially when it comes to people of size. That is why I titled this rant “Bikini Bodies.” We have assumptions about who should be allowed to wear a bikini in public. We roll our eyes and complain about being visually assaulted by an obese person who dares to wear spandex. There are websites dedicated to ridiculing people for what they wear or how they look (I won’t link to any because I refuse to support them, although in the interest of full disclosure I will admit to having visited them in the past – and I did it purely for the entertainment value, before I started to examine my own reactions). We get a guilty, schadenfreude-inflected pleasure from celebrity paparazzi photos that reveal cellulite, wrinkles, and stretch marks. We insult and criticize when a celebrity – especially a female – is too thin, or too Photoshopped, or too made up. Why have we learned that it’s not acceptable to criticize a person’s race, gender, etc. but it’s still okay to assume that because a person is fat or fashion-challenged, they are somehow morally suspect? These are other human beings. Why is it so easy to forget that? They love and are loved by other human beings. They have feelings, lives, experiences, worlds we know nothing about, but to us they are just a symbol of things we’d rather avoid.

    Some of the people I love most in this world are fat. I’m sure some of the people my readers love most in this world are fat. We turn to attribution error to tell ourselves that for our loved ones, it’s different – they aren’t lazy or lacking in will power, and they aren’t moral failures – they are good people who just let eating get the better of them. But for the rest of the overweight, it’s a different story – it is their fault they are fat, and we judge them because of it. I don’t write this to shame anyone. I write it because it’s time for us to examine our ascriptions and change our assumptions. It’s time for us to recognize that body stereotyping – and the real, documented discrimination that comes with it – is just as bad as other forms of stereotyping. It’s time for us to put down the magazines that tell us “How to Get a Bikini Body!” You want to know how to get a bikini body? Put a bikini on your body – and wear it proudly and without shame.