Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Body stuff, part 1


On an e-mail group I’m part of there’s been a discussion going on about how appearances can affect a person’s perception of the world, and by extension their personality and possibly even their politics. That happens to be a subject that interests me so I thought I’d bring it back over here and broaden the discussion a bit.
I think that the way a person looks can have a huge impact on the way they see the world. For a start it affects the way other people treat you. There are certain expectations and assumptions attached to people who are tall, or people who are fat, or people who are thin, or people who are unusually attractive, and in most cases those assumptions have both positive and negative elements. People who are tall are expected to have leadership abilities, which is great if they do, but must kind of suck if they’re shy and retiring by nature. Weight carries all kinds of expectations and assumptions, wherever a person falls on the size scale. And so on and so forth.
The interesting question for me is if a lifetime of being reacted to a certain way, having most people one meets make the assumptions that go along with being tall, or fat, or skinny, or pretty, or ugly, or whatever, actually has an impact on an individual’s personality. I think it does. How can it not? Human beings are social creatures – we define ourselves largely in relation to each other.
It gets even more interesting when you look at appearance issues that are tied up with gender presentation. I have had many short male friends who have noted that their lack of height is assumed to mean that they are less masculine somehow – there are social penalties attached to being short and slight for a man. For a woman it’s the opposite – models may be idolized but in general women are more likely to face mockery and gender policing as a result of being tall than as a result of being short. In some ways being short is actually an advantage for a woman (and I say this as someone who stands just over 5ft2) – men don’t feel threatened by women who are short, and one can get away with being a lot more assertive in terms of personality without being gender policed if one is physically unthreatening. A tall woman with my personality would probably be seen as a ball breaker, but because I’m small and femmey and entirely physically unimposing I get away with behavior that I’ve seen other women called every sexist insult in the book for.
In general people of either sex who are considered to fit the stereotypes associated with their gender well in a physical sense have a much easier passage through life. I’ve actually done experiments with this, and can report that when I go out in public in skirts and figure-hugging tops and make-up and heels people of both genders are a whole lot nicer to me. It’s not just about men wanting to get laid either, because straight women are a lot friendlier and more helpful too. I get better service in stores and restaurants, co-workers are friendlier, the wheels of the social system seem to be greased in many ways. When I go out in jeans and sneakers people aren’t rude or unpleasant, but the sense of friendliness and niceness does drop. The difference is more noticeable in men than in women – when I’m decked out in full girlie regalia men actually go out of their way to do favors for me – but it’s there in women too. I used to have a job at which every time I wore a skirt at least 3 or 4 female co-workers would stop me in the corridor and compliment me. In all these scenarios it almost feels like I’m being approvingly patted on the head for conforming perfectly to what is expected of my gender, even though my personality remains as assertive and non-girly as ever.
Male friends report a similar pattern in reverse (except without the random women going out of their way to do favors, because our society does not encourage that at all). Every femmey guy I’ve ever known has reported harassment when they’re all femmed up, and every one has said that on those occasions where they make a point of looking more masculine the harassment magically vanishes. It’s a weird, interesting phenomenon.
I wonder how much of this is homophobia. Gender non-conforming appearance is often taken as a sign that the person is queer – could that be why there’s such a difference, or is there more too it? If that’s the case, then why are openly gay people of either gender generally less likely to be harassed if they’re fairly gender conforming in appearance? And how does the day to day experience of being a butch woman or a femmey man and being greeted with covert or overt hostility and confusion, or being a gender-conforming person of either sex and thus being allowed to be more or less anonymous, affect the way the individual experiencing those reactions sees both themselves and the world around them?
I’m still mulling all this over. Particularly in reference to feminism as a movement. Anyone else have any thoughts?

8 comments:

Desipis said...

Yes, people will treat you differently based on your appearance. This happens because of their own observations of trends between appearance and personality/behavior. Starting with the tall people, parents are taller while a child is growing up so there could certainly be a rational cause for tall people being subconsciously associated with some parental qualities such as leadership.

When it comes to clothing style; by dressing in a conventional manner you're presenting the image of someone who behaves in a conventional and predictable way. This causes others to be much more comfortable and confident in how to interact with you. Dress style can also give an indication of personality; dressing in a short skirt and type tops sends a different message about who you are than dressing in a long flowing dress and would result in different reactions even though both would be equally judged feminine and normal. The reactions also depend on who the other person is; a person from an alternative culture would by more open and comfortable with someone who is of the typical appearance of their culture.

These reactions result from judgments based on people's personal experience and cultural definitions. Its a feedback loop where as people learn how others treat them they can begin to change into the person they are judged to be, which in turn reinforces the trends behind the judgments. It's been my experience that while I've changed a lot over the years, when I spend time with people I met when I was younger I'll somewhat revert back to who I used to be because how the relationships are defined. As appearance defines much of that vital first impression that form the basis for future interactions it's wouldn't surprise me if people would find themselves conforming to the expected personality of their appearance.

Of course I'm not sure this explains open and arbitrary hostility towards the gender non-conforming, however that's not the only 'style' of clothing that does receive hostility. I think it's got more to do with the arbitrary level of the social acceptability of the victimization of the particular subgroup rather than any particular attributes of the subgroup itself.

Taking away these collective understandings about clothing styles may liberate those who different from the stereotypical person of their appearance however it would remove the cultural value behind the style as well as much of the reason people wear them to begin with. I think feminism in part was trying to define that a woman wearing men's clothing to mean the same thing as a men in men's clothing. I don't think this is what happened; rather I that new style(s) were created, that when worn by women means the same thing as when men wear the corresponding men's style.

UneFemmePlusCourageuse said...

I'm 5'8, which isn't ridiculously tall but it's definitely above average. I have no problem walking in high heels and do so on a fairly frequent occasion, particularly in the summer. My highest pair of shoes makes me about 6'1.

My high school boyfriend was extremely insecure about the fact he wasn't tall (and wasn't growing) and that throughout our two-year relationship, I wasn't short and was growing. When I was fifteen and 5'5, he never made a single comment about my height, but by the time I hit seventeen and 5'7, he was constantly lording our two-inch height difference over me, calling me short even when I was wearing heels and as tall as he was.

My family pediatrician is another man who does not appreciate my height. (Yes, I'm nearly twenty years old and in college and still seeing a pediatrician--it's my mother's laziness and this summer I'm going to attempt to get a different GP...you'll see why.) This past November when I went to see him to get the Gardasil vaccine, he also checked my height and weight and blood pressure. Surprise surprise--he tells me I'm 5'6.5.

Only thing was, two weeks prior to that I had sprained my ankle and been on crutches for a couple of days. Crutches which were adjusted for someone who was 5'9 (the nurse at my school's health center saw that they were almost at the right height and didn't bother adjusting them). Crutches which worked perfectly. I can see one inch not making too big of a difference, especially since the fuzzy slippers I was perpetually wearing gave me a tiny bit more height--but I'm guessing 2 and a half inches would have.

My doctor's 5'7, 5'6.5 is probably the tallest he could make me to still feel good about himself. Isn't it great catching insecure dudes in a lie?

Basically, I hate the whole: "Delicate female flower/big manly-man" stereotype. I will not date guys who feel as though I need to be weaker and smaller than them to preserve their manhood anymore. I'm tall, I'm smart, I know my own body, and I can spot bullshit.

Octogalore said...

Interesting topic. Agree completely, how one presents and has historically presented does affect self-perception. But I think it's subjective -- the closer to how one optimally feels most genuine one can get away with presenting, the better it feels.

As you know, I'm highly skeptical about femme looks affecting ones feminist creds or identity. I think that's relevant only when a woman or man routinely dresses in a personally uncomfortable way to kowtow to the patriarchy, not when she or he is having fun with it or occasionally conforming with a corporate standard.

Feminism is about gaining, not relinquishing power, and that power shouldn't be defined by any group, whether it's men or other women. If an individual woman feels powerful presenting a certain way, any erosion of that is an erosion of power, IMO. For some women, that might involve not shaving or wearing birkenstocks, for another it might involve wearing platform boots and a mini.

queen emily said...

>>>I wonder how much of this is homophobia. Gender non-conforming appearance is often taken as a sign that the person is queer – could that be why there’s such a difference, or is there more to it? If that’s the case, then why are openly gay people of either gender generally less likely to be harassed if they’re fairly gender conforming in appearance?

I think there's considerable over-lap, but gender normativity constitutes a different axis of oppression.

I feel we should talk about hetero genders as well as sexuality, it's just the two are conflated by the culture at large, though they don't really have *too* much to do with each in a causative sense.

In my experience and those of some of my friends, being a genderqueer generally gets you harassed more in public (even if you're het, though I think that harassment diminishes a bit when a het partner's around), gender-normative GLB gets you harassed more by family, and being trans* makes just about everyone horrible, really.

I do think that the vast majority of straight people consider transitioning (ie the ultimate gender transgression) *far* worse than coming out, I think it's a far more elemental violation of heteronormativity. I think maybe it disturbs more mental frameworks..

But then again, it still remains entangled with homophobia, cos "what if I'm attracted to a person who used to be the same sex as me" is a massive anxiety.

Eh.

Daisy said...

Interesting post! I think the internet (for me), has been the first place I've never felt judged by my appearance.

Recently, I put a photo of myself on my blog and I've wondered how people might react differently to what I say... now that they have a visual image of the person who wrote it vs. when they didn't.

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