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?