I’ve been talking about how we can change the ways we see ourselves but a couple of posts from FaceBook got me thinking about how we see other people and, to a lesser extent, how they see us. In one of my FB groups a woman posted a picture of herself in an outfit she didn’t buy because her friend told her it looked too thot. Yeah, I had to look it up, too. From the magazine Complex “‘Thot’ stands for ‘That Ho Out There,’ Kiara Johnson—better known as rapper Katie Got Bandz—told Complex when asked about the definition. ‘So, a slut, a ho, a tramp, you know. Bust down.'” SMDH. The misogyny and slut shaming are worth their own blog post.
Here’s the thing, I must admit I’m actually pretty conservative when it comes to clothing. While I think people should be able to dress as we wish we also need to understand and own the statements our clothes make. That said, to me this girl’s outfit looked fabulous on her. Yes, she looked sexy. But in a totally tasteful way. Far more importantly the outfit made her feel pretty. Yet, she didn’t get because she was worried about what other people might think.
Part of this has to do with being a woman. As women we are taught that we are responsible for the way in which people, specifically men, react to the way we dress. We all know the first question that pops up when we hear that a woman has been sexually violated: What was she wearing? Just to be absolutely clear: this is bullshit. You can think what you want. The thoughts in your head are your problem. Once you start acting on those thoughts physically, or even verbally, you have crossed a line and should be held fully accountable for whatever harm your actions bring.
Part of it, in this case, has to do with being Black in America and understanding that a completely different standard is set up for us. The perception of everything we do is intensified.. It’s like there is a stereotype filter covering us that makes everything about us seem more concentrated. The minute that we do anything that plays to stereotype we get shoved into a box. As a Black woman those stereotypes, almost all of which are negative, include an overt sexuality.
Part of it is our own narcissism. We see the world through a filter of us. Though it is perfectly natural it is exacerbated by social media. Young people today have grown up with the idea that one right or wrong step could turn them into a meme. The problem is compounded by the fact that they aren’t entirely incorrect.
The fact is that ninety-nine percent of the time the people we encounter will have, at most, only the most fleeting thoughts of us. And then it will mostly be about what we thought about them. This can be hard to accept. Especially if you are like me and your anxiety sometimes manifests itself through self-consciousness. This doesn’t make it less true.
What about when people truly are judging us? According to attribution theories people attempt to understand the behavior of others through a prism of self by attributing feelings, beliefs, and intentions to them. There is internal attribution, assigning the cause of behavior to some internal characteristic, personality, motives or beliefs, rather than to outside forces. And external attribution in which we assign the cause of behavior to some situation or event outside a person’s control rather than to some internal characteristic.
For ourselves, our families, and our friends, we tend to use external attribution, but apply internal attributions to our interactions with outsiders. This is due to fundamental attribution error. We see the behavior of others as being determined by their character. Especially if a behavior seems freely chosen. Meanwhile we excuse our own behavior based on circumstances.
On top of this is actor-observer bias. When we watch others, we tend to see them as being driven by intrinsic personality traits. Unable to get inside their heads or see their pasts all we have to go in is our observation of behaviors in the moment that seem freely chosen. When a person fails to hold the door for us we think (or shout), “Asshole!” But when we fail to hold the door we know it isn’t because of a lack of consideration but because we are running late to a job interview.
Then there is the question of whether the observed behavior seems accidental or purposeful and what the behavior is. A behavior seen as intentional will be deemed to be born of internal values, especially if it has low social desirability. Accidents are seen to have external causes. This is especially relevant when we benefit from or are harmed by the behavior- like holding or failing to hold the door. Basically when we behave like assholes we always have a good reason whereas other people are just assholes down to the bone.
Western culture, particularly American culture, with its emphasis individual freedom and autonomy makes this skewed perspective worse. A person who fails to hold the door is rude. A person who is caught in an adulterous affair is a cheat. A person caught stealing from his company is a thief. That person becomes a one dimensional caricature. Unless that person is our friend, our child, or if that person is us. Then there are extenuating circumstances. As Americans we are all about personal choices and bootstraps while being dismissive of situational factors. But only as it applies to *those* people.
Besides the blatant hypocrisy the problem with this viewpoint is that history shows us that appearances are flawed, a picture tells a thousand lies, and behavior in one situation often does not at all relate to behavior under other circumstances. An adulterous man can be an honest shopkeeper and a cheating shopkeeper may be true to his partner. As Jon Elster, Professor of the Social Sciences and Political Science at Columbia University put it, “Behavior is often no more stable than the situations that shape it.”
At the beginning of this post I mentioned that there were two posts in groups I belong to. The second was this video. It’s from the blog Juggling the Jenkins If you don’t feel like watching the video here’s a quick summary: A mom, Tiffany Jenkins, pauses in the drive through because her kid dropped a toy and is having a conniption fit about it. The woman in the car behind her has her own conniption fit, laying on her horn, yelling, basically frothing at the mouth over this one minute delay. So Tiffany pulls forward, pays for her order, then pays for the order of the person behind her. Tiffany Jenkins has been in some bad places in her life. This gives her the empathy to see past the frothing of the mouth to someone who may just need a simple act of kindness.
People, them and us, we are multidimensional. A tool to keep ourselves balanced and not push people into convenient, if ill-fitting boxes, is to take a step back and reach for the positive. When we find ourselves starting to strip a person of their multidimensional reality based on a single observation of a “bad characteristic” stop and think of at least one positive thing about the person. We don’t have to get deep with it. Something as simple as liking the color of their sweater will do. It allows our minds to see the person as more than the one thing, to begin to see them as fully human. This is in turn allows us to be more fully human.