Stereotypes
Recently met a very charming French lady and we started talking about her travel experiences in India. She is a well traveled lady. I have also had few foreign travel experiences and although my ex-boss keeps teasing me about my travels saying that I have wings on my feet I feel that I do not travel enough. I should be in Modi's team to be considered well traveled:). I keep hoping PMO will call me and consider me to be part of the team:) !
Anyhow, back to the French lady and her experiences. While talking about our experience of different places and different cultures we started talking about stereotypes. We both agreed that stereotypes do exist and some of them are fairly common to that particular culture. Hence Stereotypes can be taken as fairly typical of various cultures. This can be a fairly offensive statement for few die hard liberal people who think that we can't generalize people and nations like that. Intellectuals may consider it too simplistic to believe in stereotypes, but I just take them with a pinch of salt, laugh about it and then try and find opportunities to identify or break them with regard to an Individual from that particular culture. Also, I am always curious to know about stereotypes in various cultures just so that I can find what must be the reason for categorizing people in whatever may be the case.
Funnily enough sometimes we ourselves are not aware what kind of stereotypes are popular about our culture and people. For eg. I didn't know that people think that Indian gesture for 'yes' is a 'no' for most foreigners. So when my friends asked me to gesture a 'yes' I nodded and when they asked me to gesture a 'no' a turned my head sideways as anybody else does it. They said that maybe I am under influence of the western culture and hence my 'yes' is not a 'no' like most Indians. Really..... I was quite offended by this comment. Well, I was in my teens. What do you expect from a light headed teenager. So, let's just say that I didn't like it at that time but now I realise why do people take the lateral movement of our head (when in agreement) which is very similar but (not exactly) the same as a sideways movement of head to say 'no' in the west. So sometimes I use this gesture to give my foreign friends satisfaction of stereotyping me. My French friend also told me about her experience as a foreigner in USA where everyone quoted their queen 'Marie Antoinette' by saying 'give them cakes'. She said wherever she went the phrase was told to her and she didn't know why they were telling her this one. Then her American husband told about the history lesson where this famous phrase was spoken by the French queen when people were dying of hunger and she was oblivious to the poor and pathetic condition of her people. She said that she as a French child studying in France was never taught about it. While she was narrating the story to me I told her that even I have studied about this famous phrase while in school. Isn't it funny that she as a French woman was not aware of it.
Common environment is one of the basis of people thinking and behaving in similar manner. I think that sometimes you can definitely generalize certain characteristics like Italians are quite fashion conscious people, like Russian girls put bright make up, like Americans usually are obese and British people talk a lot about weather, like Italians can't live without pasta etc etc. And yet, I do have a Russian friend who doesn't put make up at all, my US friends are all so fit that I envy their fitness, my British friend talks about everything but weather.
Sometimes I wonder how can the common environment be so common that in every country that I have visited so far women are considered bad drivers! Is it actually true? Is it something to do with female anatomy or biology or chemistry or I don't know what else that makes us a bad driver. Is it because women started driving later than men or is it that men got jealous of women driving and hence had to come up with this stereotype. What gets me is that almost everywhere that I go women are considered bad drivers. Well, I usually take advantage of this one. I consider myself a fairly good driver but whenever I make mistakes or take advantages while driving, I blame it on my being a woman driver:)
Generally stereotyping anyone or any nation is absolutely wrong but I somehow really enjoy finding out about the stereotypes and then finding correlations and differentiation and finally finding the funny side in all of it. I would love to hear from people about the stereotypes that they feel are absolutely right or wrong based on their experiences.
Anyhow, back to the French lady and her experiences. While talking about our experience of different places and different cultures we started talking about stereotypes. We both agreed that stereotypes do exist and some of them are fairly common to that particular culture. Hence Stereotypes can be taken as fairly typical of various cultures. This can be a fairly offensive statement for few die hard liberal people who think that we can't generalize people and nations like that. Intellectuals may consider it too simplistic to believe in stereotypes, but I just take them with a pinch of salt, laugh about it and then try and find opportunities to identify or break them with regard to an Individual from that particular culture. Also, I am always curious to know about stereotypes in various cultures just so that I can find what must be the reason for categorizing people in whatever may be the case.
Funnily enough sometimes we ourselves are not aware what kind of stereotypes are popular about our culture and people. For eg. I didn't know that people think that Indian gesture for 'yes' is a 'no' for most foreigners. So when my friends asked me to gesture a 'yes' I nodded and when they asked me to gesture a 'no' a turned my head sideways as anybody else does it. They said that maybe I am under influence of the western culture and hence my 'yes' is not a 'no' like most Indians. Really..... I was quite offended by this comment. Well, I was in my teens. What do you expect from a light headed teenager. So, let's just say that I didn't like it at that time but now I realise why do people take the lateral movement of our head (when in agreement) which is very similar but (not exactly) the same as a sideways movement of head to say 'no' in the west. So sometimes I use this gesture to give my foreign friends satisfaction of stereotyping me. My French friend also told me about her experience as a foreigner in USA where everyone quoted their queen 'Marie Antoinette' by saying 'give them cakes'. She said wherever she went the phrase was told to her and she didn't know why they were telling her this one. Then her American husband told about the history lesson where this famous phrase was spoken by the French queen when people were dying of hunger and she was oblivious to the poor and pathetic condition of her people. She said that she as a French child studying in France was never taught about it. While she was narrating the story to me I told her that even I have studied about this famous phrase while in school. Isn't it funny that she as a French woman was not aware of it.
Common environment is one of the basis of people thinking and behaving in similar manner. I think that sometimes you can definitely generalize certain characteristics like Italians are quite fashion conscious people, like Russian girls put bright make up, like Americans usually are obese and British people talk a lot about weather, like Italians can't live without pasta etc etc. And yet, I do have a Russian friend who doesn't put make up at all, my US friends are all so fit that I envy their fitness, my British friend talks about everything but weather.
Sometimes I wonder how can the common environment be so common that in every country that I have visited so far women are considered bad drivers! Is it actually true? Is it something to do with female anatomy or biology or chemistry or I don't know what else that makes us a bad driver. Is it because women started driving later than men or is it that men got jealous of women driving and hence had to come up with this stereotype. What gets me is that almost everywhere that I go women are considered bad drivers. Well, I usually take advantage of this one. I consider myself a fairly good driver but whenever I make mistakes or take advantages while driving, I blame it on my being a woman driver:)
Generally stereotyping anyone or any nation is absolutely wrong but I somehow really enjoy finding out about the stereotypes and then finding correlations and differentiation and finally finding the funny side in all of it. I would love to hear from people about the stereotypes that they feel are absolutely right or wrong based on their experiences.
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