Acording to the page thefreedictionary, stereotype is a conventional, formulaic, and oversimplified conception, opinion, or image. And as we all know, it's usually crated by the media.
We are lying if we said that we have never used stereotypes, because sadly, we all have done that at least once... but what can we do?. We see stereotypes everywhere, the media is one of the responsibles of this, because it creates a FAKE idea or image of something, and that image it's so repetitive that we end up believing. This is kind of like fashion, sometimes, at first sight we don´t like the clothes that we see at the catalogue, or on the tv commercials but then, with the time, and the repetition of the same images, we end up sympathizing those outifits and finally, we end up buying some of them.
At classes, we have seen different types of stereotypes (sounds weird, I know.), and now, that we are reading "the absolutely true diary of a part-time indian" while reading, I was trying to understand all the racism-and stereotypes that we are submitted to, I noticed that in the very first page. You can imagine that indians are all strong and Junior, well, he isn´t. Also, I've heard that indians are not good at school, and Junior and his sister as well, were very clever.
At classes, we have seen different types of stereotypes (sounds weird, I know.), and now, that we are reading "the absolutely true diary of a part-time indian" while reading, I was trying to understand all the racism-and stereotypes that we are submitted to, I noticed that in the very first page. You can imagine that indians are all strong and Junior, well, he isn´t. Also, I've heard that indians are not good at school, and Junior and his sister as well, were very clever.
Sometimes, we don't notice when we use stereotypes. The most usual stereotypes are those about women ( women should be at home doing the housework), men ( men shouldn´t be at home because they are the ones that bring money to the house), blondes (they are all dumb), indians ( they are alcoholics ), "americans" -> actually, united states citizens ( they are all fat), and I can keep on writting but that's not the point.
So Is there something that we can do to stop stereotyping?, in my opinion, I think that we DO have a solution, and that is avoiding stereotypes, is trying to be more careful about things, it's not being racist, it's respecting each other, and overall is accepting at the other person for what they are.
I will leave here a video that I found by casuality in youtube, and it is about the typical stereotype of blonde girls, its author Jon Lee, analises some commercials (cruel comercials for blonde girls), and kind of explain the "sense" of the advertising.
I would like to say, that I saw the video and I was is amaze by the amount of publicity that have been made based on the "dumb blonde" stereotype. What kind of society are we living in? According to my point of view, if we want to progress we can not stay stuck in a basic thought like this
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