By Kimiko Martinez
Lifestyles Editor
Have you ever tried to peel off one of those stupid subscription stickers on a magazine? You know, the one’s that have all your mailing information on it:
JANE DOE, 123 SESAME ST.
ANY TOWN, CA 90000
While I’m happy that I subscribe to most of the periodicals I receive, those stupid stickers always seem to be covering up some vital bit of information that I can’t quite see.
And peeling them off is a pain in the butt.
For a second, you think you’ve got it. Slowly pulling at the corner, and gently letting the glue release from the paper. You start to smile at your promising progress. Slowly, gently, pulling, tugging in different directions, nurturing the liberation of those bonds. You start to feel confident, and pull a little quicker, a little less carefully.
And then it happens.
It rips.
And never just a little bit. You’re lucky if you haven’t ripped the entire headline off now.
I’ve always hated those stupid stickers.
In fact, I’ve never been all that wild about labels at all.
I never saw the point of designer labels during my primary and secondary school years. Wasn’t it supposed to be about style, not just mindless advertising of the latest, cool name brand?
And I really don’t have much of a preference if it comes down to Progresso or Campbell’s.
Besides the nutritional information on the back of those cans, I really don’t see the point of labels at all, except when things are in cans and you can’t see what’s inside. But even then, wouldn’t just a picture suffice?
If I’m looking for canned corn, does it really make that much of a difference if I grab the Del Monte brand or the Jolly Green Giant? I know there are sticklers out there who’ll say it definitely makes a difference, but come on now. It’s corn. It’s in a can. How different can two types really be?
You see, when we start putting all these fancy-schmancy labels on things, we automatically start making assumptions. Just because this company has the money to put a cute little vegetable man and vibrant colors on their can doesn’t mean what’s inside is any different from the can two shelves down marked “CORN” in big, black block letters on a plain white background. I once heard that a lot of those generics got overflow product from the name brand companies anyway. So why the big fuss?
As a society, it seems we’re always trying to classify things and put them into nice, neat little stacks so that we can make sense of the worlds we create for ourselves. We make instantaneous judgments based on information we collect with each of our senses and rely heavily on visual input.
If a person dresses a certain way we make base assumptions about their personality and background. Miss 19-year-old sorority sister Abercrombie girl might have more than a little bit in common with the purple-haired punk rock girl walking by. But you’d probably assume not.
A person’s skin color or accent might conjure images of what that person’s heritage or culture might consist of, but more than likely your assumptions are pretty far off base. As Californians, we’re all familiar with the clichéd image of the blonde-haired, blue-eyed surfer guy/gal that hangs out at the beach every day, wearing bikinis and sandals everywhere they go, and using words like “dude” and “bra” when referring to fellow citizens.
We all know, just by looking around, that these stereotypes are ridiculous and exclusive, but when it comes to making suppositions about others, we’re just as bad.
I’m a 25-year-old single mom.
So what? Millions of American women are.
But what does that mean to you?
I got pregnant at 18, married at 19 and divorced at 23.
Any assumptions yet? What’s my education level, my social class, my ethnicity?
You probably wouldn’t know it to look at me (at least, that’s what I’ve heard), but that’s who I am. I’m a 25-year-old single mom. I’m 5’6”, wear a size 12, am half Japanese and almost half Caucasian with a pinch of Cherokee Indian thrown in. I grew up in a two-story house on a corner lot at the end of a cul-de-sac in suburbia with two parents, a brother, a sister and a dog.
But most people see 25-year-old single mom.
But I’m also a student, an employee, an ex-wife, a daughter, an editor of my school’s newspaper and a million other tags I could stick on myself. And once you’re through sticking all those little labels on me, all the important information is covered up. Can you even see me underneath all those little sticky tags?
It’s not that I mind telling people that I have a son, he’s the most amazing thing to ever happen to me, but I can see the thoughts flashing through their minds during the millisecond it takes to process my revelation.
Classmates assume I’m about 20, like them, and can’t even imagine what it must be like. They look at me like I’m some amazing person juggling life and school and a child. But at the same time they wonder, what could have possibly happened. What’s her story?
Underneath that big billboard of “single mom” there are plenty of other qualifiers:
The All-American girl.
Smart: an honors student, on an academic decathlon team, had a 3.6 GPA in high school.
Athletic: captain of her high school varsity field hockey team, varsity swimmer and cheerleader.
Involved: a member of the yearbook committee, a student athletic trainer, a church youth group leader.
And beautiful: voted onto the Homecoming court and first runner-up in a local pageant.
But they’re all still labels. And while we might use these to help us understand the contents they’re stuck to, they speak nothing of the real inner contents — our hearts.
And although ripping off some of those labels might alter our view of the information underneath, it doesn’t affect the words printed on those pages inside.
Isn’t that what you buy them for anyway?
— Got a story to tell? Submit your essay to graphic@pepperdine.edu.
February 06, 2003
