Prejudiced

By Patricia Frost-Copping

It's not a fact about myself that I like, or one that I like to acknowledge,particularly in today’s climate of tolerance, and acceptance of people for who they are and not what they do or how they look. I don’t know why, or what may have instigated it, but I find it hard to accept tattoos on women.

Not all tattoos, because I think some of them are rather beautiful. I’m fine about the pretty little ones worn on the shoulder or hip, the butterflies and bluebirds, even the Celtic bands that seem to have become so popular in the past few years. But there seems to be a trend for younger women to sport larger and darker ones on arms and legs - well, almost anywhere really - and it’s the negative and aggressive image that the tattoo represents that makes me recoil. I don’t want to see them, and I pre-judge the woman wearing one.

If we are honest, we all want the freedom to do and be who, and what, we are; and we want to be accepted for ourselves no matter what. We don’t want to be judged on things that, in the end, really don’t matter at all; so we should surely extend that consideration to others, shouldn’t we? Why, then, do we hang on to attitudes that are irrelevant and seem to find it so difficult to change the way we perceive some things?

I suppose I could renounce all responsibility for my attitude and lay the blame squarely at the door of those who brought me up; the ones who so effectively moulded my child-mind in the distant past. I could say they instilled an attitude in me at an early age that refuses to accept people as they might be, and presumes character knowledge of anyone who, ‘says that sort of thing’, ‘looks like that’, ‘wears clothes like that’ or ‘cuts their hair in that way’.

But were they not simply trying to equip me for the world as it was then? Trying to instil in me the knowledge and mechanisms with which I could keep myself safe in a dangerous world. A world in which they had learned, in any number of different ways - personally or by observation - that certain looks, attitudes and ways of life were harmful to the individual. Alternatively, those looks, attitudes and ways of life would elicit negative responses from the rest of society which could ultimately be just as harmful.

As a child, I was told not to talk to strangers, not to go off with unknown men (and, after the Brady/Hindley episode, unknown women were included too), I was told to respect my elders and betters and to do what they told me. I was told not to fool around with drugs or sex. I was taught what ‘odd’ looking people looked like and I was taught to give them a wide berth.

I was discouraged from taking people on face value - yes, they may speak nicely to me and have a gentle manner but they wear the wrong ‘clothes’ or ‘show too much interest in me’ (it was considered ‘unhealthy’) - so I learned to look past the nice side I was shown and assume that darkness lurked behind every friendly smile. I was imbued with the ability to recognise the presumed character of almost anyone I might encounter, and was finally admitted to the hallowed ranks of the Grand Order of Stereotypers.

As a child, I was also schooled in the things that society, then, found to be unacceptable in the female. Such as being too sexual for example, which meant being obviously sexual. Or not being sexual enough, which meant not being bothered about how attractive one was to the opposite sex.

Women did not do things that were considered the prerogative of the male, like driving anything larger than an estate car or operating anything mechanical besides a typewriter. There was a code to become familiar with by which all decent women lived in order to be allowed to exist within the confines of society.

A male dominated society, and jealously guarded; hence the rules of admittance. Follow the rules; and as a woman, one would be allowed in. Under sufferance of course, and the rules were never to be broken. Women who broke the ‘rules’ would be ostracised. Not only by the males in society, but also by the females who had made themselves ‘acceptable’.

Maybe, as society’s ‘accepted’ females, they felt their own positions threatened by non-conformists. Perhaps they were unable to conceive of any other sort of existence for themselves outside the community that so rigidly regulated their being.

But it wouldn’t be entirely fair to blame the outdated and unfair prejudices that I have held on to on my parents.

The society they lived in all their lives was very different to the one we live in today, and it is only by disregarding the attitudes we were taught as children that has allowed it to change. I am a woman who is quite capable of thinking for myself. I make decisions about everything in my life; from what to have for dinner to what time to get up in the morning or what time to go to bed at night. I am no longer bound by the rules and dictates of my parents, so why is it that I have held on to the narrow views they acquired during their lives?

Perhaps I have only just started to consider this particular prejudice in myself and now is the right time for me to examine why I have allowed the idea to just sit in my head unchallenged.

The weeds of prejudice are sometimes too deeply embedded in the gardens of our minds for us to eradicate the strangling effect they have on the blossoms of our imaginations. But with vigilance, as soon as they poke their heads above ground, we can nip them in the bud and prevent them from infecting another generation of unsuspecting women.

I have already been infected, but I am taking something for it. I am beginning to like women for being women and not for being a male construct of a woman. So, I feel I am winning; and I believe we can all win this particular battle of the sexes just as long as we are willing to think for ourselves.

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