Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Shrinking Under the Stare


According to Garland-Thompson, staring is an act in which the purpose is to gaze at and familiarize ourselves with an unfamiliar sight, because our brains simply love novelty. This is because we love to see new things (or at least our brains do) and be shocked by them so that eventually, the world will be so familiar and safe-looking to us that nothing will appear as jarring anymore (18-19). This I found to be enlightening because it offered an explanation to the stare that I had never heard before, something that doesn’t involve mere curiosity, voyeurism, or ridicule. We stare because we simply can’t help it; it’s something we’re hard-wired to do.

Yet our stares are regulated because of the mysterious power they can hold over others. Staring, whether we’re aware of it or not, creates a certain power relationship between the starer and staree. Starers hold power as initiators of the gaze. In being stared at, starees become objects of this gaze, drawing attention to themselves for their distinctive peculiarities. However, I’ve found that I don’t only stare in order to scope out the ugly kinds of weirdness but to admire the beautiful kinds just the same. As I’ve said before, we stare mostly to familiarize ourselves with the unknown. Nevertheless, the staree probably assumes that they elicit stares because of little idiosyncrasies that they may or may not be aware of. This is probably why mothers everywhere scold their children for staring, because it upsets the power relationship between people through the starer making the staree feel out of place, exposed, or ashamed.

This applies even more when the staree is disabled or a person whose physical appearance differs from the “norm.” When something is actually amiss with the staree, it seems, this is when it most important to “confer dignity” upon them and not bring attention to their disability or form (83). It becomes assumed that whatever disability this person has, it is a major source of insecurity and discussion over it (verbal and non-verbal) should be avoided at all costs.

Indeed, it’s pretty easy to feel like you’re doing something wrong when you’re being stared at doing everyday tasks. To this day I haven’t been able to find out why it seems that so many people are stare at me in the dining hall every Sunday morning. Although I know that people tend to stare even at perfectly ordinary things, I can’t shake the self-consciousness, all because of the power of the stare. The stare is stigmatizing, or socially discrediting as Erving Goffman says (44). After a night of socializing, it doesn’t seem too crazy to think that I’ve inadvertently done something to discredit myself. However, after reading this literature about the power of the stare I’ve come to feel as if I now have the power to defy it, knowing why stares are stared and that the shift in the power dynamic that we all feel while being stared at is mostly just in our minds.

2 comments:

  1. "It becomes assumed that whatever disability this person has, it is a major source of insecurity and discussion over it (verbal and non-verbal) should be avoided at all costs."

    This. In an effort to be "proper" we don't talk about what we see. How can we create a dialogue, and maybe even a language, surrounding how we approach difference? If someone is disabled, do we stare and ignore, or stare and talk? If we talk, what the hell do we say? It's all so politicized and creates a barrier between "us" and "them". If we can't figure out how to talk about what we all notice as "unlike me", then how will we ever become equals?

    So. much. thinking.

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  2. A line that stood out to me is where you said you do not stare to scope out the ugly people but you look at the beautiful people. I can find myself gazing at "beautiful people" for hours (facebook has only advanced my obsession). This is not easy to admit and I also thought that it was not natural to gaze so intently at beautiful things. Read the book and blog has made me more comfortable in publicly recognizing my gaze of beauty. What may still cripple my comfort zone is how it is still insisted to not be "proper" to stare.

    When it comes to people who are disabled, I think people being told NOT to talk about it, makes it a skeptical in and of itself. I think we bring attention upon disability when were are hushed and told not to stare. If there was no oddity of being different there would be no reason to be insecure. I do not know how to even go about normalize the image of disabled persons because of the stigmas that are so solidly attached to them.

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