Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Uncivilized Staring?


Staring serves a very important role in society. Looking at someone is necessary for human interactions to take place. It helps to dictate a person’s actions in relation to others. "To behave toward unknown others effectively and ethically, we need to gather information about them. We use their appearance as clues to who they are and how to relate to them. What you look like, rather than who you are, often determines how people respond to you" (Staring, 34).



Historically, individuals have been able to display who they are and how they are to be treated by others through their self-presentation. Dress was, and still is, a main way people gather information about others. Royals could be identified by their crowns, robes, and jewels; slaves could be identified by their raggedy clothing; military personnel can be identified by their uniforms, etc. Being able to differentiate these individuals in these groups from the other was essential to maintain proper social proprieties. Confusing a slave with a member of the royal family would be a disgraceful mistake, and without clear visual cues to inform a person who was who the mix up could certainly happen if a slave and a royal not visually distinguishable. For instance, if both royal and slave were placed in the same room together and an outsider was instructed to greet the royalty in the proper fashion and ask the slave for a glass of water asking the wrong question to the wrong person might have some dangerous consequences.


In today’s society, people live in a day to day world that involves the encountering of countless strangers. Staring is a tool to help people navigate this world of unknown people. Part of this is done for self-protection. "We need to determine whether the strangers we encounter are going to help us, mug us, bother us, see us again, or just leave us alone," (34). A person’s visual presentation allows us to make these assumptions. "Intricate visual codes such as costuming, insignia, behavior, expression, and comportment -not to mention race, gender, age, size, and visible disabilities -converge to create conclusions about strangers" (34).


The difficulty is that while staring is a vital part of social interactions, to be caught starring is not acceptable. This balance is hard to maintain and undoubtedly is why so many looks and glances at other people are done hesitantly and surreptitiously. In times where maintaining strict social class structures and proper manners and modes of behavior, presenting oneself as a “gentleman” was of the upmost importance. "Genteel refinement required scrupulous governance of expressiveness" (69) and this meant a governing of eye movement (i.e. making eye contact, staring at others, etc.). "Loss of self-governance was projected onto the lower classes,"(69). Upper class men asserted the existence of their better character than the lower classes through their capacities of self-control.


In the book Fat Shame, which explores the stigma attached to fat bodies, the author Amy Ferrell suggests overweight individuals are looked down upon because they are seen by others as being lazy and lacking in the self-control to manage their urges to eat. Their inability to maintain an “acceptable” physical appearance for others deems them uncivilized and less valuable to society. “To become fat….meant that one had moved down –had degraded –on the scale of civilization,” (Fat Shame, 64).


Likewise, the act of staring is also a result of lack of self-control. "Staring is a failure of will over the flesh" (Staring, 69). It is because of this very implication that makes being caught staring at someone negative. For both the staree and the starer because it means they are both exhibiting failures of self-control. "Sharing shamefully bares a staree's peculiarities to the prying eyes of a stranger at the same time that it shamefully exposes a starer's intractable curiosity.....both starer and staree have failed to properly control themselves....violates the civilizing process" (71).


In Fat Shame, to become fat meant you had moved down the civilization scale. In Staring, to become a spectacle to the eye, something that catching baroque staring, also means one has moved down on the civilization spectrum. So are those who stare uncivilized? But if staring is such a integral part of human interactions how can it be seen as an uncultured demonstration?

1 comment:

  1. Rachel, I really like how you incorporated the civility of both Fat Shame and Staring into your blog. I noticed that Garland-Thompson mentioned that staring as uncivilized as well. In response to your question, I do think that people who stare are considered uncivilized by society, but only if they are caught. It is not a correct assumption, but society can be harsh. Since we are taught not to stare, those who do are seen as either unable to control themselves or rude. However, staring is harder to notice and therefore punish the starer than body size. Some one might look at you "the wrong way" and you might treat them differently because of it, but the vast majority of the time there's no reason to stare. We stare because something is out of the ordinary and we're trying to understand it. By definition, staring at something unusual is not going to happen every day. Because of this, starers are more accepted into society since most of the time they are visually 'normal' so people are unable to tell that they stare. I think that staring is seen as uncultured because it is a primal instinct. And in order to be seen as civilized we must be able to control out bodies, but sometimes we just can't help it.

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