The Subject of Stereotypes: Risk or Opportunity?

This matter has been a perennial source of debate from its conception. It touches each individual’s innate prejudices that either blurs or magnifies his or her view of people in random. Who can actually say that he or she can actually size up a person and know it to be a fact and not speculation or generalisation?

Stereotypes are borne out of prejudices and not from well-founded thought. Some are generated from inferred evidence and others, uh — from real encounters? Heehee. The latter is not a cause for us to generalise, though. That would be a tad bit unfair for the rest. The society and our culture have a lot to do with the foundation of stereotyping. So, that’s a step to understanding this particular human behaviour.

This subject first came to my attention here at Dating Dames when it was raised in the conversation a few of us had when I’d written a post about how men find women who eat sexy. It made me see how stereotyping affects the dating scene or our choices on who to date, at least.

It caught up with me yet again when I talked about the Sex and the City character, Miranda’s skinny jean fashion-turned-dating experience over at Tops 2 Bottoms when it was noticed that in the show, she kept dating geeks or geeky-looking guys. In short, she’s been pegged as the geek-magnet reasoning that compared to rest of her friends, she’s the “plain” one.

It, therefore, raised a few questions like what type of guys do plain-looking and/or geeky girls get and it further reinforces the idea that hot girls = hot guys [Which we all know is total bullocks. Heh.].

It makes me wonder, though. Just how much of our dating preferences are influenced by stereotyping? Coming from someone who thinks she’s a poor judge of character [that'd be me. hehehe.], how can you tell if you’re gaining or losing something or, better yet or worse — someone — when you do stereotype?

Or is it just a case of “whatever works”?

Personal opinion: Always give them the benefit of the doubt, you really can’t know the person by simply looking at or by trusting what other people say about him or her, don’t you agree? There’s always a reason behind everything and it’s always worth taking the risk [what's there to lose?]. What good would it do to stereotype, anyway? This other person just might surprise you. Think of it this way, he or she might be “the one”. Heehee.