Have you ever been told that someone’s first impression of you is that you’re ‘dumb’ just because your hair colour is blonde? Have you ever noticed someone crossing the street because you’re wearing a hoodie and you have tattoos? Or how about my all-time favourite, you’re tall, you must have played basketball in school. Prejudice is an attitude (usually negative) (McLeod, 2018). No, I don’t mean in ‘brat’ way, I mean it is a distinctive attitude which is made up of 3 different components- Affective (Our feelings and emotions)- Behavioural (The influence on behaviour) -Cognitive (Our belief). In short terms, we can call this ABC. Let me break it down for you in the eyes of a troll (I bet they are green),
A- I don’t like people who post provocative images
B- I will comment and tell this person my thoughts
C- I believe girls act this way for attention
Now my opinion,
A- I like to express myself through my body
B- I will do this by sharing my photos to promote self-love
C- I believe that empowerment comes from confidence
It is simply a preconceived opinion
The literature of this blog is all about the prejudice against people who promote self-love.
Now let’s think… Why do you wear the clothes you wear? The shoes? Should a tall girl just not wear heels because she already has height? Absolutely not. You wear them because you like them, it empowers you, it allows you to express yourself and show individuality. Unfortunately, this exposes us to people’s opinions and sometimes people can be mean.
A few years ago, I constantly found that I was always comparing myself to other girls. Not through personality but through looks. Looks have been seen to play a big part in your life. I’ll be honest with you, not only am I what you’d call tall for a girl, I used to be underweight and I had the biggest stick-out ears. I can just imagine your image of me in your head right now. That’s okay because that’s how I used to see myself. Just because they were my physical features, doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with them, they just didn’t make me feel confident. I was so done with feeling the way I did that I found my ‘MoJordie’ as I call it (the name being Jordie) and did what I could to feel more myself. I am now embracing my height, I am a comfortable weight and I decided when I was 17 to have plastic surgery to pin back my ears. I’ve never really opened up about how insecure I used to be because I used it to grow. Now I thrive in confidence. I’ve always been aware of my emotions and tried to use them to inspire others that have been where I used to be.
There have been many occasions where I have been a victim of discrimination when it comes to self-love. I am no longer ashamed to express myself, it has taken me a long time to change from who I used to be- an insecure girl who wouldn’t even leave her house unless I had to, into someone who just travelled the world alone. Sometimes to express myself means to sit in my yoga clothes, eat all the chocolate in the world and write. Yet sometimes it is to wear a more revealing outfit, maybe that’s a mini skirt or maybe even a tank top with no bra. Embracing your sex becomes powerful and therefor can threaten those with little self-confidence. A huge influencer and entrepreneur for myself is Emily Ratajkowski. Her self-concept and use of confidence in her body to promote feminism is so empowering. After receiving a handful of negativities from her part in the music video for ‘Blurred Lines’, Emily came more in the spotlight, she quickly detracted the concept of stereotyping by self-promoting and in her words to let the ‘preconceptions be damned’.
This prejudice is primarily down to stereotyping. Stereotyping is labelling a specific group/person due to an over-generalized belief (McLeod, 2015). Comments on someone’s post such as ‘you’re a slut’ create a negative response. This is just one of the ways that Instagram has negatively impacted society. With Instagram’s user growth, the platform now holds over 1Billion users (Constine, 2018). Not only have we seen a rise in account activations but an increase in anxiety, loss of self-worth and sadly in some cases suicide. With the horrifying figures, 70% of 18-24-year olds would consider getting plastic surgery (how terrifying is that) and 9 out of 10 girls are unhappy with their body (found on the NHS website). So how much of this is down to the ‘trolls’ (online users that post offensive comments to cause a negative response)? Trolls merely project their lack of self-concept to discriminate and create an image of which they perceive another person. Eventually, after someone is repeatedly discriminated against, it starts to become someone’s reality. This as a theory is called ‘the self-fulfilling prophecy’. It is when a person has been set expectations to behave in a certain way which in turn becomes true. Social media should a place where we can be ourselves and even promote body positivity instead of leaving us open to the experience of prejudice. This caused a division between the trolls and the posting user. This in psychology terms can be best describes as the ‘in-group’ and ‘out-group’. With the ‘in-group’ being the trolls, once one person starts to discriminate it makes it easier for people to conform and become a part of the group making it easy to distinguish someone in the ‘out-group’- the victim. The ‘social identity theory’ describes the out-groups as the people who discriminate to boost their self-image. Your choices do not need to be justified unless you are causing harm to yourself for another.
Just think about one thing before you comment, if you saw your younger self standing in front of you, would you call yourself nasty names then? Or how about your child?
Be more you. Because you are freaking awesome. I am Jordie and I love being me.
Tell me about a time you feel you may have been a victim of prejudice.
Who is your role model?
If you could tell your younger self something, what would it be?
REFERENCES-
Constine, J. (2018, June). Instagram hits 1 billion monthly users, up from 800M in september. Retrieved from techcrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/20/instagram-1-billion-users/
McLeod, S. A. (2008). Prejudice and discrimination. Retrieved from https://www.simplypsychology.org/prejudice.html
McLeod, S. A. (2015, Oct 24). Stereotypes. Simply Psychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/katz-braly.html
Preconceptions be damned 
Amazing Blog Jordie!
Being blonde I’m often made to feel inferior to people in the ‘in-group’ and I am often referred to as dumb! I tried to become part of this group and dyed my hair… I soon realised that this wasn’t me and decided that I should love myself how who I am. I may not be perfect but that’s what makes me, me!
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Lovely blogging and because I’ve had the honor to know you, you are amazing as well.
I like tall girls, usually they are connected with super models. And I’ve always found myself a bit short and when I was younger and so well self – determined, my high hills were a part of myself every day, all the time. But now I think that who doesn’t like me, hasn’t got a good taste 😂.
However people can always find a reason to judge the others in one or another way. I think that you are on the right direction, as you followed this lady who’s been teaching you and influencing you how to become more confident. You are beautiful and smart, nobody can’t take your skills and your abilities. People can only be jealous. And the only recepie for that is to ignore them.
Thank you for the great reading!
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Very interesting read Jordie. I particularly like the part about judging yourself on looks as a pose to personality with other women. I used to be exactly the same but as I became old realised everybody has their own look and you have to just appreciate the way you look yourself. I think a massive part in the way in which girls impartially see themselves is social media. We see those girls who have had surgery, face lifts, Botox etc and we persevere that as “normal”. In this day and age this is the majority of what we see as woman as it it publishes everywhere. Women with incredible bodies all over social media, TV, magazines and unfortunately it makes women feel insecure about their looks and figure. Self love is what all women need and too appreciate the way we look, our figures and our own personal lives. I also strongly agree with you do not need too justify yourself to anybody, we are all our own person.
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Great blog!!
This is so true so much pressure from social media and the more these youngsters are expossed to it the more it will become the norm. Filters avilable on all apps these days means you can chnage your looks at any given time to help perceive the ideal self knky promotimg the
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Only promoting the fake unrealistic version. If i could tell myself anything when i was younger and impressionable it would be that self worth and esstem is an inner battle. That people can influance these things but over all its internal. Wanting to educate the young and showing them the real truth in a way they would listen.
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Only promoting the fake unrealistic version. If i could tell myself anything when i was younger and impressionable it would be that self worth and esstem is an inner battle. That people can influance these things but over all its internal. Wanting to educate the young and showing them the real truth in a way they would listen.
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As the title straight away points out, this blog is based around prejudice. The mention of prejudice being a preconception of what people think is laid out when assuming tall people play basketball or that blondes are dumber than women with different hair colour as this has always been the notion. This is all what society is grown up with and has been shown via press, media etc. A mention of discrimination is in the blog when you talk about self-love. It shows that because of the way you are and how you express yourself others saw you in a negative light and decided to comment in a way that could be unjust towards you. As we go deeper into the blog there is a part where you mention your physical appearance being judged. This is most likely because of social cognition, when people think the way they do it is to do with how their attitudes to certain looks are. We stereotype physical attributes causing us to be judgemental towards appearances. The theory you mentioned; ‘self-fulfilling prophecy,’ goes well with your blog. As you mention the effects of social media and how it has an influence on people. Social media is then putting out certain messages that make you think you should be behaving in a certain way and this then later becomes true. This then becomes a vicious cycle. Also, if you are not a part of an in group then this can then make you feel left out and in turn making you feel inferior. When it comes to social psychology your blog is a good link to how prejudice attitudes can have dangerous consequences to a person’s self-esteem.
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Really interesting blog, can relate to the self-fulfilling prophecy theory described; growing up in Blackburn (a seriously deprived borough) and in the Mill Hill area I knew lads who lived on some of the more “ropey” estates, even at primary school age my mother didn’t want me playing with them (despite me attending school with them) actively saying they were “no good” because of where they were from (itself a very prejudiced attitude to take), being 7 I thought this was frankly a daft reason not to play with my mates and promptly ignored her. Moving through primary and secondary school with some of them, and still living near the remainder, I saw a good percentage of these lads descend into lives of petty and/or serious crime, drug abuse and what I suppose you’d describe as general loutishness and I’ve always wondered what pushed them in that direction, what other levels of prejudice did they face simply because of the area they live? If a school friends mum can be so dismissive of them at such a young age, what other negative attitudes did they face? I’ve worked for companies previously and been instructed not to hire people from certain geographic areas based on the generalisation that no one from these places can be trusted! I feel that that sort of discriminatory attitude backs people in a corner and can leave them with no choice but slide into a lifestyle they had always been told they would live
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It is so bizarre that we can be from the same place yet grow to be different people and I think that’s down to not conforming to the Self fulfilling prophecy. People will easily predict where we end up due to the place we live or the people we surround ourself with. I also grew up in Mill Hill so I can really relate to what you’re talking about with the negative attitudes of the estates. I remember being around 14 years old and I would cry in fear when my mum would ask me to go the the corner shop because of the prejudice they fed us. I was scared of something that I didn’t know nothing about. This was solely down to monkey see- monkey do. Or in psychological terms it can be best described as Social learning theory. We are learning from other people and in this case it’s our parents. Our role models. We are taking the opinions of someone else and making them our own because that’s all that we know. We are blind to our own minds and thats maybe because we are yet to experience the real world. Relating it back to my blog post. I think once we have found that true self love, we can be confident in our own opinions and not be scared to make our own decisions. Thank you for your openness and comment.
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