Stereotypes and You.

Every once in a while, someone makes a list of stereotypical girlfriend/boyfriends. I did so myself.  But this is not about the stereotypes, but about you.

You see, when you think someone is athletic, you really mean more athletic than you are.  Chances are pretty good that they know people more athletic than themselves and they think they are just 'normal'.   Worse, that person usually knows someone more athletic than they are.  This keeps going till you hit professional sports.

So when someone makes  a list of stereotypes, what we are actually saying are things we are not.

The list I looked at most recently had:

• athletic date
• dumb date
• party date
• geeky date
• conservative with a secret kinky side date
• superior date (who will dump you)

This says more about what the average single person thinks about themselves than about the people we date.  In general, we think we are less athletic, fairly smart, not a party animal, not geeky, less kinky and less outwardly conservative, and finally has a bit of an inferiority complex.

More importantly, we are ourselves sometimes get those stereotypes.  I have had women think I am the athletic date (trapeze), the party date (tango dancing every night), the geeky date, and even the conservative guy with a secret kinky side.  I don't think anyone has ever thought me the dumb guy or the 'better than you date


But that's not the whole story.  Consider the reverse stereotypes:

• couch potato
• genius
• workaholic
• anti-geek  (we really need a word meaning the opposite of geek) 
• liberal with a secret conservative side
• inferior date.

But note how hard it was for me to come up with appropriate words for many of these categories.  I don't really mean couch potato - or lazy for example.  Instead I mean someone that does not like to do sports but does do normal amounts of work.   The anti-geek is the worst one.   There are people out there that are very anti-geek and we need a word for them.  You know the type - the girl that won't date a guy because he is a professional magic the gathering player   (source)

The words I used, with the exception of superior/inferior and dumb/genius are not really opposites.  Because we think of the qualities I am attempting to describe as 'normal', and therefore not worth giving a different label.

I think that is a problem.  Normal is not what most of us wants.  If it were, we could find it.    We want exceptional.   We want extraordinary.  We want more than just normal.  Often what we want more of is not the classic stereotype.  Those tend to be things we laugh at/dislike- that is how they became stereotypes.