Do you ever get annoyed when you find you conform to a stereotype?

I've taken up tailoring as a hobby, but it often takes me multiple tries to line the fabric up so that everything faces the right way after it's turned inside-out. I've had to rip seams out so many times because I attached things with the raw seams on the outside, or the pockets facing the wrong way, or I've sewn the wrong edges together completely. My dumb girly brain is so bad at rotational symmetry I can't even handle a dumb girly thing like sewing. Gah.

But, Kea, at the same time you're confirming the stereotype of being bad at rotational symmetry, you're flouting the stereotype of being good at sewing! So, break even?

I tried sewing once and I was terrible at it. Since I'm a man, would that mean I'm conforming to the stereotype of men being bad at household chores?

Also the fact that you tried it once and then gave up.

I don't see anything exceptional, if you fit the stereotype of your demographic in a couple of issues. Even if there is no connection between stereotype and demographic, there are bound to be a couple of hits for statistical reasons.

If you would fit all stereotypes of your demographics, and none of other demographics, that might be something different.

The thread made me wonder though, if some frills on fashionable clothes could be explained as bad rotational symmetry of the designer, and declaring the result a feature, rather then a bug.

Stereotypes exist for a reason.

Yes, but usually bad reasons. Men usually score better on spatial reasoning tests than women, but not by much. I've read the effect gets exaggerated if you first say it's a good skill for things like piloting, which is kind of the image most people already have, and reversed if you say it's good for things like flower arranging. In other words, the stereotype is probably not based on some inherent property of real people, so much as real people end up being influenced by it.

That's not even to mention the kind of things that come from only meeting one representative of a group, and assuming they're all like that one. I don't think I have ever met a single Chinese person with the kind of teeth you see in old cartoons, or seen them in any of the older portraits. What possible reason was there for that to be the racial stereotype? But I guess this is veering out of General Chat.

When I was in high school I knew a foreign exchange from Thailand who had teeth like an Escher painting of a bear trap. Seriously, when I first met the guy I had the distinct impression that you could have used those teeth to chop wood. I'm not saying I believe all people from Thailand have teeth like that, but this one certainly did.

I strongly expect that the spread of effective dentistry had a melioritive effect on the dentition of Chinese people, just like with everyone else.

Ok, I expect it did on the people. But on old photographs and centuries of paintings?

Heh, you make me wonder the same thing myself. There are garments sold in shops that I cannot even figure out how you're supposed to wear. Ironically, my deep and abiding hatred of frills is the reason why I've taken up tailoring. You wouldn't believe how hard it is to find a garment without sequins, frills, ruffles, beads, cheesy images, Engrish slogans, bows, strange flaps of material or inexplicably placed slits, pleats or ruching. Maybe the clothing designers did sew things together wrong and decided they liked it better that way.


Yeah, pretty much. You actually need pretty good spatial reasoning skills to fit a 2-D material over a 3-D form. Try to reverse-engineer your trousers. Take a look at them and try to figure out how many separate pieces of material were required to make them, what shape they are, how they were attached, and in what order. Including the fiddly bits like pockets and zippers. It's not that easy. Sewing does not deserve a reputation for being a fluffy unintelligent pursuit.

And thus we find the answer to the age old question of why JRPG characters look like they survived an explosion in a tailor's shop.

A) yes, your main point that negative stereotypes were exaggerated in the west is true, and this encompassed bad teeth on Chinese people... but...

B) The chinese people most westerners met were those who left China because they had a really rough time of it. Such people could easily have worse teeth than average, and

C) centuries of paintings would tend to be of people well above average, and tend to flatter them as well.

Not all pictures are meant to be flattering, so you'd expect some exceptions. I was going to use the many photos of Chinese railroad workers as an example, since they are obviously neither privileged nor exaggerated...but I couldn't find any where one is smiling. :/ But I could turn it around: beyond guessing that the stereotype must exist for some reason, is there anything to show that buckteeth were ever remotely common on any Chinese people? Or I could leave it, because in truth, it's only one example.

In my limited and anecdotal experience, it's quite common for Chinese people to grow teeth too big to line up straight in our mouths. I had buck teeth as a kid, and in high school my orthodontist removed four premolars to create extra room for the rest of them. My best friend in high school had enormous rabbit teeth, and got braces as an adult. Of course, it's not as if all, or even a majority of us have this characteristic.

Huh. I Googled it and apparently there's something called "Sinodonty". It's a genetic characteristic found in Asian and Native American populations. One of the features of this is shovel-shaped incisors, meaning that they look like this at the back. *Feels inside mouth* Heh. I have them. Supposedly they're also meant to be angled inwards, but thanks to braces, they don't do that anymore (if they ever did, which I can't remember).

Editing to add: I asked Ngau to check and he has White People Teeth. Except one.