Stereotypes, Wild Girls and Grace

Stereotype: A fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing.

As a writer, I sometimes work in shorthand, to keep my characters set in my mind while I do other things with them. I can label them as “this” or “that” and more easily predict what they will do. Stereotypes can be very helpful in a culture because then a writer doesn’t have to spell everything out.

When I say Harvard professor, you may think tweed jacket with patched elbows, erudite air and liberal opinions. If I say plumber, you may think muscular man in pristine clothing, neatly dressed and thin.

Or would you?

(I would because that described Rick our plumber).

See, you have to be careful because stereotypes don’t always work.

And they really don’t work in real life.

Once when the world was young, I attended junior high school with a girl whose family had fallen onto hard times. She followed suit, and while she was smart, she hung out with the wilder side of kids in our port town. The mascara got thicker, the gum chewing intensified, the skirts rose high and language . . . she managed to stay in check in class.

I steered clear of her and my mother, a teacher at the school, watched with troubled eyes as this promising girl went down ugly paths.

One day she annouced she had become a Christian.

A young Pharisee myself, I said, “I’ll believe that when I see her in heaven.”

In my mind, she was a Wild Girl.

And she stayed that way for years and years, even as I, too, became a Christian and joined her church. We were in each other’s weddings, welcomed each other’s children and visited over long distances.

But I always, in the unspoken back of my mind, stereotyped her as a wild girl.

Even when she wasn’t.

One day I realized I had carried that image of her as a 13-year-old hurting girl, for over 20 years. Wild Girl was a wise and courageous woman of God. I needed to let that ridiculous stereotype go–especially since she had given me so much life-changing advice! So I did. There’s still a little wild girl in her, of course–the fun part, but Wise Woman is a more accurate description.

Picturing people as stereotypes gets in the way of loving them. My sister-in-law is politically and religiously about as far removed from me as you can get. She’s also brilliant, funny, charming and loyal. But it took me a long time to see that because I was so fixated on the stereotype of who she was.

I kept her at an arm’s distance for several years after she married my brother. But when she announced her pregnancy, I knew I had to set aside our profound differences and focus on what we had in common. After all, she was the mother of my niece or nephew.

When I reached out to her, she met me. I focused on motherhood, books, laughter, irony and truth. We never discussed religion or politics; we made a silent pact.

Was that wrong?

Twenty-three years later, I love my sister-in-law. I still adamently disagree with her and we rarely go near the Molotov cocktail issues. We share books, proud stories of my parent’s grandchildren, family news and irony.

It’s a rich relationship I value, though I wish she’d change her mind on . . .

All because I chose to set aside the stereotype of what I thought she was and looked for the soul, the real person, behind her eyes.

We live in a society that emphasizes stereotypes and then invites us to deride the people we’ve labeled. It’s easier that way; faster, more efficient.

As a Christian, I cannot afford to use a stereotype as shorthand in my relationships. God calls me to “love one another as I have loved you.” When Jesus stopped at the noontime well and met a woman drawing water, he knew what she was: a five times married woman shunned by her community. But Jesus stopped to really look at her, to see into her heart and soul. As the Son of God, He knew what she needed: life water, forgiveness of sin and grace.

I love to turn the prism of my point of view and try to see someone from a slightly different angle. When I do that, the stereotype changes. What I see as one person when confronted head-on, looks completely different in profile.

That’s true of the soul, as well as the body. May God grant us the grace to see past the wild girl stereotypes to the person within.

Because you never know who you’ll find waiting.