How do you present yourself?

We represent others based on looks and abilities--how they present themselves to others. You are representative of a type of person. For example, if I am a white female, 21 years old attending a University, I am representative of this dynamic, reflecting back on "my" group of people and their characteristics, so you can imagine that most people already have assumptions of such different groups based on other people they have met or seen.

Cindy was a Chinese teenager, working hard to become westernized and teach people about her culture. Through her work on the cruise ship, her bosses epitomize her as someone who is working hard to achieve her goals of being westernized. But do we really know this is the case? Cindy never says directly what she wants to do, this is just an assumption we have because most of the Chinese people on the ship seem to be doing the same thing. Cindy so desperately wanted to leave the cruise ship and attended school, but she couldn't. She was poor and without money. This compared with Jerry who lacked motivation to do much and was choosy with what he wanted to do. Jerry had the ability to attend school fine but didn't take the opportunity. In this way, both of these characters were "othered" based on their social class.

This differentiation between Cindy and Jerry is in fact a misrepresentation of who they are. In Chinese society, Cindy and the rest of the poor families are seen as people who are unmotivated, hence the social class. This compared with the middle class families, such as Jerry's, where they are portrayed as hard working individuals, making their way to the top. This, however, is not the case.
This is where misrepresentation comes into play. Societies all over the world are misrepresented because of a few selective individuals. Just because Cindy is poor does not necessarily make her unmotivated. Butler says, "subjects are formed, defined, and reproduced in accordance with the requirements of political structures," (Butler 3).

We also see a form of misrepresentation in Helen Keller. Keller is often portrayed, today, as a woman who survived the Holocaust deaf and blind. No one really gets into the details so most people are unaware of how she got through it. People with disabilities are often seen as not intelligent or coherent, and unable to function like a "normal" human being. Keller was the opposite of this. Keller was renowned for her many famous and intelligent works of her time. She broke ground and theories that no one else had ever known about. Keller was intelligent beyond her age. Despite her being deaf and blind, she was able to survive well beyond her years and invent her own form of communication, and very effectively I might add. Keller was misrepresented. If anything, her deafness and blindness made her more intelligent than we could have ever dreamed of.

This idea of misrepresentation goes far beyond these two subjects. There are millions of other examples world wide that we may not even know of. It is hard to see that how someone presents themselves can be reflected on their entire community, when this is not the case at all. We need to see people for who they are as a person, rather than a group.

-Haley Bryant-