The issue with stereotyping

I always found the issue of perception amusing, especially the way people relate themselves to a stereotype.

For example, in AAL or AALT2 's blog, they never created a list of Ah Lians (ALs for short), they merely came up with a list of AL like traits.
1. The compulsion to use Twit or really bad English
- So far, all the AL blogs that I visited usually demonstrate really, really bad English. They tend to spell “rebond” as “reborn” as a trend, and the sentence structure and grammar were tragic. There are no attempts to form proper sentence structures and they demonstrate very little thoughts about their surrounds. Their entries are normally to do with their daily activities and quarrels with their boyfriends. (Nothing wrong with that, but it gets boring…)
2. Their almost-identical physical appearances:
a. bad dress sense
-usually mini shorts/ skinnies and tight tops
b. rebonded hair
- which branches into the China-doll or layered cut
3. Their character issues:
a. tendency to spout expletives thoughtlessly, with no regard for whether or not the situation calls for it
-I think this is just plain crude and ugly
b. extremely high self-esteem externally
-they prefer to believe that people stare at them out of jealousy rather than curiosity
c. very insecure internally
-I noticed how they tend to be very emotionally needy, that’s where the concept of “must-have-a-boyfriend” and “must-accrue-as-many-gans-and-jie/meis”. For some reason, they gain security in groups. In a sense, I would conclude that they lack individuality.
d. very aggressive
- I have no idea why a lot of ALs like to challenge AAL and AALT2 to meet them out for an all out brawl with their “gans” and what not.
e. defiant and arrogant
-I’ve never met people who are more certain of their infallibility.
f. the need to act cute& cam-whoring
-I think they take the need to act cute a bit too far, from photoshop-ing their eyes to achieve the “hamtaro-look”, to the artificial dimpling (by stuffing a finger into their cheek), etc
** Please note that these are my personal comments.

Recently, someone did ask this question (along this line) on AALT2’s tagboard “I have some of these traits, am I an AL?” Well, all I can say is, it depends. Do you think you are an AL? Do others think you are an AL? If it’s a common consensus, than I guess you’re an AL.

There has never been a list of AL names on either of the Anti-Ah-Lian blogs, but yet, there are people who post comments like “how dare you talk about me”, “who are you to criticize Ah Lians”, etc. And Evone brought up this question “what if I don’t want to be stereotyped as an AL?” I would like to explore the concept of stereotyping.

Stereotypes have occurred since the dawn of time. It probably started for social, economic and biological reasons. By creating different social groups, people could prioritize who to best share their resources with. It is hypothesized that people would favor family members first, especially young healthy members who are capable of procreating the next generation. In terms of the community, stereotyping was a form of protection. People in the “In-group” would share their resources with each other whereas those people deemed to be in the “Out-group” would be helped if the resources would more than sufficient for “in-group” members. “In-group” members normally share a genetic link, common social identity, religion, etc.

Evone was probably more upset about being stereotyped in a negative social group. Even then, stereotypes are relatively porous in nature. There are many sub-groups and sub-definitions. There are educated-ALs, vulgar-ALs, bimbotic-ALs, etc. As a result, there is no way of properly defining what it takes to be an AL. It’s a subjective definition and interpretation. It is different from an Ethnic stereotype where there is a proper definition based on shared identity, tradition and genetic factors. Hence, I would conclude that stereotypes are dependent on the perception of the self and the perception of others. The census determines your place in society.