Labels. They're good things, really, but I find that they're
terribly misunderstood little creatures. My generation of young adults,
especially, has lost a lot of respect for them. Yet, insofar as we humans need
labels to go about living, they haven't disappeared. They hang about in every
aspect of society, quite piously going about the now-thankless chore of calling
a thing a thing, because where there exists any sort of community, there labels
are bound to be.
Allow me an explanatory tangent. As a not always proud, but
rather consistent member of the Internet "FanFiction" community, I've
always found myself rather stymied at the absolute hatred people of my
generation and younger in this community seem to hold for labels. In middle
school, before I discovered the wonders of the PageDown key, I read through
quite a bit of the copypasta mess that usually composes a teenager's Fanfiction
profile. Amidst the condemnations of this or that social or political
persuasion, lists of "secret names" that people created by combining
the third letter of their middle name with the name of their pet goldfish, and
other odds and ends, I had at least a 45% chance of finding a list of common
conceptions and misconceptions about people, which ran in the form of bullet-points
reading "I'm [BLANK], so I MUST be [BLANK]". The first blank was
usually an objective statement about a particular trait: I'm ASIAN, I'm
OVERWEIGHT, I'm SINGLE, I'm PAGAN, I'm in THEATRE. The second blank was a
(typically unflattering) popular assumption about that trait: ugliness, nerdiness,
naivety, lack of self-control. The bullet point that generally came at the end
of the list read "I'm a PERSON, so I MUST be LABELED."
In a way, I understand this desire to avoid labels. I belong
to the same generation, the just-barely-pretending-to-be-adults who grew up
surrounded by dirty politicians and misleading advertisements and grown-ups who
fed us egotistical lies about what we were and how we should live our lives in
a misguided effort to help. We were taught from the cradle to seek genuineness,
and we can't seem to find it anywhere.
But guess what? We'll never find it, never be able to express it, without labels.
To give the most appropriate definition of the word label,
from Merriam-Webster Online, it is "a word or phrase that describes or
identifies something or someone."
Your names, any and all of them, are labels. Your college
major is a label. Your job title is a label. Your age, your eye color, your
handedness, your religious beliefs, your preference of dogs over cats, are all
labels. That you have them is a good thing.
Perhaps we've lost so much respect for labels because we
think of labels as belonging only to things, like the sticker that goes on a
peanut butter jar. This only illustrates my point. I, myself am not a fan of
peanut butter, and while I still have to deny to some of my friends that this
indicates disorder in my soul, I think they would agree with how rightly miffed
I would be if someone gave me a jar of peanut butter that was labeled 'Hazelnut
Spread'. People in communities use labels to identify everything around them,
including other people. If you admit to having an identity, then you'd better
have a label. Without one, you can't communicate your identity to others.
This is why I find the critique of labels unconvincing and
foolish, especially coming from people who claim to be authors. An author, by
definition, engages in the high and profound act of human communication. How
can you illustrate for your readers the identity of your heroes, without
labeling them? How can you explain their vocations, their values, their
feelings and opinions, without labeling them? You can't.
Now, if it is improper
labeling that offends you so much, I can agree. Just as I would much rather
not slather my bagel with peanut butter because I have a jar of peanut butter
that says "Hazelnut Spread" on it, I would also not like to call a
character Whitney or Martin or Goemethris* who by all rights ought to be called
John. But this doesn't make Whitney, or Martin, or Goemethris bad labels in and
of themselves. They are simply labels that cannot be owned by my character
called John.
What I really think the teens online are protesting is a
misguided reliance on stereotypes. tereotypes are really a subset of labeling, in which one type of label is,
rightly or wrongly, always associated with a certain group of other labels. But
this is getting long, and I can talk about stereotypes another time.
In brief, labels, when used properly to describe truth, must
command the utmost respect.
End Part 1
* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FD1hrZBXKjk
(The relevant bit occurs at about 2:30)
(The relevant bit occurs at about 2:30)
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