Well, another semester is almost finished, and I have spent the past few weeks making dolls for my research project. Yup, dolls. It all started during a classroom discussion on the way we label people. It was a very animated discussion, looking at the pros and cons of labelling, when a classmate said, very upset, that the labels were falling so thick and fast that he/she could not pick them off fast enough. Wow, what a moment!
I started to think more about our labelling tendencies, and whether or not people could subscribe to the children's verse of "sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me". As I looked around and listened to people (in real life, on the radio, in the newspapers), I realized that so many, many people are affected by their labels. How does that happen? Do they not realize that they can choose for themselves what labels to wear?
There were so many angles to view this tendency of being overwhelmed by one's label, but I finally settled on three: someone overwhelmed by labels; someone able to control what labels she wears; and someone demonstrating that the labels seen on a person (or by a person) depend very much on the observer's point of view. After my three dolls were made, I showed them to a few groups of adults and was given valuable feedback from all of them. The dolls were catalysts for discussions that shed new light on labels and gave me new lines of inquiry to follow. I'll be making some more dolls in the future on the topic of labels and identity or self-perception and hope to show them to more people. How will different groups of people respond and what new discussions will ensue from viewing my dolls?
They're all Over Me!
Sticks and Stones
Depending on Your Point of View
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