Category Archives: Stereotypes/Blason Populaire

St. Patrick’s Day – holiday practices

Text:

KT: “So St. Patrick’s Day is definitely a holiday. It’s a pretty popular holiday in the US and think in Ireland now too, but we celebrate it more traditionally American maybe. We [her family] usually try to go to mass. Sometimes it’s hard for you guys [her kids] because of school, but I always try to go if I can. It’s a Holy Day of Obligation, so technically you are required to go to mass. We also always wear green of some kind. I still jokingly pinch people if they aren’t in green, especially if they come to my house for dinner, they know better. St. Patrick’s Day is always during Lent, so when it falls on a Friday in Lent, it’s nice because there is no fasting on St. Patrick’s Day. We usually have dinner with the whole family. As you know, me, your grandmother, and your aunt always make corned beef, cabbage, and boiled potatoes. There’s also usually lots of good drinking going on too.”

Me: “Why do you make those dishes specifically?”

KT: “It’s what my family has always had. I mean even growing up that what’s we had. I know it’s a pretty cheap dish, which my family was pretty poor growing up, so it was kind a cheap meal, but still special. I mean it’s pretty famously what you eat on St. Patrick’s Day, but I think it had something to do with when all the poor Irish immigrants fled to America, it was what they could afford to celebrate with. Your dad and his family never celebrated much when he was little, so it’s pretty much the meal now. I like to keep the traditions the same.”

Me: “Did you ever go to bars to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day?”

KT: “Probably when I was younger. When I lived in New York I could barely afford to fly home for Christmas and such, so me and your dad usually celebrated with friends in the city. I’m sure we went out to bars and stuff, as young people do, but it was always more of a religious and family centered holiday when I was growing up. We also watched the parade when we [KT and her husband] lived in the city, but we don’t really do that so much now. I didn’t really do it when I was younger either. As you know, now we obviously celebrate at home with a big family [aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, etc.] dinner.”

Context:

KT is a 59 year old from California. She is from Irish descent, as well as Catholic. Therefore, for her St. Patrick’s Day is both a cultural holiday practice and a religious holiday practice. I gathered this information in an interview that I recorded and then transcribed.

Analysis:

St. Patrick is an interesting holiday because its many different practices hold many different origins. Most of the practices were popularized by Irish immigrants in the United States, rather than in Ireland. For example, corned beef and cabbage is a distinctly American custom that was started by Irish immigrants, which now serves a traditional St. Patrick’s Day meal. However, some aspects of the holiday practice, especially when religious in nature, stem from Ireland, such as going to mass to celebrate the patron saint of Ireland, St. Patrick, on his feast day. Feast days celebrates and venerates saints, usually on the day the died. The practice of St. Patrick’s in the United States developed to celebrate Irish culture. It is an interesting case of acculturation, as many traditional ways of celebration have been forgone and the more commercial aspects, such as parades, dyeing the river green, and bar crawls have overtaken to become what the holiday is popularly known for. In many ways, the holiday has become a sort of tourist attraction to Irish culture, one that is usually incorrect, a parody of, or an over exaggeration. Even so, for people from Irish or Catholic cultures, this day is often celebrated differently from the masses in order to give proper fidelity or honor to the cultural/religious holiday. While it is still a day of celebration, it is centered around family and worship, rather than parades or drinking. Therefore, the holiday practice varies widely based on the person who is celebrating because the cultural/religious holiday has become widely popularized and commercialized.

Don’t Pass a Penny on the Street

Text:

ME: that sort of thing might incur bad luck? That you believe genuinely

L: so to be honest I’m not a very like superstitious person, however I definitely have some like things that have been passed down in my family. Umm that like I still kinda like, even though I don’t like “believe it” believe it, I always will like follow it because its just kinda part of our family and my heritage. Especially like umm, for example, I have a really big one– and I know it’s such a stereotype, but like my great grandfather uhh, was jewish and he like loved through the great depression, had a very very poor family. And I’ve heard this is a Jewish stereotype, but I’ve like learned from him, our family has like learned down through the generations, that if you like, for example, see a penny on the street you always no matter what pick it up. Because wasting money is like is such horrible luck. And like if if you know, if the universe gives you the gift of like finding a like a penny on the street you take it and then you like think about your family. So that’s a big one that I learned from my mom 

ME: so passing it would incur bad luck upon you?

L: uhh yes…

ME: or is..?

L: – no that’s part of it, but like yeah it’s bad luck because, it’s about like appreciation for money and appreciation for like being given things.

ME: clarifying: you learned that from…?

L: I learned that from my mother who learned that from her grandfather who is Jewish, yeah. And I think that is like a wider Jewish thing. I’ve heard that

ME: thank you

Context:

This superstition was shared with me by a friend after going grocery shopping together when we sat in my bedroom to do schoolwork together.

L is a Jewish-American USC student studying sociology who grew up in Colorado.

Analysis:

L attributes this superstition to a respect for money and for good fortune. I think this makes sense, especially with the origin of the practice L describes: her great-grandfather growing up poor during the great depression.

The Mud Lady

Text: “In my town, there was a woman we called, the mud lady. She was a homeless woman, who wore so much makeup that it made kids scared of her and made it look like she was covered in mud. Even our parents would tell us to stay away from her whenever we went into town. If she was on the same side of the street as you, you would cross the street so you didn’t have to pass her. Everyone had different conspiracies of how she became the mud lady. I remember one kid said that she would steal people’s dogs, kill them, and bury them in the mud near the lake, others stated that she’ll stab you if you walk by her. Whenever you did walk by her, she had a very scary smile, every time. It didn’t look like a friendly smile, it looked like a psychopathic smile. Looking back on it now, she was just a poor old homeless woman trying to live her life. However, it was kids being kids, making up stories about her that had no factual evidence. I don’t believe she ever did anything bad, but as a kid, I was terrified of her.” – Informant

Context: The informant is from a small suburb in New Jersey, that probably didn’t have many homeless people, most likely why these stories were made up about her. The informant was about 10, and he would see the mud lady almost on a daily basis. This woman did make him very aware of his surroundings, starting as a child and even the parents of these children told them to stay away from her.

Analysis: This is definitely an interesting piece of folklore because although this woman never did anything truly bad, it was the conspiracy theories made up about her that truly made her scary. I think this is definitely something that occurs in small suburbs with little homeless populations because even in my town, there was this one homeless man named Joe who was the kindest man ever. But as a kid, all of us were told to stay away from him and we would gossip about potential stories of his life. One was that he comes from a very wealthy family but did so many drugs that he refuses to live a life where he isn’t homeless. Someone said that his parents offered him money but he refused to take it. We were told to always stay away from him, but as we grew up, we realized Joe was no threat. He was a homeless man just trying to live his life, without any harm to others. It is also upsetting that as children, we use the stereotype that a homeless person is dangerous or on drugs, when in reality they are just trying to live their lives.

Phrase: “A Senior is Half a Teacher”

Text: “一个学长,半个老师”
Pinyin (Simplified): yi ge xue zhang, ban ge lao shi
Translation: One senior is half a teacher.

Context:
N is a junior at USC, majoring in Communications. N is an international student from China, Anhui Province. When N was a high school student, he was in a soccer team on campus which is the community he refers to in this phrase.
N: “There’s this sort of tradition, more like a phrase. The phrase is ‘一个学长,半个老师’ (yi ge xue zhang, ban ge lao shi). It’s like, ‘a senior is equal half a teacher, or half a coach. It’s part of a tradition in my soccer team when a junior would just, like, make the freshmen do whatever they want them to do. That’s just a tradition, I guess.”
Is that like a criticism of experience?
N: “I think it’s because in China, the people who go to sports, they don’t need to have really good grades. They just go to high school or college with their sports, they just go to practice. They’re more like a street gang, like a clique. So, because they’re bad, they want to control the people who are new.”

Interpretation:
This phrase is circulated throughout the students. It isn’t a proverb which relays some form of wisdom or life lesson to the listener and it is also not a joke, as there is no humor behind the reality of the statement. It observes a complex power dynamic and metaphorically summarizes it in a concise way, likely as a call to how unfair such a hierarchy is and an acknowledge about the inevitability of its insistence in the school system. It’s a stereotype of athletes at this school widely known and accepted by the students, a blason populaire of this community of soccer players. Such speech is usually created by an external audience, the students who are not in the soccer team themselves but are familiar with it. When asked why the juniors bully the lower classmen, the answer could be this phrase. It is a lighthearted observation of the corruption and power play at school and its unfair treatment of the students, so much so that N associates this phrase with his specific team. Simultaneously, it encourages no revolt against such a system, already knowing full well the impossibility of change that could come from speaking up. This acceptance adds to the stereotype, almost perpetuating its truth.

“Hen-pecked”

1. Text (folk metaphor)

“Hen-pecked”

2. Context 

My informant heard this phrase often from her grandmother. They were born and raised in the south, Louisiana specifically, before moving to Texas. She recalls an old saying that states that you don’t let your boyfriend or husband carry your purse for that mean he’s “hen-pecked.” She further elaborated on how hen-pecked often referred to when a man “is not the head of household”, but the woman is and “as a woman, you have taken his power from him.” She heard this when she was a child growing up as a black woman in the south during the 80s. 

3. Analysis/YOUR interpretation

From my understanding of the phrase, it seems to be rooted in southern misogynistic beliefs. My informant was raised in a rural Texan community after her family moved from Louisiana. As someone who was born and also raised in Texas, I am aware of the stereotypes, traditions, and customs commonly associated. Being the head of the household typically entails the male figure is seen as the provider, masculine, and generally opposite of many stereotypical feminine traits associated with the women. So when a man holds his wife’s purse, these shared belief systems may consciously or subconsciously take hold resulting in narrow-minded beliefs. During the time my informant recalls these ideologies, hegemonic masculinity in the black community was apparent. Hegemonic masculinity at its core refers to the belief that men’s position in society remains dominant. This is often seen as the social pressures men have faced of being expected to depict a perfect “expression” of masculinity. The term hen-pecked means not seen as masculine but seen as subservient to one’s wife and therefore not upholding the hegemonic masculine standards. This is an oikotype of the original meaning. Hen-pecked originally came from the way hens are constantly pecking at the ground for food and the way a wife or girlfriend may nag at her significant other resulting in the man complying with the wife. It seems the term became used more generally not only referring to the woman pecking/nagging their partner, but anything done by the man which could be seen as subservient to women.