Overcoming stereotypes
So far in my career I have been asked by a couple of Mainstream Media Outlets to fact-check articles about Papua New Guinea. Interestingly, it seems that one constant question that I’ve been asked is “is it true that women in Papua New Guinea suckle pigs?” I had always known that ‘women suckling pigs’ had been a sort of common trope for ‘exotic pictures of New Guinea’ along with ‘headhunters’ and all this. My usual response has been: “I’ve never seen it, most of those pictures were posed, there are lots of better things to know and say about the country, but its not inconceivable that it happened.” After today, I have another — and equally Othering (although in this case auto-Othering) answer: “no man, only “Dolly Parton does that”:http://popwatch.ew.com/popwatch/2009/04/dolly-pig-parto.html”).
Alex Golub is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He studies mining and petroleum development in Papua New Guinea, as well as American culture in to the online game World of Warcraft. You can contact him at rex@savageminds.org
Apparently my great-grandfather once saw a woman in a park (in America) nursing a kitten. I imagine that there are many individual incidents of this kind of thing around the world.
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Not only Dolly Parton! Tori Amos, too! http://www.yessaid.com/pic/piglet2.jpg
;)
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I’m with Carmen – ‘strange’ things can happen anywhere in the world. I find it offensive to rebut one racist (and sexist) comment with another! Why is it okay to pick on Dolly Parton? Or any woman?
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Yes, why pick on Dolly?
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