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”).

Rex

Alex Golub is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. His book Leviathans at The Gold Mine has been published by Duke University Press. You can contact him at rex@savageminds.org

4 thoughts on “Overcoming stereotypes

  1. 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.

  2. 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?

Comments are closed.