The Flaws of Sterotyping

When first meeting anyone it is easy to form stereotypes, even when we don’t want to. One of the easiest to make is the music genre a person listens too. It is easy to think the way a person does their make-up, the way they dress, or their personality can determine or is determined by their music taste. We may judge them on what they listen to, or if they dress a certain way we may assume they listen to a particular genre. Although, it is an all too familiar concept that stereotypes are bad. Judging people on one visible aspect before we know them can result in some harmful consequences.

“A music genre doesn’t define a person,” said Hayley Lepczynski.

As individuality grows with our generation so does music taste. It is not unusual to see people embracing their favorite music genre. In fact, our survey found that 97 percent of the student body is proud of their music taste.

“A person’s music taste evolves as they grow up and change into the person they’re going to be,” said Gabe Gray.

There were certain studies conducted, trying to claim that the certain music a person listens to can determine their personalities. However, all of the claims were easily debunked when I simply asked people I knew if their personalities matched up with the genre they listened to on the chart. For instance, the study said that those who listen to rock, metal and indie music have low self-esteem, while those that listen to jazz, blues, classical, rap, opera, pop and soul all have high self-esteem levels. However, it would be to easy for one person to intermingle these two categories. The reality is: all people listen a variety of genres. Out of the 38 kids asked in Hartland High School, the average number of genre’s a student may listen to was 6.

“I don’t particularly listen to a specific number of music genres. If I like a song, band, or artist, I’ll listen to them despite what music genre it is,” said Dana Cameron.

All people are different as well, just as all song’s range within their music genre. Many songs are more than one genre, too. It’s too difficult to pin down whether all people that listen to a certain genre of music have a low self-esteem or not.

“I listen to all genres of music, a wide variety,” said Morgan Lussenden.

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