Counter-Stereotyping

Every perception society imposes on an individual or a group runs both ways. I recently noticed, in some programmers’ social groups, that when asked about their hobbies, most mentioned some kind of sport. That’s a clear example of the counter-stereotyping effect at work. The dominant social attitude (once?) held that programmers were socially awkward, health-sacrificing homebodies — dull, inarticulate, indifferent to appearance. Yet many programmers I know are nothing like that: they go to the gym regularly, love the outdoors, and no one looking at them would think “dull tech nerd.”

Counter-stereotyping is a form of “psychological compensation” and “identity reconstruction.” The sociologist Erving Goffman, in Stigma, observes that individuals with a damaged identity often seek social acceptance through concealment or compensation. Once someone becomes aware that their group carries a certain label, a defensive, reactive drive often emerges — a push toward traits diametrically opposed to that label, as if declaring: I am not what you imagine. But this kind of pushback is a double-edged sword. Once “counter-stereotype” hardens into a new paradigm one must conform to, the individual simply falls into another kind of trap.

The film The Substance (2024) pushes this psychological effect to an extreme. Under the rule that “beauty is justice,” the fading star Elizabeth injects “the substance” and splits off Sue — young, flawless. Elizabeth is the pitiable one: she has internalized society’s contempt for aging and tries to defeat it by adopting a disguise more in line with mainstream expectations; she cannot accept growing old, or rather, her aging is something society refuses to permit. In the end, as Sue recklessly drains away her life force, she collapses into a heap of flesh and blood.

The film is also full of commentary on how patriarchal society suppresses women, dictating what women should or shouldn’t be… even off-screen, some Canadian viewers reported men in theaters bursting into loud laughter during several of the film’s most horrifying scenes. Real social progress, perhaps, doesn’t lie in everyone having to prove themselves through “counter-stereotyping,” but in a society that can simply accept the uniqueness of every individual.