Care to judge people? Don’t judge so quickly

If we’re totally honest, we must admit that society isn’t really very nice, nor is it qualified to pass judgement on other people. But despite this lack of qualification we get judged for our looks, our education, the way we speak, what we eat, how we dress and what we do with our lives. The list can go on and on and on. Most people know nothing about us but they quickly jump to judging us without thinking about the consequences to the people they judge.

A very common judgement is that bald men are unattractive, unclean, unintelligent, look unwell and are and less likely to be able to get a job. How wrong can these people be? Think about Jason Statham, Bruce Willis, Patrick Stewart, Samuel L Jackson, the late Sean Connery, Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson aka The Rock and Yul Brynner. All famous, all healthy and all highly paid for the job they do, or did when they were alive. They might almost be The Bald and the Beautiful!

Beards have always been considered unkempt, unclean and scary because people often equate them as being worn by religious zealots. In fact, male orthodox practitioners of most world religions wear a beard. Muslims, Greek Orthodox, Jews, Hindus and the Amish in America all wear beards as their religious symbol. But that’s not all. Beards are now very fashionable among most Hollywood actors. Think of any male actor today, regardless of age, and they all wear beards. Ryan Reynolds, Ryan Gosling, Chris Pine, Hugh Laurie, George Clooney, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Pratt, Jake Gyllenhaal and David Beckham, to name but a tiny few. In fact, the list of beaded actors is now endless. Oh, and not to mention Prince Harry who is not an actor but a very high profile Royal figure across the world! Beards don’t look so scary, dirty and unkempt now, do they?

Now blonds are considered dumb and ditsy. Hence the phrase, ‘dumb blond’. But not so fast to judgement. Blonde women can be highly intelligent and some have been in the top of their chosen fields. In fact, a study suggests that, among white females, blondes had the highest IQ and those with black hair had the lowest. Shall we start with Hillary Clinton? She was a lawyer, senator and secretary of state, and Presidential nominee for the 2016 election. Then we had the late Margaret Thatcher who had two degrees, one in Chemistry and the other in Law from a top UK university. She was first the leader of the Conservative Party during James Callaghan’s premiership and then became Prime Minister.

Martha Stewart is also no dumb blonde. She managed to build an empire based on her culinary abilities and then expanded it to product lines outside the kitchen. JK Rowling was so switched on that she wrote her first Harry Potter book one afternoon while sitting in a coffee shop. Elizabeth Warren is a US senator but before that she was a professor at Harvard Law School. Moreover, CEOs of Xerox, IBM, Yahoo and HP have not only been women but blonde women at that. Many blonde actresses are also not so dumb. Did you know that the actress, Lisa Kudrow, who played ditsy Phoebe in Friends, used to be a medical researcher? And actress Jodie Foster is a Yale graduate who is fluent in three languages?

The way you dress also makes people immediately judge you. Too well dressed and you might be either showing off your money or are arrogant or are power dressing. But dressing too poorly has the opposite reaction. People will think you either have no money or no fashion sense. But did you know that there are many people who have the money but don’t want to spend it on frivolities? Moreover, some poorly dressed rich people don’t like to flaunt their wealth because often they already give off a vibe that suggests they might have the money.

On the other end of the spectrum there are poor people who will go out of their way to buy expensive clothes even if it puts a dent in their wallet. They want people to think they have money when in fact they do not.

You know, judging people by simply looking at them is a poor pastime and very superficial because, frankly, no one really knows what’s behind that facade.