Everybody tells us not to judge books by their covers yet our whole lives are circulated around judgment. The progression of our life constantly depends on the judgment that others place on us. This article aims to push people to look past what is on the surface and show that individuals are much more than just what meets the eye.
We live in a world that tells us not to judge books by their covers, that there is way more to books than what appears on the surface. Books are made of hundreds of pages, each filled with thousands of letters that combine in infinite ways to create stories, poems, essays, plays and much more. We cannot possibly learn all about a book’s contents by merely glancing at the illustration, big font of a catchy title or even the back cover’s five-line summary. So, we should not buy books with good covers, but rather books with good content, right?
Well, while all this makes sense and is exactly what we are being told by the world, somehow, it is far from a reality. We are just like books; our appearance but a layer of skin and clothing that conceals our experiences, stories, memories, hardships and a lot more. What is on the surface, whether on paper, our clothing, or physical appearance, should not say much about who we are and what we have been through. Yet, the world still correlates a high Grade Point Average (GPA) with intelligence, an abaya with conservatism and a high Body Mass Index with laziness.
Growing up, we were taught to trust an educational system that predicts our success rate in life on our GPA. They told us that the higher our scores are, the more likely we are going to land a good job and live a better life, and if our scores take a plunge, we are more likely going to be labeled as failures in society. To some extent, a high GPA became many students’ obsession, where they would start sacrificing their own health, be it through sleep deprivation or working themselves to the point of burnout for grades. What we later learned is that GPA is only a system that quantifies where you fit in this somewhat biased educational system, as it leaves out a lot of important qualitative aspects of who we are, such as personality, effort, experiences, emotional intelligence and maturity.
Growing up, we were also taught that the abaya is a symbol of modesty. It is a representation of identity, equality, unity and a way of preserving our heritage. However, in this diverse modern world, it is often seen as a social barrier. Women that wear abayas often feel left out in an ethnically diverse group. They often feel that others perceive them as “unapproachable”, “intimidating” and “out-of-reach.” There were countless circumstances where they felt like they were not treated the same way because of other people’s perceptions of the abaya.
Maitha Al Suwaidi, a fellow columnist for Sail Magazine, came up with the term “Abaya Paradox” to describe this phenomenon, where visible cultural identity, the abaya in this case, can overpower other parts of identity. She presented this in the RealAD show, a theatre production that delves into real issues faced by students at NYUAD. In a comedy skit, Maitha acts as a person in an experiment wearing an abaya, which acts as an invisibility cloak. When she takes off the abaya for the purposes of the experiment, her friend sitting next to her, Tatyana, notices her. When she wears it again, she is, again, invisible to Tatyana. This comedy skit is a commentary of how a person’s visible identity may overpower other aspects of that person’s identity and that they may only be perceived or regarded for that visible identity. She discusses this idea more in-depth in her article Looking Past The Uniforms.
There is also a false concept that the Body Mass Index and people’s physique are often correlated with the level of physical activity. The BMI is a scale that takes into account your height and weight and then categorizes you as “underweight,” “normal” or “overweight.” We view people who are thinly-built and have a low BMI as athletic and healthy. We look up to them and become blind to the fact that they may have bad eating habits, lack the daily recommended exercise level, or struggle with anorexia. Looking “healthy” does not make an individual less prone to developing diseases that are often attributed to obesity, like heart diseases for example. On the other hand, we believe that individuals with a higher BMI are more likely to develop diseases and we may label them with terms like “fat,” “lazy,” “sloths,” and “unproductive”, despite the fact that they might have a very healthy lifestyle. It seems as if the amount of weight you carry, or lose, is all what people choose to see and base judgments on, as if everything you are beneath your skin doesn’t matter anymore.
Before placing judgments and labels on others, be aware that individuals are more than the GPA they score, the piece of cloth they wear, and the amount of “fat” under their skin. Remember that besides what meets the eye, we are all the same. The world needs to be reminded that we are more than just our covers and first impressions. We are all walking, breathing, human beings, flesh and bones cocooning a collection of memories, experiences, stories, art, poems, songs, movies, people and much more. We are a part of all that we have met, and that can never be fully read from our covers. Before you judge me or anyone else, before you take one simple look at my appearance or anyone else’s, remind yourself that there is a lot more to us than what meets the eye. So, the next time you walk into a bookstore, make sure to wear a blindfold!
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