2.4 Label Me

This is a label. It looks a little different than the examples above, but do not be deceived. This is the personal label.

The personal label is most similar to the signage of ownership, but it can be both self-assigned and utilized as a personal version of the brand. In this way, it combines the most effective strategies of the top two methods of labeling.

The personal label serves as the mating call of social friendships, drawing geeks, nerds, jocks, preps and fangirls together across huge social strata, such as large school or work settings.

Not all labels are self-assigned. When I first pitched this project to the Digital Media class, I could see the blossoming horror on my classmates' faces as they recalled terrible names from childhood classes. I worked to make the video about more than name calling and hair pulling, because the function of the personal label means so much more.

The personal label can be a connection into a societal network, ready and waiting. Fangirls, a somewhat derogatory name from women madly obsessed with a type of media, is also a word that has been joyfully reclaimed by those it appears to exist to slight. To identify as a fangirl is, in many ways, to accept the mantle and trappings of a label given to you by someone else; and in making it your own also reinvent it.

The personal label can be a passing identification, a self-assured title that denotes what you feel, think, or believe at a given time. It broadcasts your emotion and communicates with others who also temporarily occupy the same brief discourse. In this way, internet forums have achieved enormous success by catering to the whimsical bitching needs of the multitudes online.

Lastly, labels can be arbitrarily assigned to you based on signs you express to the world at large. Short hair? You're a lesbian. Well-dressed and polite? You're metrosexual at best, probably gay. Tattoos and piercings? No good stoner.

These are the labels that harm and constrain. They can help disenfranchised parties to form groups in defense, but these groups are not high-functioning, collaborative discourses. The resentment produced by this last construct of personal labels undoes any good the labels themselves can enact, almost before it happens.