RESISTING BEING
JUDGED ON APPEARANCES
THE WAY a person chooses to present himself physically, in clothing and grooming, is often an outward manifestation of a personal philosophy or lifestyle. And when those who are opposed to what they believe the particular appearance represents encounter someone over whom they believe they have power — even that of opinion — it is problematic.
Three songs, Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On, Sizzla’s Love is Always There, and Tanya Stephens’ What a Day are among those that have a line or two about the reaction to this passing of judgement based on appearances.
What’s Going On is the title track of Marvin Gaye’s 1971 album, recorded when the USA was pressing ahead with its futile effort to crush Vietnam. The Vietnamese suffered heavily in casualties, and many American soldiers were killed. The album was released four years before the USA finally abandoned the war, but already, there were protests inside the country against the war. Those wanting peace irked citizens committed to patriotic war fervour, and Gaye summed this up in What’s Going On, contrasting the strait-laced citizenry with those of the ‘peace and love’ movement typified by the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in New York in 1969.
Gaye never mentions Vietnam — or the civil rights movement in the US—directly as he sings of death and protest: “Brother, brother, brother There’s far too many of you dying You know we’ve got to find a way To bring some loving here today Father, father We don’t need to escalate You see, war is not the answer For only love can conquer hate You know we’ve got to find a way To bring some loving here today Picket lines and picket signs Don’t punish me with brutality...”
Then he goes on the other parent as he talks about being assessed based on appearances: “Mother, mother, everybody thinks we’re wrong Oh, but who are they to judge us Simply because our hair is long”
Hair is also the marker of personal presentation, which Tanya Stephens focuses in a line from
What A Day, the penultimate track on her 2005 album,
Gangsta Blues. Stephens names a number of social ills she is tired of, beginning with “the hunger I see on people’s faces” and “the animosity between the races.” She soon moves from the large-scale to the personal issues, including hairstyle:
“Tired of being judged for the style in my hair
And the music that I listen and the clothes that I wear.”
Sizzla, a Rastafarian, does not specify dreadlocks in the chorus of Love is Always
There, which is on the 2008 Reggae
Max album. However, it must be a factor for a man who deejays:
“Love is always there
No matter how we dress and we ragga ragga hair
We no care”
And he modifies the aphorism “don’t judge a book by its cover” in stating a general principle about perception and personality, deejaying: “Now you judge the book I got to tell you that you wrong And how I look Cannot determine who I am.”