How Cool Are You & Why Does It Matter?
I’m sure many people will remember how there was a gang of people in school that it was generally agreed were the “cool” ones. If you didn’t go to school or this wasn’t your experience then I’m talking about anyone who was considered to be popular/charismatic or well liked by the majority when you were a teen.
I want to talk about what happens in the adult world with these people, and my apologies for the title but it’s hard to make an article about status and social dynamics sound interesting enough to make people want to read it. And yet status is something that affects nearly all our interactions with each other so I think it is a subject worth talking about.
One of the first things I want to know about a new person I meet is, “How status-conscious is this person?” Because status consciousness tells you a LOT about a person.
Status consciousness is a spectrum, at one end you have people who have virtually none at all and will talk to anybody and everybody and treat a Prince or a Pauper the same.
At the other end of the scale is someone who is looking for who they consider to be the most important person in the room at all times, who treats people they perceive to be “low status” like shit and who craves status and proximity to high status people. Think of that trope about people who like to “climb the social ladder” — those kind of people. (Bridget Jones’s Mum is a perfect example!)
Most people I meet are somewhere around the middle, they have a certain amount of status consciousness, but not enough to make them someone I’d be wary being around.
When I meet people I look at how are they interacting with me, are they engaging respectfully, making eye contact (where I’m not talking to someone with Aspergers or Autism I mean), are they giving me their full attention or do they have one eye on who else is in the room? I can usually tell pretty quickly if someone is status conscious or not, to what degree they are and also how they rate me in their status-hierarchy. All this information tells me a HUGE amount about the person I’m talking to.
I feel most comfortable and safe with people who have little status-consciousness (not to say they are necessarily unaware of status, but they don’t care about it). To give an example of how they are more safe I’ll share a story from my life.
I told two friend that I had been in an abusive relationship, both were previously friendly with my ex. One was uncaring of status dynamics and that person put my emotional and physical safety above their potential encountering-my-ex future discomfort. The other friend was status conscious and considered my ex to be high status and did not want to know about how he had abused me. (I am no longer friends with this person). The most status conscious person was also the most selfish and inhumane in their treatment of me. They cared more for their continuing association with the person who abused me than they did for my physical and emotional safety. I have encountered similar situations many times with status-conscious people. This is why I am particularly wary around them.
To give a more universal example, think about how Roman Polanski has been celebrated and embraced, despite the world’s knowledge of him being a paedophile who raped a child. Would he still be welcome in all the same places were he not a celebrity? It seems unlikely. Celebrity and money can bring status with them as can jobs, connections and physical appearance.
I am particularly interested in how status plays out in everyday life, (probably because I don’t hang out with that many celebrities!). I find how status affects social dynamics to be especially fascinating. If someone is very status-conscious they will be looking to spend time with and win over people they consider to be high status. They will seek them out in real life and online and attempt to be close to them, kind of like groupies.
I feel that there is a responsibility attached to being aware of the status dynamics at play and if I perceive that someone has accorded me high status I use it to include people being left out of the conversation. So if I’m in a conversation with 2 people and I can tell one of them thinks I’m higher status than the other I focus on the other person the one that has been deemed to be lower status by the other person, I make eye contact with them a lot and ask them questions to include them. I try and even out the rudeness of the status-conscious person if it is possible. I also make a mental note that the status-conscious person is not safe for me to be around.
I feel just as unsafe and wary around someone who considered me to be high status as I do around people who consider me low status. Being put on a pedestal is just as bad as being discounted as a nothing. In both cases the power dynamic is skewed. Any type of relationship built on unbalanced power dynamics is unlikely to end well.
Some things to look out for if you want to grow in your awareness of social power dynamics:
- Notice who makes eye contact with you, are they making as much eye contact with the other people in the coneversation? More or less?
- Pay attention to the body language of the people you’re with, are they leaning in to you or away from you? How are they relating to others with their body?
- As a woman I find there are other levels of status dynamics at play when I’m out with my partner (a man), some men will only make eye contact with my partner and ignore me (this tells me they are status conscious and a sexist douche), and some women will only look at my partner, very rarely I will encounter a woman who will only look at me.
- People watch at social events to hone these skills. Notice how people interact with the high status people in the room, there are lots of visual cues offered up by people all the time in every interaction and they speak volumes about that person’s values and sense of self worth.
I teach my kids about this stuff. There was a boy in my daughter’s class who was bullying another child.
“He’s never anything but nice to me.” My popular daughter said. when I asked her about it.
“If he’s nice to you is the first part of this,” I said. “Now, how does he treat OTHER people?”
I encouraged her to look at how he was treating other people and base her decision about what kind of person he was on how he treated the most unpopular kids at school, not the most popular. I also taught her that with popularity (status) comes responsibility.
Imagine if every celebrity used their status as a force for good? Imagine if they used it to highlight the injustices against the most oppressed (or perceived by some as low-status) members of our world? I believe we each have a responsibility to use our completely unearned and unjustified social advantages as a force for good in the world. Especially in light of recent events in the U.S. And aside from the greater good, an awareness of status dynamics can help steer you away from dodgy people.
