Label Conscious

In a society which encourages us to wear the most popular labels, to shop in the right stores and to trust what we recognise, is it any wonder we hasten to label everything we see?

Labels help us to order things. One label is good and another is bad. In the same way our ancestors realised red plants were nasty, we give names to those different to ourselves so that we can differentiate between them and us.

Calvin Klein is popular, so we buy their clothes. Ikea is where everyone else is going for their furniture nowadays, so we organise Ulster bus trips over. Everyone else defines a homosexual woman as a ‘dyke’, so we must too.

The attack on labels is uncoordinated; some oppose them entirely, crying ‘labels are for jars!’. Others embrace them as part of our culture, ‘Queer and Proud’. Some are offended by the mere suggestion they are a ‘fag’, while others laugh it off.

I admit to it myself, I can call myself a dyke, but that is no one else’s place to call me, unless they are particularly close.

“It’s all in how you say a thing” says Robert Frost. It’s all in who says a thing. It’s all in how you label a thing.