S-Town Reflection

I am a victim to the bubbles. “I hate everyone from Alabama” is a statement I have said in the past based on my one bad roommate from Alabama. I’m sure there are nice people, too, but I hate this girl with all my heart and just lump everyone else from her state right in there with her. Learning that S-Town was about a tiny town in Alabama made me instinctively roll my eyes and wish I could listen to literally anything else. As I began Chapter 1, I realized that John (who is indeed someone from Alabama) hated everything about the state that I did. The desire to stay in a tiny town, the racist views, the redneck tattoos, the uninspiring conversations—I could go on. This confused me. How could someone who hates everything about the place he lives simultaneously embody the stereotypes that come along with where he lives. He says he hates tattoos, yet his chest is covered in them. Some saw this as a cry for help, but the way I see it is just plain confusing.

S-Town challenged my way of thinking when it comes to looking at groups of people. There are always going to be people that are the stereotypes and there are always going to be the people that stray from the stereotypes. But I have never met anyone quite like the walking paradox that is John B. McLemore. Maybe if I look at myself as an example then it will begin to make more sense.

I am a wealthy, white, half-Jewish/half-protestant girl who was raised in Connecticut. People may assume that I paid my way into whatever school I attended, or my legacy status got me into college. They assume I am not smart, they assume I am spoiled, and they assume that I will marry rich. So little of those assumptions are accurate it almost hurts. Yes, on the outside I most definitely fit the stereotype (just like John does) but on the inside, it is a very different story. I wanted to attend my high school based on the fact that I knew my dad couldn’t help get me in, that I deserved my place fair and square. My legacy status in fact did not help me get into Harvard because (who knew?) Harvard is really hard to get into unless you really deserve it. Not saying I am not smart, because I am now at one of the most prestigious institutions in the south, but now that I am here, people still assume that I don’t deserve it. People assume that I am not smart because I work a different way than most. People don’t know that everything nice that I own was not given to me, I worked my ass off to get it for myself.