178 I Can Read You Like a Book
look, or a range of colorful looks, that they can enjoy on the golf
course and nowhere else. Horseback riders have their own look.
Within the equestrian community there are even subcultures, as
there are subcultures among suburban homeowners. No self-
respecting dressage rider will be caught in cowboy boots, what-
ever the color. Even less likely is a real cowboy in cherry-red jeans.
Each subculture will, through approval and sanction, create its own
color and style code.
These sanctions and approvals can take many forms. Approvals
come though the use of compliments, adoration, and sanctions,
through means ranging from avoidance and unvoiced disapproval
all the way to both formal and informal methods of humiliation.The role of humiliation
Public humiliation as punishment, and mockery as a tool of
intimidation are just two types of cultural practices that alter a
person’s body language with the specific intent of affecting his
emotional state.
Whether intentionally inflicted or not, humiliation has an effect
on the person’s body language if endured often enough. Interestingly,
it is impossible to predict what this effect will be. I’ve heard from
numerous fellow redheads that they have felt persecuted; they talk
to me with a wink as if there were some red-head cult that needed to
rise up in solidarity. As I mention earlier, I even had one say to me,
“We have to stick together! They do not like us because we have red
hair.” After wondering who “they” are, my response was a polite