When Does Niching become Discrimination?
When I started working on my documentary, Beard Club, I had a big vision. I wanted to tackle the youthful ideal of how we are all human.
WHY A DOCUMENTARY ABOUT BEARDS?
Well, beards presented themselves to me in the form of German World Beard and Mustache competitors at a rest stop in Sedona, Arizona.
It was a topic I had never thought about before. But when I mentioned the competition of crazy beards done in pageant form consisting of over 12 categories to men, they became animated with their own beard or mustache stories. I realized that facial hair was one window into a man’s world.
My main struggle was, I was doing this research during a time when it felt taboo to talk about men because in some unwritten way, in certain female art and academic circles, they were the enemy.
In a way, I was quiet about my work but I was drawn in by a bigger story.
LOOKING AT LAYERS OF DISCRIMINATION
With my research into beards of the world, I feel like I’ve been working in areas of discrimination for over twenty decades.
You might wonder what I mean by referring to discrimination when it comes to men and beards.
Well, in my work I went to an African American barbershop in North Carolina, traveled through India going to Sikh gurdwaras and spoke to a professor of economics at Jawaharlal University in New Delhi, I took a ferry to Vashon Island to speak to a Russian Orthodox priest and the subway to the Upper East Side in New York City to speak to a Jewish Rabbi, I attended a vocal class in San Francisco and spoke to the instructor, a formerly homeless artist and attended a beard competition in Italy.
I learned a lot about discrimination and how it operates across cultures, ages, and genders.
Power dynamics have been operating around what was acceptable and unacceptable for men and their facial hair since Alexander the Great, and possibly earlier.
Facial hair was a marker of identity and identity dictated who was in and who was out of a cultural box, who got privileges and who received punishment.
WE ARE MORE SIMILAR THAN WE APPEAR TO BE
Labels separate us on false terms.
We are connected by our concerns in life more than the color of our skin, our age, our religions, our economic status.
Fundamentally we are all similar. We love. We grieve. We hope. We dream. We feel pain. We feel pleasure.
YET OUR IDEA OF STORY HAS BEEN BASED ON CONFLICT
As a filmmaker, I felt the pressure from grantmakers and industry experts to add conflict to the film in the form of a character’s hero journey. That is where one character struggles against obstacles and ends up achieving or not achieving their goal and usually learning a lesson.
In fact, another filmmaker contacted me at the time and said they were following some of the same characters, the American beard competitors and their journey to crush the Europeans. It was the story of Americans versus the Europeans.
It was the exact opposite of my approach which was to celebrate how beards bring these men from different backgrounds together.
There is an assumption in our market-driven psyche that in order to succeed we have to separate people, we have to show conflict, and we have to ‘crush’ those with ideas and opinions that are different than ours.
In editing Beard Club I struggled with my original vision to keep this a conflict-free film. The tension was there in the nebulous form of cultural norms that we are all alternatively struggling to separate ourselves from and embrace and celebrate.
The film itself showed to diverse crowds. I had heartfelt feedback from young girls and young boys of ages between 8–10 as well as clean-shaven men in their 60s and 70s. I heard from bearded and non-bearded, men and women.
I think the struggle to fit in is something we all experience.
DO WE NEED CONFLICT TO MARKET
This is where I come to think about the way we talk about niches today.
I work in the knowledge industry. I help artists and purpose-driven entrepreneurs and organizations tell their stories using my WeStory framework.
This is a framework based on telling a story based on a point of connection, a place of common ground, based not on demographics but based on those life experiences and emotions that are felt across boundaries.
While it is true some solutions and products are gender or age-specific, some like turbans may be religion-specific this doesn’t mean we need to put messages out into the world that are against others.
I go back to television.
Look at television from the 1970s versus 2010s. Much of what was on sitcoms and dramas from the 1970s were based on stereotypes. The narratives of sitcoms were fairly shallow. Gender stereotypes were common, even when they were being broken they were broken like in Lavern and Shirley, the working women were outcasts in some way. Stories were based more on external situations than on internal struggles.
If you watch comedies on Netflix today the characters are more well-rounded. Stories pursue more of an inner journey. Settings are specific but the situations inside of these settings are universal.
THE POWER OF COMMON GROUND
The world is moving towards one of embracing empathy and compassion.
While the media portrays all of our political and economic conflicts in hyper-realism, in books, podcasts, on the streets, in Zoom conversations, on yoga mats and meditation circles, there is a desire to understand the other and to find a way to move towards a more just way of living in this world.
When we niche based on demographics, we move towards silos and building communities based on sameness.
Marketing based on finding common ground is more inclusive when common ground is based on common wishes, beliefs, questions and experiences based on the idea of possibility.
Laura J. Lukitsch is a filmmaker, artist and story consultant helping artists and purpose-driven entrepreneurs show up with authenticity in order to create an impact for themselves, others and the planet. Her programs help creatives find their voice and share their work. When she’s not writing, creating, or coaching she is on her bike or out in nature.
