So, I've been perusing the many MBTI-related Youtube videos. It mostly consists of hobbyists explaining how they experience their type. It's unclear how many of them have taken the MBTI or gone through a verification process, but it's still interesting to see their perspective on it. What's disconcerting though, is the sheer volume of type-correcting. What's particularly troublesome is that (a)these are self-identified NT males re-typing self-identified NT females as SF and (b) that they appear to be doing so based on superficial things that women are typically pressured to do, such as spending time on hair and make-up or behaving in a more extraverted manner.
What I'm about to say I say as a woman that does not spend time on her hair or make-up. (I wear lipstick, and not much else.) I'm not bringing my type into this, but rather, saying it to explain what it's like to be a woman that doesn't spend a lot of time on hair and make-up in order to convey why some NT women might conclude it was logical to spend time on such things...even if they didn't care that much about it themselves. To live in my world is to constantly get sidewise glances as I'm walking down the street by less unkempt women. It's to constantly get students writing on evaluations that it was my fault they couldn't learn philosophy because my "disheveled" appearance rendered them incapable of paying attention in class. It's to dread going to the hairdresser (and consequently go only once a year) because, being a woman, I get pressured to let them do all sorts of things with product and straightener and other forms of torture, and frequently getting snarky comments when I refuse. It's, when I come from the salon, going to a regular restaurant and having a well-meaning waitress telling me that I "look feminine now." The best part of living in Detroit was going to The Bronx when they had a woman doing five dollar haircuts on Thursday nights. It was usually a whole lot of hipster guys that hated going to the salon...and me. I got to have a couple of drinks, she did my hair quickly and I never had to worry about getting hassled for not being more into beauty and fashion. Bear in mind this is nothing compared to what I experienced as a child, but I'm not going into that, because I try not to look too closely at my childhood.
To give you an idea, this is what I look like when I come from the salon. My hair only ever looks like this when I leave the salon:
Not bad, huh? If only I had the patience to actually get it to look like that again. I don't even blow dry my hair. Instead, I like to (hastily)toss it into pigtails, which causes it to look like this:
Still, not too bad, although I can't always wear it in pigtails. Sometimes I'm just tired and don't want to bother, other times it's a situation (like teaching) where I don't want the youthful look of pigtails. Here's an old picture of me in Brazil, but seriously, I've seen myself in the mirror when I'm at home, so that's not the traipsing-through-the-Amazon syndrome. (Also, this was pre-foot problems and pre-40 metabolism so add a "few" pounds when you look at the photo.)
(Yes, that is a sloth I'm holding.)
Now, I've never been good at conforming, so I pretty much don't bother trying. I understand, though, that if you were better at it, or had a sister in the same household that was good at it and trained you at an early age, or just forced yourself because you wanted more success and less hassle, you might be a bit better at it. It's worth noting that when I attended an MBTI workshop, one of the women who seemed like she spent the most time on her hair and make-up was an INTJ. (The only INTP was an elderly guy, so I can't really comment on INTP women.) It makes sense if you think about it. INTJs are driven to succeed, and success in the corporate world for women often means conforming to female standards of beauty. The INFPs, by contrast, were almost "granola."
Similarly, women are generally expected to be friendlier than men. In a national sample, there were slightly more introverted men than extraverted, with most preferring T. With women, though, there were slightly more extraverted women than men, with most preferring F. Sensing was the majority preference in both groups, and both groups showed a slightly higher percentage of J than P. If you add it up, then, the dominant type for males would be ISTJ whereas the dominant type for females would be ESFJ. In other words, INTP women in the United States are the typological opposite of their gender.
Although INTPs tend to be evaluated somewhat negatively when male, females are evaluated almost entirely negatively. In Portraits of Type, Thorne and Gough relay the following data of adjectives used to describe INTPs.
For males:
-Tends to be rebellious and nonconforming
-Thinks and associates with ideas in unusual ways; has unconventional thought processes
-Genuinely values intellectual and cognitive matters
-Values own independence and autonomy
-Is critical, skeptical, not easily impressed
Adjectives: original, imaginative, complicated, hasty, rebellious, high strung, individualistic, restless, self-centered, temperamental.
If you're interested in the enneagram, you'll no doubt recognize that INTP men are described in a very "five-ish" sort of way. If you're not, you'll still probably recognize the "eccentric professor" archetype.
By contrast, let's take a look at how INTP women are described:
-Is basically distrustful of people in general, questions their motivations
-Keeps people at a distance; avoids close interpersonal relationships
-Is subtly negativistic, tends to undermine and obstruct or sabotage
-Tends to be self-defensive
-Extrapunitive, tends to transfer or project blame
Adjectives: distrustful, sulky, evasive, indifferent, resentful, defensive, wary, unfriendly, tense, aloof.
If you're interested in the enneagram, you'll no doubt notice the more "sixish" picture of INTP women. If you aren't, you still likely noticed that, while INTP men have a mix of negative qualities and some very positive traits, INTP women are rated almost entirely negatively. In particular, whereas INTP men have their intellectual contributions recognized, that seems wholly overlooked in description of INTP women. Bearing that in mind, clearly, it's not a stretch that an INTP woman might conclude, after a bit of dispassionate consideration on how to best reach her goals, that she might need to imitate her FJ counterparts somewhat. This can be in terms of physical appearance or it can be in terms of affecting a degree of warmth and sociability that may mask a more detached interior. To then use those very same adaptive characteristics to refute her type is to place her in the double-bind that independent women are so often prone to: if she doesn't conform at least a little bit to her gender, then she is perceived very negatively and has a much harder go of things. However, if she does conform, her intense rational mind is not taken seriously by her male peers.
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