Tuesday, September 8th

In class this week we continued our discussion on gender. The reading to go along with our discussion was Guns and Dolls. When speaking about gender, Prof. Spencer brought up the point that awareness of gender begins at birth. When a baby is born, the first thing people ask are "is it a boy, or a girl?" Also, there are colors associated with new babies. It is customary for a boy to be associated with the color blue, and girls with pink. These ideas remain constant as the child grows. Boys play with guns (and other toys that are more aggressive), and girls play with dolls. When asked what toys we had it became apparent that most students (including myself) had similar experiences. Some examples of toys that males had were nerf guns, wrestling action figures, and sports equipment. Some of my favorites were Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures (for obvious reasons...they are awesome) and of course wrestling action figures (because who wants to be the only kid at the playground without a Stone Cold Steve Austin figurine?) The girls who shared examples of their childhood toys mostly stayed true to the traditional model. There were a couple exceptions where girls played with more masculine toys.
A question was brought up, what if your child played with toys that weren't gender appropriate, how would you feel? I agree with the class consensus. I think it's more acceptable for a girl to play with more masculine toys than it is for a boy to play with dolls or a more feminine toy. We discussed that our society set the bar for what females should look like, and that is the unrealistic, perfect figure of the Barbie doll. We also watched a short clip titled Tough Guise, I feel that as a male I can relate to this more so I will discuss this rather than the Barbie doll idea. I thought it was completely accurate. Men feel that they have to conform to the masculine ideal set up in our society. As a male, I have felt this pressure, as I feel most other men have as well. My favorite athlete, Michael Jordan is a perfect example of this. He represents what society says a male should be like. Highly competetive, tough, successful, athletic, and so on. I feel that no one should be forced into acting or looking like someone else. Everyone is different, not every male is highly masculine (aka Chuck Norris), and not every female is extremely feminine. There are shades of grey, hopefully our society will recognize this and not continue to force people into roles they don't necessarily fit in to. That's all I have to say about that.

Have a good weekend!