More questions answered.

How do your social class, cultural/ethnic background and geographic region shape your beliefs about gender?

I've grown up and lived around the DC metropolitan area for the majority of my life. My mom always jokes that we've lived on both sides of river, since we lived in Fort Washington in PG County, MD for eight years before moving to Alexandria. Although in PG county the demographics are predominantly black and in Alexandria they are predominantly white, I think it's arguable that both areas are extremely diverse--both in terms of the multitudes of ethnicites and social classes to which anyone living there is exposed. Because of this (and also because of the way I was raised), I am much more accepting of people who are different than I am.

How does all that affect how I look at gender? I think it's hard to say. For certain, I can say that because of my own nature of acceptance, I have often struggled with the differential treatment that men and women recieve. Working at Pathways, a shelter in DC for chronically homeless women (who are often coping with mental diseases as well), this ridge became ever-more apparent. The question of why women even need their own shelters--not that it actually needs to be asked--is a living testemony to the male dominance in our society. Although I have been working at Pathways, the main shelter at Calvary is a temporary home for some women who have been battered by their husbands or boyfriends, and they literally have no other alternative than to stay at a shelter. What kind of society are we, where a woman has to choose between being abused or having a roof over her head?

I also struggle with the fact that these women have been repeatedly rejected from our society--whether it is because of their race, their mental health status, their social class, or just because they are women. In all honesty, it makes me really very angry. What gives those in power the right to decide that one type of person matters more or is worth more than another? The hegemonies of men over women, the rich over the poor, white over every other ethnicity... Though they are homeless, many of these women have families, have children, and even have jobs. Why don't they count as much as the rich white men of our society? ...or even as much as someone like me?

How do media and mass communication shape your ideas about gender roles?

In a media-infused world such as ours, it's difficult for anyone to feel as though they are "properly" performing their gender role. As cultural consumers, we are constantly bombarded by advertisements selling products to make us thinner, toner, tanner, etc.. Both men and women have physical standards we are expected to live up to in Western society, whether it is the "heroin chic" look for women (as mentioned in the Media chapter of Genderspeak) or the top-heavy GI Joe look for men (as seen in Tough Guise). Pop culture and the advertising world feed off eachother, with product placements in films and commercials starring our favorite actors, singers and models as they hawk everything from Diet Coke to skin creams. We are made to feel deficient, and buy products or get surgeries to fix our inadequacies. We seek to portray ourselves as the same stereotypes of perfection we see every minute of everyday in the media.

One thing I wish the Gender and Mass Media chapter of Genderspeak had discussed was the power of celebrities over the public--particularly female ones. When Jennifer Lopez was rising to stardom, the masses ran to buy jeans, posterier padding and even implants so they could have "a butt like J-lo." Angelina Jolie's increasing fame resulted in droves of women flocking to get colagen injections in their lips. There was even a show on MTV not too long ago where individuals would get plastic surgery to make them look as much like a certain celebrity as possible (such as Brad Pitt and Carmen Electra). Some celebrities even feed off their own image, eventually creating caricaturized representations of themselves--like Michael Jackson or the late Anna Nicole Smith.

I've talked a lot about the physical standards to which men and women are expected to adhere, but that is only one of the roles they must fulfill. One current advertisement on TV that I find exemplifies the presence of gender roles (and by that I also mean it is incredibly irritating) is an ad for an online dating service in which a man goes on dates with series of "abnormal" women. One woman exclaims how her life "is so not together," while another informs him that chickens are the only animals that don't have nasal passages. Although this commercial obviously shows women who don't fit the typical gender roles (and how they are ultimately rejected), I tried not to over-analyze it--after all, we've all been on bad dates. However, the company doesn't run any similar ads where a woman goes on dates with a series of abnormal men (or with same-sex dating for that matter). I kept thinking back to our discussion in class about how it's fine for girls to emulate boys, but not for boys to emulate girls because the female sex is inferior to the male sex. From a female perspective, it seems to me the message of this commercial is that women who don't fit traditional gender roles are not only rejected, but don't have a chance to seek out a partner of their own. In other words, females are the ones with the deficiency, because they are the "inferior" gender whom need to live up to the standards set by males.

(I seriously hate that commercial, by the way.)

RESPONSES

To Julie:
I totally agree about the unconscious categorizing we place upon upon others. If anything deviates from what we consider to be "the norm," we automatically place judgement and also have a difficult time developing a response to it. Just like with your service learning, it was surprising to you that women were also the ones who inflicted violence because you had a set idea that women are caregivers and nurturers. In the poem we read, Guerilla War, the author expresses that within the Vietcong, "even their women fight; and young boy, and girls." Normally in war, soldiers have the option to spare the women and the children because they are typically passive, but when they deviate from that behavior, you becomes unsure whether you should spare them or shoot them, and "after a while, you quit trying."

Lorena Bobbit is also a good example of women who surprise the public through acts of violent. If it had been a man who had cut off part of a woman, or another man's penis, would the story have been as big as it was? Probably not However, I think I have to disagree with the idea that the female astronaut was targeted because she was female. After hearing about the story in class and also on the news, I asked myself, "Is it because she is a woman that her exploits became such a sensationalized media story?" To me, the answer is no. This isn't to say her sex had nothing to do with it, but I think the larger issue was that she was an astronaut. Astronauts go through rigorous training, both physical and mental, before they are put into space. The fact that someone who went through that kind of training was in such a mentally unstable state is why the story caught the public's attention. Although it's hard to say for sure, I think that if it had been a male astronaut driving across country in diapers, the story would still have been the same kind of media frenzy.

To Stephanie:

[I'll try to respond to your post if you can have it up by 9:00AM tomorrow. Otherwise, I don't know if I'll have time to respond before I have to leave for class. :( ]