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Even though we generally like to imagine that men are from Mars and women are from Venus, we are continuing to find evidence that these planetary gender differences may not be written in the cosmos, but instead may result from a particular set of social arrangements, of which we are reminded daily. This isn’t to say that gender differences are not real, but is instead an attempt to make gender performances visible, so that we can recognize when we are performing in ways we don’t necessarily want to and change if need be.
This week we are going to ask, “How do these social norms get written into our bodies and shape the way we move through the world?” Asking this helps us challenge the popular notion that masculinity and femininity are biologically based or written into our DNA or somehow scriipted by our hormones. Perhaps there is more to that old adage that boys will be boys, and girls will be sugar and spice and everything nice? If this were the case, would we all need to be schooled in the norms of gender so regularly – wouldn’t it be natural and easy and nearly impossible to not do gender properly? Would we need to be reminded of gender boundaries and the social sanctions associated with transgressing them?
Beer commercials are a great place to see how tenuous masculinity performances are, and it seems like men are always on the verge of
performing masculinity improperly.
Consider this new ad campaign for Molson beer, and their concept of a Guyet. (It’s a sort of man-diet, for the uninitiated)
THE LINKS TO THESE 2 VIDEOS WILL BE LISTED IN MESSAGES
What are the dangers associated with men performing masculinity improperly? What tenets are being showcased as central to performing masculinity properly?
It’s obvious that we spend a great deal of time teaching children how to be girls and how to be boys through our elaborate and ongoing process of gender socialization. Sperry and Grauerholtz examined fairytales and the ways in which adhering to the social dictates of “beauty” (whether that be passivity, working industriously, or more cultivating one’s physical appearances) becomes a normative component of performing femininity. Nelson puts Halloween costumes under the (sociological) microscope to investigate the latent narratives that make visible our love of gender stereotypes and their consequences.
Your task is to find a similar cultural artifact to put under the metaphorical microscope in order to illuminate a larger social trend in gender performance. Your artifact should be loosely defined as an instrument of children’s gender socialization, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be a toy. I’m not looking for an obvious causal relationship (Barbie causes eating disorders or plastic surgery) but instead a more thoughtful and deliberate exploration between an artifact and the relationship it might have to the theoretical concepts we are exploring. (Hegemonic masculinity, heteronormativity, gender-differentiated performance, ideologies, agency and resistance, social sanctions, gender boundary policing, devaluation of femininity, normative feminine beauty ideal, active-masculine/passive-feminine, etc.)
Think back to something that played prominently in your childhood and start your analysis there.
Were you a Legos kid? (WATCH THE LINKED VIDEO IN MESSAGES)
Did you love Pocahontas?
Have fond memories of the little Happy Meal toys?
Remember that your task here is a critical sociological analysis, so be sure that you are able to both talk at a specific level of analysis and explore the more general sociological consequences.
