Gender Socialization
A baby is born and the doctor looks at the proud parents or parent and says three simple words: Its a boy, or Its a girl! Before a newborn child even takes his or her first breath of life outside the mothers womb, he or she is distinguishable and characterized by gender. The baby is brought home and dressed in clothes that help friends, family and even strangers identify the sex of the child. Baby boys are dressed in blue and baby girls are dressed in pink. The baby boy may be dressed in a blue jumpsuit with a football or a baseball glove on it. The baby girl may wear a bow in their hair and flowered pajamas. As the boy begins to grow, he is given a miniature basketball and a hoop to play with. The girl is given dolls an d doll clothes to dress them up in. Even going further, eventually the boy may play with Legos and Lincoln Logs and the girl gets a PlaySchool oven and a plastic tea set with which to play house. Sounds pretty normal right? Why? As illustrated in the not-so-fictional scenario above, gender socialization begins very early in life. Society has accepted such stereotypical things as baby boy blue and baby girl pink to help identify the sex of a child. Heaven forbid the little Joey looks like a g
Removed from the context of how they were originally intended to be shown, the images in the videos were very disturbing to both men and women. The presenters literally filled a wall with images taken from magazines and ne wspapers and each of the photographs were of beautiful women endorsing some product. The point is why does Toby have to a nswer these questions? Because this is what we have determined to be socially correct. But these are the stereotypes that are influenced by the parents. Young boys are bound to realize this and following ChodorowÕs theory, will refuse to perform a lot of chores in an attempt to become more masculine. It is very possible and in fact probably more so that one thinks. Why are the girls expected to do four times as much work around the house than the boys are? Chodorow writes that a young boy is usually unable to identify with his masculinity through his father. On the average, the boys receive $4. FEMALEÊEXPLOITATION As I briefly mentioned earlier, advertisers utilize female images to sell products. Ironically, popular womenÕs magazines also use beautiful women to promote cosmetics and beauty products (funny that both my examples sho w the exploitation of female images in society. The documentary helped us to see how we are easily influenced by images when we do not stop and think what t hey are showing us. Recently in my womanÕs studies class we were involved in a student panel discussion regarding this topic. To look even further, the survey reported that the boys only perform three household chores to earn their weekly allowance whereas the girls are performing twel ve or more. Except for the stereotypical examples I have given above which again are e stablished by the parents, Chodorow states that the development of a child is basically the same for boys and girls until the age of three.
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Word Count,
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