Fashion Designer Ambiguity

In “The Fashion Industry: Free to be an Individual” by Hannah Berry, Hannah emphasizes how social media especially advertisements pressure females to use certain product to in order to be considered beautiful. She also acknowledges the current effort of advertisement today to more realistically depicts of women. In addition, these advertisements use the modern women look to advertise products to increase women self-esteem and to encourage women to be comfortable with one’s image.

The claim presented in the article is how ads often set unrealistic beauty standards, and how the author encourages them to “break free” from these standards by giving two examples on how ads should be compelled.

Sociologist Dalton Conley wrote his book, You May Ask Yourself, addressing how “gender is a social construction” that is so normal for society to think how a man or woman should act towards the public. Society often categorizes roles that females and males are suppose to play in, but not only are they categorized they are also being taught what their gender role is suppose to do. The beginning of gender socialization can start with a child who is not born yet by simply having the parents purchase items that are all pink if its expected to be a girl, but if its expected to be a boy then everything they purchase will be blue. Conley states that gender roles are “sets of behavioral norms assumed to accompany ones’ status as male or female” (Conley [2008] 2013:134). So even when a child is growing into their infant years, toys are made specifically for their gender. By examining how social construction places gender in categories it becomes apparent that males and females get differentiated a lot which emphasizes inequality between them.

This is called gender socialization, which exaggerates sexual differences physically, experimentally, academically, and psychologically. Most parents are unaware that they play such a large role in creating a male or female child. But they are the first and one of the largest influences on their child. When parents have a female child she is viewed as sweet and gentle. The parents will even hold their daughter closer than they would a son. As they grow older boys are encouraged to explore while girls are kept closer to their parents. They are taught different approaches to many different problems in life. They may not realize it but through their interactions with their children they are encouraging their children to grow into a certain type of person based on their gender. The toys they are introduced to are even gender-based. Toys for males encourage them to develop such abilities of spatial perception, creativity, competition, aggression, and constructiveness. Toys for girls encouraged creativity, nurturance, and attractiveness. Children’s rooms and clothing are specific color: girls are pink and boys are blue. Girls often wear dresses and skirts that limit their physical activity. These types of influences at such an early age lay a foundation for the child’s personality. By the time they reach school age they already have a sense of being male or female. In school peers and teachers enforce these differences even further. (Lips, 1979,

In modern times, people can still be seen with these types of clothes though not worn in everyday life. Today things like jeans, tee-shirts, shorts, tank tops, etc. Some clothing has a female variation and a male variation and some gender neutral clothing. Though today we are open to forms of expression through clothing, back then they had a hard time accepting people who looked different. Racism is very blatant and out in the open in To Kill a Mockingbird, exemplified through how casually everyone uses racist terms, which was commonplace for the time.

     Even before the children are born, parents begin choosing clothing and decorations by color based on the sex of the baby. The stereotype of pink, pastels, yellow and white for girls and bright or dark colors like green, blue and red for boys has long been a part of culture. How many times have you heard kids argue over toys because girls don’t want that icky boy color or the boys don’t want the gross girl color? This

Within the American culture, our youth are taught that the masculine roles of the male has traditionally been associated with their role of being strong and dominant and the feminine role of a female has traditionally been associated with their role of being the follower and the nurturer. Children learn the gender roles beginning at birth through the socialization process. Historically our society has always identified male infants with blue and female infants with pink, however, with the turning of the 20th century more neutral colors are being thrown into the mix. More expecting parents are adventuring away from traditional blue and pink and choosing the neutral colors such as green and yellow. Children learn gender socialization through family members, education, other children and social media. Each reinforces the gender role by displaying and maintaining the normal expectation for each genders behavior. Our youth are taught at an early age of the separate expectations of each gender. Parents often teach the role not knowingly but through association. Boys are associated with trucks, toy guns and superheroes that teach them motor skills and independence, whereas the girls are associated with baby dolls, dress costumes, and toy kitchens which teaches them nurturing and social

Although, most of the people in the United States that undergo gender selection, choose girls, a large amount of people who come from Asian or Caucasian descent, choose boys. America is one of the few countries that actually allow gender selection; Canada, the UK, and Australia are just some of the few that have banned it. When people choose a gender, they expect a certain stereotypical role to follow. This reinforces constricting and false gender roles. Girls do not always dress in pink and boys do not always like baseball and trucks. “Do we really want to allow parents to thrall to gender stereotypes to engineer their children for the sole purpose of meeting ephemeral and superficial cultural norms?” (Dollar). If someone goes through so much money and effort to choose a child of a certain gender, they are supporting stereotypes that are damaging to both girls and boys. What happens when you get a girl who does not do all the girly things you were hoping? Or your boy does not like to play sports or get dirty? You can not give them

Even before the children are born, parents begin choosing clothing and decorations by color based on the sex of the baby. The stereotype of pink, pastels, yellow and

However, this is a heavy role to place on a child. The little girl that is born might not like pink. She might enjoy playing sports, and connect better with her father than her mother. Paying for a child’s sex isn’t going to guarantee that they stick to gender normative roles. Imagine the weight on a designer baby's shoulders! There would be an obvious push to stick to the gender norms that the parents clearly are looking for in the child (Sidhu;

The fashions of the past 100 years greatly differ from the styles of the present. Some of the trends of the trends of our generation were inspired by those years, while others remain out of style. Our fashions are not only brought back from the past, but some are brand new ideas fashion designers create. Fashion is an alternating compilation of styles that suffice diverse people and contradistinctive times. Fashion can be considered an expressive art, with the human physique as its canvas, and as a symbolization of one’s class, employment, imagination, and emotions.

Even before a child is born, we have already labeled that child as either a boy or a girl. Then as they grow up we subject them to gender socialization, which is the process in which cultures communicate their expectations about gender to the child (Arnett, 135). I grew up in a small town; however, it was not like the stereotypical, very conservative, small town that is often portrayed in movies. My experience in Western culture, which is immensely different than that of other cultures, is that gender socialization was prevalent during childhood, but became more relaxed during adolescents and emerging adulthood.

Children learn at a very early age what it means to be a boy or a girl in our society. As children grow and develop, the gender stereotypes they are exposed to at home are reinforced by many elements in their environment and are thus perpetuated throughout childhood followed by adolescence. One major societal issue uprising with the way children are raised in today’s society is the gender specific dressing for boys and girls. The history with gender specific dressing is a one sided masculine enforced point of view for centuries. As children move through childhood and into adolescence, they are exposed to many factors which influence their behaviors and attitudes regarding gender roles. It is difficult for a child in today’s society to grow to adulthood without experiencing some form of gender bias or stereotyping. The question lies whether the view of gender specific dressing shall change or stay the same. As society continues to evolve and grow so does the tolerance of new uprising views for the general purpose of equality and freedom to do as pleased. Children regularly learn to adopt gender roles which are not always fair to both sexes. These attitudes and behaviors are generally learned first in the home but then reinforced by their environment, school experience, and media viewing. Nonetheless, the strongest influence on gender role development seems to occur within the family setting. Culture, values, and beliefs are the parents early role for passing on, both overtly

Today when a human baby is born the first question that is asked is '' Is it a boy or a girl?'' In human culture the answer to this question is gigantically significant. This definition of ''femaleness'' or ''maleness'' is the hypothesis of the society which assumes that the child who is born a girl will remain female forever, while a boy will be a male. Gender roles are created by society and vary from society to society as it takes all sorts to make a world. It does not matter where ever you are in the world its just ''society'' which assigns the gender roles without even having enough knowledge about one's gender identity. We living in 21st century but when it comes to gender role orientation we are in total chaos.

The fashion design career, has recently emerged as one of the most popular and competitive among young people. Those who actually succeed in design have a very individualistic personal style and don’t follow trends set by others. Having fashion design as your profession sometimes allows you to meet glamorous people. It can also put you in charge of what is in and out when it comes to clothing through ramp shows and fashion write-ups. Most designers have a great social status, and are accepted by everyone. However, There are many aspects which may or may not help you choose it as your career.