preview

Gender Conventions In Busker By Nisha Coleman

Decent Essays

To be unconventional is to separate oneself from societal norms and be different than the usual. In Nisha Coleman’ memoir, Busker, Coleman excellently depicts what it’s like to defy gender conventions through Nisha’s appearance and her lack of sexual experience/desire.

Coleman puts an emphasis on Nisha’s appearance to illustrate to the reader the difference between the average French women and herself. This is first seen as the beginning of the memoir when Pierre brings home a woman named Elise. Nisha finds herself shocked by Elise’ femininity and elegance, she begins to compare herself to Elise. Nisha describes Elise as, “an attractive woman with natural confidence and hyper-feminine aura.” (32) whereas, she describes herself as “grubby and childish in my …show more content…

Societies conventional physical expectations of women is what Elise appears to be, sexy, confident and dressed elegantly. Nisha clearly defies this gender convention by dressing more child-like and masculine. Nisha’ gender defiance is shown once again by Nisha’ lack of sexual experience/desire. Nisha is invited to a Parisian women’s apartment, Céline. The idea of becoming friends with Parisian women is exciting to Nisha yet stressful as Nisha is different from most French women. Once she arrives at Célines the group, her nerves settle yet she realizes that “everyone else here is so confident and sexy” (103) this quote indicates that Nisha does not view herself as the conventional French women, since she does not find she posseses anywhere near the same level of sexiness or confidence. This is clearly portrayed once the group begins to play “the game”, which consists asking and answering questions written on a piece of paper. To Nishas surprise the majority of the questions were extremely sexual, making her extremely uncomfortable due to her lack of sexual experience. This is shown when she thinks to herself, “I can’t talk. If I tried to say

Get Access