Gender Narrative : The And Dress Up Like Princesses

Gender roles have been a hotly debated topic in the most recent years, especially the role of women in society. Women have had set expectations that they are believed to conform to, which is shown in many pieces of film and literature. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald describes the life of a man in the upper class in the 1920’s, as well as women in the 1920’s. The movie The Princess Bride, written by William Goldman, visually explains the treatment and expectations of women, and especially focuses on the “damsel in distress” stereotype.. Roxane Gay’s “Bad Feminist” explains the stereotypes against women and ways women can come together and fight these constraints. Based on these sources, societal expectations take away from each individual’s identity, forcing women to conform to society's standards. In order to fight against these expectations, women have banded together and formed movements against these standards.

Gender is a topic that not many people are educated on. When people think of gender, they think of boy and girl, people usually think of a girl having a vagina, and a boy having a penis. Many people have their thoughts on how each sex should behave which would be giving people gender roles, girls should play with Barbie dolls, and boys should play with trucks. There is more to gender than just the vagina and penis, In “Understanding The Complexities of Gender”, Sam Killermann talks about the distinct pieces that also comes with gender, like gender identity, gender expression, and biological sex. When people think of gender, the only part people think of is the biological sex.

Why do so many people consider gender and sex to be the same? Society has forced people to believe that there are two forms of identity, which are male or female. A person’s upbringing can have drastic affect on his or her perception about gender and identity. As stated in the “Complexity of Identity” by Beverly Daniel Tatum, a person has multiple identities ranging from gender to ethnicity. For example, I am brought in very orthodox Hindu family. My family is very conservative, which is why they tried to make me into a traditional “Indian girl”. When I was two and half years old, I came to America and it was very different from India, especially for my parents. It was a huge cultural shock for them because they never experienced women being so open-minded. Even though my parents knew that females in America are more outspoken, they still tried to impose feminine values on me. For instance, before I would go to school, my mom would comb my thick, black hair and tie it into two ponytails. Not only did she always tie my hair but she also made me wear dresses, even though I resisted multiple times. Over time I got into the habit of my mom dressing me up for school; however, I now realize that was not someone whom I wanted to be. I did not want to wear dresses, I did not want always want to tie my hair and I did not always wanted to be constantly reminded that I had to act like a girl. I was always under the impression that I should always act like a girl to be considered a

Gender can be defined as “sex roles” which are conditions that one considers to be for men or women. People tends to mistake it with sex or thinks that they are both the same. We discussed about the patterns of gender which how the authors of The Kaleidoscope of Gender describes it as “regularized, prepackaged ways of thinking, feeling, and acting” (Spade and Valentino,2017). It becomes an identity for us. We believe that there is and can only be two genders, being masculine for men and feminine for women. These roles has been forced onto us since birth: blue for boys, and pink for girls. You can see the roles being push onto a person throughout one’s life, but we don’t notice it since it’s “normal” to us.

​​Gender is defined as whatever behaviors and attitudes a group considers proper for its males and females. Unlike sex, gender is something that we learn from the day we are born. “Young children begin to acquire gender role stereotypes at about the same time they develop gender identity and by the age of 3 or 4 most children” (Amanda Youmans). Peers, community, media, religion and our upbringing all play a role in the understanding of our culture and what is considered acceptable for males and females. When the sex of a child is revealed, they are automatically placed into a gender specific role with certain expectations. There are things in this world such as colors, toys, media depiction and taught behaviors that play into these gender roles.

In “Cinderella and Princess Culture,” Peggy Orenstein compares girls lives to princesses. Society is stereotyping girls as princesses negatively impacting girls well being. As a result, Orenstein claims society should stop stereotyping girls as princesses and have parents limit the girl's exposure to them. Orenstein proves her claim by stating playing with princesses lowers girls self-esteem and can harm their mental and physical health. Orenstein also states the word princess is such a broad meaning, that it is very misunderstood. For example, when one hears the word princess they can think of a girl wearing a fancy dress, or all the princess products. A lot of girls are being stereotyped as being a princess,

defines gender roles between masculine and feminine, but not everyone fits perfectly into the role that

Some things may need to be like this including clothing, but having gender oriented toys and movies is laughable. I think that if we took the genders off of things we buy at the store that don't need to have genders. I think that soap is just soap and I will use it no matter what gender it is used for, and maybe many other people think that it is stupid also. I think that women should not be stereotyped for taking longer in the morning than men just because women looked a certain way and woman should be in skirts and men should wear pants but in reality if it were switched people might start to freak out . I think our appearance really doesn't matter at all and we freak out when something happens that is just a little bit not normal and anybody should be able to express themselves and people need to be more open minded to new

To start with, ever since I was in kindergarten, it was always easier for me to empathize more with boys than with girls. I would rather like to play with the dirt than with dolls. I considered girls to be wimps. I loved adventures, mysteries, video games and games that required a lot of physical activity and the boys were the ones I could relate to

Argument/Conclusion: Gender is a social construction or a process in which human beings are brought up to believe that only two genders (male or female) were normal and that based on your sex you are classified to a specific gender.

Nobody is born with a set gender, the way we walk, talk, and dress gives off the impression of being a man or woman and therefore, gender is performative, or in other words nobody possesses a gender from the beginning of their life. In our daily lives we build models of a set gender through repetition. From the moment a baby is born, the gender of the child has already been set by society. Growing up, they perform the gender they believe they should be based on how they have observed these genders to be. They do this by watching it be performed by their parents and those around them. Over and over we have seen gender being performed in more or less in the same way. The repetition gives us the idea that this is why we should be acting according to our gender.

When we look up gender in the dictionary it states “Although it is possible to define gender as “sex,” indicating that the term can be used when differentiating male creatures from female ones biologically, the concept of gender, a word primarily applied to human beings, has additional connotations—more rich and more amorphous—having to do with general behavior, social interactions, and most importantly, one 's fundamental sense of self.” When I define gender I automatically define it as being a boy and girl or male and female. People define gender in so many ways, but it is in the way that we think more outside of the box based on people’s opinions, that make us wonder more.

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 term ‘gender’ was coined by John Money in 1955: “Gender is used to signify all those things that a person says or does to disclose himself/herself as having the status of a boy or man, girl or woman, respectively” (Coleman and Money, 1991, 13). In

In society, the biological difference between men and women is used as a justification for aligning them with different social roles which restrict and mold their attitudes and behavior. Merriam-Webster defines gender as the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex. Narrow minded society of today is not satisfied with the natural difference of sex, but each insist on adding a cultural difference of gender to it. The unsophisticated, ideal physical facts always become associated with the complex psychological qualities (Holter). It is not enough for a male to be a man; he must also be masculine. A woman, in addition to being a female, must be feminine (Magner). In a more evolved and accepting society,