Title: Researching historical youth culture: class and gender in relation to Teddy Girls.
Abstract: While much has been written on the importance of gender and class in relation to male participants of historical youth cultures, women are usually overlooked or conceptualised as occupying separate spaces and identities in relation to pre-existing understandings of “male” identity (such as Skeggs and McRobbie). In relation to Teddy Boys, Teddy Girls are rarely-mentioned and under researched. They are seen as an “add-on”, or afterthought to their male counterparts. This paper aims to contribute to the wider narrative of females as active participants in constructing cultural identity. As well as re-situate a particular female identity within cultural
In today’s generation no matter what gender a person is, they have expectations of society to act like either a “women” or “man”. Back in the day when our parents were growing up it wasn’t the same social standers. Girls didn’t have to deal with such high expectations. Adults usually can’t relate to our situation. In the two essays, Mary Piper’s, “Saplings in the Storm” and Sandra Cisneros “Barbie-Q”, gave a better perspective of girls going through adolescents. During this stage in their life they have to deal with social norms, which pressures girls to compare themselves to others and strive to be an unrealistic model of femininity. This emotional battle to blend in leads to metal distress while not allowing adolescent girl be themselves
In her early years, Eleanor was a debutante. Eleanor was enrolled in the Junior League (Scharf, 1987). The Junior League was a group of young upper-class women who planned to add social responsibility to their lives (Scharf, 1987). Eleanor took her role of social responsibility very seriously (Scharf, 1987). She taught classes at the Rivington Street Settlement House in Manhattan (Scharf, 1987). Eleanor treated the immigrants with absolute kindness and taught her classes with total commitment and personal satisfaction (Scharf, 1987).
Wardy's book offers an expanded insight into girlhood, complete with appearances of stereotypes and sexualization during childhood. Taking a friendly approach to the realities of growing up for girls while having stereotypes and sexualization present, the chapters in Wardy's book are honest and bold and offers advice to parents from the change of child play to shopping strategies for girls that take away from sexualized markets, from how to teach young girls the importance of loving their bodies, Wardy includes useful tips in each chapter that is designed to help parents redefine what it means to be a girl in today's society.
This fall Winnebago Lutheran Academy will be conducting the musical "Hello Dolly". The musical will be lead by the director, Justin Lipert, who is going into his fith year at the acdemy. The lead "Dolly Levi" will be held by returning senior, Charlie Rosenthal. Hello Dolly will be held in the schools chapel from Thursday November 3rd though Sunday November 4th. With many new comers and planty of returning stars the show is sure to be a
Through such actions of defiance and revolt, she manages to keep herself “free” from the social gender pressures imposed upon her. This girl feels imprisoned by her family, as she thrives on what is accepted as “a man’s job”. Furthermore, it is through her imagination that she is able to escape reality, inventing a “world that is recognizably [her] own”. She imagines “opportunities for courage, boldness and self-sacrifice,” where she can ride horses and save lives. This young girl’s ambitions and dreams to live a man’s life are impeded by her mother and grandmother’s protests to “act like a girl”.
Girls are written into youth cultural theory in the language of consumption--initially, as objects for consumption by men. At first, British cultural theorists thought of girls as an absence, a silence, a silence which could only be filled in some separate world of autonomous female culture. Feminist researchers turned to the family as the pivotal point. In following working-class girls into the closed arena of the family, researchers of female culture gained insight into the possibilities of specifically female cultural forms. In this way, they thought of so-called 'bedroom" culture as analogous to male subcultures (p. 105).
The difference between men and women is a very controversial issue, while there are obviously physical differences; the problem is how the genders are treated. It is stereotypically thought that the men do the labor work and make all the money, while the women stay in the house, cooking, cleaning and taking care of the children. While this stereotype does not exist as much in the 21st century, it was very prevalent in the 1900s. By using many different literary tools such as character development, symbolism, and setting, Alice Munro’s Boys and Girls and John Steinbeck’s The Chrysanthemums challenge this controversial topic of the treatment of women versus men in the 1900s.
Launched on March 1959, the Barbie doll is a toy that was first put on display in New York. It quickly garnered a lot of attention with the target audience of the creators, young girls. This doll was different than its previous dolls because it was a doll that was an ideal representation of a woman. Thus allowing young girls to use their imagination to create and act-out what this doll’s life is like and what their future would potentially be. To successfully understand this toy, we must think like C Wright Mills, a sociologist who asks to use our sociological imagination, the intersection of one’s biography and history. This artifact reflects and perpetuates the dominant ideology of how to perform your gender the “right” way in the early 1960s. I will argue this demonstrates West and Zimmerman’s concept of “doing gender” which is clarified with Judith Butler’s concept of socialization of gender.
The biological sex of a person, in most cases, today can still be considered one of the main identifying characteristics of an individual. In the past the sex of a person was more than an identifying characteristic, it was who they were. They were either men or women, there was no in between or changing it. Society today has come a long way in terms of gender identity and gender roles, but the concept of patriarchy still has the upper hand when it all boils down. Allan G. Johnson’s, The Gender Knot, provides for a more diverse outlook on the women’s expected roles in life, how they are expected to handle difficult situations in marriage, and how they demonstrate courage, in Mona Lisa Smile.
In Alice Munro’s short story “Boys and Girls”, the author explains the transition from being a tomboy girl to becoming a woman. The protagonist is
In the 1970’s through to the 1980’s the main focus was the underachievement of girls. Starting from a young age before children were required to start primary school, conditioning and sex stereotyping had started. This involved the assumption that girls were supposed to play with dolls and role playing their role as a carer with their dolls and boys were expected to play with tool kits and more ‘manly’ toys. By girls playing with dolls their educational aspirations were becoming influenced through the play of these stereotypical toys of a girl. This also reinforced the stereotype of women as they were only seen as carers or mothers.
In Alice Munro’s short story “Boys and Girls,” our narrator is a young farm girl on the verge of puberty who is learning what it means to be a “girl.” The story shows the differing gender roles of boys and girls – specifically that women are the weaker, more emotional sex – by showing how the adults of the story expect the children to grow into their respective roles as a girl and a boy, and how the children grow up and ultimately begin to fulfill these roles, making the transition from being “children” to being “young adults.”
The portrayals of the two genders are highly stereotyped. In her extended metaphor, Jiles contradicts the ideals that girls are like a “Paper matches”(11), relating back to the gender role of domesticity as they have “At Your Service”(10), written on their bodies, and will come “bearing supper”(13) with their “heads on fire”(14), mocking the domestic roles of women. In the modern age there is no need for “hunters or warriors”(7) Boys are apparently “deprived of socially sanctioned rituals. In retort to society they are like “hominoids” who “walk(ing) over red-hot cinders without crying”(7). Mocking their mothers the author says, “Mother thought see won, poor foolish Mother”, when they, the mothers think their sons are going to be perfect like the “first twelve years”(4) where they are: “affectionate, kind, a joy to see in their charming clothes.”(4) Tweedie also compares the adolescent boys to “chimps leaving a tea party”(3), that are “thin and long as celery in their tattered vest and holey jeans” in which she refers to the girls as civilized, as that they have “shining, well brushed tresses”(2) and “immaculate
The way society is taught to be socialized is salient and goes unnoticed, therefore it is valid to claim that gender is socially constructed through our everyday practices, whether we are aware of the construction or not. With socialization beginning the instant a child is born, the process is continuous through out adolescence and varies dramatically across the two genders. With guidance from institutions and arenas such as education, sports, music and the mass media gender seems to be coerced, as it comes with a scripted set of behaviors and attitudes. This essay argues that gender is socially constructed on an everyday basis. To further explain this thesis the essay will draw on early childhood socialization of masculinity and femininity,
In Alice Munro short story “Boys and Girls” is about a young girl confused in life about herself maturing into a young women that takes place on a fox farm in Jubilee, Ontario, Canada with her parents and her younger brother. The character of the young girl that is not specified by a name in the story is struggling with the roles that are expected by her peers of a young women in the 1940’s. This young girl has been helping her father on the fox farm for many years in which brought so much of a joy in her life. As she gets older, as well and as her younger brother Laird grows older, she is starting to realize that her younger brother will be soon be taking over the roles and responsibility of taking care of the animals. Then her mother and grandmother points out the anticipations of her to start acting more like how a young women of her age should present themselves and this has great emotional effects on her, and at the end of the story she shows a final act of disobedience against her father, but it only shows the thing she resist the most, her maturing into a young women and becoming her own person.