Welcome to the Machine: The Ramifications of Conditioning Essay

The idea of gender roles has been prominent throughout not only American History, but world history as well. Everyone understands that men are the ones who provide for their family while women are responsible for household work such as taking care of the children, cleaning, and cooking. The United States has come a long way in demolishing these gender constructs from presenting women the right to vote to recent strives in pop culture such as Benny’s gender crushing single and music video, Little Game, but the nation is still not quite to the point of completely shattering the often harmful gender roles that are set upon children and adults in society. As a means to prevent damage to future generations, parents should not assign gender roles to their children at birth.

People receive thousands of cultural messages everyday about gender roles from advertisements, movies, TV, music, magazines, family, school… etc. People perceive these messages and realize expectations for their gender and for their children as well, and how they should operate within society. While many individuals and organizations challenge these traditional gender roles, the evident impact of mainstream culture persists.

Amy Cunningham, an editor and author from New York, wrote an article “Why Women Smile” to emphasize on how women are no longer smiling because it is a natural thing, but rather an everyday habit. Coupled with Cunningham’s supported reasons of using logos and ethos, she also uniquely brings in her personal experience by having ethos, making her argument more relatable. A long side with that, societies’ past and present impact on today’s world about women was also included as Cunningham put her own take into proving her point. Although this may be true, there were some fallacies found in her argument, leading it to the lack of fully portraying the audience.

Summary The video, “Social Norms and Conformity,” discusses the role of gender, conformity, and deviance in today’s society. It first outlines how gender and one’s definition of it is socially constructed from the moment we are born. At birth, we are automatically bestowed with the status of belonging to a group; we are welcomed as a member into society and we are consequentially influenced by the beliefs, ideals, and social norms that that particular society holds. As the video highlights, Western society holds very different expectations for what constitutes being “female” and “male.”

From a young age, boys and girls are told to act a certain way based on their gender. The norms they are told often contradict each other, with boys being told to be confident and girls compliant. As a UNICEF report from 2008 describes, “Children start facing norms that define ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ from an early age. Boys are told not to cry, not to fear, not to be forgiving and instead to be assertive, and strong. Girls on the other hand are asked not to be demanding, to be forgiving and accommodating and ‘ladylike’.

From the moment they are born, children are exposed to myriad of rigid gender stereotypes. Even as newborns, children are carried out of the hospital in a pink blanket if they are female or a blue blanket if they are male. As children grow older, gender roles are reinforced by family members, the media, and other children and adults in the child’s life. As toddlers, girls often are given dolls and books about princess and boys are often given trucks and books about heroes. If a girl tracks mud across the floor she would probably get scolded by a parent, but if her brother did the same thing he would probably get a laugh or a “boys will be boys.”

In today’s society, women are typically caught smiling but it's questioned as to why. The essay, “Why Women Smile”, was written by Amy Cunningham as she elaborated on her view of associating smiling with women. I, personally, enjoyed this document because I was able to put myself in Amy’s shoes as she discussed her view point, as well as the research she found. Cunningham’s views are similar to mine which helped me relate to the essay very much.

Amy Cunningham is a widely publicized author who has primarily written about psychological issues and modern life. Her article “Why Women Smile” analyzes why women in the United States smile so frequently, while also strongly persuading the reader that this is primarily a negative cultural phenomenon. Cunningham clearly did significant research on the subject as evident by the information from studies and experts she provides in the essay. Personal experiences are used to show how women are pressured to smile by society. Cunningham also provides examples of the differences in the perception of a woman’s smile, in different cultures both presently and historically, to show that this is an American trait. Cunningham riles the reader up by repeatedly belittling a woman’s false smile as a submissive act that society encourages, which also

Amy Cunningham’s “Why Women Smile” talks about how women are expected to smile all the time, resulting in it being a burden and the burial of their true feelings. She mentions that it has become a standard to portray a woman’s personal feelings in public.

The book Learning to Be Gender points out a serious question of gender norms in our society in which both men and women should behave appropriately in their desire gender. For instance, we learn how to act, talk and dress up like our gender. Then when we grow up and have kids and

Full name: Nabila Rizwan HCC ID: 206665638 English 1301 Diagnostic Exam Evaluation of Why Women Smile Amy Cunningham argues, in her article "Why Women Smile", how women smile over everything even if there is no reason to smile. Her words "My smile has gleamed like a cheap plastic night-light so long and so reliably that certain friends and relatives worry that my mood will darken the moment my smile dims." shows her awareness about how people are obsessed with her smile that her relatives get worried that if her smile dims out, it will dim down the fun around them. She thinks that the women are genetically programmed to have a smile on her face as it has been in our culture that women are much more tolerable than men and thus. are expected to have a smile on their face on every situation.

Gender roles have been around since the beginning of time and have distinctly followed a specific pathway, naming women the nurturing figure, caretaker of the home, and having sensitive feelings, while men become the provider of a family with aggressive and demanding attitudes. This difference in roles create disunity that harms women in more ways than one. Gender roles can be implemented by both men and women ranging from all ages. From a very young age, girls are pressured to fix their hair neat, wear pretty dresses, and act bubbly, classy, and innocent. As girls grow into women, the same expectations still linger around them.

Within this paper, the umbrella term “queer” will be used to encompass many different sexual identities mentioned. While once used as a derogatory term, it has been rebranded and revitalized as a term of unification for members of the LGBTQIA+ community. In order to prevent erasure of the narrative of subsets of members within the larger queer community, their identities will be included. When discussing the larger implications of the development of sexual minority identification, queer will be employed.

The purpose of Amy Cunningham’s “Why Women Smile” has shown the history of society swaying women’s emotions through smiles. The article enlightens the fact that women’s feelings are shaped by society even though legally women are equal and free. Not only does she refer to her personal experience of a fake smile, but also to a psychologist’s viewpoint and experiments to justify her standpoint on the influences of women smiling. The author gives explanations on how historically society can make a woman feel obligated to smile even though they’re not in state of happiness. Cunningham explains the influences of women smiling not only through history and past public opinions, but also through the different phases of life we see in the process of human growth.

Society has its way of molding a child into a respectable human being. Parents have a certain way they want their child to behave and act in the public setting, as well as in the home. For example, cultural conditioning is the process by which society’s attitude and values are passed to its members; the process works as parents pass down the values and standards that have been upheld throughout numerous generations. Thus, the way that a child is brought up is considered traditional. Both the story “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid and the video “The Mask You Are In” both explore the negative side of cultural conditioning. While Kincaid reveals the oppressive nature of the female identity construct, “The Mask You Live In” criticizes society’s efforts to teach boys how to “be a man.” Men and women both have standards to meet. The pieces of information reveal what we are faced with on a daily basis.