Gender Roles In Moonlight

Even before the moment we are born, models of gender and sexual expression are pressed into us. The colors "pink" and "blue" identify what gender a newborn baby will be, placing these two genders into a type of "box" or "category". The idea that young girls should stay inside to play will dolls and young boys should go outside to be adventurous, also puts these two genders under limitations. Society places these gender roles upon us, in hopes of us acting a particular way to display our gender in the "correct" manner. Society makes us act, speak, dress, groom, and love in a specific way. However, in today's day and age, we are thankfully straying away from these defined roles, and are allowing ourselves to fully express our own view on our

personal gender. Girls now dress in a more masculine fashion and men are able to have more feminine traits as well. Members of the LGBTQ community also have more expression about themselves and who they chose to love. Many movies have help those who may be struggling, by showing different models of gender in a positive light. Moonlight, Frida, Bound, and Boys Don't Cry all feature protagonists who do not fit the conventional, socially approved model of gender and sexual expression.
Moonlight, a story of a young black man struggling with his inner self, is a film which displays unconventional models of gender and sexual expression.

Chiron, the protagonist of the film, is shown throughout three important stages of his life; youth, adolescence, and early adult life. In his youth stage, titled "Little", Chiron questions Juan on what the word "faggot" means and if Chiron himself is one. Juan described the term as "a word used to make gay people feel bad". We later find out, after an intimate moment with Kevin on the beach, that Chiron is in fact gay. This sets the scene for the film. The film shows the fragility of black

masculinity.
In Chiron's culture, masculinity is hard and aggressive. The only acceptable behavior by Chiron's peers, regarding emotions, is the elimination of them. As he grows older, into the second stage of the film, Chiron understands that due to the society he lives in, he needs to conform to these gender norms of black masculinity. Chiron is faced with a very difficult choice. He would either embrace who he truly is sexually as a person, opening himself up to abuse from those around him, or confirm and identify as a straight black male. He chooses the latter. Chiron embraces the black male masculinity and turns away from his true self. He becomes an aggressive drug-dealer, changing his appearance and actions to a harder and more "masculine" way. However, he is still the same person emotionally and sexually on the inside, though his external appearance is now conformed to the harsh gender norms that society has forced him to become.
Within the film Frida, we are able to see a woman who does not fit typical gender norms. Frida was a strong bisexual woman who redefined female beauty roles and sexuality stereotypes. Frida had a masculine look to her. She did not pluck her eyebrows or remove of her body hair, keeping her masculine features very prominent. Her appearance was intimidating to not only woman but men. Frida, at the time where women had few rights (1900's), attended a co-educational school. This was very unusual in those days, since men were seen as the dominant sex. Frida also wore her hair pulled back off of her face and appeared in men's suits for family photos. Frida redefined how women are portrayed by society, not only in her appearance but her artwork. She strayed away from traditional feminine beauty in art. Frida painted raw and honest artwork, showing hard experiences that real women face. Her artwork consisted of abortions, birth, breastfeeding, and miscarriages. These are all experiences that society sees as controversial and tends to hide from site. When in reality these are experiences that happen to many women and are very real in the world. After having gone through countless tragedies in her life, one being a traumatic accident resulting in over 30 surgeries, she did not turn weak. She was strong and turned to painting, displaying her suffering through artwork, showing that women are able to survive physically and emotionally from anything that happens in their lives. Frida is the ultimate feminine icon, changing how society view femininity, sexuality, and women as a whole.
Bound is another film that redefines femininity and displays a protagonist who does not fit the conventional, socially approved model of gender and sexual expression.

Bound is an erotic film that uses "heterosexual soft-core porn sexual displays in the context of thriller or film noir-type plots" (Bound, Class PowerPoint). Before Bound most American films featured lesbians as criminals, vampires, ashamed lesbians, and "now I am, now I am not" lesbians. "Very few films, prior to the 1990s, contained a lesbian love story in which the relationship was overt and intact at the end of the film" (Kelly Kessler). Bound, does feature the typical theme of lesbian violence, for both the butch woman and the femme fatale. However, Kessler says, "it is different in that it appeals to a wide audience without selling out lesbians" (Kessler, Class

PowerPoint).
Bound follows the love story of Corky, an ex-con lesbian, and Violet, a hyper-feminine lesbian woman who is looking to escape the harsh relationship with her male "lover" Caesar. Corky is seen as an aggressive and butch lesbian, with more masculine features. This is a very stereotypical view of how lesbians "should look". Violet is a very feminine woman who is always dressed in sexy dresses and has soft, more feminine features. At first glance, to many heterosexual viewers, Violet would not seem to fit the "lesbian look", since she is so feminine. These butch/femme roles in the film are very recognizable stereotypes, appealing to heterosexual viewers who believe lesbians are easily identified as mimicking heterosexuals. In other words, by showing "who the man is in the relationship". However, as the film progresses, it can be seen that the tables turn in a way. Towards the end of the film, when Violet confronts Caesar with the gun, one would assume that Corky, the "masculine" one, would swoop in and save Violet. Instead, Violet takes control and kills Caesar, showing her own form of masculinity and power. Violet and Corky break these gender norms, by showing that there is not always a "man" in a lesbian relationship. The relationship is equal, as all relationships should be. Both Corky and Violet are strong lesbian woman who are also vulnerable to one another because of their love.
Boys Don't Cry takes us through the struggling life of Brandon, a transgender. Through Brandon's life of transition, he is faced with challenges commonly experienced in the transgender community; difficulty finding "a place" in public spaces such as bathrooms, pronouns and names, violence, and family misunderstandings or rejection. In one scene in the film, Brandon is forced into a bathroom and has his pants ripped down by John and Tom. This scene highlights how there needs to be a gender identification based on the biological sex of a person, when this is not always the case. Many people who are biologically a female, identify themselves as a male, and will therefor use the male bathroom.
In today's society, there is such a fear behind transgender people because we cannot fit them into a certain "category" regarding a particular gender. "Transgendering disrupts the ways in which sex, gender