Gender Stereotypes In Tootsie

Tootsie reflection paper

In the film “Tootsie” staring David Hoffman, we see many ways that gender, gender roles and gender stereotypes are applied, as they often are in the real world. In this essay I will be discussing how the film “does gender”, the different categories of gender stereotypes and examples of each type in the storyline, and how feminism is represented throughout the movie. I feel that this film does a great job of representing the topics we have been talking about in class in a realistic and understandable manner.

The term “doing gender” is what this film is largely based of off. According to our lesion, when you “do gender”, you are actively engaging in how you identify as, typically categorized as male or female, but

more currently the idea of there being more than one gender is being expressed more. This term is displayed in the movie when Dustin Hoffman’s character changes from himself, Michael Dorsey, into a female acting persona, Dorthey Michaels. He changes his physical appearance, the tone and pitch of his voice, and parts of his personality to fit the characteristic of the gender that he is trying to portray. In a way, Hoffman is being androgynous with his character, showing both masculine and feminine characteristics, just at different times. In order for Michael to play his female role of Dorthey, he attempts to transform himself to the follow some of the stereotypes that society has about women, so that way no one knows that it is actually him.
In the film, they show many components of stereotypes regarding both men and women.

In class we learned that here are 4 components that contribute to these stereotypes: physical, personality, social, and sexuality. These components are shown multiple times throughout the movie. The most obvious approach in the movie is the difference in the physical appearance of the character. Michael Dorsey shows many masculine traits in the way his hair his done, the clothes he wears, and having a bare face (no make-up), while Dorthey Michaels has curlier salon type hair, wears dresses and earrings, and has a great amount of make-up applied. Dorthey also has breasts added and he waist/body shape is accented with the high wasted band on most of the dresses she wears, where as Michael is flat chested and has a straighter straighter and more “masculine” body shape. For the personality side Michael had a hard time finding acting jobs because he had a difficult “bossy” personality on set, that type of aggression is often stereotyped as a male trait. When Dorthey displayed a more “edgy” out going and assertive personally, people made comments about how different she was from what they considered to be a normal woman trait of being more calm and cooperative. As often thought of as a women’s trait, Dorthey was pretty social in the movie and really tried to connect to people’s emotions, whereas, at first, Michael himself struggled with emotions regarding his relationship and struggled with

communicating and cooperating well on sets. For sexuality, Michael was definitely interested in females, which fits the stereotype, but with him playing the role of Dorthey, he sometimes leads people to believe that Dorthey was guy because she tried kissing another female, which breaks the normal stereotypes of females being attracted to males.
I indirectly this film is directed to support feminism as well. In particular, the liberal form of feminism that we talked about in class, which relates to the idea that women are legally and socially equal to men. I feel this way because of the way Dorthey Michaels stands up for herself as a confident and independent woman, especially emphasized in the character that she is playing on her show. Even with her “attitude”, people managed to gain a lot of respect for her as both an actress and person, regardless of the fact that she is a woman and trying to break the social norms of how women are told to act like. I also feel it is lightly shown when Michael Dorsey is trying to help Sandy Lester for her Audition. She was being quiet and timid when practicing lines with Michael and he encouraged her that her role need to stand up against the male doctor role and prove that she is not the small, vulnerable woman that he is trying to treat her like. Dustin Hoffman even got emotional during one of his interviews when discussing how acting as a female affected him, changing the way he views woman and raising the amount of respect he has for them.
This film made a statement about women and the stereotypes/expectations that follow them. I loved that this movie took a serious topic such as gender, gender stereotypes and feminism, and was able to take a light-hearted approach to it and still get their meaning across effectively. After viewing the film and analyzing it in accordance to the concepts that I chose, I was able to get a greater understanding of how much these gender stereotypes affect the way we categorize different genders and how people act in order to fit into these genders. It was a wonderful learning experience with a comedic twist to keep it enjoyable.