Women hold a momentous role in society. They are a necessity to the evolution of the world by becoming the wife, mother, cook, and soul protector of the family. The outcome ought to result in women being treated as equals to the public, but the reality is a girl’s body is the soul attribute to their worth. Tensions about the complex workings of an adolescent’s body has many cultural and adorned meanings behind it and is readily looked over as a point of becoming a woman. The various meanings and positions taken on the body has turned women into the second sex or the other in society. The cultural values that are presented to women and young girls are a result of the second sex theory and the patriarchal structure the world has continued to …show more content…
Society says, woman are fragile and naive to the world around them. The women need guidance or they might tarnish their bodies and present themselves in a bad manner. It is better for the women to be watched carefully and remain pure for her future husband. Society says women are not capable of taking care of themselves, which would imply that they care for the overall protection of girl and womanhood, on the contrary the female population is not safe in the eyes of the law since rape and domestic violence is mostly looked over as a woman being …show more content…
The black woman is already seen as more guilty, traitorous, and sexually knowledgeable than their female white parts because she does not accurately represent their idea of innocence. This stems from many concepts, but the main one is the race. African Americans are categorized as being more sexualized than any race, but that comes from ignorance and the media which leads to many African American women pleading for help but are rejected because of their gender and race.
In the public eye, being at home should be a safe place for girls and women alike, but that is not true. The family is the most dangerous place for girls and that presents another contradiction when the law gets involved. The reality of the situation is that it is a greater chance for young girls to be abused at home. The laws are in place to protect and discipline, but context matters. In some religions, if you are rapped by anyone they become your husband, this is a result due to the fact that a lawmaker will see the girl as precocious and assume she wanted this to
"Skin blemishes made it impossible for me to really enjoy myself. I was always worrying about the way I looked" (Brumberg, p. 87). Woman all around the world share the same problem, they feel unhappy and self-conscious with the appearance of their bodies. In The Body Project by Joan Jacobs Brumberg, she successfully illustrates the way adolescents begin to change focus from inner to outer beauty in the early 19th and 20th centuries. Through use of personal diaries and historical research, Brumberg shows her readers the physical differences between girls then and now. Brumberg talks about an array of topics in her book – periods, acne, dieting, piercing, virginity, and sexuality. From their roots in the 1800’s through the Victorian era and into modern society the reader gets a glimpse of the way young women evaluate their bodies and turn them into body projects, and is still to this day sweeping the nation more than ever.
It makes one wonder how society came to these ridiculous standards of beauty and the taboo of talking about women's bodies that still resonate today. I can personally attest to the uncomfortableness of the conversation of menstruation and developing bodies. My mother was taught, as her mother before and so on, that these conversations are to be kept in private and talked about quietly. In response to this, the power of men have an increasingly strong hold on the ideal physical beauty and how the changes of the body, such as menstruation, be in private and never spoke of. The Body Project gives a disturbing look at how women in the past few centuries and the present should act, look like, and keep hidden in response to what men think is most desirable. No matter how free women think they are, we are still under the control of men even if it is not directly. This book opens the conversation on the problems that are still plaguing women and how society needs to change to have a healthier environment for women to be comfortable in their
The reading assigned titled “The Socially Constructed Body” by Judith Lorber and Yancey Martin dives into the sociology of gender with a specific focus on how the male and female body is compromised by social ideals in the Western culture. She introduces the phenomenon of body ideals pressed on men and women by introducing the shift in cosmetic surgery toward body modifications.
Being a woman is hard work. We many have pressures on us from society to marry, bear children, be an upstanding citizen, and maintain some sort of career, all the while trying to understand our bodies and its changes; being a woman of color, or black woman, it’s even harder. Not only do we have to deal with everything a White woman does, and we also have the added pressure of defying stigmas and stereotypes within our own group of people. What stigma’s you ask? How about not being perceived as ignorant, uneducated, and or “ghetto”. The stereotypical misrepresentations of African-American women and men in popular culture have influenced societal views of Blacks for centuries. The typical stereotypes about Black women range from the smiling, asexual and often-obese Mammy to the promiscuous and the loud, smart mouthed, neck-rolling Black welfare mother is the popular image on reality television. These images portrayed in media and popular culture creates powerful ideology about race and gender, which affects every day experiences of Black women in America.
Karin Martin (1998) discusses how our bodies are gendered at young ages in her exploration of how bodily differences are constructed in preschool. Martin’s research (1998) shows the differences between the two genders that we make, even at such young ages. Our bodies are gendered in social institutions and these differences create a context for social relations in which differences confirm inequalities of power (Martin, 1998). As we get older our bodies continue to be gendered, with reference to body hair; women are taught to remove their body hair to be feminine. Christina Hope (1982) argues that this misogynistic idea, comes from the societies ideals about the different sexes. She says that American society depicts men and women as polar opposites, and therefore women removing their body hair keeps them feminine as it is a masculine trait to have body hair (Hope, 1982). Hope (1982) also explains that American cultural has the tendency to group women with non-adults, and men with adults. She argues that a woman naturally grows body hair during or after puberty, and the removal of it may be “feminine” but it is also “childlike” (Hope 1982). Women’s hair removal products are often advertised with terms like “baby soft”, reinforcing this idea that a feminine woman is much like a child. These idea’s are all a part of the western world’s culture,
Fresh from the womb we enter the world as tiny, blank slates with an eagerness to learn and blossom. Oblivious to the dark influences of culture, pre-adult life is filled with a misconception about freedom of choice. The most primitive and predominant concept that suppresses this idea of free choice involve sex and gender; specifically, the correlation between internal and external sex anatomy with gender identity. Meaning, those with male organs possess masculine identities, which involve personality traits, behavior, etcetera, and the opposite for females. Manipulating individuals to adopt and conform to gender identities, and those respective roles, has a damaging, life-long, effect on their development and reflection of self through prolonged suppression. This essay will attempt to exploit the problems associated with forced gender conformity through an exploration of personal experiences.
Women have been submitted to believe they live to care for their household and to respect men as the ones with absolute authority. Girls are expected to help the mothers with their younger siblings and helping care for the house. Women are taught that they need prepare themselves to be the best wifes. Being punished physically, mentally, and verbally is viewed as normal and acceptable when the women are not up to the expectations of the man. These gender norms are implemented into young girls life by their parents, society, and history.
During the 19th century, in eastern America, men were the heads of families and controllers of the work place, while women had little power, especially over their roles; particularly upper class women due to the lack of necessity for them to work outside the home. “Men perpetrated an ideological prison that subjected and silenced women”(Welter, Barbara). Their only responsibilities were to be modest, proper women who took care of themselves and did not stray from the purpose of motherhood. They were to remain in the home scene and leave the public work to the men; trapped in their own households, they were expected to smile, accept, and relish such a life. Barbra Walter also agrees that women were imprisoned in their homes, and were merely good for maintaining the family, “a servant tending to the needs of the family”(Welter). Many women's emotions, as well as minds, ran amiss from this life assignment and caused them to stray from the social norms set up by tradition. The narrator in Charlotte Gilman's story, The Yellow Wallpaper, is a victim of such emotional disobedience and rebelliousness. As well as the rebellious women in the poem The Woman in the Ordinary, by Marge Piercy.
From a young age , many individuals worldwide are socialized according to their gender and what is appropriate for males and females. Socializing according to ones gender starts from the moment you are born when the nurses give you either a blue or pink blanket to wrap the child in. This allows society to known whether the child is a male or female. The double standard for gender occurs within many areas of development for instance the clothes one wears, the toys that are placed with, the jobs and careers one chooses in their later life. Attachment given by a child's parent reinforces an individual to be socialized and children can also contribute how their parents treat and see them , these are social constructs within parenting (Ambert,2012). All of these things can be gender separated and still are in today's society. Another area where males and females are socialized differently is in the area of sexuality and what is acceptable for males is not always for the female gender. Gender specific norms govern the appropriate amount of partners , when it is acceptable to engage in sexual activity and what motivates ones behavior (Kreager &Staff, 2009). This shows society individuals are socialized according to their gender because males are socialized into behaving a different way than girls but it still be accepted as a norm. Women are taught that it is okay to have sexual relationships but they need a reason, example being in a committed relationship, where as men just need a place. This is a common perception based on ones gender , formed from a western conservative view point ( Fugere et.al, 2008). Gender socialization is a process where boys are seen to be given wings and girls are to be given roots (Myers, Spencer, Jordan...
Imagine if you were a woman in nineteenth century America, what do you think life would be like? The obvious answer is that one would be subjected to being a housewife and only a housewife, but there was something else that went far beneath this surface oppression. For women, the nineteenth century was a dark period. Not only were they thought of as glorified maids, but they were also greatly oppressed and subjected to the rule of man. At this time, women weren’t allowed to vote and it was socially unacceptable for a woman to do much without the proper consent of her husband or father. In the story, The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the reader explores the idea of how deeply this oppression affected the average woman. In the story, the main character is denied the simple right of her own sanity and peace of mind wherever she expressed desires to be free. The nineteenth century was not a pleasant time for women, especially for those who were brave enough to ask to be treated like a man.
Women in history were subjected to an oppressed role, which men were in control. Many of these women created groups to talk about these problems such as the Seneca Falls. Women fought for equality, but some were happy with the status quo, and some simply became the change.
Gender is such a ubiquitous notion that humans assume gender is biological. However, gender is a notion that is made up in order to organize human life. It is created and recreated giving power to the dominant gender, creating an inferior gender and producing gender roles. There are many questionable perspectives such as how two genders are learned, how humans learn their own gender and others genders, how they learn to appropriately perform their gender and how gender roles are produced. In order to understand these perspectives, we must view gender as a social institution. Society bases gender on sex and applies a sex category to people in daily life by recognizing gender markers. Sex is the foundation to which gender is created. We must understand the difference between anatomical sex and gender in order to grasp the development of gender. First, I will be assessing existing perspectives on the social construction of gender. Next, I will analyze three case studies and explain how gender construction is applied in order to provide a clearer understanding of gender construction. Lastly, I will develop my own case study by analyzing the movie Mrs. Doubtfire and apply gender construction.
A women's role has changed tremendously and is making its greatest impact in our society today. Many years ago, women's contribution to society was limited and controlled by men. Women are standing tall and are playing a major role in many important areas. Women's role has changed at an accelerating rate and have part in areas such as Politics, Professional Training Jobs, Medicine,Business and Law. Formerly they were not part of any political matter, but they have advanced in many aspects. For example, women have attained power and have been growing in political office.
In my own opinion, based on the experience I have, the issues that oppress women today are employment, economy, labour, education and domestic abuse. For example in Nigeria, most women are involved in petty trading, farming, selling fruits and street hawking in urban areas. Those women who have a reputable job were not paying enough salary. They paying them half of the salary that the men get. The salary will not be enough for the woman to get the food for their family.
The role women play in today’s society is a drastic change from the previous role. Women used to be confined to the superiority of the man. Physically, mentally, and emotionally abused, belittled, embarrassed, and silenced. These are just a few examples of the emotion from the isolated treatment of the past. A woman’s role in today’s society is more valued than ever before.