| just a little assignment we did while training to get a feel for the process of writing a narrative argument, so we could better teach it to our students. not a big deal, but I actually found that I cared about my essay, so I thought I'd pass it along. Not a great piece of writing, but then I never meant it to be.
Guys and Dolls
One evening around a year ago, I was working at Kmart, technically “minding” the service desk. I was probably smelling the hand lotions nearby. It could get boring at Kmart. This particular evening, a man walked in with his young son and rather proudly made it known that his boy was going to be looking at our selection of curtains in order to get ideas for redecorating the living room at their home. A couple of the teenage girls went over to coo at the kid and talk to the dad, while I had to return to the service desk for something or other.
I could overhear bits and pieces of the conversation.
Apparently, the young boy was a fashion savant, fond of overseeing his mother’s wardrobe as well as the household décor. The kid talked avidly of lace curtains and matching colors. It was cute as hell and the dad fairly exuded fatherly pride. He said something about his son having his own tv show someday.
As soon as the pair left, the two workers who had been making such a fuss over the boy walked past the service desk saying something to the effect of, “You know he’s going to be gay as anything when he grows up.” I remember silently agreeing with them. The “signs” as it were, of femininity had practically emanated from the kid. He decorated the home, he dressed his mother, he was a fashionista with an attitude all before the age of eight. Even the fact that he was quite verbose seemed to point towards queen-dom on the horizon. But after I thought about it, the girls’ remarks began to bother me. Not because they meant their assumption about the boy’s sexual orientation negatively, I’m sure they didn’t, I knew the girls and they were more liberal than not. No, they simply saw a little boy not matching the template they associated with normal, “masculine” little boys and made two ill-founded assumptions. First, that the boy would grow up gay by virtue of his feminine qualities, associating his sexual orientation with non-fulfillment of a gender stereotype; second, that a well-articulated enthusiasm for fashion and decoration was not in fact a masculine quality.
Unfortunately, as the girls’ reactions illustrated, the problem that the young boy in Kmart will undoubtedly face throughout his life is one faced by boys across America who differ from traditional gender expectations: ridicule, confusion, and a resultant pressure to conform. As such a boy once myself, I can attest to the torment that attends the teenage years as one realizes that one cannot fit in with “the guys” without pretending to be someone one is not. I even remember adjusting my academic performance in middle school so that I scored lower on tests, and deliberately stunting my vocabulary, all so that I would fit in with the male crowd, which viewed scholastic prowess as uncool and even girly. It took me until well in my college experience to become completely comfortable with the person I am and the way I express my gender. Though I can now admit publicly to straightening my hair and loving romantic comedies without embarrassment, this growth was a long and very hard time coming.
Where do such gender stereotypes come from and are they legitimate? In regards to the particular stereotype of the Kmart boy, some would point to the multitude of gay men supposedly working a monopoly on the fashion industries of today. Yet I would challenge them to provide supporting evidence from personal experience. None of the gay men I’ve ever met have had career aspirations in that field, while some straight friends of mine are currently working in it. Not to mention the inherent prejudice in assuming that a gay domain is a feminine one. Others would point to the cultural history of America to show that home decoration and style sense have traditionally been associated with the female. Yet it would be absurd to imagine that men in general do not care what they or their home look like, as the rising numbers of admitted “metrosexuals” in America alone can prove. In his New York Times article “Gay or Straight? Hard to Tell”, David Colman reports that
“Marshal Cohen, the chief analyst of the NPD Group, which researches trends in the fashion industry, noted that far more men now feel free to indulge an interest in style. In 1985 only 25 percent of all men's apparel was bought by men, he said; 75 percent was bought by women for men. By 1998 men were buying 52 percent of apparel; in 2004 that number grew to 69 percent and shows no sign of slowing.”
Even Lowe’s, the traditional “man’s store” of America, carries many stylistic options in nearly every product, such as bathtubs, sink faucets, lamps, fans, etc. The idea that manly men are not interested in fashion or decoration is ridiculous.
So if these illogical gender stereotypes are not legitimate; again, where do they come from? I will venture to say that they are sustained, and often created, by the mainstream media in America. For example, the only reason most of us believe that gay men have taken over high-end fashion is the multitude of movies with style-zealous gay sidekicks or television shows such as Queer Eye for the Straight Guy that depict feminine gays as inherently more fashion-enlightened than the majority of macho straight men who desperately need their help. Also, the fact that magazines such as Better Homes and Gardens and Vogue have traditionally been marketed to women has associated their content matter with the female gender in the average American mind. It would probably be absurd to assume this to be intentional plot by the media to rigidly define our gender roles for us. Rather, the media thrives on giving us what they think we want to see. But communicating with the media is not a viable option for most Americans. The media gauges our attitudes but doesn’t sit down to talk to us about them. Since most of us then do not much of a voice in media output, how can we strive to change this pattern of thought, other than writing MGM and requesting non-comedic films about male homemakers who are completely masculine? I believe the answer lies with our children.
When I was a kid, about five years old, I remember firmly believing that guys did not have eyelashes. Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck did not have them; Minnie and Daisie did. Virtually all male cartoon characters were (and still are) drawn without eyelashes, and as a five year old, I tended to take my cues from the cartoon realm more than reality. One particular day, I remember fervently making the case to my mother that I did not have eyelashes. She told me to go and look in the mirror, something I was typically too busy to do as a kid, so I did. And was mortified. The lashes of Minnie Mouse, Ariel and Belle were staring back at me. How had this happened? What did I have to do to get lashless eyes like Mowgli and Superman? Thankfully I didn’t try to cut them off. I accepted my fate, soon reversed my opinion that eyelashes were feminine, and went back to my legos.
Gender stereotyping as illustrated by the previous story often has its roots in our childhood experiences and is not necessarily based in logic. As humans, we naturally look to others for social cues
and knowledge in early life, including parents and peers as much as the media. As a result, every kid “knows” the tradition, that girls play with dolls and boys play with trucks. If you’re a boy and you play with dolls, then you risk being called “girly” by other boys (which is, for some reason, the worst thing a young boy can hear). Like most basic things that we learn as children, gender stereotypes are not questioned until much later in life, if ever. Yet just because children know the sex “lines” doesn’t mean that they don’t cross them. Ironically, even though I was mortified of having “girly” eyelashes, I was shameless as a kid about playing with my sister’s barbies and paper dolls. And though, I played baseball and fixed tables with my dad, I never did get the point of trucks.
Think back to your own childhood. Most likely there were activities or interests that you had which risked the ridicule of your peers would they have known. Children are quick to believe what the older world tells them, yet there remains for a child a significant level of freshness. No matter what cultural beliefs are injected into their minds, children will manifest an openness and genderless curiosity which I believe is the more natural state of a human being, rather than adherence to whatever broad social patterns have been constructed over the last few decades.
Yet thought patterns change with each generation, if the wheels are set in motion in homes across America. Think about how the equality of blacks, women, and gays is now a natural notion to most young people of today, because they were raised without such prejudices, while their grand-parents for instance might still be struggling with their generation’s modes of thought. Like the father of the Kmart boy, when I am a parent one day, I fully intend to raise my children to think of gender without stereotypes as much as possible, in order to let them find their own way. Therein, I believe, lies the answer.
(what a horrible ending.)
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