All of a sudden I found myself thinking sociologically when I was working on my gender role cartoon for sociology. I was trying to look for a female character with a business look attire. At first I couldn't find it. So then I searched it. I typed in business women but it didn't find any results. Then I typed in business in general but only in the female section. Still no results. I was really surprised and pissed off in knowing that there was only like five business women characters in that section. The men section had so many options of careers and many of them had ties and suits. On the other hand, women were mostly seen wearing skirts and aprons. There were men astronauts but no women astronauts.
This reminds me of what we were talking about in class about gender roles. It's amazing how society tries to really emphasize about how certain genders should act in society. When I was a little girl, I was given a play kitchen by "Santa" and I absolutely fell in love with it. After awhile, my sister played with it but my little brother and some little nephews of ours also wanted to play with the kitchen.Although they were always given the choice to play with other "boy" toys, sometimes they wanted to play with us in the kitchen. Some parents didn't seem to happy about it but it's not like they could explain to their child the reasons why he couldn't play with the girls in the kitchen. Society tries to categorize each person gender wise with colors and products such as a toy kitchen. They're usually pink and purple, girl toys, and boy toys are usually red and blue, more dark colors. I never noticed this when I was little but so many toys have tried to influence each gender to act ho they're supposed to act (girls and play kitchens and trucks and boys). But do we really need all of this gender categorizing... does it help keep things in balance?
Keep this post in mind when you do your gender experiment by looking at toys, clothes, etc. It's interesting to see how people identify gender....
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