Society and Gender

In this post I would like to focus on the concept that we started to discuss outside at the end of class. Specifically the idea that the church constructs people to have perceptions of what roles men and women should have. I want to explore this idea and also look on the effects of media in constructing gender roles as well.

 Being raised in a Lutheran environment I was completely oblivious to the process of construction and the "damage was already done". There is no doubt in my mind that seeing a man preaching to a crowd of people every week trained my malleable mind to correlate men with power. Then I started to reflect on my own family. Growing up I considered my grandmother to be far more "religious" than my grandfather. Why was that? I knew my grandfather was a religious man and I can even remember us talking about faith, but my grandmother still stood above him. I think a true explanation for this could be that my grandmother felt that she had to compensate or over-express herself because she was constructed to feel somewhat less than a man. I believe she wanted to be recognized as equal. I can almost guarantee this phenomenon occurred very early in her life. She has told me stories of, "when she was growing up women were expected to take care of their husbands no matter what".  This could almost be seen as a very old-school traditional sense of church. Focusing on social construction I wondered at what age we started to identify gender roles. I think this video clip does a great job showing this with very basic examples. Watch the 2:36 clip below.

The clip shows us that at 2 years of age children can identify themselves as male or female with certainty. At ages 4 or 5 they have gender constancy which means they have standards for what is appropriate for each gender to do. We can see from statements like, "boys are better...they are stronger than girls" that the construction has clearly started. So I began to think about myself at around 4 or 5 and what I could identify with at this age. The very first thing I thought of was Disney movies. Surely these movies had to have some effect on me, but what could they have been? I found a very entertaining clip entitled How Classic Disney Movies Made an Entire Generation Suck. Before you watch I just want to say I still love my Disney classics!

Sorry Walt

Some excellent points are brought up inside this clip. Messages that could be interpreted differently include: In The Little Mermaid Ariel disobeys her parents and makes a deal with the "bad guy" all to try and get a man. In The Lion King how do you become king? To become king you must kill the king. This shows that power and violence are closely related. In Beauty and the Beast Belle is a prisoner and for the first whole act she is threatened and insulted. As said in the video this could (at some level) help construct someone who accepts an abusive (verbal or physical) relationship in hopes of change later. The Hunchback of Notre-Dame taught us that looks are important, and the Fox and the Hound taught us that on some level physical differences get in the way of relationships. The same way that I did not realize how I was being socialized to construct gender roles in the church I am sure lots of children and parents are unaware of the effects movies (and all media) have in our lives even at early ages.

Do you think that the content in children's movies and TV shows (in regards to creating gender roles) has improved, stayed the same, or changed for the worse? Do you have any examples supporting your answer? Did you think about any of the Disney movies differently when watching the Disney clip, and were there any "aha" moments that made you reflect/think (if so explain)? Lastly, I made an assumption about my grandmother having to compensate in order for her to feel "equal". Do you think this thought process could be true and common for some women, for most women? (at home, work, etc...)?

Separation by the Media

For my first post I want to focus on the picture that the Peninsula Hotel put out as an advertisement. This picture was first brought to my attention last year. My original thought about this photo was that it was just a coincidence that a black man was holding the door for a young white girl... that there was no deeper social meaning. Since then, however, I have given the whole thing a lot more thought. According to online sources this picture was not just a random snapshot but part of a photo shoot. Any photographer can tell you that a majority of the time a picture is supposed to tell a story or display a deeper meaning (especially when it comes to advertising). I thought to myself, what story does this picture tell? How can it be interpreted? If it were to be a white man holding the door for a black girl does the story change? I think the answer to that question is most definitely yes.

I believe we have been socially constructed to separate black and white in the different forms of media. I gained some key perspective on this thought last year when I attended a Communication celebration event. I was seated at a table with a professor name Damien ( I can not remember his last name). He specialized in African American studies and we were discussing perception. He started asking me questions like how many black teachers I had growing up, how many black doctors I went to, if my dentist was black... I think you get the idea. My answer to most of his questions was none. The point he was making is that growing up I had only seen white people in roles of professionalism  and authority. I had been constructed (not purposely) to draw attention to the difference. Ever since that day I have been trying to pay attention to how the media creates and spreads this idea. Last night I was watching TV and a commercial break came on, I watched closely and tried to see how diverse the people inside of the commercials were. What I found is that white men came up the most followed by white women. The only black people inside of the whole commercial break were part of the environment (not key characters). One key detail I picked up from this is that a bus driver was depicted as an older black man. That was a conscious choice someone decided to make. I connect the depiction of that man to the worker at the Peninsula Hotel. I think that the media is creating false identities and limiting what people may think of themselves and others.

Another place I noticed this was inside of movies. This concept is noted inside of Byron Bowers standup set at the Laughfactory in California. Click the link below to watch a 43 second video of his set.

Byron Bowers

Byron addressed multiple stereotypes inside of this segment but the fact about the Harry Potter series is true. Why do you think that is? Do you think that we are taking steps to eliminate this phenomenon? If so, where are the powerful examples?