Paper #3: Gender 101 (due Thursday, November 13th by 5pm)

Paper #3: Gender 101

For this paper, I want you to research the hidden curriculum of “Gender 101” in your society.  How do we learn to be boys and girls—and men and women—by watching movies, playing with toys, participating in sports, and engaging in other social rituals/activities?  Remember that these rules are rarely stated outright, but must be learned to play the “game” correctly.  Even children quickly become aware of the rules, and learn to mimic their cultural role models.  Those who don’t are often ostracized or made to feel abnormal in some fashion. 

Our essays from the past two weeks have helped us see how gender influences behavior (smiling), clothing (corsets), toys (Barbie) and sports (throwing like a boy/girl).  Now I want you to add to this conversation and help us see the “Gender 101” rules in some activity/aspect of your society.  Remember, these don’t have to be negative: you can find something that challenges traditional stereotypes as well.  However, the rules are typically of a “follow this, not that” variety.  See what you can find! 

Choose ONE of the following categories to investigate:

• Entertainment: any film, TV show, book, or video game that showcases gender in a positive/negative way. 
• Sports: any sport that seems to define how men/women should act, or a sport that is designed to exclude a specific sex.
• Careers: similar to sports, any career that guides male/female behavior or excludes a specific sex.
• Toys: any toy that seems to have certain gender ideas either built into the product itself, OR in the way that it is marketed to children (for ex: Legos aren’t exclusively male or female—they’re just bricks—but they are marketed very differently to boys and girls). 

RESEARCH (4 sources required for a 2^nd draft paper)

• You must use at least 2 essays from class as part of your conversation
• You should use at least 1 outside academic article accessed through EBSCO or found elsewhere, but it must have an author or be from an authoritative organization (National Geographic, etc.) 
• You can use at least 1 film, show, or commercial in your paper, as long as you quote and discuss it as a significant part of your paper.  Don’t simply say, “there’s a commercial that shows girls playing with pink Legos.”  Analyze the commercial and bring it into your conversation—what does it say, show, and explain to its audience? 
• All sources must be quoted in some fashion (as part of your conversation) and documented according to MLA guidelines with a Works Cited page.

DUE Thursday, November 13^th by 5pm 

For Thursday: Pollitt and Fallows' essays

Reading/Discussion Questions for

Pollitt’s Why Boys Don’t Play With Dolls (555-557) and

Fallows’ “Throwing Like a Girl” (400-406)

Answer TWO of the following...

1.         At the end of the essay, Pollitt writes, “Feminsits are often accused of imposing their “agenda” on children.  Isn’t that what adults always do, consciously or unconsciously?” (524).  What does she mean by this?  How is she defending the role of ‘feminism’ in the education of children? 

2.         Why do you think people are concerned about the gender (as opposed to the biological sex) of a child?  What does gender say about boys and girls (and men and women) that is so important to the “status quo”?  Why do we get uncomfortable when the rules are broken (or blurred)? 

3.         How does Fallows introduce a ‘naysayer’ into his argument, and where might he act like a naysayer in the essay himself?  Why is this effective in both instances? 

4.         Why is throwing a baseball “a perfectly natural action…but not at all innate” (403)?  How does this relate to performances of gender itself, and why might “throwing like a girl” be related to gender, even if either sex can do it? 

For Tuesday: Reading Genders response

For Tuesday: Reading Genders

Instead of doing a reading this weekend, I want you to ‘read’ something you might otherwise just watch.  In other words, I want you to carefully watch either an episode of a favorite TV show or a favorite movie.  However, while doing so, I want you to examine ONE character in the show, male or female.  Consider how this character represents the “idea” of gender—that is, of being male or female.  How does he/she act, dress, behave, talk, etc?  What norms or rules do they seem to be following?  How do others in the show/film react to them?  Likewise, how are we supposed to respond to them?   Or consider it this way: if we were from another planet, and this character was our true introduction to being male or female, what would we know about it?  What rules would we try to follow?  What ideas might we not see or understand based on his/her performance? 

Some ideas:

• In a movie like Transformers, there are all these guys and robots (all of whom seem to be male), and there’s always one token woman.  What kind of woman is she?  What’s her role in the film?
• How do action heroes represent an ideal/idea of being male?  From Rambo to The Rock, who are these guys, and what idea are they trying to sell us?
• Who are the women in superhero movies?  Every superhero movie has  one or two (but usually only one or two); are they following the same ‘script’ as the male superheroes?  Does being superhuman change the rules of gender—or reinforce them even more? 
• How do men and women act in period dramas such as Downton Abbey, Pride and Prejudice, etc.?  What is our idea of the way men and women used to present themselves? 
• Does a show like The Big Bang Theory¸about various ‘nerds’, really change our perceptions/ideas about gender?  Are the men showing us different ideas or possibilities about being male?  The women? 

REMEMBER, this is just an informal assignment, so treat it like an in-class writing prompt.  Watch the show or movie, and then write for 6-7 minutes, analyzing what you’ve seen.  This may help you on Paper #3, so put a little thought into it. 

For Thursday: Eight Days In a Corset (sorry for the delay--the post got erased!)

For Thursday: Hustvedt, “Eight Days in a Corset” (445-450)

Answer TWO of the following...

1.  How can clothes be considered an art form rather than a way to simply cover things up and keep warm?  In other words, how can clothing (such as a corset) be both an idea and an object? 

2. How did the 19^th century sell the corset to women?  What did this say about the 19^th century idea of being a woman?  Related to this, why could only some women wear a corset—what did it say about that woman’s social class? 

3. What does Hustvedt mean when she writes, “wearing clothes is an act of the imagination, an invention of self, a fiction?” (450).  How can clothes change your identity, or how you—and others—see you?   

4. Even though a corset re-enforces outdated and possibly sexist ideas about women, why does Hustvedt enjoy wearing a corset as a movie extra?  Why does she admit that “the whalebone corset I wore for eight days catapulted me into another time and another aesthetic, and I liked it” (446)?  

For Tuesday: Cunningham's "Why Women Smile" (pp.347-353)

For Tuesday: Cunningham's "Why Women Smile" (pp.347-353)

Answer TWO of the following…

1. Why are women under more pressure to smile than men, according to the essay?  Why isn’t this inherently “female” but socially constructed (a product of gender)? 

2. Based on the ideas in the essay, what kind of smile is Mona Lisa’s smile?  Is it a “Duchenne Smile”?  A social smile?  What “reading” can we take from her smile—and how much of a smile is it? 

3. Is smiling an American cultural value?  Consider this passage: “When McDonald’s opened in Moscow not long ago and when EuroDisney debuted in France last year [1992], the Americans involved in both business ventures complained that they couldn’t get the natives they’d employed to smile worth a damn” (352).  What does this mean?  Why couldn’t—or wouldn’t—Europeans smile? 

4. Why might Cunningham be writing this essay to women as a kind of warning?  Consider the passage, “We’d do well to realize just how much our smiles misrepresent us, and swear off for good the self-depreciating grins and ritual displays of deference” (353). 

Paper #2 Conference Times

REMEMBER: These conferences are instead of class, so missing your conferences is the same as missing an entire week of class.  The times are below in case you forget what time you signed up for.  If you need to reschedule, no problem, just let me know as soon as possible.  We will also discuss the final Portfolio and your current grade during your conference, so be sure to come!  

TUESDAY
9:30 Jenna
9:40 Shelby
9:50 Josiah

10:00 Hayden
10:10 Courtney
10:20 Summer
10:30 Andrew N.
10:40 Adria

11:00 Anna
11:10 Macy
11:20 Andrew D.
11:30 Colby

1:00 Caylin
1:20 Amber
1:30 Walter

2:00 Ariel
2:20 Dillon
2:50 Treasury

THURSDAY
9:30 Chase
9:50 Roland

10:00 Bryson
10:10 Karina
10:20 Catrina
10:30 Kaitlyn
10:40 Tristen
10:50 Savannah

11:00 Tyler C.
11:10 Cierra
10:20 Tanner
10:30 Clay
11:50 Amelia

1:00 Jessica
1:10 Amber
1:20 Terra
1:30 Ryan
1:40 Carlye
1:50 Ashish

2:00 Bibek
2:10 Rachel
2:20 Hayden

FRIDAY
1:00 Jamison