Sociology Final Journal Check in

11/22/12
I’ve really enjoyed this class because gender in society really interests me because it’s something that I see in everyday life and how it affects the girls I know around me.  Some of my most favorite topics that we discussed in this class would be marriage, media, and beauty.  I think that media has the biggest affect on gender today because a lot of impressionable kids who don’t know what to think get ideas from the media and believe them to be true and accurate.  Some of these ideas are that you have to look good and need to find a man that will take care of you.  Girls take these very seriously because even before girls are teenagers they spend thousands of dollars on their appearance and over 15 times more than that when they reach 30 years old.  You don’t see men spending that much money on their appearance which is probably because our society says that men don’t need to look their best and can get away with more basic appearances.  What many people don’t realize is that because our society pressures girls into looking their best it affects their health and self esteem leading to anorexia, bulimia, and body image disorders.  I can see this directly affecting girls I know everyday which makes me sad to see just because of our society these girls have low self esteem and worry about what they eat or don’t eat.  For example both my friend Jessica and my cousin Tara only eat one meal a day usually, I’ll ask Tara when’s the last time she’s eaten anything and usually she’ll say she had a small breakfast or nothing at all.  It’s very unhealthy to only eat one time a day because it’ll affect your energy levels and also put your body into starvation mode so any calories you eat your body will store them.  They both are heavy drinkers so instead of giving them healthy calories from meats they end up saving the alcohol calories which have no nutritional value.  You would think that because they don’t eat very much food they would be very skinny but actually they are a bit overweight probably because if they ate healthy they would look leaner.  Now some of my other friends are watching their weight in a better way by counting calories and making sure they don’t overeat.  A lot of these girls aren’t very overweight they just have this ideal image of a girl and want to obtain that for themselves, for example my girlfriend doesn’t look overweight at all but everytime I see her she mentions something about food at least once. Talking about beauty and the appearance of girls reminded me of the show Todlers in Tiaras so I decided to watch an episode and link it below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rhhk9bfVXro




11/8/12

This week we talked about gender and political power which really shocked me that even today the ratio of men to women in politics is very bad.  Masculinity works not only as an identity but as a social system,  it works like a social system because men constantly are trying to prove their manhood by being the most powerful, rich, and having the best life that they can.  This power can also lead to rape against females because men want to dominate them and our society makes it seem like women should play hard to get and some men don’t know when to stop.  The rape culture defined by Armstrong, Hamilton, and Sweeney is characterized by a set of ideas that create an environment conducts rape.  I think that America is a rape culture in which men strive for power and to look masculine and will do anything to get it.  A great example of this would be fraternities in colleges where they have huge parties that allow females to get in for free and drink as much alcohol as they want and charge men $10 usually to get in.  Some fraternities only allow men in if they bring in more than one women so the ratio isn’t hurt,  in my opinion this creates an ideal environment for rape because the girls can get really drunk and the guys can take advantage of these girls especially since they have bedrooms right upstairs.  I’ve never known anyone who has gotten raped at a fraternity but it always worries me when my cousin goes to them and gets really drunk.  The scariest part about it is a girl could get raped when she is blacked out and not remember it the next day which could be horrible if she gets an STI or pregnant and not have a clue who did it to her.  I think the greek system is sexist in other ways too especially how fraternities can have alcohol and parties whereas sororities aren’t allowed to have either which makes no sense at all as long as the students are over 21 years old.  I think they do this because of the stereotype of girls being good, clean, not wild and men being out of control and liking to party all the time.  A good example of the media talking about girls and how unfairly they are treated is the song Hey Ho by Ludacris where he explains that if guys sleep around they are playas but if girls do they are considered sluts or whores.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSCtk9PakWw

11/6/12

I really enjoyed the class today we had a guest speaker who did a really good job of explaining how there are gender inequalities in sports.  I knew that sports were dominated mainly by men but I didn’t know how unfairly women were treated until today.  It started in the 1800’s when the Industrial Revolution required hard working men for jobs that were labor intensive such as making steel and other materials.  The women would work at home would raise the kids and maintain the house therefore seeming to have a relatively small role in the family since the husband brings home the paycheck.  It made them look like they had fragile bodies and that their bodies should be used for making babies not to compete in sports because they may hurt themselves.  After these stereotypes about females were formed some sexist comments came about like “playing like a girl” showing that if you play badly you must be playing like a girl.  There are certain sports deemed girl or boy sports like football is a guy sport whereas volleyball and softball are usually for females.  It’s a shame that they are gendered this way because many girls who are good at these “guy” sports might quit because they don’t feel like they are in the right place.  An example of this would be my friend who used to play soccer and was very good at it but ended up quitting to play tennis.  Later on she said she wished she stuck with soccer instead of switching because she enjoyed it alot more.  Heterosexuality is emphasized in sports especially football because it shows that the players are tough and are willing to get hurt for the team,  it’s very rare for a homosexual person to be open about it while he is playing sports because he will probably get alot of negative publicity.  Now homosexuality is usually only a bad thing if it’s talking about guys who lack masculinity or females who are masculine because it eliminates the need to have a guy.  An example of females showing heterosexuality in sports would be the lingerie football league where females dress up in lingerie and play football which many guys think is very sexy.  According to Adams and Bettis article women who play sports is a safe space for masculine traits,  which makes sense especially if they are doing it sexually.  With men on the other hand it’s okay to show certain unmasculine traits in certain cases such as crying, bonding, physical contact as long as it’s in a heterosexual way.  I think that people need to care less about being masculine, feminine, homo, and hetereo and worry about things that actually matter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZcSEE7TuGU



11/1/12

Today was about gender in mass media and how teens and younger girls are led to believe that looks and having a boyfriend are very important in life.  In the reading “Is he Boyfriend Material? Representation of Males in Teenage Girls’ Magazines” by Kirsten Firminger she talks about how teen magazines guide readers towards good guys and away from bad guys.  She explains how it’s the girl’s responsibility to self-regulate, make good decisions and present themselves in a good way.  On the backend these magazines are mainly there for advertisement and not for entertainment because if they make girls believe they need to be beautiful then the products advertised in these magazines will sell better. A Lot of these magazines are setup in the way that makes women believe they need to attract males to have a successful life when in reality women can live perfectly fine on their own.  I can see in my everyday life how the media negatively affects girls I know especially concerning their body image.  My girlfriend for example always talks about how she eats a lot of food and worries about what i’ll think of her even though I could care less about how much she eats as long as she’s eating I don’t see anything wrong with that.  Girls are socialized to purchase products that help attract boys so they can remain in control which doesn’t help them feel good about themselves because there will always be a prettier girl especially now with digital enhancements.  An example of women feeling this way is in an episode of Mad Men where the girls get together for a focus group in which they try on different lipsticks to see which ones look the best.  During this time one of the men says that they should have put a man in the focus group so they would take it more seriously which implies that these women are putting on the makeup mainly to look good for men.  During this whole focus group the men are making fun of and checking out the women on the other side of the mirror.  Somethings in our society need to be fixed because it’s making people have low self esteem and feel badly about themselves mainly sexism in the media.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVI7-ufWR6I



11/8/12
I was at the library today and I walked past the girl’s bathroom and noticed how much nicer and cleaner it looks than the mens.  There is tile going up the wall that looks like it would be in a persons home,  also there is a big mirror right next to the door so girls can make sure they look good before they leave.  I also noticed many girls fixing their hair before they would walk out but when I see men they rarely even bother to fix their hair if its messy.  I think that the sexuality in the media plays a big part in how girls view their bodies.  Erving Goffman talks about body postures in the media in her “Gender Display” reading and how the media makes women look sexualized to sell more products.  Even today women are still sexualized in the media, a good example of this would be most axe commercials that say if a man wears axe he will get a hot girl.  In the video I posted below it shows a couple where the man wears axe and then they go around the city picking up random clothing parts that makes people assume they had a wild night.  Television shows like Sex and the City may at first seem to be helpful to demolishing a patriarchal society but actually it doesn’t.  Rebecca Brasfield talks about this in the reading “Rereading Sex and The City: Exposing the Hegemonic Feminist Narrative”  the whole show is about four women who mainly talk about sex, love and dating.  Hegemonic masculinity is shown throughout the show and it means that these women see themselves as oppressed by a patriarchal society.  The show doesn’t help women’s cause because they make fun of transgendered and bisexual people they show how bisexuals are promiscuous, gay but haven't come out of the closet, and that bisexuals will never be satisfied.  There is also class segregation in the show which shows that to maintain a good class you need to marry into it,  like in the episode where Miranda breaks up with her boyfriend because he is poor.   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VDsLcl72Ss

Check in 3

11/1/12 This week really interested me because lately I’ve been trying to stay away from Mass Media because so many societal norms come from the media that it’s hard to be your own person when other people are telling you how to act and think. This all starts at a very young age when children are susceptible to whatever they see and hear. They don’t know the difference between what is right and wrong since they have nothing to base morals off of besides their peers, parents, and the media. In Adie Nelson’s reading “The Pink Dragon is Female: Halloween Costumes and Gender Markers” she explains how in previous research “Play” ment creative imagination. Now however commercial markets play a major role in fostering children’s imaginations so kids have less freedom than they did to choose to be whoever they want to be. The study looked at marketing reinforcement of gender stereotypes based on colors, names, and the boys and girls on the packaging. Out of 469 costumes only 8.7% of them were gender neutral which means that either a girl or boy could wear them and it be socially acceptable. In my family I have two brothers and a sister and not once have I seen them wear a costume that didn’t fit their gender role, for example my brother wearing a dress. I found an example of sexim in a movie called “The Change-Up” it’s showing a young man with two hot girls and then a dad with two kids showing that men should look for hot women compared to having a family and being a stay at home dad.
http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lok9c4L6Yx1qhw47o.jpg

10/30/12 Today was a very interesting class that talked about gender in the media and how women control a small portion of Directing, writing, and producing jobs in the media. I like how that girl on youtube showed the Bechdel test and I was surprised to see that many movies failing it showing that men have the most important role. Growing up as a child I never would pick up on men being the dominating role I just assumed it was normal and how it should be. Looking back on it I realize how wrong it is and how much mass media contributes to our societal norms and keeping the white male above all other races and genders. There’s a video about disney and sexim that is similar to the Micky Mouse Monopoly in showing that men should embody females looks and not care about their personalities. They also explain how boys should turn into men and have nice bodies and be very masculine so they can be good to their wife and make lots of money. People without big bodies are usually made to look stupid, weak and have a minor role. Most fights in disney movies between men are about getting a women showing who is the better man. Women in the media are also portrayed in goofy, friendly, and not serious postures which makes them look silly and as if they are objects not people. Erving Goffman talks about this Gender Display and how it’s still present in the media and objects we purchase today. Masculinity if reinforced through violent video games in Kimmel’s reading he explains some of the reasons why. One is that men need to relax from their adult lives, take revenge against the world that has mistreated them, and finally restore a sense of control. This kind of relates to a book I was reading the other day “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are” by Alan Watts which talks about people having an ego and it makes them want to fight against this strange world they were placed in. This relates to gender because if we all didn’t have huge egos then I believe we wouldn’t have gender, race, and war conflicts because we would all understand that we are born of the earth and are all living life because we are part of the universe as a whole process. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lc0qg7hzcnU

10/17/12 I really enjoyed working on the breaking a gendered norm paper/project. At first I thought it was going to be very tough, awkward, and made me anxious but by the end of it I was glad we it was an assignment. This week was interesting to me because I think that one of the worst things about the inequality of gender is that women get paid less than men in the workforce and don’t get very high level positions. Also lots of women usually get jobs caring for other people as nurses which don’t get paid very much compared to doctors or surgeons. I think that because of this discrimination in the workplace where women get paid a lot less than men the home life of a married couple is affected. In my experience this helps contribute to the fact that there are many stay at home moms, since my dad makes alot more money than my mom would she ends up staying home and caring for the kids. Even when the wife makes more than the husband she ends up doing more housework to protect their husband’s gender identity based on a study by Bianchi, et al. There are more examples of this in “Gender Force Field” by Williams where he talks about dual earning couples and how their relationships are affected based on how much money one partner makes. Below I included a video about gender stereotypes in the household which have many different television commercials one specifically is for young girls showing that they should do housework. Another is a survey done asking kids about different questions asking who does what role in the house all of them choose the woman. There’s a lot more of this in children’s movies especially Disney like we saw in Micky Mouse Monopoly where it shows how girls should do the housework like Snow White cleaning the house. They also explain how girls need a man to go to work and rescue them and in order to do that they need to dress beautifully and flirt with them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z6ks8Z0X20


10/10/12 Society has usually adopted the fact that women stay at home with the children, make dinner and take care of the household. This has been going on for many years and is further backed by many media shows especially the show Mad Men. In the scene I attached below it shows Don Drapper getting angry at his boy because he is playing with a toy at the dinner table. It shows that the man is the dominant member of the household and he has the final say in punishing the children. Also it is showing how Betty makes the food for the family so when Don gets home from work he has a nice meal to sit down and enjoy. This scene from the movie ties into the reading “The Feminization of Love” by Francesca Cancian. She states that “This feminized perspective leads us to believe that women are much more capable of love than men and that the way to make relationships more loving is for men to become more like women.” This whole show is about how women need a man in order to have a good life and that without one they will be very unhappy and an outcast of society. Also the show has examples of married men who sleep with their secretaries and random women and get away with it. Even the main character’s wife Betty knew about Don sleeping around but put up with it until she found a suitable man to fill Don’s place. Thankfully the times are starting to change and because of economic times both the husband and the wife have jobs and share the household chores. Personally I see the typical model of the family in both my mom and my dads families, my dad works hard and my step mom stays at home. On the other hand my step dad works and my mom stays at home taking care of the kids taking them to sporting events, feeding them, etc. I believe that one day people won’t question when both parents work, take care of the house, and children equally just like the family in the New York Times video we watched in class.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEICkRt9FcY

Journal Check in #2

9/18/12 After watching Mickey Mouse Monopoly it really opened me up even further to ideas about how corrupt Disney is. Even as a kid in middle school I realized there were subliminal messages in Disney movies and certain sexual images if you paused the screen at the right time. I never realized that there were many gender stereotypes and lots of racism involved thought. A girl in class mentioned how Snow White was made in the 1930s but there was still Pocahontas which was made in the 90s that portrayed a false history and a love story where the girl needed a guy. It was interesting to hear that the movie Brave reverses the role of male and female so that guys can realize what’s been going on this time. Disney is an entertainment company but they should have some moral obligation to instill good values in kids because most of them grow up watching a TV. I listened to a great audio clip by Terence Mckenna about how television is a drug, he says that after twenty minutes in front of a television your breathing,stare reflex, and heart rate all change. Television is a billboard and anyone who has money can put their message into this “trip” which will change the way we view the world, it’s shaping our value system without us being aware of it. Disney is using this form of entertainment that is part of a huge marketing scheme, after every movie there’s always tons of toys, games, and even happy meals at McDonalds that kids want to get. Kids may see other kids playing with these toys or talking about the latest Disney movie and they too want to be “normal” and get the toys for themselves, it’s kind of sad to think about because kids are making decisions based on their peers and not necessarily what they like themselves. I really enjoyed the discussion about “Dude your a Fag” today. I was surprised to hear that even girls call other girls fag or faggot when they do something idiotic or stupid. To them it doesn’t have anything to do with someone being a homo like in “Dude your a Fag”. It makes people sound stupid when they say these things, similarly to when someone is called a retard for being dumb. If you want to call someone out for doing something stupid/dumb then say those words don’t use other words that have different meanings just because you hear it from a peer. In my opinion Pascoe didn’t have enough data to make an accurate analysis, she only went to one school for 18 months. She should have visited an all girl school an all boy school and a private school and compared what she say because one school may have different views on the topic. It’s not necessarily the kids faults, society in general including big corporations have changed our language and morals. An example of this is when a guy is called a pussy or a pansy when they do something unmanly. This makes it seem like our society wants the guy to have power and dominate and anything that effects that is seen as a threat. In the book I think that Jessie was liked and Ricky was an outcast because if men see a feminine male they see him as a threat to their own image and attach some of their ego to their gender. This is absurd and makes me think of these men as being insecure. 9/26/12 Yesterday's lecture about the beauty myth really disturbed me. I didn’t realize that women spend thousands of dollars a year to keep up their appearance in order to look good for other people. I noticed that between your tweens and your teens the amount of money for beauty goes up ten times then from 20s till 30s its around double and doesn’t go up very much between 30s and 50+. I think this is the case because many women are looking to find a male and start a family so they have to spend lots of money early on to look good, but in reality it’s much later before you start to look badly. It’s really shocking to know that the main reason women want to have a perfect body is to match up to an image portrayed by media, surgery, and cosmetic industries who make billions of dollars. In the book “The Beauty Myth” she claims that beauty is real and universal and women should embody it while men should desire these women. This ideal body has created eating disorders such as anorexia, bulimia, and body dysmorphic disorder. Susan Bordo examined some eating disorders to draw attention to anorexia and bulimia as major problems women in the US have with their bodies. Males also are pressured to look fit and lean but it isn’t as great as women are. I don’t think males don’t care about their appearance as much as women because society expects women to be the ones needing a man not the other way around. Overall I do like this topic because it plays an important role in sociology and especially to do with the inequality of women in society. 9/27/12 I really enjoyed this class about gender and health because it’s directly related to my life. My dad had a fall recently and bruised his face but refused to go see a doctor until his scheduled appointment a month later I don’t understand what’s the big deal with seeing a doctor if you know your sick. I think it’s more than men being lazy, they actually care about being strong and won’t admit if they are weak or sick in anyway. I do agree that in society girls are constantly being portrayed as weak and requiring a man to be whole, not the other way around. A good example of this is when people are told they “throw like a girl”. I’ve never thought of condom campaigns as being sexist against women until I read this article. Some commercials like KY yours and mine seem to make it look as though both partners have an equal amount of pleasure and certain Trojan ribbed condoms seem to make it more pleasurable for the girl. A girl brought up a good point about Trojan condoms showing that they are mainly for a mans desire and the fact that usually show the man as strong. There’s countless things that happen in our society that’s considered the norm yet are very sexist, kind of sad how most of us are oblivious to it.

Journal 2

I was watching the show Mad Men the other day and I’m glad to see that sexism in the workplace is being exposed on mainstream TV. The show is about an advertising agency in 1960. Times have changed greatly since then because in the show it illustrates how women would become secretaries not necessarily to make money but to meet a rich man and marry him. Also women are treated with little respect and the main character Don Drapper(John Hamm) constantly cheats on his wife until she decides to divorce him. She felt dependent on him for a long time and knew what was going on but didn’t break it off until she found a person she could marry which further backs the stereotype that women cannot live on their own. This show is full of sexism and gender stereotypes, another example is when Don’s secretary is promoted to a copyrighter everyone assumes she slept with him. Also another secretary wears a wedding ring and talks about her husband to deter men from hitting on her and making sexist comments. I think that society has come a long way since then because now if people act like that in the work place a sexual harassment can be filed. We still have a long way to go because women don’t get paid as much as men and generally many moms stay at home with the kids while the dad goes to work. My cousins family is an exception to this, my uncle stays at home and takes care of the house while his mom goes to work they are both a happy couple and don’t seem to have many problems. I hope in the future this can happen more because it makes women seem like they have a less significant role in the family even though staying at home is a tough job especially with multiple kids.

Journal Entry 1

After watching toddlers & tiaras I have a lot of mixed emotions about it. At first I’m angry with how the parents want their daughters to conform to gender stereotypes, for example the girl who likes to play soccer yet her mom wants her to participate in the beauty pageant. On the other hand if the children truly enjoy being in these shows then that’s great, however if they are doing it just to see their parents happy or award them then that’s horrible. A child shouldn’t be pressured into doing something they don’t actually enjoy just because there is a benefit for the parents. My mother for example has still not learned this, she makes all her kids(including me) play sports at a young age even if we don’t like to play. I think she does this so she can talk and socialize at these events and use it as a bragging right to her own benefit. I remember many times when I wouldn’t enjoy going to baseball practices and games but I didn’t have any other choice. This is also happening with my brother Tyler who hates going to swim meets yet our mom will not stand down and let him do what makes him happy. I especially liked the SNL video about baby toupees it shows that even though they are babies they still fit into gender norms and that hair is important.