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