Gender Stereotypes In Tootsie

Tootsie reflection paper In the film “Tootsie” staring David Hoffman, we see many ways that gender, gender roles and gender stereotypes are applied, as they often are in the real world. In this essay I will be discussing how the film “does gender”, the different categories of gender stereotypes and examples of each type in the storyline, and how feminism is represented throughout the movie. I feel that this film does a great job of representing the topics we have been talking about in class in a realistic and understandable manner. The term “doing gender” is what this film is largely based of off. According to our lesion, when you “do gender”, you are actively engaging in how you identify as, typically categorized as male or female, but

In class we learned that here are 4 components that contribute to these stereotypes: physical, personality, social, and sexuality. These components are shown multiple times throughout the movie. The most obvious approach in the movie is the difference in the physical appearance of the character. Michael Dorsey shows many masculine traits in the way his hair his done, the clothes he wears, and having a bare face (no make-up), while Dorthey Michaels has curlier salon type hair, wears dresses and earrings, and has a great amount of make-up applied. Dorthey also has breasts added and he waist/body shape is accented with the high wasted band on most of the dresses she wears, where as Michael is flat chested and has a straighter straighter and more “masculine” body shape. For the personality side Michael had a hard time finding acting jobs because he had a difficult “bossy” personality on set, that type of aggression is often stereotyped as a male trait. When Dorthey displayed a more “edgy” out going and assertive personally, people made comments about how different she was from what they considered to be a normal woman trait of being more calm and cooperative. As often thought of as a women’s trait, Dorthey was pretty social in the movie and really tried to connect to people’s emotions, whereas, at first, Michael himself struggled with emotions regarding his relationship and struggled with