Analysis: The Cultural Construct Of Gender Appropriation

The Cultural Construct of Gender Appropriation

In Mariah Burton Nelson article “I Won. I’m Sorry” she discusses how ingrained the concept of gender roles are within American society. She states how women are expected to be feminine while men are anticipated to be masculine. Nelson’s article highlights how these assumptions cause society to delegate standards of beauty and submission for women to fulfill while assigning standards of dominance and aggression for men to fulfill. In Aaron Devor’s, a professor of sociology, essay “Gender Role Behaviors and Attitudes” he debates that the existence of gender assumptions are not biological but rather a cultural construct. He refers to people who follow this cultural construct of gender as actors;

In his article Devor states, “People use femininity or masculinity to claim and communicate their membership in their assigned, or choose, sex or gender. Others recognize [individuals] more on the basis of these characteristics than on the basis of sex characteristics,” (505). This quote insinuates that in order for society to recognized one as male or female one must meet the requirements of what it means to be feminine or masculine because the structure of one 's anatomy alone is not significant enough to matter. People fear that by failing to exhibit these set gender traits they will fail to fit into a category of male or female. In Nelson’s article she announces how, “Tall women tell [her] they won’t wear heels because they don’t want to appear taller than their husbands or boyfriends, even by an inch,” (525). Seeing as a person’s gender is more effectively communicated to society through a person 's appearance and actions rather than by technicality tall women fear that their failure to be petite will be a threat to their status a women. Women believe that society will label them as unfeminine due to their height; considering that the words unfeminine and unattractive have been culturally constructed to mean the same thing women are in constant fear that if they don 't meet these gender norms they will struggle to attract a significant

Devor and Nelson both acknowledge that gender roles are determined not by biological makeup but by societal manipulation. Devor conveys how society has developed of system of communicating gender identity that relies more so on the characteristics of a person rather than the anatomy of a person. So when individuals fail to religiously adhere to these gender codes they are at risk of failing to adequately communicate their gender, which can lead to being ostracized in the dating world or by pairs. Nelson highlights how the culture uses television to promotes and enforces gender roles; which assist society in identify what is gender appropriate. Society puts so much emphasis on gender appropriation that people fear the outcome of not fitting into a category of male or female because there is no inbetween. Men are supposed to dominate with aggression while women enable them by remaining vulnerable and submissive. Both authors believe that there are no natural character traits in men and women and that the creation of these differences were culturally created in an effort to keep women oppressed by male