When most people think of girly, what comes to mind is a young woman who wears makeup and dresses, or who acts properly and ladylike. When I think of girly, I think of the kind of person I never was or felt the need to be. Girly is nothing but a standard by which I have always been judged. I have been incorrectly taught that in order to be a girl, I need to be feminine and formal. But girly is not the only way to be a girl.
When I was a a baby, my parents dressed me in light pastels of all colors. In my room, the walls were yellow with blue trim, and I had a green rug that sat over a multi-color padded floor. Relatives would visit the house and they would exclaim, “But she needs pink! It’s girly!” But, I was still a girl. I was just a girl
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In middle school, I was punished and lectured one day for cursing, but a boy in the same class who also swore was only given a monotone, one-sentence warning. In a class lecture one day, a cockroach was running loose around the room. Both boys and girls jumped up or stood on the chairs, whereas I simply walked over to smush it with my shoe. At work, I am given the easy jobs, such as carrying the small bags of trash outside to put in the garbage bins. But instead, I grab the big trash to lift the workload off of other people. In high school, young women are expected to dress appropriately and “for their body”. For school dances, girls are supposed to wait for guys to ask them, then get their nails done and go in pretty dresses. This year, however, I went stag in a group to homecoming and dressed myself in a suit--instead of the red dress I planned to wear. But, I am still a girl. I am a girl who swears as a form of self-f***ing-expression. I am a girl who kills the bugs instead of screaming. I am a girl who lifts the heavy, dirty trash instead of letting a guy do it for me. I am a girl who strapped on suspenders and a bow-tie to a dance because I can. I am a girl who does not see why the absence of girly should make me any less of a
Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches From the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture. By Peggy Orenstein. New york, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2011, 192 pages
A man can be shy, have feelings, and insecure and that wouldn’t make him a girl. In the 1920s gender roles had a big impact on everyday life. Men would go out and work whereas the women would stay home and look after the kids, clean the house and cook dinner. As a child they would be taught where their place in society was. It wasn’t until later on that gender roles shifted.
The article was shown to the readers how society classifies children's gender. Base on Eckert and Ginet mention that the people classify the colors the pink is for girls and the blue for boys and here is the evidence “ Colors are so integral to our way of thinking about gender that attributions have bled into our view of the colors so that people tend to believe that pink is more “delicate” color than blue (and not just any blue, but baby blue).( Eckert and Ginet738) In this case, the authors are using this information to make people think about color are representing the girls and boys gender. Also when the babies grow up, they know how to differentiate who is a girl and who is a boy by means of colors that are pink or blue. This affecting that the authors because think many parents teach their children to identify the colors and is a man teaches him the masculine colors that are gree, yellow and blue, and the women teach them colors of women who are pink and purple. However many people do not agree with the authors because the colors are unisex and any gender can use whatever color they
Your sparkling eyes gazed at the television, reading the word “Cinderella” by Disney. You had all your Cinderella toys lined up, ready to grab whenever necessary. Your Cinderella pajamas on, and your tea set is all prepared.Your mom adored your love for princesses. Didn’t we all love to sing along to the Disney movies about princesses and true love? Peggy Orenstein sure didn’t. Peggy Orenstein, the author of Cinderella Ate My Daughter has a sharp opinion about how a “pretty and pink” culture is influencing girls in a negative way. The author proves this argument by discussing gender colorization, dolls, and princesses.
Mathews finds the pastel of infancy in pink, but since pink is a color intermediate between red and white, William V. Davis prefers to take it as suggesting “neither total depravity nor innocence” but “the tainted innocence, the spiritual imperfection of mankind,” a view shared, up to a point, by Robinson. . . . (62).
“Hey are you going to the party tonight?” you hear them ask you. As you agree you also wonder what will people’s first impression of you be when they see u walk in the door at that frat house party everyone seems to be going to. Women have gone into a state of mind that in order to fit in, they have to look and dress a certain way to impress in these college parties. But these never ending expectations held against women is not an issue that has recently developed throughout time as it dates back to civilization. For the most part, women are considered prominent over men which causes women to act in a certain behavior in which will function to get them to events such as frat parties. In today’s society, women are constructed to to act well
On Halloween night, one will inevitably see tween-aged girls adorned in sexed-up skeleton, vampire, and doctor ensembles. Costume companies design these provocative outfits specifically for children who want “a sexy look to give you the perfect butt” (Jones, 2014, p.7). The sexualization of girls’ clothing and, consequently, the girls wearing the clothing is not limited to one day per year, however. Popular retailers, such as Abercrombie Kids and Victoria’s Secret PINK, market children’s thong underwear adorned phrases such as “eye candy” and “call me”; push up bikini tops are commonplace in sections intended for young girls (Goldfarb, 2008). Even television shows such as My Little Pony are marketed to sexualize girlhood. The sexualization of girls is inescapable in today’s society, where it is pervasive on virtually all media platforms. This issue must be addressed immediately, as it damages not only the individual, but the well-being of society as a whole.
Even before the children are born, parents begin choosing clothing and decorations by color based on the sex of the baby. The stereotype of pink, pastels, yellow and white for girls and bright or dark colors like green, blue and red for boys has long been a part of our culture. How many times have you heard kids argue over toys because the girls don’t want the icky boy color or the boys don’t want the gross girl color? The issue of color may go deeper than just fighting for toys. Studies have been done showing that school classrooms, especially for younger grades, are typically decorated in “boy” colors and reflect an environment that is most comfortable for boys (Bruning 23). Parents and teachers may be able to help reverse this thinking by buying toys in gender neutral colors and by using the same colors for boys and girls.
Judith Butler used the term ‘girled’ to account for how society set up binary gender categories: “The doctor who receives the child and pronounces – ‘It’s a girl’ – begins that long string of interpellations by which the girl is transitively girled: gender is ritualistically repeated,whereby the repetition occasions both the risk of failure and the congealed effect of sedimentation” [2, 49]. From the early childhood, parents create specific discourse and label gender of girl by choosing appropriate to accepted norms of femininity body adornment such as cloth of particular feminine colors: “an infant in dressed in pink is commonly expected to be sweet, graceful and pretty”[6 ,91] and design, buying appropriate toys and decorating child with ‘girlish’ accessorizes. Adults respond to the female infant according created self-fulfilling prophecy and create atmosphere for development of girl in frames of feminine
I dress extremely girly on most days, and that’s really because I am a girl. But also where I live has an effect on my outfits. For example, in my hometown girls dressed like girls and boys dressed like boys, and if you didn’t follow along with that you were teased about being gay or a lesbian (which I don’t understand how those words are an insult). I never had an issue about dressing femininely, I love dresses, skirts, jewelry, high heels, etc. My fashion choices are heavily influenced by my age. As I grew up, I wasn’t allowed to wear scandalous clothes or wear makeup until I was of proper age. Now that I’m an adult, I can wear whatever I
And I was "other" before being anything else -- even before being a girl. I was a noticeable nobody.
The distinction between girls and women is not whether they are smart or interesting; it is whether one is a ‘good’ girl or a ‘bad’ girl.
For a long time pink has been associated with femininity, which gives us the underlying assumption that girls are sweet, gentle, and delicate because that is what pink has come to represent in our society. Yet, the colours used in the toys meant for boys are black and blue which are seen as tough and aggressive. Coincidently, sweet, gentle and delicate is how society sees girls and how they believe they should act when they become women. Furthermore, tough and aggressive is how we want the men to be in our society. Critical sociology looks to gender as a competition where one gender is
In elementary school one of the most common phrase used was, “You can’t do that you're a girl.” Society puts gender stereotypes and expectations on children at a very young age. I never really understood these stereotypes and expectations until later in my life. I couldn’t figure out why it was that boys were not allowed to like the color pink, and if the girls wanted to play “boy” sports it was seen as unusual. My family consists of my parents, my sister and I; so I never had sibling of the opposite gender in my life. I didn’t have someone to compare gender differences with. I was given toys no matter what gender they were geared towards. I remember receiving hot wheels cars and baby dolls the same year for Christmas and never thought anything thing of it. I think that these experiences has really shaped who I am today.
Everyone has their own opinion on what makes someone a “good girl.” Some may claim that good girls are those who do not have casual sex, drink, or do drugs. By some definitions, good girls are just those who pretend to be good. In my family, we have our own definition. Good girls work hard, do well in school and life, and above all, are sources of support for their families and friends. In addition, good girls do not get involved in harmful things, are not outspoken and are never tactless. My family has a culture of good girls. For generations and generations we have produced good girls. Sure, I have female relatives who are considered the black sheep of our family, but we do not talk about them. We unconsciously focus on breeding and raising decent, soft-spoken, feminine women.