'Gender Roles In Hoop Dreams'

Throughout the semester we have read books on sports in where most of the characters were male. We all know gender roles have an effect on how we see movies or read books. They use the masculinity and femininity to add to the characheter is seen in the book or movie. This semester we read short novels and watched a movie on sports but paid more attention to how gender roles played a fctor in them. We see that being masculine can affect the way you do something or play in a sport. So we saw how gender roles played a factor on these stories and how each character pushed them selfs just because of their gender. In the movie Hoop Dreams we saw how two male high school students both wanted to be rising stars in basketball. Basketball seemed like

In her short story Golden gloves she talks about how a young boy pushes himself to the limit despite his deformed feet to become a great boxer. He becomes the boxer he wanted to be and it made him feel more masculine then ever. That is until he was beaten in the ring. When he lost his first fight he realized that not all men can be the best, there will always be someone better. In the short story she says “ He had his weakness, his bad habits, his limitations.” That is when he realized he did the most he could. Society wants us to believe there is not limitation but physically there is. There is only so much our body can do before it is knocked down. When he lost that fight he became weak physically and mentaily. His masculinity was no where to be seen because he gave up. He then had a wife in where Oates showed us how a women is masculine in her life time. We don’t really see women being masculine because we believe masculinity has to be physical, But little did we know it is mental aswell. When he heard his wife say she was willing to have another baby. IT gave him the thought that she is able to go thorough it all again and not quit. IT made him feel less manly ever since he quit boxing. He thought to himself “ In a way Invulnerable to hurt even if she is very badly hurt she’ll be risking something he himself cannot risk again in his life.” In this short story Oates shows us a way on how gender role is flipped and how man are seen weak and the women is seen as the masculine one. This happens on an everyday bases but society does not pay attention to it because women don’t care if they are seen