Brady's Article: What Makes Femininity?

What Makes Femininity Girls should wear pink, and boys should wear blue. Girls get to play with baby dolls, and are given a responsibility to feed them and put them to sleep, while boys are given toy trucks to play with. Girls are immediately put into the housewife scene, given fake vacuum cleaners and kitchen supplies, and are told they have to grow up immediately, while young boys can spend as much time as they like in growing up. The gender roles in America are baringly obvious, and extremely harmful. However, it is more detrimental to females. When the word femininity is heard, your thoughts will probably move to the color pink, frilly dresses, long hair, heels, red lips and bright eyes, along with an hourglass body figure.

This is detrimental because these standards are impossible to reach, yet everyone expects them to be reached and then surpassed in the end. In Brady’s article, “I Want a Wife”, she lists what she would personally “want” in a wife. She would want this fictional wife to take care of all of her issues. She wants a wife “who will work and send [her] to school” and “take care of the children” and a wife “who is sensitive to [their] sexual needs.” (Brady 502-503). The entire article that Brady wrote has to do with the unrealistic standards that are placed on women- the article dates back to 1972 and still relates to the current events of today. Women are still expected to cook and clean, take care of the children, work, plan events, and almost every other thing in the book. It is horribly unfair- not to mention sexist- to imagine that women have to do everything while men pass with the bare minimum. These things are deemed feminine because, since the Paleolithic Era, women have always been the gender to gather food and take care of the children, which then poured into later periods of life. People never like to change “the

They do not want to be housewives. They do not want to dress up in skirts and blouses, wear heels and pantyhoes, or anything like that. It does not suit them. There are women out there who like to have tattoos all over and short hair. Short haircuts are always going to associated with the male gender, so when females get their hair cut in such a way, they will always be asked; “are you sure you want to look like a boy?” Tattoos are also associated with the male gender because of males often being seen with sleeves of tattoos, while women who get even a tattoo on their arm can be seen as “sleazy.” Anything that does not conform to female standards does will be seen as masculine, and she will be considered less of a