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IJBM: femininity/femaleness is disproportionately associated with love/intimacy/romance/attraction
I guess one could blame this on a society that's male-dominated and also heteronormative. Though I'm a bit more interested in exploring its extent and implications first. This will be a bit of a mess of a post because I am going to cover a lot of points, a bit haphazardly, all related to gender roles. Feel free to reply to any number of them.
We associate heart shapes, pink, and the term "love" with girls, and with romance. The gender differentiation of young children is annoying enough (the boys with action figures and dump trucks and girls with dolls and playhouses thing), and then it's like, you have Valentine's Day activities in elementary school where people talk about love and crushes and concepts related to romance, but then (at least from a boy's perspective) those are the sorts of things that are normally associated with girls anyway.
And while I didn't grow up with Barbie dolls, I would assume someone else somewhere has noticed that there's a Ken character in the Barbie lore but
(1) there isn't an equivalent love interest in entertainment media targeted toward boys, until maybe starting with the preteen years,
(2) what about platonic companionship between boys and girls, outside of things like PBS shows, and
(3) how about the notion of boys and girls consuming the same media, rather than being differentiated by gender expectations even when it comes to entertainment? Why even have (eventually self-reinforcing) assumptions like "this action show isn't for girls" in the first place?
Come teenage years, when people actually have hit puberty and are actually sexually attracted to each other, you still have a stronger association of romance and sexuality with girls than with boys. While people will talk about the "hotness" of both sexes, there's more shaming of aesthetically unappealing girls, there's a general undercurrent of male being the "default" gender of things (people talk more of "girl versions" of things like clothing, characters, products, etc.), and there's still a strong association of "girl" with the idea of "love interest".
Even going into college, the stereotype of "girl stuff" is physical aesthetic appeal (i.e. "beauty", for the term usually used for females), relationship gossip, and conspicuous consumption, while the stereotype of "guy stuff" is fast cars, alcoholic beverages, sexual intercourse, and sports. Sure, they don't all fit the pattern I've made note of, and that's just natural, but you still have more of an emphasis on relationships and sexuality/attractiveness among the stereotypical "girly" topics. And note that all these topics are inherently gender-neutral (marketing aside, and aside from the fact that we more typically use "handsomeness" rather than "beauty" for males).
I have a particular beef with gridiron football and cheerleading. Gridiron football is almost always, exclusively, a sport for boys. Now I know why that makes sense; human sexual dimorphism is such that males are on average a bit taller, heavier, and bulkier than females. But what really irks me, in the context of the topic of this thread, is the fact that the girls' "equivalent" is cheerleading. Yes, I know cheerleading actually involves physical activity, and sometimes some rather impressive acrobatics. But the stereotype of the cheerleader -- or more specifically, the cheerleader's primary role in many narratives -- is sex appeal to the guys. You can blame it on the outfits all you want, you can include as impressive acrobatic routines as you want, but that stereotype persists. Yet the stereotypical narrative role of the (gridiron) football player is not one of sex appeal to the chicks -- the usual role is the hard-working athlete, or the dumb muscle (a.k.a. "jock"), or the big guy, but not the hot guy. So they're not equivalent at all, socially speaking. (Also, cheerleading is less about a somewhat-civilized reimagining of an all-out brawl to the death than gridiron football, but that's another issue.)
Heck, in the field of sports, there are a number of them where the standard female outfit is noticeably more revealing (for no apparent reason) than the standard male outfit. Alternatively, we could observe that the standard male outfit is less revealing than the standard female outfit. I don't typically see male tennis players wearing tank tops, for example. And perhaps the worst offender in this regard is beach volleyball, where I remember hearing the bikini became officially standardized as the dress code for female players, while men wear tank tops and shorts.
(Oddly, one sport where the two genders seem to have more parity in net clothing coverage (even if not locational coverage) is one where they don't have much, period: swimming and other aquatic sports. At least, didn't, until recent years, where now you can't tell men and women apart half the time because swimmers are wearing full-body suits anyway.)
Discuss.
Edit: Okay, I can find some men's beach volleyball pictures where the players are only wearing shorts. Fine. But on the other hand, there's...whatever the term is for sexually appealing women posing next to race cars. And the drivers are almost exclusively men. (This of course assumes you consider car racing to be a sport, which I know is in some dispute. But even if you don't, and just consider it a thing in society, my point still stands.)
Comments
I mean, the bastards do call it "bromance."
wat
I mean that your society promotes romantic love as a female thing and fraternal love as a male thing.
Copious amounts of alcohol actually increases estrogen in the bod, so boozing it up is very emancipatory.
Prescribed gender roles are a tool of division and oppression enforced by those who desire control over the lives of others. Gloria Steinem would call it the work of the patriarchy; William Burroughs would call it a facet of Control as an entity; Antonio Gramsci would call it hegemony in its purest form. But in the end, these are all the same thing.
I could go into a further rant about this from a queer perspective, but I'm not sure if anyone would be interested in several paragraphs of me kvetching about my relationship with pink shirts, ponies and power violence bands.
Glennmagusharvey,
Heck, in the field of sports, there are a number of them where the standard female outfit is noticeably more revealing (for no apparent reason) than the standard male outfit. Alternatively, we could observe that the standard male outfit is less revealing than the standard female outfit. I don't typically see male tennis players wearing tank tops, for example. And perhaps the worst offender in this regard is beach volleyball, where I remember hearing the bikini became officially standardized as the dress code for female players, while men wear tank tops and shorts.
(Oddly, one sport where the two genders seem to have more parity in net clothing coverage (even if not locational coverage) is one where they don't have much, period: swimming and other aquatic sports. At least, didn't, until recent years, where now you can't tell men and women apart half the time because swimmers are wearing full-body suits anyway.)
I certainly agree with you as to the beach volleyball uniform from what I know about the topic. I am not sure if the tennis example is totally on target though since I get the impression that people have a bit more choice when it comes to what they wear. From what I can tell, plenty of women wear nearly the exact same clothing as men when playing that sport. That being said, I am no tennis expert, so I will defer to your knowledge on that subject.
Are there other examples of sports "where the standard female outfit is noticeably more revealing (for no apparent reason) than the standard male outfit" that come to mind for you? I am having some trouble thinking of them myself and am interested to hear what you had in mind in case there could be reasons for those different clothing choices.
On a somewhat related note, I thought the point you made about football was largely a valid one, but I am not sure what can be done about it. You could encourage more women to play football by establishing corresponding official women's football teams at high schools and such. Some women already do play football with men at that level and beyond, actually, and other schools have women's flag football teams so maybe the dynamic you alluded to is already somewhat diminished.
None of that is meant to be a criticism of cheerleading though. I think the cheerleading you might see at an actual cheerleading competition, albeit somewhat different from what you would probably see at a game, definitely requires athletic skill.
JHM,
I could go into a further rant about this from a queer perspective, but I'm not sure if anyone would be interested in several paragraphs of me kvetching about my relationship with pink shirts, ponies and power violence bands.
Feel free to go on if you would like. It sounds to me like you may have something interesting to add.
Now that somebody mentioned ponies, I'd like to comment on the entire "Brony" phenomenon. I personally don't consider it associated with the concept that GMH is referring to of "femininity/femaleness". Bronies aren't reveling in how cute and adorable the show is. In fact, they're reveling in the fact that beside that it has merit. Not many say "Pinkie Pie was cute when she did [X]", they say "Pinkie Pie was crazy awesome when she did [X]". They don't obsess over cute side characters and beautiful characters like the new alicorn that got married who for the life of me I can't name aren't all that popular. They like weird ones, like Derpy and DJ-PON3. The big events to them are Rainbow Dash's breaking the sound barrier and Fluttershy's comedy bits and crazy bits.
I might be wrong as I'm not really part of that fandom, but that is how they come off. They're "bros", they didn't even come to the show for the cute in the first place.
So... what I'm trying to say is being a brony can't really be considered feminine or even part of queer theory to me.
Anyways,
Note: When I refer to TV/in Media, I mean as mainstream as it gets.
Love/Romance
Definitely. When portrayed on TV, when the romance focuses on a straight girl it will be beautiful and amazing and the best thing to happen to that girl in years. The only possible threats to this are if the guy is cheating on her, under which circumstances the girl will become a blithering mess or become obsessed with revenge. If two girls are fighting over one boy, it almost always turns out that the other girl is evil and our main character girl deserves him (Glee has literally done this so much it's hard to keep up and once on 90210 a boy who had been on the show for less than six episodes ended an actual sistership forever).
When a girl needs to choose between to guys, it will be portrayed as the single most difficult thing she has ever come across. The boys will be portrayed as able to stand by themselves, though.
Contrast with when a guy in media gets a girlfriend. She's not personal, he'll introduce her to his friends and if she's lucky she'll stick around and become the punchline of a couple of jokes. At most, she'll give him one of those "Girls are just as good as guys at [X]" lessons. She will get mad at trivial things just so she can ask for forgiveness later, but sometimes he will make jokes at her expense that will merely bounce off her. She will never be a character, merely a combination of every stereotype they can think of.
When a guy needs to choose between two girls, they will throw themselves at him and act irrational. A great example of this is a Big Time Rush episode that involved Kendall having to choose between Jo, his old girlfriend who he danged broke up with and had just suddenly appeared and Lucy, who he was getting to know and starting to date. He runs away from them and both girls decide they will leave the apartment building they all live in if he doesn't want them, because seeing him with the other will give them heart attacks or something. Keep in mind that while Jo could do that as she has money, Lucy has no resources that would cover such a big move. They don't even consider finding alternate places or anything.
Of course, Kendall picks Jo and while I didn't want to go into this yet she is the blue-eyed, blonde haired girl next door but not much else and he hasn't even seen her in months, yet we're supposed to believe she's the one. Lucy on the other hand has a personality and has dark hair with red streaks and wants to become a rockstar. So of course she is way too much (which brings me to another thing I'd like to cover later under the heading of Vulnerability).
Intimacy
Guys will be cool with having lots of random sex. Women want everything to be special unless they're weird or broken.
On TV, intimacy is a form of validation. Never a personal experience. There's a great example with HBO show supposedly written by women Girls, which has way too much girls focusing on how the guy they're with doesn't seem to like them as much as they should and oh gods it's not like they can break up with him because they're such fat blobs of uselessness and who else will love them! You don't want to be like the one whose biggest baggage is still being a virgin right? Can she even be considered human if nobody has never loved her enough to have sex with her at her age!? (And this is only the first three episodes).
For men... do I seriously need to give an example? Almost anybody can picture that scene from every show where a group of guys discusses their conquests and shames the one who has never had one
(I also want to cover vulnerability and attraction, but I can do that later).
^^ That actually wasn't what I was necessarily going to comment on, but it does bring up a few things that I wanted to touch on.
For one thing, when you take into account only the most vocal element of a given fan base, you marginalise other groups. While the straight male fandom of that show is surprisingly large and occasionally rather... intense, shoving aside the queer fans of the show that do exist for whatever reason strikes me as pretty unfair.
But on the opposite end of the spectrum, the fact that a large section of the MLP fandom in its current incarnation basically takes in the show explicitly in spite of its "gendered" status is an interesting thing to analyse from this angle as well. It's not dissimilar to the popularity of magical girl shows with teenaged boys and grown men—although ignoring the non-straight aspect there, too, is problematic and missing the whole picture.
My initial point, however, was really a pithy throwaway line: "Ponies are mean, except on TV, but I don't watch TV." Alternately: "My boyfriend likes it, but I can't watch it. I am allergic to chirpy musical numbers. They give me hives."
^^^ OK.
Since I already covered the middle one, I'll talk about the first and last.
There is a certain degree of stigma with respect to a man having a strong eye for colour when dressing, I have noticed, particularly when the man in question chooses colours that are "feminine" as part of their wardrobe or shows them more than a passing appreciation. The ability to accept nuance in palette is tacitly branded as an unmanly or queer trait. This applies even more to things like interior design than clothing.
Now, yes, I am stating the obvious there, but it still legitimately puzzles me. Perhaps it comes from the fact that I am a very visually-oriented person, and I feel like cross-associating that trait with some totally unrelated aspect of myself is a bit absurd—insulting, too, given that I inherit my interest in colour and design as much from my incredibly straight father as my mother. Perhaps you could say that I feel freer to be flamboyant given that identify less with conventional gender roles, but that still comes back to the same base issue: Why, as a man, must I be aesthetically limited?
But there's another thing, too: I surely do not present as stereotypically gay. Nor do I read as particularly butch, granted, but I am tall, stubbly, reasonably strong; I have a low, resonant voice with nary a trace of blatant effeminacy; and, irony of ironies, dress pretty conservatively. With little self-consciousness, I cleave close to my gender expectations, and I am mostly comfortable there. Yet the idea of being prescribed these roles rankles me intensely. After all, this is merely who I am, not everyone.
Which brings me to musical aggression and the expectations therein. More aggressive music has a history of being very much a straight male thing, but the more extreme and personal that aggression becomes, the more the appeal shifts from one to machismo to one to catharsis. When taken past a certain point, presumed "manly" aggression and swagger ceases to have a gendered role as it turns into simple blind rage—sexless, without reason, yet liberating.
Power violence is perhaps not the best example given that it is less overtly demonstrative of the queer theory angle, although it does provide for an interesting topic given its roots and aims. The genre emerged out of the hardcore scene during the early '90s with groups like Man Is The Bastard as a kind of radicalised take on the sludgier end of the genre: Extremely ugly music, alternately played very slow or very fast, with extremely political lyrics delivered with the utmost of vocal venom. The expression was not of communal uplift through angry fist-pumping, but a direct sonic expression of spite at the state of things.
Which brings me to my point: If you listen to a lot of the more radically engaged sexual-politics-focused musical acts of the last thirty years, outside of the occasional attempted pop evangelist, most of these bands are, in one way or another, pretty abrasive. Yet the abrasion is rarely so much in a "muscular" way as it is a somewhat psychotic way. There is an appeal in scaring the straights, in screaming "FUCK YOU!" in the most hysterical, bloodthirsty way possible, of turning their assumptions against them.
Which is why I was talking about Bronies. I didn't push anybody aside, my entire post refers explicitly to bronies and brony culture.
Magical Girl fans explicitly discuss how adorable things are, straight or not.
Are you saying that something becomes itself so much that it stops having it's own characteristics?
Um... beyond that point I'm not even sure what point you're trying to make, sorry.
Question: What do these genres of music have to do with gender portrayals? The only part that sounds relevant is "When taken past a certain point, presumed "manly" aggression and swagger ceases to have a gendered role as it turns into simple blind rage—sexless". The only analogy I can come up with is that Conan the Barbarian hacking enemies with a sword is a manly thing, but slasher killers are of gender-neutral nature.
Presumably masculine aggression is using one's physical attributes to ruin someone; hacking, slashing, beating the stuffing out of, etcetera. Feminine aggression is using one's social attributes to ruin someone; scandal, smears, and rumors.
@fourteenwings:
Oddly, there is one similarity in the stuff you point out:
> Can she even be considered human if nobody has never loved her enough to have sex with her at her age!?
> a group of guys...shames the one who has never had [a sexual "conquest"]
This is at least different from ye olden days when women were expected to stay virgins while men were expected to sleep around.
That said, even in this similarity there is a difference; the first line emphasizes validation from external sources (by "receiving" a sexual experience) and the second line emphasizes validation by self-initiated means (the shaming implies an expectation that the male should impose a sexual experience on a sexual target).
@JHM:
I think it is dissimilar in a way, since most people feel no sexual attraction to cartoon ponies, while we see periphery demographics for magical girl shows enjoying their (usually implicit) sex appeal.
Do you mean colors in general and more specifically brighter colors in general (as opposed to a palette made solely of blacks, greys, and browns), or do you mean specific color shades such as lavender vs. purple?
Because...
I've found myself asking the same question, as a heterosexual male.
If you walk into a department store and just take a quick visual survey of the different departments, you'll know what I mean.
I've noticed that men's clothing tends to cluster annoyingly into certain colors -- those blacks, greys, and browns I mentioned before, with a few dark blues. Generally speaking, the darker colors, maybe occasionally contrasted with red, green, or blue for more informal settings. Purple and pink are right out of course. Contrast women's clothing, which has some (even if not many) more colors, such as red, turquoise, purple, yellow/off-white, and blue, and also more gold trim, for more formal clothing, while maintaining a very diverse selection of colors for more informal clothing (pretty much the entire spectrum of basic and secondary colors, as well as both white and black).
Noticeably, the color selections for adult clothing also tends to be darker-colored than color selections for children's clothing, while following some of the same patterns as for adults. The boys' section has strong "basic" colors like black, blue, red, green, yellow, orange, etc., while the girls' section has all those colors minus black but plus pink, purple, sky blue, lime green, and a host of other colors, generally brighter than the boys' section. Occasionally you'll find very bright colors like neon red and neon green on things like swimwear and other very casual clothing (but not for boys).
The babies' section basically has the same colors as the girls' section, minus the neon brights.
A similar pattern can be observed in the selection of shoes. Both genders get white-colored sports shoes (a.k.a. "sneakers"), but men's shoes will contrast that white with black or dark blue (and occasionally light grey) accents, and sometimes have all-black styles. Women's shoes contrast that white with pink and light blue accents, and I don't think I've ever seen entirely-black women's shoes. So you still have a "women get lighter colors than men" thing. And I've actually had experiences where I've browsed for shoes, picked up a women's pair without knowing it, tried them on, and found them to fit quite nicely -- because, let's be honest, there's really no difference between female and male feet (for the purpose of shoe fitting), other than female feet being slightly smaller on average. (If anything I suspect that there's probably more difference culturally depending on whether you wore shoes at home as a kid and thus whether your feet got to grow more widely.)
And I'm not even gonna get into the problem of high heels. Those things are just travesties, in my humble opinion.
Okay, before I longpost I want to talk about cosmetic/skincare products. It's a thing that's been on my mind forever now.
So there was once a world where everybody who cared enough would use [Brand X], there would be only one brand X, it would be colored in stereotypically female colours ie. pink/lime/cyan.
Someone had the bright idea of making [Brand X] for men. Because men can't use default [Brand X] for some reason. Men's [Brand X] honestly sucks and is extremely limited in it's coverage. It will always be advertised in a masculine way, with the model almost always a buff athlete. Default [Brand X] will not change it's name to "[Brand X] for women" as that would be offensive or something.
So, what have we learned here? Skincare, an activity stereotypically associated with females, is icky unless it's explicitly labeled as "For Men", as men don't have to lower themselves to the level of using default [Brand X], as it is icky.
I mean, you could argue that they make For Men shaving balms or whatever but they also make default shaving balms which basically do the same thing and can cover a variety of skin types better than For Men products. And this extends to Shower Gels, which is the point at which they're pushing even the average person's buttons.
I'm surprised that the bit about gender-coded aggression in art threw people as much as it did. I guess I'll put it this way: Up to a certain point, violent music can be seen as reinforcing a sense of masculine dominance in the performer and the listener. There is a comfortable power fantasy at work. Take this past a certain point—yelling and growling becomes shrieking and howling; harmonies go from comfortably technical or bluntly catchy to highly dissonant—and the appeal ceases to be one of a shared vainglory, but something a little more extreme and a lot less reliant on gender: The aesthetics of catharsis, the art of flipping out. Comfort turns into confrontation, yet also into a kind of release, albeit one that is not so much "fun" as "draining."
There is also the element of shock: A man performing death metal growls is, well, expected; a woman going into the same guttural range is surprising and perhaps just a little ominous. Either gender screaming as if in pain or like they genuinely want to rip your face off is, depending on the context, unsettling. And for someone that feels at a disadvantage for simply being who they are most of the time, there is a serious appeal in that. You become what ails you and you surpass it.
As for the wardrobe thing...
Exactly this.
I would like to point out that women's feet do tend to be narrower than men's feet on average, thus the differentiation, but as you point out, people vary.
High heels are a weird topic on many levels.
P.S.
I could comment, but I'm not sure that I want to touch that one...