Gender Roles
Category:
Visual culture, non-art
Authorship:
N/A
Title:
N/A
Original Location:
Everywhere
Description/Interpretation
The imagery that I have gathered are screen shots from google images. The top set of imagery is a screen shot of example pictures you get when you type “girls playing” into the google search engine. The second set of pictures are examples of what types of images someone is shown when they enter “boys playing” into google image search engine. My reasoning for this is to give us an array of imagery that could be used to present these two ideas, be it found in a book, in advertisement, in photography, and society. When I look at the top set of pictures I see many girls wearing the colors pink, and dressed in skirts or dresses and sit by pretty flowers. The girls appear to enjoy playing house, dress up, and play with dolls. The boys on the other hand do not wear any pink- they wear just about every other color. The boys play sports outside, video games, and with toy trains. There is an obvious difference in what boys and girls look like, how they dressed, and how they like to play. I think that seeing this type of imagery, which we have over many times in our lives, sets gender roles for kids very young. It tells boys to be masculine and play contact sports, or play in the mud, or video games. The girls start to play with makeup and play dress up very young, which is superficial. Many activities for young girls are also centered around keeping them inside of the house; makeup, dress up, Barbie and other dolls (which send their own message about stereotyping women also), cooking, tea parties, etc. The visual endorsement of gender roles in our society can play an effect on our children, as they may feel obliged to do the “right” thing and stay within the boundaries created for their gender. This may also lead to teasing of children who do not, like a tomboy might get teased for “wanting to be a boy”, or a boy might be teased for “wanting to be a girl” if he wears pink or wants to play with dolls.
Use in Teaching:
Instead of showing these images in my classroom, I would do the opposite. Whenever I’m teaching a lesson or using imagery I would make sure that whatever it is I am showing does not support gender stereotyping. Instead, I would make sure that in my lessons I use images of women doing many different jobs, such as being a doctor or an astronaut, and would include pictures of boys who may not appear masculine, may be wearing pink, playing with dolls, or brushing someone’s hair. I would also include pictures of boys and girls playing together, to try to enforce the idea that we do not need to be separated by gender, nor should we be stigmatized by gender roles.
Source:
Google.com
Here is a humorous video about social norms and gender-roles.