Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Hey everyone. There are many things about being a girl and "doing" the gender role that I dislike. I don't like waking up so early for class to fix my face and hair. I absolutely hate blow drying my hair at night. It's so time consuming and makes me sweat, which is something else girls stereotypically don't like to do. But one big thing that came to mind when I read the blog prompt for this week was homecoming. If you were a girl in high school, you waited for a boy to ask you to the dance. You just did. It would be majorly crossing a gender line for us to ask who we actually wanted to go with, so instead we would just wait around and hope for a suitable boy to ask us. And I don't know about you ladies, but this gave me SUCH an anxiety attack. What if I don't get a date? What if the boy who asks me is weird? What if the guy I like asks someone else? It was exhausting. Meanwhile, the boys in the school could just waltz up to anyone they pleased and ask her to the dance, and chances are she would say yes. I was so jealous of them. Why as girls do we have to do that? Why would it have been such a catastrophic even if I had just asked the boy I liked? I don't know why it is this way, but I don't like it. Shaving my legs and putting on mascara can definitely be annoying, but I think waiting around for a date back in high school was one of the worst things I had to do in order to "do" my gender correctly.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I completely agree with you. During my freshman year of high school I was so nervous about being asked to homecoming. There was a guy that I really wanted to go with. We were both too nervous to ask each other to go and neither one of us ended up going to the dance.
ReplyDeleteI've never really had to think about "doing" my gender in this way. I went to an all girls high school, so we invited whoever we wanted to every one of our dances. Problems would arise if another girl snatched the boy you wanted to take before you got the chance, or in typical girl fashion you had to worry about asking a boy if he just broke up with your friend and hence you would be breaking "girl code". In this way I guess I had to "do" my gender in the way that a boy at your school would be "doing" his gender. It's interesting to think about how that role can switch so easily.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, the whole asking a girl to a dance thing isn't really much fun for us either. I know plenty of guys who were jealous of girls because all y'all had to do was sit and wait to be asked. We had to put our pride on the line and put ourselves out there by asking a girl out. If she says no we are humiliated because not only do our friends know about it but she will almost surely tell her friends so everyone gets to be a part of our embarrassment. Also there is pressure on us to get the right date just like there is for y'all. There typically is a particular girl we want to ask but some other guy my ask her, she may say no, she may not get along with our friends. It may seem like guys just go "She pretty. I ask her to dance," but in all honesty there is a lot more thought and pressure on our end than is typically perceived.
ReplyDelete