Gender norms are an idea of how each gender is supposed to behave. These ideas are drawn from many things but mainly from society and culture. We are taught these roles at a young age, think about toys and how they teach our children what is “manly” or what is “girly”. Our parents also teach us these roles, for example, many have grown up believing that women are supposed to do all the housekeeping when in that is not always the case, but in our society that’s just the way it is and always has been.
For generations fathers have taught their boys how to build and fix things, where our mothers have taught their daughters how to cook, sew, and housekeep. These roles are never questioned, it is always assumed that the guy will be the builder, and the women will be the housekeeper but that raises the question is that necessarily true? One good way to further examine this would be breaking gender norms and seeing how others react. There are many skillful men and women afraid to express certain talents because they go against these gender norms.
I myself don’t really have any talents that go against my gender norms, so to break one I decided to make a trip to Starbucks. I asked my female friend what she felt was the most feminine drink on their menu and she said she felt it was the pumpkin spice latte. So I made my way into Starbucks and ordered the latte. My order taker was a female and actually right when I ordered she smiled and talked to me about how much she loved them as well.
The Essay on Does Mulan Overthrow Oppressive Gender Norms?
During this story, the main character, a girl, joins the Chinese army to fight because she doesn't want her dad to get hurt. Girls were not allowed in the Chinese army so Mulan had to hide her identity doing a variety of different things. Many people speculate that Gender Trouble played a role in the creation of Mulan. Judith Butler believes that gender parody and bodily performance of possible ...
She almost seemed happy that I ordered it as if guys are usually afraid to try it or something. When I went to grab a seat I decided that to go along with my drink it would be a good idea to sit with my legs crossed the way girls usually sit. As I could’ve predicted I got some looks a few of them were a bit intimidating especially from guys. For the most part people just minded their own business but a few of the guys that looked over at me looked like they wanted to beat me up.
It’s funny to think somebody would actually want to hurt you for breaking gender norms. It’s a good thing I had my female friend with me or I would’ve probably been a little intimidated. I figured nobody would really come disrupt us, so instead I just found the dirty looks funny. There was actually a girl that stared at me as well but it was a much less violent stare, if anything it was more of a confused look on her face.
After I finished my drink I headed out and talked to my friend about what we saw, I must say I really enjoyed doing this, the drink was surprisingly awesome. To me breaking gender norms is a good start in fixing some of our society’s ills. Not accepting people for who they truly are is a problem in our society. If we could learn to ignore gender roles and just be ourselves I think we could all be happier in some way.
