University of Baltimore Buying and Selling Gender Discussion Instructions After studying the assigned reading, Sociology: The Social Construction of Gende

University of Baltimore Buying and Selling Gender Discussion Instructions

After studying the assigned reading, Sociology: The Social Construction of Gender, considering the concept of “gender as socially constructed,” answer the following questions and prompts. Again, answer the questions but do not have the questions in the essay.

A) How does media create meanings about gender?

B) Provide examples of how this is manifested in our everyday lives.

C) Provide a link to a commercial/ad that stereotypes gender. Even though it is natural to find humor in some of these portrayals, in what ways is this problematic.

Also, consider that sex is a system of classification based on biology and physiology, while gender reflects the cultural meaning that is ascribed to a person’s sex, thus resulting in labels of “masculinity and femininity.” Furthermore, our biology is not distinctively male or female and a significant number of people are born “intersex” with variations in chromosomes or sexual organs. Most biological researchers agree on the estimation that intersex people are about as common as encountering someone with green eyes. It is important to understand that masculinity and femininity are not oppositional, although it seems to be portrayed so in media. In Western society (such as in the U.S. and Western Europe) we typically adhere to certain ideas and values that define masculinity and femininity as we perform the roles. What if the list was different? All of us, in honesty, could reveal that we interchange among the qualities. Take a look at the list and answer the following questions:

Masculinity

Femininity

strength
dominance
aggression
independence
empowerment
active
rational thought
production
breadwinner
subject
outdoors
technology

weakness
submission
compliance/vulnerability
dependence
disempowerment
passive
emotion
consumption
nurturer
object
indoors
nature

Provide answers to the following questions or prompts in your assignment submission.

D) How is the list being currently challenged?

E) What traits do you have that are typically considered “on the list” of the other sex?

F) What examples do you see in your daily life of people challenging the historic list?

G) What about examples in media of characters or people challenging the list?

H) Finally, do you agree or disagree that gender is socially constructed? Provide evidence that backs your opinion.

Support your responses with research from the Learning Resources. Use APA in-text citations where necessary and cite any outside sources. Create an APA Reference List at the end of the document.

Submit your responses in the file submission area for this assignment by attaching a MSWord document, and please also copy and paste your response into the comments area.500 to 600 words The Social Construction of Gender, in Sociology by Boundless, is used under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license. © 2014, boundless.com. UMUC has modified this work
and it is available under the original license.
The Social Construction of Gender
Social constructivists propose that there is no inherent truth to gender; it is
constructed by social expectations and gender performance.
Learning Objective
?
Explain Judith Butler’s concept of gender performativity
Key Points
?
?
?
Social constructionism is the notion that people’s understanding of reality is
partially, if not entirely, socially situated.
Gender is a social identity that needs to be contextualized.
Individuals internalize social expectations for gender norms and behave
accordingly.
Terms
?
social constructionism
The idea that social institutions and knowledge are created by actors within the
system, rather than having any inherent truth on their own.
?
Gender performativity
Gender Performativity is a term created by post-structuralist feminist philosopher
Judith Butler in her 1990 book Gender Trouble, which has subsequently been
used in a variety of academic fields that describes how individuals participate in
social constructions of gender.
?
essentialism
The view that objects have properties that are essential to them.
Social Constructionism
The social construction of gender comes out of the general school of thought entitled
social constructionism. Social constructionism proposes that everything people “know”
or see as “reality” is partially, if not entirely, socially situated. To say that something is
socially constructed does not mitigate the power of the concept. Take, for example,
money. Money is a socially constructed reality. Paper bills are worth nothing
independent of the value individuals ascribe to them. The dollar is only worth as much
1
as value as Americans are willing to ascribe to it. Note that the dollar only works in its
own currency market; it holds no value in areas that don’t use the dollar. Nevertheless,
the dollar is extremely powerful within its own domain.
These basic theories of social constructionism can be applied to any issue of study
pertaining to human life, including gender. Is gender an essential category or a social
construct? If it is a social construct, how does it function? Who benefits from the way
that gender is constructed? A social constructionist view of gender looks beyond
categories and examines the intersections of multiple identities and the blurring of the
boundaries between essentialist categories. This is especially true with regards to
categories of male and female, which are viewed typically as binary and opposite.
Social constructionism seeks to blur the binary and muddle these two categories, which
are so frequently presumed to be essential.
Judith Butler and Gender Performativity
Judith Butler is one of the most prominent social theorists currently working on issues
pertaining to the social construction of gender. Butler is a trained philosopher and has
oriented her work towards feminism and queer theory. Butler’s most known work is
Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, published in 1991, which
argues for gender performativity. This means that gender is not an essential category.
The repetitious performances of “male” and “female” in accordance with social norms
reifies the categories, creating the appearance of a naturalized and essential binary.
Gender is never a stable descriptor of an individual, but an individual is always “doing”
gender, performing or deviating from the socially accepted performance of gender
stereotypes. Doing gender is not just about acting in a particular way. It is about
embodying and believing certain gender norms and engaging in practices that map on
to those norms. These performances normalize the essentialism of gender categories.
In other words, by doing gender, we reinforce the notion that there are only two mutually
exclusive categories of gender. The internalized belief that men and women are
essentially different is what makes men and women behave in ways that appear
essentially different. Gender is maintained as a category through socially constructed
displays of gender.
Doing gender is fundamentally a social relationship. One does gender in order to be
perceived by others in a particular way, either as male, female, or as troubling those
categories. Certainly, gender is internalized and acquires significance for the individual;
some individuals want to feel feminine or masculine. Social constructionists might argue
that because categories are only formed within a social context, even the affect of
gender is in some ways a social relation. Moreover, we hold ourselves and each other
2
for our presentation of gender, or how we “measure up.” We are aware that others
evaluate and characterize our behavior on the parameter of gender. Social
constructionists would say that gender is interactional rather than individual—it is
developed through social interactions. Gender is also said to be omnirelevant, meaning
that people are always judging our behavior to be either male or female.
3
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BUYING AND SELLING GENDER
I
n the video called Adventures in the Gender Trade, Kate Bornstein, a transgender performance
artist and activist, looks into the camera and says, “Once you buy gender, you’ll buy anything to
keep it.” Her observation goes to the heart of deep connections between economic processes and
institutionalized patterns of gender difference, opposition, and inequality in contemporary society.
Readings in this chapter examine the ways in which modern marketplace forces such as commercialization, commodification, and consumerism exploit and construct gender. However, before we explore
the buying and selling of gender, we want to review briefly the major elements of contemporary
American economic life—elements that embody corporate capitalism—which form the framework for
the packaging and delivery of gender to consumers.
DEFINING CORPORATE CAPITALISM
Corporate capitalism is an economic system in which large, national and transnational corporations are
the dominant forces. The basic goal of corporate capitalism is the same as it was when social scientists
such as Karl Marx studied early capitalist economies: converting money into more money (Johnson,
2001). Corporate capitalists invest money in the production of all sorts of goods and services for the
purpose of selling at a profit. Capitalism, as Gitlin (2001) observes, requires a consumerist way of life.
In today’s society, corporate capitalism affects virtually every aspect of life—most Americans work
for a corporate employer, whether a fast food chain or a bank, and virtually everyone buys the products and services of capitalist production (Johnson, 2001; Ritzer, 1999). Those goods and services
include things we must have in order to live (e.g., food and shelter) and, most important for contemporary capitalism’s survival and growth, things we have learned to want or desire (e. g., microwave
ovens, televisions, cruises, fitness fashions, cosmetic surgery), even though we do not need them in
order to live (Ritzer, 1999).
From an economic viewpoint, we are a nation of consumers, people who buy and use a dizzying
array of objects and services conceived, designed, and sold to us by corporations. George Ritzer
(1999), a leading analyst of consumerism, observes that consumption plays such as big role in the lives
of contemporary Americans that it has, in many respects, come to define our society.
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In fact, as Ritzer notes, Americans spend most
of their available resources on consumer goods
and services. Corporate, consumer capitalism
depends on luring people into what he calls the
“cathedrals of consumption,” such as book superstores, shopping malls, theme parks, fast food
restaurants, and casinos, where we will spend
money to buy an array of goods and services.
Our consumption-driven economy counts on
customers whose spending habits are relatively
unrestrained and who view shopping as pleasurable. Indeed, Americans spend much more today
than they did just forty years ago (Ritzer, 1999).
Most of our available resources go to purchasing
and consuming “stuff.” Americans consume
more of everything and more varieties of things
than people in other nations. We are also more
likely to go into debt than Americans of earlier
generations and people in other nations today.
Some social scientists (e.g, Schor, 1998, p. 2004)
use the term hyperconsumption to describe what
seems to be a growing American passion for and
obsession with consumption.
MARKETING GENDER
Gender is a fundamental element of the modern
machinery of marketing. It is an obvious resource
from which the creators and distributors of goods
and services can draw ideas, images, and messages. The imagery of consumer culture thrives on
gender difference and asymmetry. For example,
consumer emblems of hyperfemininity and
hypermasculinity, such as Barbie and GI Joe,
stand in stark physical contrast to each other
(Schiebinger, 2000). This is not happenstance.
Barbie and GI Joe intentionally reinforce beliefs
in essential differences between women and men.
The exaggerated, gendered appearances of Barbie
and GI Joe can be purchased by adult consumers
who have the financial resources to pay for new
cosmetic surgeries, such as breast and calf
implants, that literally inscribe beliefs about
physical differences between women and men
into their flesh (Sullivan, 2001). As Walters
observes (2001), turning difference into “an
object of barter is perhaps the quintessentially
American experience” (p. 289). Indeed, virtually
every product and service, including the most
functional, can be designed and consumed as
masculine or feminine (e.g., deodorants, bicycles,
greeting cards, wallpaper, cars, and hair styles).
Gender-coding of products and services is a
common strategy employed by capitalist organizations to sell their wares. It is also integral to the
processes by which gender is constructed,
because it frames and structures gender practices. Let’s look at the gender-coding of clothing
to illustrate how consumer culture participates in
the construction of gender through ordinary
material forms. As the gender archeologist
Sorenson (2000) observes, clothing is an ideal
medium for the expression of a culture’s gender
beliefs because it is an extension of the body and
an important element in identity and communication. No wonder corporate capitalists have
cashed in on the business of fabricating gender
through dress (Sorenson, 2000). Sorenson
(2000) notes that simple observation of the clothing habits of people reveals a powerful pattern of
“dressing gender” (p. 124). Throughout life, she
argues, the gender-coding of colors, patterns,
decorations, fabrics, fastenings, trimmings, and
other aspects of dress create and maintain differences between boys and girls and men and
women. Even when clothing designers and manufacturers create what appear to be “unisex”
fashions (e.g., tuxedos for women), they incorporate just enough gendered elements (e.g., lacy
trim or a revealing neckline) to insure that the
culturally created gender categories—feminine
and masculine—are not completely erased.
Consider the lengths to which the fashion industry has gone to create dress that conveys a “serious yet feminine” business appearance for the
increasing number of women in management
and executive levels of the corporate world
(Kimle & Damhorst, 1997). Contemplate the
ferocity of the taboo against boys and men wearing skirts and dresses. Breaking the taboo
(except on a few occasions such as Halloween)
typically results in negative sanctions. The reading in this chapter by Adie Nelson examines the
extent to which even fantasy dress for children
ends up conforming to gender stereotypes.
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Buying and Selling Gender • 219
Gender-coded clothing is one example of corporate exploitation of gender to sell all kinds of
goods and services, including gender itself. Have
we arrived at a moment in history when identities, including gender identity, are largely shaped
within the dynamics of consumerism? Will we,
as Bornstein observes, buy anything to keep up
gender appearances? The readings in this chapter
help us to answer these questions. They illuminate some of the key ways in which capitalist,
consumer culture makes use of cultural definitions and stereotypes of gender to produce and
sell goods and services.
In our “consumers’ republic” (Cohen, 2003),
the mass media (e.g., television and magazines)
play a central role in delivering potential consumers to advertisers whose job it is to persuade
us to buy particular products and services
(Kilbourne, 1999; Ritzer, 1999). The advertising
industry devotes itself to creating and keeping
consumers in the marketplace, and it is very
good at what it does. Today’s advertisers use
sophisticated strategies for hooking consumers.
The strategies work because they link our deepest emotions and most beloved ideals to products
and services by persuading us that identity and
self-worth can be fashioned out of the things
we buy (Featherstone, 1991; Zukin, 2004)).
Advertisers transform gender into a commodity,
and convince consumers that we can transform
ourselves into more masculine men and more
feminine women by buying particular products
and services. Men are lured into buying cars
that will make them feel like hypermasculine
machines, and women are sold a wondrous array
of cosmetic products and procedures that are
supposed to turn them into drop-dead beauties.
Jacqueline Urla and Alan Swedlund’s article
explores the story that Barbie, a well advertised
and wildly popular toy turned icon, tells about
femininity in consumer culture. They note that
although Barbie’s long, thin body and big breasts
are remarkably unnatural, she stands as an ideal
that has played itself out in the real body trends
of Playboy magazine centerfolds and Miss
America contestants. The authors provide evidence that between 1959 and 1978, the average
weight and hip size for women centerfolds and
beauty contestants decreased steadily. A followup study for 1979–88 found the acceleration of
this trend with “approximately 69 percent of
Playboy centerfolds and 60 percent of Miss
America contestants weighing in at 15 percent or
more below their expected age and height category” (p. 298). One lesson we might glean from
this story is that a toy (Barbie) and real women
(centerfolds and beauty contestants) are converging in a culture in which the bonds of beauty
norms are narrowing and tightening their grip on
both products and persons (Sullivan, 2001). To
illustrate the extent of media’s influence even
further, Kirsten Firminger’s piece on representations of males in teenage girls’ magazines
demonstrates the power of print media to guide
readers not only toward consumption of gendered products and services but also toward consumption of (stereo)types of people who are
packaged much like other gendered products.
Any analysis of the marketing of femininity
and masculinity has to take into account the
ways in which the gendering of products and
services is tightly linked to prisms of difference
and inequality such as sexuality, race, age, and
ability/disability. Consumer culture thrives, for
example, on heterosexuality, whiteness, and
youthfulness. Automobile advertisers market
cars made for heterosexual romance and marriage. Liquor ads feature men and women in love
(Kilbourne, 1999). Recent research on race and
gender imagery in the most popular advertising
medium, television, confirms the continuing
dominance of images of White, affluent, young
adults. “Virtually all forms of television marketing perpetuate images of White hegemonic
masculinity and White feminine romantic fulfillment” (Coltrane & Messineo, 2000, p. 386).
In spite of what is called niche marketing or marketing to special audiences such as Latinos, gay
men, and older Americans, commercial television imagery continues to rely on stereotypes
of race, gender, age, and the like (Coltrane &
Messineo, 2000). Stereotypes sell.
Two readings in this chapter address intersections of prisms of difference and inequality in
consumer culture. The first, by Toni Calasanti
and Neal King, offers detailed insight into the
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mass-marketing of “successful aging” products,
services, and activities to old men. They highlight
the fact that marketing that targets old people
plays upon the stigma of aging in American culture and, in the case of men, the often desperate
attempts of aging men to hang onto youthful
manliness. The second, by Minjeong Kim and
Angie Chung, is a close analysis of multicultural
advertising strategies that rely on racialized, sexualized, and gendered stereotypes of Asian
American women as the “Other” not only to sell
products but also to sell Orientalism itself.
turning nonconformity into obedience that
answers to Madison Avenue (Harris, 2000).
Analysts of the commodification of gayness have
been especially sensitive to the potential problems posed by advertising’s recent creation of a
largely fictional identity of gay as “wealthy White
man” with a lifestyle defined by hip fashion
(Walters, 2001). What will happen if lesbian and
gay male styles are increasingly drawn into massmediated, consumer culture? Will those modes of
rebellion against the dominance of heterosexism
lose their political clout? Will they become mere
“symbolic forms of resistance, ineffectual strategies of rebellion” (Harris, 2000, p. xxiii)?
CAN YOU BUY IN WITHOUT SELLING OUT?
The tension between creativity, resistance, and
rebellion, on the one hand; and the lure and power
of commercialization on the other, is a focus of
much research on consumerism and consumer culture (Quart, 2003; Schor, 2004). Can we produce
and consume the gendered products and services of
corporate capitalism without wanting and trying to
be just like Barbie or Madonna, the Marlboro Man
or Brad Pitt? Does corporate, commercial culture consume everything and everyone in its path,
including the creators of countercultural forms?
The latter question is important. Consider the
fact that “grunge,” which began as antiestablishment fashion, became a national trend when
companies such as Diesel and Urban Outfitters
coopted and commercialized it (O’Brien, 1999).
Then contemplate how commercial culture has
cleverly exploited the women’s movement by
associating serious social issues and problems with
trivial or dangerous products. “New Freedom”
is a maxipad. “ERA” is a laundry detergent.
Cigarette ads often portray smoking as a symbol
of women’s liberation (Kilbourne, 1999).
Commercial culture is quite successful in enticing artists of all sorts to “sell out.” For example,
Madonna began her career as a rebel who dared
to display a rounded belly. But, over time,
she has been “normalized,” as reflected in the
transformation of her body to better fit celebrity
appearance norms (Bordo, 1997).
The culture of the commodity is also successful in mainstreaming the unconventional by
THE GLOBAL REACH OF AMERICAN
GENDER IMAGES AND IDEALS
The global reach of American culture is yet
another concern of consumer culture researchers.
Transnational corporations are selling American
popular culture and consumerism as a way of life
in countries around the world (Kilbourne, 1999;
Ritzer, 1999). People across the globe are now
regularly exposed to American images, icons,
and ideals. For example, Baywatch, with its array
of perfect (albeit cosmetically enhanced) male
a…
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