week 6- response to Sara M

I agree that it is kind of scary how young girls are in fact victims to the media portrayal of women in society. Whenever my little sisters (10 yrs old) are around me when I do my make up to get ready to go out, they always try to convince me to trade my “grown up” make up with theirs. They have their little pretend lip glosses and eye shadows they sell for little girls, and of course that is not good enough for them. They want the powder, bronzer, blush, mascara and anything else they can get their hands on in my make up bag. I find this kind of funny because they have their own little pretend make up to play with! Why do they need mine?? Well, apparently, according to them, their play make up is for “kids” and its “stupid” and “cheap,” when in reality if I wanted to I could just use their and it would be just as nice. But because it has the label of “kids makeup” they have to want mine. Its crazy that at this age they are already thinking about dressing up and wearing makeup when their little faces are beautiful enough to not have to put anything on it and they would probably just ruin their skin if they started dabbling in this stuff. They see all this new makeup on tv modeled by the most beautiful women (who are photo shopped none the less) and they want to have it because it is directed towards women. And the women who want to look as beautiful as the models, have to have that particular makeup. Its kind of weird that girls younger and younger are so concerned with how they look and how they are seen by other people, I think I’m going to have to have a talk with my sisters and straighten this out...haha

week 6- last blog

During this course I have learned to really think about how out behaviors and words come off to people as well as affect them. It is easy to assume that everything you do is just you being yourself. However, sometimes things get taken the wrong way. After researching my topic as well as learning about everything this course dealt with it still amazes me how men and women are perceived. Men have to act strong and be independent otherwise they are seen as not manly and weak. Women have to be caring and feminine and take care of everyone around them because if they don’t then they are not good mothers or seen as bad women in general. I’ve come to realize that no one is perfect and all we can do is try to be the best person we can be. If we get judged for it then that is just another obstacle we have to get through. I hope that in the future men and women will really be seen as equals and will truly have the same rights and privileges. During this course I have learned that we are taking the steps to becoming better as a society in some ways. Speaking out about our troubles and issues is a great start to the realization that we all have concerns and need to be understood. Hopefully, sooner than later, we will all see what the issues are and will take the necessary steps to change them.

Week 5 response to Tamica

When I read your post, I was utterly shocked. I can see why you were angered by this because it is complete idiocy what young girls are being taught nowadays. If I was you and heard that little girl talk about “real beauty” being what is shown on TV I probably would have made a rude remark to her mother. But you clearly have more restrain than I do. I have two little sisters who are twins, they are turning 10 next month, they would come to me and tell me stories of what their classmates of the 3^rd grade talk about and what they wear. I am stunned each and every time a new story comes to me. Apparently fashion, looking good, and fitting in is the main concern on a 3^rd graders mind. I remember when I was that old the only thing I cared about was who I was gonna play with after school and what we would be playing…tag or house. My sisters say that they get picked on sometimes by the other girls in their class because their clothes aren’t as “flashy” as the other girls. Flashy as in the sense of having rhinestones all over their shirts and pants and tight leggings with short tops. This disgusted me of course but I was glad to know that my sisters are at least staying true to themselves and know that certain things are not appropriate for school nor for their age. They also tell me that girls wear make up to school and some of them have their hair dyed blonde to make it platinum blonde rather than staying true to their dirty blonde hair. If my sisters asked my mom to dye their hair I think she’d laugh in their face and send them to their room for even asking such a question. Haha. But in all seriousness, it is truly sad what this has come to. Its awful to see that mothers are not trying to educate their children on what is right and to try to make them better human being, and are rather teaching them how to walk sexy so they can get a man. That is appalling.

week 5

This weeks topic is women’s and men’s movements. My eureka moment comes from a movie I caught on TV the other day…the movie is called “Sorority Boys” and it is a comedy. Im going to reference a small part of the movie which involves a women’s study class. Three guys were kicked out of their fraternity called “KOK” ( if u pronounce it out loud you’ll get the jist of what the frat is about) because they were accused of stealing money from their fraternity safe. Well, they ended up dressing up as women and joining a sorority called “DOG” (these women were considered to be the unattractive sorority so I think you can figured out why it was called what it is). One of these guys fell for a girl in this sorority and she happened to be taking a women’s studies class in their college. This guy showed up in this class one day and of course it was filled with ONLY women…the teacher saw him enter the class and made a remark that he must be in the wrong class because this is a class for women, so of course he made a smart comment back about how he wants to get in touch with his femininity or something of the sort. So she allowed him to be in the class. Well, turned out that this guy didn’t want to be in the class to learn about it he just wanted to sit next to the girl and get to know her because this was the only opportunity he had to make friends with her as a man (remember he is dressed as a woman participating in her sorority). So basically he joined women’s studies to get into the pants of a girl. This is exactly what majority of men are about lol. Im sorry to say this but I found this hilarious. This makes me think that maybe if women took classes on men’s movements and men on women’s studies we could all learn a little something about each other. I think this should be a requirement in every college. This would allow men and women to have a better understanding of each other and each other’s needs. I think a lot of our societal issues come from the fact that we don’t understand how the opposite sex feels about certain things, especially about their societal/gender roles. We could all get along a little better and have less hate for the opposite sex if we were given a fair chance to learn about each other. These types of classes are detailed and give a lot of insight on what the sexes think. This could result in a great transformation of our minds.

week 4 response to Jackie

Im glad to see that you consider yourself and your partner as equal and that neither wear the pants. When I dated my ex-boyfriend he always wanted to be the “man” in the relationship, and he was physically, but realistically I was the one that took care of everything and organized everything that we did. This was frustrating to me because I always thought a relationship involves both of the partners and not just the one. Well to make a long story short, we broke up. Everything that I taught him during our relationship he now does with his current girlfriend which is kind of bitter sweet to me. Im glad he finally grew up and realized how to be a man, but at the same time why did I have to be the one to teach him it?!!? Lol

I find it very realistic that your straight friends complain to you about their boyfriends. Sometimes I wish that all heterosexual relationships were more like the way homosexual individuals carry them out to be. Where each partner has a say and you are both involved equally. I guess it is a little bit easier to have two females in a relationship because we are so open and understand as opposed to a male/female relationship. Then again, what do I know? Im sure you and your girlfriend have the same type of problems as any heterosexual couple, at least you guys solve your problems in a level headed way! Haha Thank you for sharing your story.

Week 4

Being friends with a guy and only remaining friends with has been rather hard in the past. Not for me thought, for him. In 7^th grade I became friends with this guy Jimmy, him and I have been really good friends since then to this day. Once we got into high school, and hormones started raging in boys, Jimmy started to develop feelings for me. We would hang out by ourselves and talk for hours about life, our families, traumatic experiences, and people of the opposite sex we were attracted to of course. I always assumed that since we were able to have these mature conversations and keep everything between us, that we were strictly platonic friends who just enjoyed each others company and were able to talk about anything. Well, I guess this was a plus for Jimmy, he found this attractive about me and he took these sacred shared moments as a sign that I was into him as well. Which wasn’t the case at all, I had absolutely no sexual attraction or romantic feelings for him. He was simply my best friend who happened to be male. For a couple of years in high school me and Jimmy stopped talking for good. It came to the point where he would constantly bring up the fact of “why don’t you want to be with me, we have such a great time together, we‘re perfect for each other.” For me, there just wasn’t a romantic spark. Yes, we would have been perfect for each other if I was attracted to him in that type of way. I felt awful about the whole thing because 1. I lost one of my best friends, and 2. I hurt his feelings, which was not my intention at all. It took Jimmy a couple of years, up until about Junior year of high school to realize that it was not worth cutting each other out of our lives just because he couldn’t be with me romantically. I was really happy to find us in conversation one day about how he was immature and should have handled it better and that he misses my friendship. This made me feel happy because I knew then that he really respected our friendship, enough to bring it back to life. Ever since then him and I have been better than ever. Always getting together when we were home from college to catch up on our life experiences. I guess it took him losing me as a friend to realize that he’d rather have me be only his friend than to not have me in his life at all. This is kind of sad in a way because at times I feel he still has some type of feelings for me and wishes we had dated in the past, but I am glad to have my friend back. He is one of those friends that I can see being at my wedding years from now and I know I can always count on him for anything. There is always a positive and a negative to every friendship. And I guess me and Jimmy overcame the negative to remain positive for the rest of time.

Week 3 response to Jeff

Jeff,

I find it hilarious that you as an adult have to sit in the basement at the kiddy table. This is funny to me because I have a friend who is my age (22) and she has a big family which consists of many aunts and uncles and cousins. Many of her cousins are over 18, and when her family gets together there is always a “kiddy table” and she has to be part of it. I know this because I once went to a family event with her and I had to sit at the kiddy table! I thought this was funny because we are young adults and should not have to sit with the little kids. But I guess in her situation there are so many older adults that there just isn’t enough room for her to sit at the adult table.

The other thing I want to mention is the part about girls and boys helping out in the kitchen. As far as I can remember, all the women in my family are the ones to prepare the meals for Christmas dinner and other big holidays. The only time a man is cooking is when the grill is involved because it is a “manly” object and I guess women cannot handle a massive steel grill with flames. Haha But you have to consider the fact that long long ago in cave man days, men were the ones to hunt and prepare all the meals, and this was considered a man’s job. I guess times have changed. Once I reached a certain age where I was able to actually contribute in the kitchen I was included in the meal preparations. I have two little twin sisters who will be 10 this July, and since they were 7 years old they always wanted to get in the kitchen with us women and help out. I feel as though this is one of those things where you observe people doing certain things and you learn to adapt to your gender role, which for women would be cooking, as society teaches us. I find this kind of disturbing because they were just little girls at the age of 7 and they already were used to the idea that they will one day be doing the same thing as mom. I don’t blame them for wanting to do it but in my opinion this was a young age to start wanting to be grown up. The men of course line up to fill their plate as you have mention after the women are done preparing the meals. It wouldn’t hurt for a guy to get in the kitchen and make a meal for a woman once in a while haha.

Week 3

Okay, so we all know that men are the "strong" ones and women are the "weak" ones...well, in theory. haha. BUT I have come to learn a hilarious thing in the past few days. My mother who will be 45 years old in September decided she is "aging" and wants to get into shap after three kids, mind you she is 5'6 and weighs about 135 lbs...shes not what you would consider "large." She actually has a small frame just is not toned to the point where she would like...but that's besides the point. She has taken up kickboxing..I know, kind of random right? Well, she is in a group of about ten people and 2 of them are men and the rest women. She joined the group much later after everyone else and they all have been training for a few months now. She has gone twice and has explained the crazy amount of rigourous exercise that is required to be completed during the sessions. One part of the session is when you team up with a partner and do boxing and kicking exercises on the punching bag that weighs I don't even know how many pounds. So basically each person takes turns punching and kicking and you are supposed to get into a rhythm to start building strength and muscle to be able to continuously do it. Well, on her first day, the trainer told my mom to pair up with one of the burly men that work out there. Instead of pairing her with one of the women, which you would think would be more fair, instead she got paired with a male. They started kicking and boxing and the small person that is my mother kicked the punching bag so hard it swung into that guy and hit him in his body! He was not even able to react in time to be able to kick or hit it back he just stood there like a tree and let her kick it into him. I thought this was hilarious because women are always thought to be the weak ones and can never physically be compared to a man, well guess what!...they can! And I am proud to say my 44 year old mother was able to do it hahaha. She is a prime example of a woman who challenges herself and is able to "kick a man's ass." :)

response to Michele

I think that women are so concerned with how they look that it is almost unhealthy. I feel as though women don't really express their true beauty noadays because of all the make-up, plastic surgeries, clothing that sucks you in to appear thinner, and clothing in general making you appear a certain way. Magazines and TV shows and films have such a way about them trying to make a woman look perfect, but the truth of the matter is that there is no such thing! As you probably know, from the kind of work that you do, even the most beautiful movie star has some type of flaws. But the way that she is portrayed after being photo shopped and made to look tanner and thinner she "appears" perfect. This is the problem with society, we make women feel as though they have to present themselves as though they are perfect. My male friends tell me all the time that they hate when girls wear too much make up and that when they wake up to their girlfriend the next morning she looks like a completely different person until she reapplies her make-up again. I would never want to be seen like that, I want to be seen as how I really look, because truthfully, it's way too much work to have to constantly be perfect haha. I have so much respect for full figured models because they are not ashamed to hide their bodies and want to cater to the "not-so-perfect" crowd. I'm glad that these things even exist, otheriwise we would be forced to look at "perfect" people all day long, which would be a bore.

response post to Taara

Taara, I completely feel your pain. I have one friend who is heavier set and your situation is exactly the same thing I go through everytime we go shopping together. My friend will complain about the same things as your friend, how her stomach is too big and sticks out too much and how she can't wear anything too short because her legs have too much cellulite on them. This annoys me so much because she will compare me to her and make me feel bad about the size that I am ( and trust me, I am far from perfect and have plenty of flaws and insecurities about my body).But the one thing I try to tell my friend is that I have issues with finding clothes as well, because I am taller and pants tend to be short on me sometimes or maybe my chest doesnt fill out a shirt as well as hers does. It's hard to comfort a friend sometimes because you want to be honest, but at the same time you can't say everything you want to because you know it will jsut hurt their feelings. As to what Lindsey said, the part about where your friend might be fishing for you to tell her something that may not necessarily be true, well I have been there. And I find that it is best to just help them find what looks and fits best! lol If you go too much into detail then you'll will be seen as a very bad friend in their eyes because instead of boosting their self esteem you will just bring it down. I, for example expect nothing but honesty. I would rather a friend tell me something looks awful on me than to sugar coat it and say it looks "fine," because I know it doensn't look "fine," it look awful! haha. With situations like these you have to be careful even with nonverbal communication because the way you look at your friend when she comes out of the dressing room could open a whole new can of worms and send the completely wrong message that you weren't intending for. I've done that, made a face that implied negativity but in reality it was uncertainty. I've learned my lesson with that. haha

week 1

this is a response to Professor M's post during the first week:

Hi, I'm Katarzyna (Kat for short), I am 22 and finishing up my degree in August. As a response to your post Professor, I thinkg that more and more we are seeing gay couples expressing their sexuality publicly. I can understand why you were caught off guard. 1. your young daughter was with you being exposed to something people don't consider "normal and 2. it was two young boys kissing and acting like a couple. After 4 years of college, I learned a lot about people, and their sexualities. In high school, the gay kids would seclude themselves and would deny any homosexual allegations because they would be tormented, judged, and discriminated against. But being in college you see the gay world in a completely different light. Homosexuals are open and free to talk about it and flaunt it. They love themselves and who they are and are not afraid to act like it. I feel as though in high school people are much more narrow minded and haven't really had a taste of the real world yet. But after 4 years of college (the time to experiment and find yourself) you see and learn a lot just through observation. I am happy to hear that those two young boys felt secure enough in their own skin to be able to publicly express who they truly are. PDA in my opinion should be kept to a minimum and should be done in a classy way if necessary, whether straigh or gay. However, I feel as though society is in fact becoming used to the idea that homosexuals exist and the ARE real people with feelings and emotions. The realization is definitely a good thing though; when society keeps its mind closed off from reality then we start to have problems such as hate and discrimination. I hope that more and more people become open to homosexuality because it is in our present and our future and there is nothing anyone can do to prevent it. We are all human beings and deserve love in whichever way is good for us as individuals.
originally posted on May 20, 2010 12:00 am

Week 2

This gender moment has to do a little bit with last weeks reading but also this weeks: I was watching "That 70's Show" and Eric Forman was forced to go on a date with his mother. He was completely offended that he had to go out to see a movie/go shopping with his mom because men don't do that kind of stuff with their moms. Not to mention, if he was seen in public with his "mommy" he would be publicly humiliated (which he was anyways). Well, as him and his mom were having dinner at a pizzeria she said that one day he will thank her for spending a little time with her outside of the house. And this was so because by talking and getting to know each other outside of the daily routine of living together under the same roof, he can actually learn a thing or two from a female (his mom). He could learn something about himself and also learn possibly how women who have found themselves think and how women should be treated. this was supposed to be a life lesson type of thing for him, and I think he got it. He actually appreciated the fact that his mother wanted to spend time with him and that it actually didn't make him a "momma's boy." It brings me back to how boys disassociate themselves from their mothers because they don't want to be like them because from an early age they learn to be like their father and little girls are supposed to mimic and learn from their mom's. Well, Eric got a rude awakening that taught him a lesson...it is okay to watch and learn things from a parent of the opposite sex. It doesn't make you lame OR a sissy in his case. Also, talking to his mom about his relationship with his girlfriend Donna, made him appreciate his girlfriend and respect her even more. It seems as though men use foul language towards women, but Eric is not one of them because of his respect for his mother. If you ever watch the show, you can pick up on the nonverbal communications between the family members. You can quickly see how scared Eric is of his father when he raises his tone of voice, but when his mom is involved all she has to do is shoot him the "no no/ you're an idiot" look and Eric is fully aware that he should shut his mouth immediately or just run. lol. Seeing this episode and connecting it to the reading makes me think about how much communication goes on on a daily basis between everyone around you whether it be verbal/nonverbal, negative/positive, or derogatory/complementary.