(I ask questions for my audience to answer or elaborate on in their responses)
Is Cooking Doing Gender?
Here in this picture a man is looking at a pots and pans set at Walmart. Is he challenging gender? In our society when we think about cooking or even shopping for ingredients we sent mom or wife to the store or kitchen. In today’s society finding a man that knows how to cook is rare and may be surprising to a female but it may be surprising to find anyone, any gender that cooks ( are young people cooking these days). When it comes to norms in our society this man is challenging gender.
Gender Fitness
When it comes to fitness guys are the experts right? Guys are the strong ones, ladies don”t you dare lift a finger, your not capable. Wrong! This picture has gender all over it the mat is blue which is considered a male color ( I”m a female and my favorite color is blue). It also has a male on the packaging, this sends a message to that men are only allowed to be strong, fit and work out.
Is Cleaning Doing Gender?
Here I watched a woman prepare to sweep floors at her job (Walmart). In our society we at a whole look at clean as a woman job. Mom cleans the kitchen and washes the dishes. Hotels and Hospitals mainly have woman housekeepers. It is very rare you find a male housekeeper. Is this norm that society made doing gender, what if a male was in this picture instead would he be challenging gender ?
Wardrobe
On the left is the boys clothing section of Walmart and on the right is the girls clothing section at Walmart. How did I know that?… Well on the left are loose clothing in much darker shades with skulls and “boyish” characters on them. The right side has more slim fit clothing with much more brighter colors with happy symbols like hearts and rainbows. At a very young age we as a society gender our kids. From born we put them in categories as we dress them in colors helping other to identify what gender the baby is. We tend to me more rough with our boys and cater more to our girls. If I (a woman) were to come to class with a shirt from the left side and wore dark colored clothing that fit loose this would be an example of me challenging gender or undoing gender.
OMG is he wearing…
That’s right you see it..PINK a PINK men shirt at Walmart go get you one fellas I think is was only 13$. Something that most people do not know is that pink was actually a color that baby boys wore in the 19th century. In fact while the boys wore pink the baby girls wore.blue. The tables has turned. Piggy back off the last picture of the kids clothing in Walmart kids are gendered by color from day one. Color can not be gendered yet we as a society thinks other wise.