I think a gender rule that I wish I did not have to follow is wearing make-up. Sure, it makes me feel prettier and gives me that extra oopmh feeling, but what's sad is that it is so expected of young girls to wear mascara at such an early age. I remember when I was in 7th grade and I got my first mascara. It was a pretty exciting moment then, but looking back on it now, I was probably about 11 or 12 (if I did my math right). Now I see some girls in 6th grade wearing a full face of makeup! It's crazy to see how young these girls are, wearing makeup and following this gender rule so young. I felt obligated to start wearing mascara because every other girl in 7th grade was wearing mascara. As I was conforming to wearing my mascara, it made me feel pretty, and it made me feel like I fit in with the rest of the 7th grade girls. Now I've come to the point where I wear mascara practically every day and it's no longer a weird thing to me. It's come to the point where I feel weird if I don't wear mascara, compared to 7th grade when I had no idea what mascara even did.
Prompt #2
I have actually witnessed gender policing fairly recently
(if I'm understanding the term correctly). I was with my family out at dinner,
and the waitress was taking our order. My sister is gay, and so she tends to
dress a little bit more masculine than I would or than my mom would. I think
that particular night she was wearing black skinny jeans, doc Martens, a black
band shirt, and a denim jacket. Also, her hair is cut pretty short with shaved
sides. Anyway, the waitress gets to my sister and addresses her as "sir",
even though my sister identifies as female. My sister let it slide and went on
to order, but I'm pretty sure I was just sitting there with my mouth open. I
suppose my sister could come across as male, but like it's pretty clear that
she has boobs. Maybe the waitress had a lot on her mind; I don't know her life.
The point is, she clearly misaddressed my sister, based on what she saw looking
at my sister (who she thought was a dude) and what she knows as societal
standards of being male. She put two and two together, and came up with my
sister being male. Now, that was obviously incorrect since my sister is a
female, but society has come to identify people who have short hair as male I
guess. If the waitress had not addressed my sister as "sir", she might've
just addressed her as "miss" or just made direct eye contact and said
"you", especially if she did not know what to identify her as. But
she chose to identify her as "sir". If she had chosen to address my
sister as "miss", I wouldn't have had my mouth open and therefore
would not be writing about this incident on my blog. But hey, life happens.
Prompt #3
I think the thing that resonated most with me from watching
those videos is the comment Janet said when she was interviewing with Oprah.
When she was in kindergarten, she was supposed to put her stuff in the blue
cubby hole for boys, even though she wanted to put her stuff in the red cubby
hole for girls. She had to identify herself with one of the two boxes
presented, and the box that she was supposed to identify with didn't feel right
with her. I think it's so crazy and so amazing that she knew from such an early
age that she didn't feel right. I've always felt right with who I am; I can't
imagine not feeling right with who you are.
