I found a greeting card at my house with a pink bow and a rhinestone clip attached to the front. You can remove the bow from the card after you read it and it becomes a hair bow for the newborn. The writing says "So soft, so sweet, It's a Girl!"
I think this fits the reading for todays post perfectly. Gender sterotypes are learned behavior from the first day a child is born. There are gifts where a father either gets a pink bubble gum cigar, or a blue one, which pretty much determines that the newborn is either male or female, and should fit one of the gender roles. Willer talks about language and how it is used to reinforce these sterotypes. In this particular card, it uses soft and sweet, which wouldn't be used to describe a boy. Most boys are not taught to grow up being "soft" or "sweet."
2 comments:
I like your comparison with the "sweet" statments between males and females.
I completely forgot about the cigars that dads get. It is true that babies are gendered by colors. Everything, including the cigars have a gender to them.
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