“Lessons” From Big Sis

From Brianna C.

This photo of my 13-year-old sister Brytne Rogers (on the left) watching me, who is 21 years old, (on the right) trying to live up to society’s image of women’s beauty. I got this idea from the textbook chapter “Ambivalence toward Sex and Women’s Bodies” and “Sex, Lies, and Bodies”.  My younger sister in this photo is learning what woman’s image should be according to my standards of what a woman should be. In the photo my sister is imitating what I do that I think are the gender codes to being a woman. The mirror symbolizes that a woman’s appearance to the world is the most important.  My short skirt and crop top symbolizes that a woman’s body is the “key” to beauty, which is an example of the self-objectification theory, which argues that a woman’s body is an object and the ultimate symbol of woman’s beauty. My facial expression while putting on the red lipstick shows seductiveness, because I want men to look at me and want me, because in society, that is the goal for a woman to get men’s attention and make them want her, and the only affective way to do this in our society is by my appearance.

In the photo you will notice that my sister is imitating me putting on the lipstick and even trying to imitate the same facial expression. Children learn more from actions than words. Even if I tell her that outward beauty does not matter, what she sees has more influence. She sees that I dress seductively and put on makeup and show off my body so in her eyes that is what it takes to be a woman and anything less than that is not acceptable in society.