Socialized Suggestion

From: Amber


    The answer to the question of whether a baby boy gets the blue or pink hat has become so natural that majority of people don’t even question why? He gets the blue hat of course. The social norms and rules society learns starts this early and progresses into childhood and beyond even into adulthood. What I wanted to focus on in my photograph is the gender roles or gender schemas. “Gender schemas become part of self-identity, influencing children’s preferences, attitudes, and behavior as they strive to act in socially appropriate ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ ways (Rudman and Glick 59-60).” Throughout our lives there are these schemas that influence us to each culture to be masculine or feminine. In my photo I show myself representing a girl that has broken the schemas, to be interested in the culture that is considered on the more “masculine” side: video games (toys marketed for boys), a poster from a video game with a pin-up woman on it. My legs are open with a slouched posture, quite unlady like. The other woman in the photograph is standing above me, representing authority and a predetermined notion of what I should prefer and behave because I am a woman. She is holding a poster of a famous male singer that is enjoyed by usually woman and is the typical conception of what is conventionally “attractive.” With her authoritative gesture, she is pressuring the social norms and feminine gender schema onto me to replace my poster with hers, as if to claim that I am in the wrong.
    All together this photo is framed in a square layout to represent each child placed in these schemas, they are placed in a box of expectations similar to the way society forces children to grow up with a traditional attitude that may not reflect with how they truly feel. In many ways, the phrase “thinking outside the box” can be taken literally. If more and more people were to stop conforming to the social norms of  femininity and masculinity, then we could see less of that pressure placed on ourselves and early on in our children.