Speech: Samantha McGehee

While watching Family Feud last week, Steve Harvey asked the contestants this question, “A survey of women showed that they prefer their husbands to be a doctor, what profession do men prefer their wives to have?” I accurately guessed the top two answers: Stripper and model. Then I came to a realization, that I, as a 16 year old girl, was acutely aware that society’s expectations for me were to be a stripper or a model. Expectations based solely on my appearance. However, this is not the only epitome I had. The question stated that a survey showed women prefer doctors. Now when I hear the word doctor, I immediately think of Dr. McDreamy from Grey’s Anatomy. And what is doctor McDreamy? Handsome, rich, and powerful. This insignificant question on a game show revealed a very significant issue in our culture. Society constructs restrictive and unattainable standards and expectations for not only women, but also for men.

And before I go any further I feel it necessary when discussing gender, to define the difference between gender and sex. Sex is the biological distinction between males and females. Gender is the personal traits and social positions that members of a society attach to being male or female. This is an important definition because it shows that gender is a clear social construct defined by the society.

 Now, if I asked you to name some minorities in America, what would you say?  Probably women, African-Americans and Hispanics. Two of those are racial minorities. They are statically less populous in our country than whites. But the other one we named, women, is a gender minority.  But women are not statically less populous than men; in fact the percentage generally fluctuates between women being 50% to 51% of the population.  So then why are they considered a minority? If it isn't because they lack the numbers to be considered a majority it must be something else. They lack power, they lack equality. Now, we don’t live in the United States in the 1950's, the world of Mad Men and Leave it to Beaver, where women were distinctly housewives and servants to their husbands. But if you think that all of those standards were left in the 1950's, you are mistaken. Women still fight the standards of society every day. We are still asked to be “pretty little fools” as Daisy Buchanan would put it. So the question is where do we get these ideals? Barbara Baker in her Sexism in the Media dissertation says the media is representation oriented. Representation is the process of creating strong mental images that “support dominant cultural ideology.” This goes back to deep set American values and the connection between consumerism, capitalism and advertisement all aimed at men. These advertisements often display women in a sexually pleasing light to men, which often dehumanizes them and Jean Kilbourne from the Wellesley Centers for Women states that “turning something into a thing is the first step to justifying violence against it”, claiming that this dehumanizing process of women in the media is the first step in creating a culture where violence against women is acceptable. Women also have a power problem. The problem being, that they can’t easily attain power. This is easily illustrated by politics. Despite being half of the population women still don’t have anything close to 50% of representation in Congress. There is also a lack of media spotlight on women in power. And when there is it is in two distinct lights, the “bitch and the ditz” complex. Women in power are bitches that threaten the manhood of their male counterparts. They are off putting and intimidating, therefore an unwanted obstacle in the political process.  If they aren’t a bitch then they are a ditz. Ditz referring to flighty, unintelligent women that are often  portrayed as ascending to power with the help of men or through their sexuality. Look at the portrayal of Hilary Clinton and Sarah Palin. Clinton was a masculine, castrating bitch. Palin was a hyper sexualized, dumber than a box of rocks ditz. According to author Jennifer Pozner, society wants and expects women to “Look like Miss USA, have sex like Samantha on Sex and the City and think like June Clever”, all of these ideals are proposed from media outputs, Miss USA is praised for her body, Samantha is known for her promiscuous sex life, and June Clever thinks and acts like the perfect housewife. These are the three expectations of women, all of which are incredibly, well frankly, ridiculous.

However the story doesn't end there. Men suffer the effects of gender archetypes just as women do, but in other ways. Men are expected to be strong, muscular, unemotional and powerful. In Barbara Kruger’s commonly called What Big Muscles You Have!, the work of art is comprised with phrases such as “My quarterback”, “My leader of the pack”, “My lordship”, “My daddy” and on top of these in larger text is the sentence “What big muscles you have!”. These not only portray the expectations of men but also how society gives them the power as being superior to women. Author Jonathon Katz calls this the macho paradox. Now you might think well what is so wrong with that. Society just has high expectations. Well society isn’t your mother. While it has high expectations it is unwavering and it pressures all males to live up to this expectation and isolates though ones that don’t. Because let’s face it not everybody can be the handsome star quarterback who goes on to be a successful business man. But does that make everybody else a failure? According to society it does. This high pressure is the same as the one applied to women however it is an unspoken fault in our society. Most likely due the expectation that men shouldn’t be emotional, they shouldn’t express their feelings, including those about the pressure they face in silence.

But despite the seemingly conflicting lives of men and women they live together every day, mostly in harmony. Both groups are aware of their expectations based on society. However, despite these standards being an accepted way in our culture. We shouldn’t be so fast to ignore the unresolved consequences that result. Warren Farrell, a noted professor and author for his exploration of various gender studies, uses one of his books to explore the evident confusion between men and women when interacting with each other. One of his most interesting points is that both sexes choose or are attracted to partners that are the least capable of loving in order to meet other needs. Farrell provided this with a football-cheerleader example. Football players (men) are cultured to be aggressive, and successful. Cheerleaders (women) are cultured to be pretty supporters of the successful men and offer their bodies to the best players. This conditioning is often the fault of relationships because both genders ask more of the other than what society has accustomed for them to provide. However, I would like to clearly distinguish that men are not overbearing monsters for their role, it is natural for the powerful not to want the powerless to gain equality because it threatens their position in society. But just because something is considered natural in our society doesn’t mean it is just.

Therefore we have to find some way to change the standards of society. Social problems can often be subtle on a day to day basis, they are usually only seen through a cataclysmic event and even then, changing society’s ideals takes decades if not longer to change. However, the first step to solving a problem is to recognize that we, as a society, have one. By recognizing these restrictive standards we can work to identify them in our daily lives and try to change our actions. So I urge you to ask not what society can be for you, but what you can be for society. And if it is by these standards that you want to be defined. If we continue to define ours’ and others’ potential based on society’s definition of our gender then we define people based on unattainable and demoralizing expectations and we lose appreciation for people as individuals, no matter their gender. One solution is going towards deviance. Deviance is defined as the recognized form of violation against cultural norms. Before you consider deviance as a defiant and unjust act, Rock and Roll was once considered to be an act of deviance. Emile Durkheim, the pioneer in studying deviance suggests this hope about deviance against gender inequality and standards stating that deviance is a natural occurrence in society and that “Today’s deviance can become tomorrow’s morality”.

Work Cited:

Baker, Barbara L. Sexism in Media. Diss. Central Missouri State U, 1998. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.

"Barbara Kruger." Interview by Christopher Bollen. Interview n.d.: n. pag. Web. 15 June 2014. <http://www.interviewmagazine.com/art/barbara-kruger#_>.

Farrell, Warren. Why Men Are the Way They Are: The Male-female Dynamic. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1986. Print.

Kruger, Barbara. Untitled (What big muscles you have!) . 1986. Centre Pompidou, Paris.  Strickland, Carol, and John Boswell. The Annotated Mona Lisa: A Crash Course in Art History from Prehistoric to Post-modern. Kansas City: Andrews and McMeel, 1992. Print.

Miss Representation. Dir. Jennifer Siebel Newson. Perf. Michelle Bachmann, Hilary Rodham Clinton, Erika Falk, Lisa Ling. 2011.Film.