Stenseth 1

Alex Stenseth

Professor Sally Fielding

WRTC Section 0032

24 January 2018

Neutrality

My family is different from the typical TV family. My dad cooked me breakfast, he did

my laundry, he was PTO President for some time at my school, and he even did my hair. My

mother was the financial controller at the local newspaper who would come home to my dad’s

home cooked meals, and would rant about her job during dinner. As a child, I often heard

multitudes of advertisements directed towards mothers regarding grocery shopping and cleaning

the house and taking the kids to school and so on and so forth. I would always ask my dad why

they were directed towards moms when he was the one who did all the things the ads were

talking about. Afterall, he was usually driving me to sports practice or the grocery store when I

heard them. For all I knew, that was what my father did, and I never understood why these

commercials were directed at mothers. My mother and father’s swapped gendered job

stereotypes have influenced me subconsciously to break gender roles of my own. As a freshman

in high school, I learned the importance of breaking down gender barriers and being cognizant of

my roles between masculinity and femininity due to an experience on my cross country team.

Women’s traditional role in American society was to function as the housekeeper: A

person who cleans house, cooks meals and cares for the kids. Advertisements in the 50’s

particularly targeted this concept as women bought 65 to 80 percent of all purchased goods in the

United States during the time frame. The stereotype that women must fulfill their duties in the
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home was a common concept due to the abundance of advertisements conveying the role

(Baughman 279). Even to this day, mothers are still typically depicted as the ones who stay at

home and care for the kids. Women tend to be stereotyped as emotional, weak, and dependent

due to the way society has treated them for hundreds of years. Although these stereotypes are not

quite as present as they used to be, I have still encountered incidents where I felt them just

because of my gender.

According to the descriptions of gender roles provided by Aaron Devor in “Becoming

Members of Society: The Social Meanings of Gender,” a feminine person is described as

submissive, expressive, and maternal, whereas a masculine person exhibits dominant, aggressive,

and confident traits (Devor 16-22). My father does not act explicitly feminine, nor would I say he

acts explicitly masculine. What makes him appear as such are the activities and roles he takes in

society and how he dresses. His dress is masculine, but the activities he does can range anything

from driving his large pick up truck to the hardware store, to doing the laundry and cleaning the

bathroom. My father’s gender neutral personality, which I believe I subconsciously learned from

him, granted me the ability to befriend people of many different personalities, ages, and genders.

Sometimes however, even when I’m hanging out with a group of all male friends, my

difference in gender glares through. At one of my first cross country meets in high school, I was

sitting in a circle with a group of my male friends playing cards on a blanket during a searing hot

summer day. We had all finished our races and there was only one race in the meet left to go.

Naturally, it was time to clean up shop. Without a second thought I began helping the boys fold

up the brand new, extra long canopy tent adorned with our scarlet and columbia blue school

colors. I had noticed no other girls were helping with the tent, but I did not think much of it.
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Within a few minutes, the tent was packed up in its case and ready for delivery to the school bus.

I, along with the same group of guys I was playing cards with (And had conveniently beat earlier

in multiple arm wrestling matches), lifted up the tent and began carrying it to the bus. It was at

this point our coach walked over and said: “Let the boys carry it.” The comment drove a stake

into my soul. What reason was there for me not to help? I let go initially in a bit of shock as to

what I was just told, but I followed them for a minute or so before I decided to defy my coach’s

comment and continue lifting the tent. The guys didn’t say anything about the incident, but it was

obvious I was deeply annoyed.

Since that fateful incident on my cross country team, I have held little to no tolerance for

gendered comments that rely on my looks versus my physical and mental ability. Unfortunately

though, comments like these still occur. Even my new female choir teacher, who was much

younger and less traditional in ideals than my cross country coach, only asked for boys to

volunteer to help set up the dance risers in the auditorium. What she did not know is that my

women's choir had set it up on our own the year prior. With that in mind, when she asked for

guys to volunteer, I raised my hand as well. Other girls began to raise their hands too. After an

initial moment of surprise, my choir teacher then said “Well, okay… Anyone that wants to

help!”

In my eyes, there is no difference whether I am male or female. I play the double bass

even though it is a male dominated instrument. I spin in color guard even though it is primarily a

female sport. I go to college because it does not matter what gender I am, I will still get the same

education. I helped lift a tent because an extra set of hands is an extra set of hands.
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The double bass is a male dominated instrument because the instruments are large and suited for taller people. The

body of the instrument produces a low sound which is characteristic of a male bass voice. Lower sounding bass

instruments such as tuba and trombone, tend to be male dominated fields, whereas soprano instruments like piccolo

and flute tend to be primarily females.

People can stereotype me all they want on initial first impressions, but I live to break

such thoughts. For example, I scored 88.333 out of 100 masculine points, 44.167 out of 100

feminine points, and 65 out of 100 androgynous points on the Bem Sex-Role Inventory test

which is used to measure an individual’s femininity and masculinity, and happens to be one of

the most widely used tools regarding research on gender roles (Davis 1). When my roommate

took the test on my behalf without any of my own input, she received these results: 85 of 100

masculine points, 41.667 out of 100 feminine points, and 57.5 out of 100 androgynous points.

This test places masculinity, femininity, and androgynous -- or gender neutral-- on three separate

scales based on certain questions.

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There’s nothing stereotypical about large displays of masculinity in a female, and I sure

as well flaunt this aspect of my multi-faceted personality. If an emotional anchor is what

someone wants. It is not me. If an athlete who’s only thoughts are football is what someone

wants. It is not me. But if someone wants a person who enjoys a little competition, loves to arm

wrestle anyone and anything, and can gossip to the end of time, then that is me. If a stereotype

can be broken, then I will go for it. No one gets to decide what I can or cannot do based on my

gender.
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Works Cited

"Bem Sex-Role Inventory (BSRI)." ​Britannica Academic​, Encyclopædia Britannica, 1 May.

2017. Accessed 19 Jan. 2018.

Davis, Shannon. “BEM Sex Role Inventory.” ​The BSRI Test with JavaScript scoring​,

garote.bdmonkeys.net/bsri.html.

Edwards, Rebecca. “Women’s and Gender History.” ​American History Now​, edited by Eric

Foner and Lisa McGirr, Temple University Press, 2011, pp. 336–357. ​JSTOR​,

Krieger, Susan. “Gender Roles Among Women.” ​The Family Silver: Essays on Relationships

among Women​, University of California Press, Berkeley; Los Angeles; London, 1996, pp.

13–33. ​JSTOR​.

Groner, Rachael, and John F. OHara. ​Composing Gender​. Bedford/St. Martins, 2014.

"Women's Roles in the 1950s." ​American Decades​, edited by Judith S. Baughman, et al., vol. 6:

1950-1959, Gale, 2001, pp. 278-280. ​Gale Virtual Reference Library​,

http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/CX3468301967/GVRL?u=viva_jmu&sid=GVRL&xi

d=d4dd25f3. Accessed 23 Jan. 2018.