gender norm

Since I had some free time on my hands, this Labor Day morning, I called up a friend and asked her if she wanted to join me and my daughter to a trip to the Central Park Zoo. It appeared to me as a good opportunity to try out that gender norm activity assignment. I remembered that one of the female gender norms I was constantly nagged with while growing up, and which always seemed to be so unreachably eluding and painstakingly difficult to attain, the one that claims that women are supposed to be sweet, graceful and nurturing. I could challenge this stereotype with some added exaggeration and embellishments, and at the same time try to forget that I am often lacking these expected feminine traits, which is pretty much on a daily basis. So I put my most “manly” looking pair of pants and a rather large t-shirt. No makeup of course, and we were ready to set off to the park. The exterior had to match the inner convictions. To avoid any unnecessary misunderstandings I decided to avoid keeping my intentions secret from my friend. I made her aware that I was going to behave in an authoritarian manner, and she only had to go along with it. I was going to be the undisputable boss this day. Since we are in New York I was sure that people were going to be unsurprised to this kind of extravagant displays of strange behaviors. So… despite the fact that no one seemed to be raising their eyebrows I was feeling as if I was doing something criminal, as if I was a fraud. I was pretty much sure too, that the old lady sitting across of us in the subway was thinking we were a lesbian couple which came by a child in some doubtful manner. I guess in general peoples’ reactions and responses to us were rather nonchalant and non-involving. It was rather the way I was judging myself that made me think that it was me, who despite my perceived openness of mind, was still looking through a lens of gender socialization. It was I who judged women, sometimes correctly, sometimes wrongly to be more feminine or more masculine, but kind of always within the norms of this society. If I had seen a couple of females, in a similar situation I was trying to replicate, and one of them was more feminine and the other had been displaying masculine characteristics I would have most probably speculated similarly like the lady in the subway that we must be a couple. Furthermore, without being able to restrain myself, I would have broken my head trying to figure out how this unconventional couple came to have a child. On whether it was adopted or conceived by either of one of the women. It was a lesson for me to be aware of stereotypes and preconceived ideas that might quietly sneak up into our minds by the unformulated radiations of social norms.
Dolgoon (Michelle)