Ask anyone what qualities are ideal in a man, and you’re likely to get the same answer repeatedly: confident, chivalrous, muscular, intelligent, rich. Every man – regardless of his personality, preferences or culture – is expected by mainstream society to meet this ideal of masculinity.
Those who do not are often deemed inferior for their inability or unwillingness to act out this very narrow set of personal characteristics.
I have always wondered if the people who mock those who do not conform to these expectations realise how oppressive their actions are.
My personal guess is that a very small proportion of the men in society naturally fulfils society’s requirement for “a real man”. As for the rest, the gap between who they are and who society expects them to be results in, at best, internal conflict, and at worst, being ridiculed and outcast by others.
It is no doubt difficult to endure ridicule or be ostracised for not ‘fitting in’. However, it’s equally difficult to pretend to be who we are not, everyday. Everyone makes different decisions when struggling with this dilemma, and experiences different consequences.
Personally, for me, there was a lot of controversy that I had to put up with when coming to terms this ‘masculine ideal’.
When I entered secondary school, I was a skinny, soft-spoken and shy boy who found it extremely difficult to befriend anyone. This made me a target for physical and psychological bullying. People would point out how I wasn’t as well-built as other guys, how I was not supposed to be flamboyant, and I was mocked for not “being a man”.
This constant barrage of reminders that I was not good enough made me question my own identity and left me at a loss. I felt helpless and worthless because I was only accepted by a handful of people, and ostracised by the majority.
Despite this, throughout my 4 years in secondary school, I never regretted being the way I was. While the bullying I faced in school was painful, the idea of being false to myself just so I could be like everyone else felt even worse. When I saw my other friends acting in stereotypically macho ways, it seemed clear to me that the behaviour was fake.
Even today, I still get the occasional comment about how I dress and carry myself. But I have come to embrace the fact that I am different. Yes, it would have been a lot easier to just give in and be like everyone else – I could have conformed to keeping up a stereotypical appearance of being ‘a real man’. But that would not have been me.
My hope is that people will eventually realise that there is no one ideal for what one half of the world’s population should be like, and always challenge this idea. It is to our collective benefit to work towards destroying the stereotypes that society holds over everyone’s heads, and instead, celebrate the unique, infinitely interesting things that make each individual special.
“Math class is tough,” said Barbie. Those were the first words this iconic blonde symbol of the femininity declared back in 1992 in a segment titled Barbie Teen Talk. Clearly, gender stereotypes are not a new concept. Obviously, the world’s most famous doll agrees with the age-old cliché of females being intellectually inferior to their male counterparts. How often do we overlook the potential damage these stereotypes do, especially in an educational setting?
In today’s society, gender bias influences each and every individual. As members of this gendered society, we recognize and accept characteristics of femininity and masculinity, moulding our bodies and altering our body images accordingly to fit social expectations.
These gendered attitudes are emphasized in our system of schooling, creating and maintaining gender inequalities, part of which includes society greatly emphasising and controlling the female body. Young girls in Singapore today are at an increasing risk of negative body images and low self- esteem, which may be due to social stereotyping and cultural notions of female bodies that are reinforced within their schools.
Stereotyping girls as intellectually-inferior to their male counterparts damages their notions of self-worth, and instead overemphasizes the importance of female physical attractiveness, instead of personal traits. Hailing from a single-sex secondary school, my schoolmates and I were commonly described as “bimbos” and “girly” by others. The identity of an entire school community was reduced to simplistic, and not-so-flattering, stereotypes of femininity, often despite its evident merit in both academics and sports. In fact, it is common practice in popular culture for schools to be ranked based on the perceived physical attractiveness of their female students. This attitude assumes a woman’s natural state as an object valued for aesthetic appeal. Her potential as a person is undermined by sending the message that women are more valued for their appearance than for their talents. What effects will the subtle, yet large-scale, objectification of female students in schools have on their perception of themselves?
Perhaps what is even more distressing is the school administration’s growing role in imposing unrealistic ideals of the female body. At a recent family gathering, I found out that my seven-year-old cousin has been deemed overweight and forced to join a “Health Club” at school. Apparently, in many primary schools all over the country, it is becoming increasingly common for “overweight” children to be forced to join health clubs, skipping recess and partaking in physical activity as part of an initiative to combat childhood obesity. Essentially, “Health Club”, or more commonly, TAF (Trim and Fit) clubs, are premises to enforce rigid notions of ideal body types, and, perhaps even more dangerously, equate being thin with being ‘healthy’. As a result, adolescents are body-shamed into believing that being “skinny” is the ideal body shape.
In an interview with NBC News, a primary school girl expressed that she felt “sad…to look at people [because they were] so skinny and could wear so many clothes”. At just ten years old, this little girl has already developed a distorted body image and an inferiority complex. Demanding that she forgo food during recess in favour of dribbling a basketball, as in many such clubs in the name of ‘health’, will only worsen the problem. One could argue that these school policies, designed originally with good intentions, are now creating body image problems for future generations. By policing their bodies from a young age, these girls are taught that they must live up to society’s expectations of how they should look and dress. Damagingly, this then results in females themselves learning to measure their value by their appearance.
However, gender stereotypes are harmful to all, even male students. With emphasis on masculinity in the media, more boys are under pressure to live up to society’s notions of what a “real man” is. In a study conducted on participants who had undergone penile enlargement surgery, a majority of the participants had expressed previous reservations about going into shared school showers and engaging in physical activities in school–showing once again that the negative effects of gender expectations start from early on, most often at some point in school. Many participants cited anxiety about their peers’ perception of how ‘macho’, or masculine, they were as a prime reason for undergoing such an intensive surgical procedure. More and more young boys feel increasing pressure to have an idealised male body as popularised in the media, and uphold traditionally ‘masculine’ traits like strength. These attitudes are not helped by others in their peer group reinforcing and perpetuating these pressures on the individual. Gender stereotypes and expectations, if accepted as a normal, run-of-the-mill part of our society, may predict insecurities for the male population as well.
Obviously, society’s strict adherence to gender stereotypes and body ideals can be injurious to both females, as well as males. When education systems emphasize these suffocating constraints of gender inequality, there are potentially dangerous implications for one’s perception of self. Moreover, considering the power school wields over our youth, we, as a community, have to take steps to increase awareness of the harmful gender stereotypes we see in our classrooms, and everywhere else.
There was a video that went viral on Youtube and on the news, of a little girl ranting angrily about how marketing companies were using stereotypical gender norms to market their products to increase sales. Her name is Riley.
Riley: Wouldn’t be fair for all the girls to buy princesses, and all the boys to buy superheroes. Some girls like superheroes, some girls like princesses. Some boys like superheroes, some boys like princesses. Dad: Absolutely. Riley: Well then why does all the girls have to buy pink stuff and all the boys have to buy different colored stuff? Dad: That’s a good question Riley.
There has been an increasing retaliation against gendered toys, and more so, advertisements of them, that use rigidly-defined gender standards and cater to a limited group of society. The most recent controversial advertisement is the new line of Lego Friends, for girls. Instead of taking on active roles as the males do – such as building houses and jet planes – the female roles in the advertisement are limited to passive activities such as waitresses at the café, and taking their pets to the vet. Lego’s division of gender roles promotes the adoption of passive roles by females – being ‘acted upon’ and having things done to them – in contrast to male roles which have the option to engage in imaginative, adventurous activities.
The notion of having a ‘pink aisle’ in most toy stores is alive and healthy.
In general, most toys made specifically for girls do not offer the constructive skills that boys’ toys do. Girls’ toys are made to teach them to be nurturing, taking care of the home and the hearth, and boys toys teach them to be ambitious, aggressive and logical. Of course, toy-manufacturing companies shirk social responsibility, stating that their only aim is to make profit, and well, if their product sells, and if girls like the toys, then what’s the harm in buying them? It’s true, parenting is not in the job description of toy manufacturers, but if huge toy brands are affecting millions of children’s lives every single day, they must feel like they owe some responsibility towards those kids, and the least they can do is refrain from having sexist commercials, or commercials targeted to a specific gender performance.
Speaking of parenting, parents’ choices and views of gender and sexism have a huge part to play in their children’s lives. As toys become more and more gendered, the struggle of kids to break out of their constrictive masculine and feminine molds gets harder and harder. This makes it harder for kids who find out that they have alternate sexual preferences and gender identities, to come out to the rest of the world, especially to their parents. Yes, surprisingly, a majority of parents are reinforcing the pink-aise-blue-aisle norm. They do not want their 4-year-old son playing with dolls instead of cars, out of fear that this might cause their child to be homosexual, or transgender.
“Why not let boys be boys and girls be girls?” is an argument from most. They say that their daughters always ask for Barbie dolls and kitchen sets, and their sons turn dolls into decapitated hand grenades. They say it’s ‘natural’ for girls to be drawn to the pretty pink toys. But what is usually accepted as ‘natural’ by society has been normalised by mass media, by social stigma and often, forced on children by peer pressure. Girls and boys think that specific toys are meant for them, and start to want those toys, through watching chirpy advertisements replayed on TV, and what they are told by their peers, parents, and other authority figures. Preferring certain toys, thus, is part of a wider phenomenon of gender roles being reinforced in every aspect of society. This cultural and media influence affects how children see themselves as persons. If their toys, and the books and films they love, as well as the people around them, tell them that they are limited to certain roles, would they not begin to believe it? What kind of person will they grow up to see themselves as?
A boy should be able to play with a doll or a kitchen set without being judged, and girls should be able to pick up cars without thinking that they’re ‘for boys’ and to play with chemistry sets without thinking they’re ‘too difficult’. Parents can be more open-minded when they choose their kids’ toys, and when they let their kids choose toys. As their children’s first role models, they have the power to affect their children’s thinking more than anything they see on TV or around them.
Parents should encourage kids to express themselves freely and without fear. In kindergarten, teachers can bring productive, mind-bending toys that improve children’s cognitive skills, like Playdoh, blocks, puzzles and art sets. The variety of these gender-neutral toys, should be increased, and their use promoted, so that kids don’t feel like they can’t go anywhere other than merely that one aisle that represents their gender performance. This could affect a plethora of generations – their expressive and personal choices, their careers, and their ambitions.
The Let Toys Be Toys campaign focuses on allowing children to play with the toys that most interest them.
So far, Goldiblox has started a courageous and path-breaking movement to increase the educational value of girls’ toys, and has increased the gender-neutral corner of the toy market. The Let Toys Be Toys campaign, which demands that toys be sorted by genre rather than by gender, has made the society more aware of the banes of gendered toys. However, if kids all over the world want to see a change, there is still a long way to go. Parents can make a difference, by talking to their kids about these issues. Schools should promote discussions about sexism and gender, starting with little kids. Kids need to be told that it’s okay to be who they want to be. As a wise little girl once said, ‘Some girls like superheroes, some boys like princesses.’ The message can’t get plainer than that.
