Thursday, November 18, 2010

On Becoming Female: Lessons Learned in School



Preoccupation (with appearance) among American women prevents them from focusing on more constructive aspects of themselves. At Woodview (middle school), concerns about attractiveness were promoted primarily through the high status activity of cheerleading. The tea her who organizes the tryouts told the judges to keep appearance in mind as they selected the candidates. Also, to pay attention to the person's weight. To be the best representatives they should be highly attractive as wek as being capable of promoting school spirit. Appearance was included in the judging of cheerleaders under the category of "sparkle." Iy was important to have the skills to do these gymnastic routines, but it was equally important to find was to maintain a neat, feminine appearance throughout the performance. This conveys the message to girls that how they look is as important as what they do. Although weight was taken into account, one year some girls who were considered overweight were selected. The judges suggested that they be put on diets, preserving the idea that thinness is an important aspect of cheerleaders' appearance.

Boys' Focus on Girls' Appearance in Peer Interaction

Male interest in girls' bodies as being sexual and appealing could arouse the deepest level of appearance anxiety in girls. Infromal rankings such as this remind girls that they are being evaluated on a daily basis.

The Role of Girls' Gossip

It was evident from the girls' comments at Woodview that the continual focus on other girls' looks further added to their anxieties about their own appearance. Many girls are likely to stay self-conscious and insecure about their body type and weight. Besides being appraised on the basis of their attire, girls were also evaluated for their body weight and type. Girls who were particularly overweight were frequent targets of gossip. Girls who were too skinny were alzo criticized, as were girla who had large hips and large breasts. Girls often try to increase their control over their weight by dieting, which leads, in more severe cases, to eating disorders. A group of sixth graders spent much of their lunch period making fun of a popular girl for wearing a particularly unusual outfit to school.
In another case, a group of eighth grade girls was critical of a local beauty pageant contestant of high school age who visited the school to collect money for her campaign. They claimed that she used makeup to give a false image of beauty, and that underneath she was really ugly. This girl was ctiticized for her attempts to be "too attractive" and "too sexy."
If girls do succeed in looking, acting, or dressing like the models they see in the media, however, they are likely to be accused of portraying false images or wanton sexuality. Thus, girls blame each other for drawing sexual attention to themselves rather than criticizing the social practices that promote a view of girls and women as sexual objects.





Attractiveness as an Increasing Concern for Girls

Appearance is alrady a salient concern among students, and it is likely to increase in importance for many as they get older. A more powerful form of school-sponsored competition is the selection of prom queens, homecoming queens, and attendants in which girls are annually evaluated on their attractiveness, often without ever volunteering to enter such competitions.

These experiences send girls a strong message that what they do and who they are is less important then how they look. Girls and women continued to be viewed as sexual objects within the media as well as other arenas from cheerleading and pompon teams to swimsuit competitions. Women must struggle to overcome a perception of self as object rather than subject  before they can begin the process of self-definiton as total and compleate human beings.

Relation to Myself:

I can absolutely say that this article was so true because it's there, at school, in the hallways. I hear girls talking about how other girls look all the time. One incident I overheard a girl saying "I kept looking at her hair wondering how she got so many bobbypins to stay there, and her hair was down. I just kept laughing at her." If girls would stop criticing eachother and start worring more about the important things in life we wouldn't have as many problems as we do. I remember being in elementary school and girls use to torment others for being ugly or having ugly clothes. They use to talk about girls who had big legs and weren't skinny. This is a horrible horrible state of mind. Judging others isn't right. Just like people say, "don't judge a book by its cover." In the end you might have missed out on a great friendship.

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Sexuality and Gender in Children's Daily Worlds

This article written by Barrie Thorne and Zella Luria is about children and how they interact with the opposite gender. It focuses on the domains of gender and sexuality as they are organized and experienced among elementary school children, especially nine to eleven year olds. People use gender to refer to cultural and social phenomena. When children are between the ages of nine to tenthey're beginning the transformation from the gender system of childhood to that of adolescence. They are also on the verge of sexual maturity, cultural adolescence,

The Daily Separation of Girls and Boys

Gender segregation-the separation of girls and boys in friendships and casual encounters.
When children choose seats, select companions for work or play, or arrange themselves in line, elementary school children frequently cluster into same-sex groups. Gender segregation in elementary and middle schools has been found to acount for more segregation than race. There is more gender segregation when children are freer to construct their own activities. Boys tend to interact in larger and more publicly visible groups. Boys engage in more physical aggressive play and fighting. Their socail relations tend to be overtly hierarchical and competitive. Organized sports are both a central activity and a major metaphor among boys. Girls more often interact in smaller groups. They more often engage in turn-taking activites like jump-rope and doing tricks on the bars. Girls do engage in conflict, although it tends to take more indirect forms than the direct insults and challenges more often found in interactions among boys, and between girls and boys.

Interactions Among Boys

Boys in all-male groups often build towards heightened and intense moments. Dirty words are a focus of rules. Both girls and boys know dirty words, but flaunting of the words and risking punishment for their use was more frequent in boys' than in girls' groups. dirty talk is a staple part of the repertore of the boys' groups. Sports, dirty words, and testing the limits are a part of what boys teach boys how to do.

Rule Transgression: Comparing Girls' and Boys' Groups

Rule breaking by girl groups is smaller scale than rule breaking by boy groups.Teachers avoid disciplining whole groups of boys, partly for fear of seeming unfair.Girls' groups may engage in rule breaking, but the gender gourp's support for repeated public transgression is far less certain.

The Tie To Sexuality in Males

Gender arrangements and subcultures of middle childhood prepare the way for the secual scripts of adolescenced. Fifth and sixth grade boys share pornography7, in the form of soft-core magazines like Playboy and Penthouse, with grteat care to avoid confiscation. Since pornography is typically forbidden for children in boht school and families, this secret sharing occurs in a context of rule-breaking.

Interaction Among Girls

Forth and fifth grade girls more often organize themselves in pairs of best friends linked in shifting coalitions. The pattern is more one of dyads moving into triads, since girls often participate in two or more pairs at one time. Girls often talk about who is friends with or likes whom, they continually negotiate the parameters of friendships. On school playgrounds girls are less likely than boys to organize themselves into team sports. Sometimes girls work out group choreographies, counting and jumping rope in unison, or swinging aroud the bars.

Compared to my life:

I can compare this to how it is in high school, even though this is elementary children being talked about. When we are gie\ven the choise to pick our own groups in class most the time girls go with girls and boys go with boys. Even when we're able to pick seats at the beginnging of the year. The guys sit together and girls sit together. When I'm in gym class and we have a free day were we can play basketball or walk. Most the time the girls walk and the boys play the games. The only thing I can say is that there is a couple of guys that do interact with girls and be apart of girl groups and there is girls that interact more with guy groups in high school. Even though we're not given recess anymore we do still have free periods, and the girls do sit all together same with guys. Girl lunch tables tend to have guys and the main subject. But all in all things never really change from elementary to high school. It's all pretty similar.

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Extreme Isolation


This article talks about kids who have been isolated from society for long periods of time, with no human interaction and socialization. In the 1940s a girl named Anna had been deprived of normal contact and had been given little human care for most of her first six years. Her death caused by hemorrhagic jaundice (bacterial disease caused by being exposed to water, food, or soil with the urine of infected animals. If left untreated it can turn into meningitis and cause death) occured on August 6, 1942. She was about ten and a half at death.

Two weeks after being born in a nurse's private home, Anna was taken to teh family farm. The grandfather's antagonism caused her to be moved to the house of her mother's friend shortly after. The local minister became interested and took her to his house thinking of adoption. Decided against it when he found that she had vaginitis. Anna was then taken to a child's home in the nearest large city. She spent eight weeks there until the agency told her mother to come get her. Her mom wanted to give her to a couple who got denied by the agency so she came and got Anna herself and gave her to the couple anyway. Social worker went to the mother's home and pleaded with Anna's grandfather to allow the mother to bring the child home. He refused.  More than four months old, she was taken to another children's home in a near-by town. A medical exam revealed that she had impetigo, vaginitis, umbilical hernia, and a skin rash.

She stayed in the second child home for 3 weeks. Later she was transferred to a private foster-home. Since the grandfather would not, and the mother could not, pay for the child's care, she was finally taken back as a  last resort to the grandfathers' house at the age of five and a half months. Anna was kept on the second floor in an attic like room. She received only enough care to keep her barely alive. She rarely moved from one place to another. At the age of six she could not talk, walk, or do anything that showed intelligence.

In 1936, two years after being discovered, Anna had progressed but still did not speak. On August 30, 1939 she was taken to a private home for retarded children. She eventually attained an adult mental level of six or seven years. A final and last report made from the school on June 22, 1942 stated that Anna could follow directions, string beads, identify a few colors, build with blocks, and differentiate between attractive and unattractive pictures. She talked mainly in phrases but would repeat words and try to carry on a conversation. At her death her capacities did not amount to much more than a two and a half year old. Her isolation prevented a considerable amount of mental development.
"It is almost impossible for any child to learn to speak, think, act like a normal person after a long period of early isolation."
Anna represented a marginal case, because she was discovered before she had reached age six.

Another case similar to Anna's is one of a young girl who was given the name Isabelle. She was born one month later than Anna, and discovered November, 1938, nine months after Anna was discovered. At the time she was found she was about six and a half years of age. She was an illegitimate child and had been kept in seclusion for that reason. Mother was a deat mute, and it appears they had spent most of their time together in a dark room shut off from the rest of the mother's family. Isabelle had no chance to develope speech; when she communicated with her mother. Lack of sunshine and inadequacy of diet had caused Isabelle to become rachitic.

Her behavior towards strangers was almost like a wild animal, showing much fear and hostility. In lieu to speech she made only a strong croaking sound. Isabelle acted like an infant. Many of her actions resembled deaf children. The individuals incharged of Isabelle launched a systematic and skillful program of training. One week of intensive effort before she even made her first  attempt at vocalization. In a little over two months after her first vocalization she was putting sentences together. Nine months after that she could identify words and sentences on the printed pages, could write well, could add to ten, and could retell a story after hearing it. Seven months beyond that point she had a vocabulary of 1,500 - 2,000 words and was asking complicated questions. She reached a normal level by eight and a half years of age. Isabelle covered in two years the stages of learning that oridinarily require six.

Today she is over 14 years old and has passed teh sixth grade in a public school.

In both cases of Anna and Isabelle  there was exceedingly low, or rather blank, intellectual level to begin with. In both a considerably higher level was reached later on. But the Ohio girl (Isabelle) achieved a normal mentality within two years whereas Anna was still markedly inadequate at teh end of four and half years.