Sensible Shoes. Uses Husbands Last Name.”, is a professor of linguistics at Georgetown University. In her essay, she tells a story of a conference she attended consisting of four women and eight men. She began to make inferences towards the other three women and considering how each one differed from one another (1). She then brings in the idea of being “marked”. Society puts labels onto everything and everyone; it wants you to follow a certain code or discipline. A women’s image is usually thought of to contain makeup, so to not wear any would be considered marked in the mind of society. On the other hand men who do not wear makeup would be considered unmarked, because society does not signify men with makeup. The idea of markedness can be seen in the movie Tomboy. Tomboy, written and directed by Céline Sciamma, centers around a ten year old girl by the name of Laure. Laure deliberately introduces herself as a boy named Mikäel to her peers after moving to a different community. Throughout the movie, Laure shows how determined she is to belong with the male gender and break away from being marked as feminine. Laure's efforts to be disguised as a boy climax during a scene where she decides to take her shirt off during a game of soccer with her friends. As Tannen’s theory alludes to the idea of markedness by certain things like clothing, one can see how markedness can be examined with a lack of clothing as …show more content…
In her essay “Dueling Dualisms”, Fausto-Sterling brings to light how sex and gender have been sculpted by our society (5). She also explains how different attractions can be molded into our brains before we have made our first intuition when she says, “…we acquire our sexual essence before birth and that it unfolds as we grow and develop” (6). Laure is moving away from these norms when she chooses to take her shirt off as well as play a sport where only men are playing. In doing this Laure is certifying, to her peers and to herself, that she is in fact a boy. One can also see how Laure is drawing attractions towards girls like Lisa. Laure, since birth, could have been more comparable with a male’s persona, and hence have attractions for girls as well feeling better connected within a male’s character. Similarly, Tannen’s idea of markedness fits with Fausto-Sterling’s idea with how society molds a certain gender schema to what society is accustom to viewing. One can apply these arguments to Laure’s situation and see that Laure is facing challenges with her friends to fit within a certain schema and appearance of a