Analysis Of Boys Vs. Girls Protest In Honor Of Valentine's Day

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Annually, my high school will host a Boys Vs Girls rally in honor of Valentine’s Day. Despite participating both freshman and sophomore year, during my junior year I chose to challenge the festivities because I found a perspective of the event that it seem more harmful than lighthearted. As a junior, I was able to see how such a rally perpetuated sexism and failed to provide adequate representation for gender nonconforming or transgender students. Over two years, I saw that both males and females were generally portrayed unfairly by the opposite sex. Each group would play into detrimental stereotypes in order to gain the most laughs from their peers. I personally found such behavior repulsive and harmful to our school’s unity. I was told …show more content…
The skits performed by the students typically play upon stereotypes that are horrible and not accurate. Students on my campus do not see the consequences of sexist actions or remarks and how such things can socialize how their peers view gender. Even when women are portrayed as promiscuous and stupid, my female peers were defending these themes as a joke. In a place of education, they were fine with being called stupid because it was simply a joke. I cannot blame them for writing it off. Feminism is still viewed negatively among our peers and their parents. Going against sexism and claiming to be a feminist would effectively kill a girl’s reputation on our …show more content…
However, I do not think our opposition was pointless. I believe that there were a few students and teachers that gained a new perspective of the rally and will henceforth think differently about what it represents. While we were still forced to participate in the rally, we did silently protest by refusing to wear pink or blue and chose instead to wear purple. This allowed us to talk with our peers about the issues with the rally when they asked why we were not wearing pink or blue. This year, we will continue our dissent and perhaps we will be more successful in a what we hope to be a more progressive

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