Femininity In Films

For this paper I am going to be discussing gender in the institution of films. Specifically I am going to be discussing masculinity and femininity in coming of age films. I am going to discuss how gender is represented in coming of age films and what it means to “come of age “ in regards to both masculinity and femininity. Coming of age movies set an expectation for teens and young adults it lays out what they should fear and what they should thrive to be in order to transition to adulthood successfully. The media defines cultural and gender norms that are often very stereotypical (). The cultivation theory suggest that exposure to stereotypes in the media can lead to adopt these beliefs in their real lives (). In the media masculinity is often …show more content…
The movie “The duff” is about a high school senior named Bianca. Bianca is a straight A student that’s involved in extracurricular activities and she is not popular but she does have friends, everything is actually going just fine for Bianca until she realizes she is a “duff”. At a party her neighbor (Wesley) tells her that she is clearly a duff, which stands for designated ugly fat friend. The rest of the movie is spent with Bianca trying to prove that she is not a “duff”. In this movie, immediately is pitted against every other young girl in the movie. Her neighbor tells her that she is not as good looking as her friends (Casey and Jess) and men only use her as a buffer to get to them. Her crush also ends up doing the same thing only asking about information to get to her more attractive friends. There is also a turmoil between another character Madison and Bianca in this movie. Et al suggests that societies expectation of achieving femininity may be the cause for competition and rivalry’s between adolescent girls and women. While women in et al studied stated that while they realize their rivalries were damaging their self-image they still perceived achieving femininity with happiness. This is exactly what the viewer sees in “The Duff”. Bianca distance herself from her friends putting achieving femininity above her friends, and decides that she is going to become the “attractive friend”. She has been friends with these two girls her whole life, but to avoid being ostracized by all of her peers she chooses to pursue this change in her appearance and attitude. In this movie the audience does not only see the common themes of female rivalries we also see the common narrative that women struggle to maintain it all. While Bianca pursues her new change to be considered attractive to men she neglects her newspaper