Gender Roles In She's The Man

According to Dictionary.com, gender roles refers to the behaviours, attitudes, and activities expected or common for males and females. Many children learn gender roles from a very young age. In many cases they are taught by parents and family, religion and additional sources like the media and distinct for every culture. The gender stereotypes are pertinent to personality traits, domestic behaviours, occupations and physical appearance. For example, women are often expected to be weak and graceful while men are supposed to be self-confident and aggressive. Also, when it comes to physical appearances, females need to be small and well put together while men are tall and broad-shouldered. Similarly when people say “act like a girl”, they associate …show more content…
Conformity is a type of social influence involving a change in belief or behaviour in order to fit in with a group. There are many types of conformity and some other them are, normative, informational and ingratiation. Normative conformity is falling under pressure because someone wants to be a part of a certain group. In this case, the person usually agrees with others in public but has a different opinion in private. In She’s The Man, normative conformity is seen a lot by Justin who is Viola’s ex-boyfriend and his teammates. When the girls ask for a chance to try out for the boys’ soccer team, the coach replies, “Girls aren 't as fast as boys or strong or as athletic. Girls can 't beat boys and it’s as simple as that”. When the coach is sharing his views with the female soccer team, some members of the male soccer team seem to disagree but they still nod along because they do not want to fit in with their team members. Also, when Viola asks Justin what he thinks about the girls trying out, he says, “I think the coach said it all”. The answer he gives is clearly so he would not get made fun of for picking the girls over his own teammates. In the beginning of the movie, there is a scene where Justin is telling Viola that she is “better than half of the boys on the team” but he changes his answer when he is surrounded busy his team because he does not want to be rejected by the group that he values. In public he …show more content…
The definition of family is, “a group of persons united by ties of marriage, blood, or adoption, constituting a single household and interacting with each other in their respective social positions, usually of those of spices, parents, children, and siblings”. There are many characteristics of families but the main ones are emotional basis, limited size, formative influence, responsibility of the members and social regulations. In She’s The Man, Viola’s parents are divorced which is acceptable because of the culture. In an American culture, divorces are very common and it is not rare for kids to spend a certain amount of time with one parents and some time other the other parent. Viola and Sebastian both seem to use the other parent as an excuse to do as they please but, Viola’s mother is the one that is actually shown as someone who is there for emotional support. Even though Viola and her mother disagree about certain things, her mother is there for her when her and Justin break up. When Viola comes home looking stressed out, her mother asks what is wrong to which she explain the situation between her and Justin. Her mother cares enough to ask her what caused the relationship to end which shows that despite their differences, her mother is fulfilling the role of