What It Mean To Be Gendered Me Analysis

Throughout my life, two things have always remained true and constant, I am female and white. Although my understanding of these two identities has shifted over time, they have still consistently defined me. My gender is something that has always been prevalent in my life, to how conscious I’ve always been of it, to how it affects me now. My race, though, especially in adolescence, was never something I thought about or recognized. Being white, I never and still do not have to think about race. In the ways I am disadvantaged through my gender, I am still at some advantage with my pale white skin tone. These identities are not entirely seperate and their overlap is real and noteworthy. In discussion of my gender I will touch on, gender norms/expectations …show more content…
I had longer hair than my brother, I wore pink and purple, and sometimes, I wore dresses and skirts. I had always thought the reason I was a girl, who work pink and had long hair, was because of my private parts, and the reason my brother was a boy, was because of his. I have always been performing my gender before I even knew I was doing it. In “What It Means To Be Gendered Me” by Betsy Lucal, she talks about “markers of femininity” one of them being “observably no body hair.” This was something I had clearly noticed by the 4th grade, when I asked my mom to teach me how to shave my legs. I was only nine years old, my leg hair was light blonde and very dismal but I wanted it gone. I knew that girls did not have body hair, and if they did, they must be doing something wrong. Our society sees gender nonconforming acts as very deviant. In her writing, Lucal discusses her own gender nonconformity, I recognize if I had not conformed to my gender in these ways, I might experience certain things she does, like people passing judgment, or being confused by her appearance. For instance, when I did have visible leg hair throughout high school, some of my male peers would point it out, or say “eww, shave your legs!” Something like this might seem small, but has a lasting effect on people and their self confidence and self …show more content…
We lived in a trailer park for the majority of my elementary schooling. But, I still went to a nice, well funded public school. Reading “Race, Homeownership and Wealth” by Thomas M. Shapiro was profoundly eye opening to me. What made me think about something I had never seen as a privilege; my childhood home, was a quote from Sharipo, that points out that schooling is determined by geographic location and in turn housing affordability often equates school quality. This, along with the other information given in this reading, had me come to this conclusion- somewhere, a black family was making about the same as mine, but due to the racial wealth gap (brought by years of systematic racial oppression) they lived in a different, lower class neighborhood, probably predominantly black, as mine was white. Because of where they lived, their school was different, whether it be less funded, less motivated teachers, or less supplies. All of these factors made their primary education less accessible or worth less, than it was to me. In summary, my family’s poorness still put me on an upward path to potential wealth and education, while the black family is essentially stuck in a poverty cycle. As we learned both in lecture and in “Who Rules America?” by G. William Domhoff, the upper class has ways of keeping their wealth not only accumulating but within the family.