What Is Gender Performativity free essay sample

All of us have been assigned a â€Å"sex† when we are born, and we are bound to be men or women. Many of us believe that we belong to a particular sex whilst sex is natural, gender is social and culture constructed. Sex refers to the biological and physiological characteristics that define men and women such as reproductive organs; gender refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviors, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women. [i] To put it another way, male and female are sex categories, while masculine and feminine are gender categories. In this contemporary society, for males, behavioral traits generally considered masculine include independent, non-emotional, aggressive, tough-skinned, competitive, strong, active, self-confident. In contrast, for females, behavioral traits generally considered feminine include dependent, emotional, passive, sensitive, weak, accepting. Have you ever think that, why a male must act like a man, a female must act like a woman? It is all because of gender socialization. We will write a custom essay sample on What Is Gender Performativity? or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page During this process, we learned how to behave in the society, to act the expected role of men or women. In other words, that is all of us are taught to perform scripts of the belonged sex. Judith Butler argues that gender is â€Å"performative† and is constructed through â€Å"repeated acts of gender practice. In the following I will give explanation on Judith Butler’s arguments, and based on Bulter’s view, critical analyze the contemporary ideas of masculinity and femininity by discussing people’s clothing, see how are they being gendered. In Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Judith Butler mentioned gender is an act. The action of gender requires a performance that is repeated. This repetition is at once a reenactment and reexperiencing of a set of meanings already socially established and it is the mundane and ritualized form of their legitimation. Although there are individual bodies that enact these significations by becoming stylized into gendered modes, this â€Å"action† is a public action. These actions are formed by the temporal and collective dimensions, gender is an identity tenuously constituted in time, constituted in an exterior space through a stylized repetition of cts. Gender is instituted through the stylization of the body and, hence, must be understood as the mundane way in which bodily gestures, movements, and enactments of various kinds constitute the illusion of an abiding gendered self. This formulation moves the conception of gender off the ground of a substantial model of identity to one that requires a conception of a constituted social temporality. The act that o ne does, the act that one performs, is, in a sense, an act that has been going on before one arrived on the scene. ii] Hence, gender is an act which has been rehearsed, much as a script survives the particular actors who make use of it, but which requires individual actors in order to be actualized and reproduced as reality once again. [iii] Butler thinks that gender is performative which sees gender is the effect of a series of acts, how we act and walk and speak and talk in ways that consolidate an impression of being a man or being a woman, we have to nominate ourselves as either male or female, which means, it is constructed through multiple acts of gender practice. In Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity, Elizabeth Wilson stated that â€Å"fashion is obsessed with gender, defines and redefines the gender boundary. †[iv] In this contemporary society, fashion is androgynous, however, we use fashion as a tool to help us to perform the script, and let others to have a clearer identification of our gender. Therefore, fa is one of the most effective examples to demonstrate how masculinity and femininity are gendered. Clothing clarifies cultural ideas about gender; it helps in constructing self-controlling, self-regulating subjects with their â€Å"proper looks†; it adds layers of cultural meanings onto the body. Vision is the first thing to attract peoples attention, clothing is an indicator which help us to determine the sex of a person, for example, there are only little appearance differences between infant boys and infant girls, parents most often use clothing to avoid confusion. Boys are typically dressed in blue color, and often decorated with sporting, cars or superheros prints; girls are dressed in pink and decorated with flowers or hearts. [v] In 2010, there was a news â€Å"Rooms with a hue: The all-pink and all-blue photographs that prove girls and boys develop gender specific preferences to colour† by Daily Mail Reporter, it shows that girls usually like pink and boys usually like blue. [vi] However, before World War II, girl would be thought as butch if she wearing pink. At that time, pink was the boys colour (because its an offshoot of angry red) and blue was the girls colour (because it was thought to be calming and serene). [vii] This can indicate that colour performance is gendered, people set a value on one colour, and use that colour to help them perform their scripts better. Nowadays, blue provides a energetic feeling while pink is a girlish and gentle. Not only the use of colour, but also the types and the cuttings of clothing can illustrate that appearance is gendered. In order to emphasise male and female bodily features, the shoulders part of suit of men are stiffened, and the womens clothing is usually skinny which these can add â€Å"masculinity† and â€Å"femininity† to the body. [viii] The suit especially the stiffened shoulders, can help broadening the shoulders and chest, shows that men are strong. Also, men’s bodies are rendered invisible, which ignored their erotic display and men’s suits are usually promoting â€Å"professional† images of male, show that they are independent and competitive.