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Gender Mystique

Hostile echos: from Beatle bangs to man braids

1/24/2016

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First, it was "man buns", then the snarkfest shifted to "man braids".  Making fun of men who adopt "feminine" hairstyles? Do you REALLY want to sound like someone's stodgy old grandpa in 1965?

Fifty years ago, the older generation (and young conservatives) were making fun of guys with long hair. They cast aspersions on their manhood, called them fags, and tried to hold them down and forcibly cut their hair. They threw them out of school.

Today, long hair and ponytails are no big deal but OMG buns and braids!!!! Get a grip, people. Spare us the pearl-clutching. It's just hair.


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Pink for boys, blue for girls (and vice versa)

1/13/2016

 
Some wonderful Wikipedian has created a spectacularly well-researched page on the use of pink and blue as gendered colors. I have a few more citations to contribute, but for now enjoy!

Looking for women of a certain age...

1/12/2016

 
​My current project is about how women in American learn to perform femininity and how they define it for themselves from childhood to the brink of old age. If you are a woman born in 1949 (or graduated from high school in 1967) and willing to share your experiences in a private Facebook group, contact me.

    Tell me more about the women of 1949

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remember cotton plaid school dresses?

1/12/2016

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Picture
That's me, age 6, enjoying the slide in North Platte, Nebraska in 1955. This was a school dress, but I may have also worn it to church. (Cody Park was a favorite after-church destination for our family.) I had several similar plaid cotton dresses with white collars, in shades of dark blue, dark green, and red. The Sears has a similar style (1955 Fall catalog, below). I never owned any of the girlier styles on the page -- no "full circle" skirts or ruffled dresses. 
Picture
​Looking through my old photos raises some questions about the origins of my personal sense of style. My mother chose or made most of my school clothes, and I don't recall having much say about them until later elementary school (probably fifth or sixth grade). I am not sure why she didn't pick pastels, or why my clothes were so tailored, but it probably had to do with her taste as well as her perception of me. 
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ANYONE can ... and should ... wear skirts

1/5/2016

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Jaden Smith is in the news again for modelling a skirt in a Louis Vuitton ad. They've worn skirts before, but I won't bother with the links and references because Google exists for a reason. I am assuming they will again, and hope that the day will come that it won't be news.
Aside: Yes, I meant THEY. We have been using "you" for singular and plural for how long? (Except for "y'all", which is also blessedly neutral.) So IMHO, a neutral third person is long overdue.
 (Men used to wear skirts/dresses/robes all the time, nearly everywhere. (Except in cultures where they wore trousers, and in those cultures women often wore trousers, too.) Kilts, tunics, houppelandes, gowns, cassocks -- call them what you will, but they were all skirts in one form or another. Agamemnon. Alexander the Great. Jesus of Nazareth. Julius Caesar. Charlemagne. Jamie Fraser. (Okay, he's not real, but didn't he look fine in a skirt?) Skirt-wearing dudes for millennia.

People should wear skirts -- and/or trousers -- when they need or want to wear them. I am a trousers-in-cold-weather, skirts-in-hot-weather sort of person. I do break that rule, of course, because it is NOT A RULE, just a pattern. 

The next question should be whether or not everyone who wears a skirt needs to shave their legs. (I vote no.)


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    Jo Paoletti

    Professor Emerita
    ​American Studies
    University of Maryland

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