Gender is nowadays commonplace in terms of psychological and civil rights debates, and due to its popularity as an issue of discussion, it is viewed as a routine ground for everyday activities, in which every ordinary person is an expert. Gender is normally considered through the concept of biological sex and the complicated and sophisticated human behavior is often reduced to the basic physiological processes. However, gender as a sociological term fully refers to the social “cover” of biological sex, i.e. the system of norms, values, expectations, and patterns, associated with sex. Considering the essays entitled “The Story of My Body” and “Becoming Members of Society: Learning the Social Meanings of Gender” by J.Cofer and H.Devor respectively, it is possible to assume that the cultural myth of gender is based the natural roles, and the three main social institutions enforcing gender-related myth are community, family, and market.
The cultural myth, judging from the literary works of Cofer and Devor, refers to the organized set of beliefs and prejudices which refer to certain social constructs. In particular, in her exploration of the cultural myth of femininity, or external indicators of the female sex, Cofer’s work suggests that the young narrator failed to comply with the skin and color-related expectations imposed on American girls and women, she was ignored by her classmates and mistreated by peers from the same community, probably because she didn’t look beautiful and feminine enough from their perspective. In the United States, the cultural myth of femininity prescribes that women be light-skinned, slim, healthy-looking, and have well-underlined secondary sex features like thin voices and notable breasts. As Cofer’s protagonist confesses she was extremely thin and thus was consumed by the desire for developing into a strong and athletic woman with a powerful and probably larger body (Cofer, p.429). In this sense, it is important to remember Devor’s idea of femininity, which he associated with the realization of the reproductive function: “Feminine characteristics are thought to be intrinsic to the female facility for childbirth and breastfeeding. Hence, it is popularly believed that the social position of females is biologically mandated to be intertwined with the care of children and a “natural” dependency on men for the maintenance of mother-child units” (Devor, par. 15). Women’s dependency on men is translated in the cultural myth of femininity in terms of woman’s inferiority, both physical and intellectual; in order to act as an independent breadwinner, the woman must compete with males and have the same talents and capacities, whereas the lack of such skills and abilities automatically points to women’s dependency upon men. Thus, the cultural myth of femininity implies that women show poorer performance in educational and occupational areas. At the same time, the narrator in Cofer’s short story appears to have quite high academic achievements at school and exceeds her classmates by her intellectual development. Consequently, in her adolescence, the protagonist suffers from loneliness due to the fact that her peers (especially boys) are not interested in socializing with her and label her as “brain” (Cofer, p.429). As one can assume, according to the cultural myth of gender, being a “true” woman means having a more “voluptuous” body with well-developed sex features and being inferior to males in terms of intellectual abilities.
The role of community in the construction of the cultural myth of gender is well-described by both Cofer and Devor. In particular, Judith Cofer recounts her immigration experience and states that after moving from Puerto Rico to the United States, she faced immense social pressure dictating her the way a true American female was supposed to look like. Accordingly, she endured humiliation because of the improper “dirty-brown natural” (Cofer, p.426) color; for instance, salespersons from the supermarket refused to let her in: “Don’t come in here unless you gonna buy something. You PR kids put your dirty hands-on stuff. You always look dirty” (Cofer, p.426). Further, in the context of body size, the narrator was often teased by her classmates because of her excessive thinness and fragility (Cofer, p.429). Similar to Cofer, Devor stresses the crucial role of the “significant others”, or members of the same community or reference group, in the communication and enforcement of the cultural myth of gender (Devor, par.10). Thus, the community acts as a censor and surveyor of the observance of gender norms. The practice of keeping within the frames of the gender role can be viewed as a criterion for inclusion into or exclusion from making community decisions. Moreover, the power of community’s control can be also approached as a power of social pressure which the narrator of Cofer’s story, when she appeared to look dissimilarly as compared to other White American and even Latino girls.
In the context of family as an agent and communicator of standards, referring to the cultural myth of gender, Cofer’s narrator recognizes that her mother, a very attractive woman with long black hair and round body curves, was the person who taught her to “move, smile, and talk like an attractive woman” (Cofer, p.430). Owing to family support, the girl realized in her adolescence that she was gorgeous according to the standards of her cultural group. In this sense, H.Devor also implies that family is a primary environment, where gender is constructed: “Five-year-olds, for example, may be able to accurately recognize their own gender and the genders of the people around them, but they will often make such assumptions on the basis of role information, such as hairstyle, rather than physical attributes, such as genitals, even when physical cues are clearly known to them” (Devor, par 5). Due to the fact that such young children have very little or no experience of interacting with other reference groups apart from the family, one can clearly conclude that family teaches the basic concepts of gender to the immature personality in a natural way. Critically consider Cofer’s text, it is also important to note that adult relatives use non-harassing and non-pressuring gender construction techniques like expressing an expert opinion (in Cofer’s case, the mother was definitely an expert) and positive reinforcement (e.g. praising). Therefore, the family is an institution of convergence between the psychical (or psychological and personal) and the political (or collective), i.e. it acts as a mediator between the personal interests and the social norms dictated from outside. Family, as compared to the other institutions, provides a smoother construction of gender identity and gender roles in each particular person, due to the fact that it “marries” the personal and the collective interests.
Finally, the market as the carrier and agent of cultural myth is not mentioned by Devor and briefly addressed by Cofer. In particular, the narrator states she was compared to popular actresses like Audrey Hepburn given her delicate features and thin neck. Thus, her beauty and femininity as perceived by others were based upon certain objective standards, which originated from the culture industry, namely popular films. Thus, beauty (in particular, female beauty) has become an object of commerce and production, as the modern canons and requirements cannot be met by an average woman without changing her physical appearance. In the last centuries, beauty was amongst the major virtues of woman as well as the major determinant of her popularity and chances to get married and have a stable family – this principle has survived up to the present day, moreover, it has been complicated by actresses and models, who hold the beauty standard. A number of theorists note that in the society-driven formation of gender attributes, beauty is a value in itself (especially for women), due to the fact that the male’s role is a watcher and the female is the person who is being watched.
To sum up, the two works suggest that gender as a construct is enforced by the community by means of social pressure and social inclusion or marginalization, by the family through teaching and modeling role behaviors attributed to either masculinity or femininity and, finally, by the market, which overemphasizes the importance of certain gender characteristics through popular media and consequently “sells” them to the population.
References
Cofer, J. “The Story of My Body”. In Rereading America: Cultural Contexts for Critical Thinking and Writing, edited by G.Colombo, R.Cullen and B.Lisle. Bedford, 2001, pp.423-432.
Devor, H. “Becoming Members of Society: Learning the Social Meanings of Gender”. In Rereading America: Cultural Contexts for Critical Thinking and Writing, edited by G.Colombo, R.Cullen and B.Lisle. Bedford, 2001. Web.