Difference Between A Boy and A Girl The world of boys and girls is different from an early age, from the moment each one develops preferences (girls - the dolls, clothes and delicate sensitivity, boys - cars, games and aggression). Our parents will buy us the right things when we are younger, for girls, parents will buy dress, skirts, girly stuffs, and even braid the hair. For boys, parents will buy t-shirts, trousers, and short hair for boys. Gender identity formation occurs around the age of 2-3 years. The child realizes there are two categories: boys and girls, and each belong to one of them.
Girls are often viewed as playing with Barbie dolls and boys with GI Joe action figures. As quoted from Sociology: A Down-to-Earth Approach, “most parents would be upset if someone gave their son Barbie dolls.” This is because society’s gender norms have boys characterized to be masculine and tough, not feminine and soft. Mass media can also contribute to this issue by displaying males as aggressive, while females are displayed as being more unassertive. This creates two very distinct roles as the norm in a society. An example of these two distinct roles are in television shows, such as Two and a Half Men.
We get little choice at this age as we learn our ‘sex-roles’ mainly through primary socialisation, watching and being influenced by our parents and family. (Hammond, et al., 2015) The baby girl is wrapped in pink and the boy in blue, the boy gets tractors and drums for Christmas while the girl gets dolls and prams, automatically suggesting a mothering role for the girl and a working role for the boy. This process happens between the ages of 0-6 (Hourigan, 2016). As children grow older most of them learn and incorporate expected gender characteristics and attitudes such as, acting tough and “manly” or putting on makeup and acting “properly”. (McDonald, 2009).
Within modern America, children are consistently put into roles and expected to stay within them; instances of this often happen within preschools, elementary schools, and even within the home. Sexism in America affects how children and young adults act within our society. Toys, along with playing, are extremely important to a child’s development. In, the article, Playland, the author, Alice Rob, discusses how gendered labeled toys are changing, and how more changes are needed. This article also talks about how in the past a significantly small amount of toys were made specifically for boys and girls.
Little Giants and the gender role in society I remembered when I was young, there were plenty of movie that has girls play dolls and boys play football. These movies were popular amongs children that day until now, girls were meant to be soft and boys were meant to be powerful and strong. Then one day, I’ve watched a movie that has a girl play in the football team and I were supprised because it’s the first time that I’ve seen a movie that shows girl can be both femininity and masculinity. This movie has a huge impact on young children behaviour and has influenced childrens in constructing gender roles in the society. ‘Little Giants’ has shown the characteristic of the main character to be abnormal and changing the gender stereotypes in young audiences’ perspective.
From the moment he/she born, that one word defines most if not all of their life choices starting with the clothes they wear to the decorations in their room to the toys they play with. “Children develop gender-typed patterns of behavior and preferences as early as age 15 to 36 months” states a psychological viewpoint on gender stereotyping in children. This is a shocking factor as if children are able to make preferences at such an early age, it is clear how gender stereotyping comes about. This is due to the fact that young children look up to elders who instill in a young boy or girl values and
I remembered when I was young, there were plenty of movie that has girls play dolls and boys play football. These movies were popular among children that day until now, girls were meant to be soft and boys were meant to be powerful and strong. Then one day, I’ve watched a movie that has a girl play in the football team and I were surprised because it’s the first time that I’ve seen a movie that shows girl can be both femininity and masculinity. This movie has a huge impact on young children behaviour and has influenced children in constructing gender roles in the society. ‘Little Giants’ has shown the characteristic of the main character to be abnormal and changing the gender stereotypes in young audiences’ perspective.
In our society exists another social norm, a code called, “Behavior Code”. Even at this moment, many idiosyncratic babies with different characteristics are born around the world. In their adolescence, however, many boys and girls question themselves whether their behaviors are in accordance with the behavior code. For instance, some girls grow into tomboys — “girls start wearing stylish clothes and watching from the sidelines as the boys acted and spoke” (Pipher, p1). But, unfortunately, at some points of their adolescence, those idiosyncratic girls lose thier authenticity and become a part of the society, behaving correspondingly to the behavior code.
Option one: Are beauty pageants exploiters? Over the years it becomes evident how the true meaning of beauty has deteriorated. People daily life more of appearances and how they look, and leave aside important aspects such as values and personality. Then beauty contests show the concept of beauty in a wrong way, increasingly increasing beauty standards and leading participants to perform transformations to their body to meet the aforementioned standards. In addition, children participating in these contests are largely forced by their mothers to participate and to carry out transformations with the aim of winning.
According to the research article, the development of gender differences in colour preference appear at about the age of two. This is seen in the preferences for the colours pink and blue, girls generally like pink more than boys do and boys generally like blue more than girls. Identical to gender differences in toy preference, color preferences also grow across childhood. Gender differences in colour preferences emerge later in life in comparison to gender differences in toy preferences. The colors pink and blue also co-vary with the gender-typicality of children’s toys; boys’ toys are often colored blue and girls’ toys are often in pink.