The Social Construction of Gender

I chose Target as the store to look at. When I clicked on baby, then baby clothing, there were four categories. They were shop all baby clothing, baby girl clothing, baby boy clothing, and unisex baby clothing. I found that for clothing, newborns and toddlers, the girl’s clothing were always much brighter in colors and pretty colorful. I also found that there were many designs and prints such as cheetah, floral, princesses, and rainbows. They displayed words such as sister, little sister, sweet, girl power. All the girl clothing were all cute and girly girl. For boys, the colors for clothing and shoes were either dark or neutral and very rarely, some bright colors. The designs or prints were either animals, stripes, sports, superheroes, cars or just plain. I found a shirt that had the word “strong” which is a word we associate with men/males/boys. There always was a repetition for the color, Navy Blue. For unisex, the clothing were mostly gray, black, or white. There was a little of mint/green or yellow. The clothing were mostly onesies, pants, sets, and a few shirts. There weren’t many but I felt like some were more for one of the genders. For example, there was a onesie that had a shiny gold heart was engraved with some words. I felt like this was more for baby girls since boys clothing don’t usually have any print that is shiny.

The conclusion that I can make about how gender is framed as early as infancy is that society plays a huge role in how outfits, colors, and words/phrases are created. We create these “standards” for genders that influences people to follow them. On page 25 of TC, it says, “gender is encoded and maintained through a variety of strong social cues” which is true as we can see from the examples above. One of the social cues included toys which we know that girls play with things such as babies, kitchen tools/cooking, and house while boys play with cars, action figures/superheroes, and play sports. In the book, on page 32, it talks about how children learn to consider “women’s work” and “men’s work” and I feel like toys are a good way to see this. Qualities, activities, and characters that are emphasized for girls are to dress and act cute, play with dolls or play cook, and they are to be sweet and polite. For boys, they are taught to be tough and to stand up for themselves, they play sports, and be manly.