Social Construction of Gender

This picture shows my dresser in my room that is filled with the various odds and ends that I use to "beautify" myself on a daily basis. Some of the items pictured include: makeup of all kinds (eyeshadow, eyeliner, and mascara), nail polish, hair products, and jewelry. This isn't even everything that I own of these products, just the ones I use most often.

This image represents one aspect of how I "do gender" everyday. Lorber would put this type of doing gender into the category of "gender display, presentation of self as a certain kind of gendered person through dress, cosmetics, adornments, and permanent and reversible body markers." (31) When one thinks about it, all the steps and routines that women (and to a lesser degree in most cases, men) go through every day serve as one way to mark ourselves as our respective genders. The behaviors that we engage in daily are for the most part determined at birth when the doctor declares us a girl or a boy. This arbitrary assignment sets us on a path that most of us follow fairly closely for the rest of our lives that informs our behaviors, expectations, and experiences. (15) The untold amounts of time and money that I spend getting ready to go out in public almost every day are considered normal behavior because I am a woman. In most cases, if a man were to engage in the same sort of behavior, he would be considered abnormal and perhaps his sexuality would be called into question. It is the social definition of gender, and what is right and wrong for men and women, that is being followed when men refrain from putting on makeup or nail polish even if they would like to, or that keeps a woman from going outside of the house without at least doing her hair and a little makeup. On the flip side of that argument I do enjoy doing makeup and polishing my nails, but the question remains whether I enjoy these things because I simply find them fun, or if I enjoy these things because I've been conditioned to want to enjoy them because I am a woman. Either way, the social construction of gender is something that I take part in everyday by simply getting ready in the morning.