Gender Stereotypes

The video that I decided to show showed both children and adults being interviewed on questions that relate to gender stereotypes. Some of the questions asked to the children included “What would happen if a boy wore a dress to school, how are boys and girls different, what do boys and girls wear, and do boys/ girls have long or short hair?” These questions were all generally answered the same by the students including “Boys play more soccer and do more active stuff, girls don’t like mind craft, girls like Barbie dolls and boys prefer to play with toy cars, boys aren’t allowed to wear dresses and skirts, boys like Legos, etc.” The one question that stood out to me in this video was when the children were asked what would happen if a boy wore a dress to school, and almost all of the kids answered that the other kids would laugh. This video relates to an activity that we did in class called Gender Box. In this activity, I learned that boys tend to stay “inside their box” and in that case are generally safe from harassment of others outside of the box. If a boy that went to school with one of the kids in this video and wanted to wear a dress to school, he most likely would not because he would know that his classmates would laugh at him. Kids stereotype gender by how their roles are played out in society. In a ted talk that we watched in class called “Pink and Blue: Communicating Gender to Children”, Anthony Schullo talks about how our words and actions communicate stereotypical ideas about gender roles. His niece and nephew are shown wearing pink and blue in which he describes is where our gender communication to children begins. He also hints on the ideas of telling boys to man up, to tell girls to play with their Barbies and boys to play with hot wheels. Gender stereotypes, as I have learned in class and in life situations, are still extremely dominate in society, especially with youth. By changing the way we speak and act in front of children can help change these gender stereotypes.