Gender, Bodies and Food

This week I get to talk about my body and gender. There are two ways of approaching this that immediately come to mind:
1. Social- (how I exist as a body in a social world.)
2. Personal- (how I experience my body.)

I talked about this a bit last time mentioning the benefits of being white with a feminine gender expression. Another very important dimension of my social body is my body size and shape.



When I reached puberty I immediately became aware that I fit some kind of standard that seemed to earn the approval of adults.
When we took our body measurements in 7th grade home economics class I was told I had "perfect" measurements. When my mom took me to the gym with her, people would say how "healthy" I looked. A specific example that stands out in my memory is when I accompanied by girlfriend to a doctors visit. After briefly meeting with my girlfriend the doctor turned to me and said "as for you, keep up the good work." I can only assume that he made this judgment by looking at my body size and shape and, as a smoker, I recognize why this is a problem. I recognize that 'health' can easily become a justification for fat-phobic discriminatory behavior and practices.

It is hard to reflect on the privileges and disadvantages of living in this particular body, although I know that it has shaped my life in significant ways and made me who I am today.

Constructing Gendered Selves

After School Nightmare is a favorite manga of mine.

"Mashiro Ichijo, an intersexed high-school student who is made by a teacher to work out his gender identity in a collective dream, and Mashiro's romantic relationships with two classmates, one female and one male" (quote).

Ichijo thinks "as a man I'm too weak" because of his female side. As a woman she thinks something like "I'm too unattractive," because of her male side. Often experimenting with wearing a boys or girls school uniform, s/he feels the need to choose between one or the other gender expression and play it up, not comfortable to be in a gray area.

The truth is, gender is a gray area. As the bell curve demonstrates, there are more similarities than differences. That is, the things that make people different from each other are based on a variety of factors not necessarily related to gender. Yet as a society, we are constantly searching for and focusing obsessively on the differences we do find.


I often use my gender expression to my advantage. As a white middle-class woman with a feminine gender expression, I find I can 'get away with' a lot more than my peers of other races, classes, and genders. Rarely am I ever watched or suspected to be a shoplifter. I get pulled over less than males my age, especially if they have darker skin than mine. If I was caught doing something bad as a child, crying would almost always be followed by absolution/forgiveness with no punishment. This tended to be less effective for the boys my age.

I have mixed feelings about these advantages. Because my feminine gender expression appears to match my sex, coming out in high school was relatively easy for me. Easy because no one knew. When I told people "I'm gay", I was often not taken seriously. I was told I couldn't be a lesbian because I didn't play basketball. Because I didn't express a butch persona in my everyday life people just didn't believe I could be a lesbian. My girlfriend at the time was quite outwardly feminine as well. Our gender expressions were very non-threatening so we hardly ever got harassed.

I continue to be surprised at other less-easy coming out stories. My parents are very liberal-minded and upper-class. My father now seems to take pride in the fact that he has a lesbian daughter, and freely introduces me and my partner to his friends. It is a little more difficult with my girlfriends family, leading to awkward moments when I may or may not get introduced at all. I wonder if I had a more masculine gender expression, would I be taken more seriously as my girlfriends partner?

Who is Gender Studies For?

As my girlfriend and I celebrated our 8 year anniversary this weekend, we listened to some music by the band that we fell in love with at the same time we were falling in love with each other. Looking back, I also bonded with my ex-girlfriend over David Bowie and the whole glam-rock scene, which we found very romantic.

As we entered a lesbian relationship we were getting a lot of excitement from identifying with these men (whom we each also somewhat resemble physically adding even more to the excitement of roleplay possibilities.) Roleplay was not new to either of us; we had both been in previous relationships that involved roleplay-- mostly based on fictional and original characters who were often of ambiguous gender.

Now, I know that not every lesbian couple getting together today are role playing my favorite characters from popular-culture media (although I often like to imagine this to be true.) As I've recently gotten to know others in the lesbian community through the Gender Studies department, I realize what a beautiful variety of gender identities exists among us. Mainstream perception of lesbian gender identity is flat and steryotyped (big surprise) and the focus tends to be on the fact that we are both female bodied. We have been asked in all honesty "how" we have sex. Let me count the ways... And I'm willing to make the jump and just assume as much variety exists in the 'straight community' as well.

Which leads me to the obvious answer to today's prompt "who are Gender Studies for?" Answer: Everyone!


Access is a 2-man Japanese-pop band popular in the 90's. There were many rumors about their relationship with each other which they tended to encourage often including strong homosexual overtones in their music, photoshoots, and music videos.

This blog is for a class project for Sociology of Gender.
My Gender Workbook is an interactive book by Kate Bornstein that guides readers through a gender discovery process. Although I haven't worked through it myself, I did get to see Bornstein speak at UNCA several years ago which was really cool.
This class project seems to be loosely based on the idea behind My Gender Workbook. We are given several promps through the semester and can express our responses any number of ways. I chose to blog! Next topic: "Who is Gender Studies for?"