The class discussion today focussed on masculinity and femininity. We were asked to select some well-known person as representing the ideal of each femininity and masculinity. As a class, we came up with James Bond, Arnold Schwarzenegger, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and Will Smith as representatives for masculinity. We chose Jennifer Anniston, Michelle Obama, Betty White, and Marilyn Munroe as representatives for femininity. I really liked that Michelle Obama was considered feminine by my classmates because it seems that only recently women have been praised for being poised, intelligent, and in a position of power. This was the idea of Second Wave Feminism, but I feel as though this ideal was really only a view shared by feminists at the time rather than the general population.
I found this activity slightly difficult, because although I was aware of the idea of ideal femininity and masculinity that was requested of me, my personal ideals do not really exist for either gender. I feel as though gender is a wide spectrum, where a person, male or female, can sit anywhere along. Neither end is ideal and neither end is flawed. Wherever an individual person sits along this spectrum is their own personal ideal, and it isn’t for any other person to judge what is ideal for another.
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