So, most academics and feminists argue that gender (separate from sex) is socially constructed. They say our notions of what is manly or feminine are based on things that we are taught by parents, shown on TV, experienced at school by teachers and students have also been told what being a "man" or a "woman" truly is. One example of gender construction that seems to make some sense to me is how culture has decided that the color pink is for girls and the color blue is for boys.
Joel, my oldest son, went through a phase where he really like pink. It was his favorite color for about a month (along with red). I remember pausing to think about how I wanted to handle this desire of his. It wasn't a big deal; he wasn't doing anything that went against the normalized idea of male gender. I mean, he could have been asking for a sequined tutu or a Hawaiian Barbie to play with ; ).
I let it go for awhile, but I definitely heard others tell Joel that pink was a girl color and blue was for boys. In class today somebody looked up the origin of this aspect of gender construction, and it seems that this idea of blue for boys and pink for girls reached its height around the middle of the 20th century. Apparently it was marketed that way to the American public. Pink has definitely become more accepted for guys to wear, but I don't know of any straight men who would buy a pink phone or get a pink bicycle for their son, even if it was asked for by the kid.
What I find interesting about the pictures above (and yes, my son is the one holding his diploma upside down...) is that
1.) A 5 year old is wearing a bright pink shirt at an age when many parents are in the process of perpetuating the male/female norms of blue and pink, respectively.
2.) Two of the boys (mine included) are wearing shirts that have some lighter, salmony reddish tones that might be considered pink-ish.
3.) That little boy in bright pink is not really a part of the group in either photo.
It is probably just coincidence that a boy who is not very close to my son and his friends happened to be standing there when I yelled to the group around Joel, "Get together and smile for a picture."But it is interesting to note that the kid who is on the edge of dressing conventions for little kids doesn't seem to be accepted as part of the group. I don't know the kid, and after asking Joel, he doesn't have much to say about him either. The boy in bright pink seems a little emblematic of those people in society who are often rejected or marginalized because they do to conform to the "heterosexual framework" preserved by "a binary restriction on gender identity" that Judith Butler is writing in reaction against.
Butler posits that gender is performative, "and just as a play requires both text and interpretation, so the gendered body acts its part in a culturally restricted corporeal space and enacts interpretations within the confines of already existing directives" (277). If this is true, then it seems that several of these kids in the picture have been given scripts that challenge the notion that pink is for little girls. However, the ones that challenge this more subtley (Joel's shirt is blue and light-red, and many would call Miles's shirt plain red) seem to be more accepted. Or maybe they reject the overt performance that flies in the face of accepted gender norms.
Really, they are just kids who put on the clothes their parents tell them to wear. They may have some input if a kid likes a certain cartoon brand or color, but for the most part, the children are a reflection of how their parents' perform or construct gender. Unfortunately for them, kids are generally stuck with what parents put on them, and they have to cope with what is out of their control. I've seen 5 year olds show their new shoes and brag about the new spiderman shirt they just got. Inevitably, Joel will see others get new stuff that he wants and then come home and ask me for it. However, I've also heard my son mention new clothes that his female friends at preschool wear, and I remember several times when he would tell me about their new clothing, and then add, as if part of the dialogue of his script, "But I don't want Disney princess shoes, Daddy. Those are for girls." He repeats/performs the lines he has been taught.
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