Capri Sun, Cixous

Cixous’ article talks about how society has created gender roles and why men are the superior sex. She says that men are considered the providers and breadwinners in most American families. In our head we have an image of what a typical family would look like and the men are the successful workers. While reading this article it reminded me a lot of my CMC 200 paper, which talked about the concept of masculinity. In society, the fact that there are certain ways men and women should act is the reasons there are gender roles. Men are told to be men by being masculine and masculinity is defined in many different aspects of our life. When studying masculinity, I learned that being successful was a major part of being a man. Cixous explains in her article that men are suppose to be the providers and they fear when women achieve more success then them. This is because of the already preconceived notions that take place today. Certain words that describe masculinity are successful, strong, wealthy, and dominant. Words that would explain femininity would also be considered an insult if called that to a male. This is what Cixous described as oppositions. The male is opposite of female. When doing my paper for CMC 200, I realized that in order for a man to feel like a man he needed be masculine. Masculinity can change depended on the culture being studied, therefore masculinity is not apart of the biology that make up males rather it is what society makes of it. The media and other systems create the gender roles, which are usually hegemonic ideologies. Advertisements, television shows, and films are a huge factor that shapes our perspective of the male and female. Boys grow up witnessing these forms of media and it becomes an expectation for them to portray masculinity because there whole lives they see men as the dominant gender. I think that this is something that is more difficult for boys to break away from then girls, because a girl can be successful and work outside of the home and at times may be looked down upon; but when men become the “stay at home” dad, he is observed negatively by society.