Together Yet Separate
“You can’t play with He-man, he’s not for girls!” This phrase still echoes in my mind as I reminisce about my childhood playtime. As I reached for a He-man action figure from the toy box, I was handed a Barbie doll or a My Little Pony figurine. At that time, I was too young to realize the great chasm that gender had created for such a simple task as playing with toys. However, looking back, it becomes clear that gender, itself, plays a key role in the everyday lives of boys and girls. In Barrie Thorne’s book, Gender Play, this role is depicted in various ways through participant observation, or ethnography. By researching the ways that children play an active role in “doing” gender, analyzing the neutralization of this socialized role, and displaying the effects that education, primarily those with a classroom setting, has on gender, Thorne provides ample support of the notion that gender is a social construction. From my experiences with the He-man doll, one can deduce a certain boundary line for activities between girls and boys. Barrie Thorne provides explanations of these boundaries by analyzing the ways that children play an active role in creating them. By having shared interests, or “behavioral compatibility”, g
. . .
Some common words found in the essay are:
Finally Thorne, Gender Play, Barrie Thorne, Thorne Chodorows, Thorne Ashton, , Little Pony, boys girls, neutralization gender, gender differences, gender separation, girls boys, Barrie Thornes, active role, gender labeling, gender play, play active, processes gender, children play active, play active role, gender labeling identity, boys interact boys, interact boys girls,
Approximate Word count = 1578
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
|
 |
