Gender Performance (week 3)

The main theme in both the Butler piece and the Blessing piece centered around how gender roles actually do not exist outside of what we have learned from history and what our culture believes to be normal.  I find these statements to be quite true.  Since the time we were little children we have been told that girls act one way and boys act another.  So under these assumptions we just act out what we have seen to be the norm since we were young.  Judith Butler mentions that she believes that gender is not stable.  Saying this I took away that she believes that gender roles change and contort due to influences of politics, culture, and the media.  Then from these influences we just merely act our parts in this performance.  All gender roles are a performance put on by all of us, but this performance is not being done to entertain but more so get by on a daily basis.  These gender norms need to be questioned and changed and that seems to be what Rrose Is a Rrose Is a Rrose tried to accomplish.

Culture has largely shaped gender identities.  We have been told that we need to dress one way or act another way because that is what a man/woman does.  Even as children we are brought up with boys wearing blue and girls wearing pink, boys play with legos and girls with dolls.  This largely within the past few years has become somewhat of a issue within the school system and is something that teachers have been dealing with and trying to address that there is no "norm".  Photography has the ability to either further enforce this thinking and idea that a Woman or Man exist as gender rather than only sex.  Photography can also and I believe should do the opposite and question these ideas that a Male should act or look one way and a Female another.


When reading through these papers I was trying to think of a modern day artist dealing with these issues of gender and role.  I then remember Charlie Whites series of teen and transgender comparisons.  He would photograph a teen girl just "blooming into womanhood" and also a male to female transexual.  Both who are dealing with becoming a woman and the roles around this word.