shopping

When doing some shopping for a present for my dads birthday. I noticed, not the first time, the difference of shopping departments. They really cater more to women then men, unless of course it is a Male's store, but even then there's  not that many stores that are just for men.  One of my favorite stores to go to is JCPenney, I go there first before any other store.  I like the style of clothes, their prices and their coupons, plus I have a cousin that works there so that extra discount is always nice :-).  While looking for something for my dad, I noticed that they don't have a large section for males, or at least not as big as the women's.  Since my dad is also a bigger man, it took me a while to find the Big and Tall section, lets just say its not much of a section but more of a small corner.

Something that I also noticed is the prices of clothes, It seems that clothes for men are usually more  expensive than the women's. I try and think of why this could be, women for the most part shop the most, and therefore buy more clothes, sometimes at high prices, but a women could probably still get 1-2 nice outfits for maybe $100, while a male can probably get only one, or not even a full outfit. I could see how materials could be a part of it. Males are typically bigger, bulkier so therefore more materials are used to make their clothing but even then, women's plus sizes, I think are still cheaper than regular males clothing are just about the same. I wonder why this could be?  Is it that women are regular shoppers so the clothes are at lower prices because they shop more and to keep women coming back? Sale racks are also usually cheaper for women too, some $5 or up,  products can be found while Male's sales racks are usually at $10 or up.

When thinking back at some of the things that we have read so far this semester, we could also see that media has been a big part of the social construction, of why women are bigger shoppers than men.  When we look at commercials and television shows, for the most part, women are spotlighted in store advertisements. Yes, there are some men as well but not as much as women. Shows like "Sex and the City", "House Wives of Orange County, Atlanta..etc" all have women that are always so nicely dressed and therefore also contribute to the promotion of clothing, especially some that have their own line of clothes. In the book John Fiske, talks about audience power, the power of the audience to interpret media text, and determine their popularity, far outweighs the ability of media institutions to send a particular message or ideology to audience through their texts (Gauntlet 2002). With this we could see that the commercials and the advertisements that some television programs have, as well as the promotions that other artists make are sending a message to the audience. A message that can promote buying certain brands or items.  All this can also contribute to reasons why stores can also have more women's clothing, than men, because for the most part men are not as interested in clothing as women are or do not have as much time as women. Or because there so much marketing for womens than men that they give women a larger variety of clothes than they do for men.

      VS.

"Women's Work"

Today on my way to campus I was trying to find a radio station to listen to and while searching, I came across a conversation on a station, about "womens work." On 101.9 WTMX http://www.wtmx.com/ek.php - Kathy and Eric the hosts. were talking about a survey that was done with 10 women and 10 men about if there really is such a thing as womens work.  The participants of the survey had no knowledge of what the questions would be so this was there answers; 20% of women said that there was such a thing as "women's work" and when the men were asked 90% said that there was such a thing as "womens work." As we can see there is a significant difference in the answers that women and men gave. The hosts continued to talk about why this could have been. Kathy suggested that the 80% of women that said there was no such thing, could be because women who took offense to that terminology. Kathy continues to say that if other terminology would have been used the answers could have possibly been different. This got me thinking of other possible terminology that could have been used (clean light, soft work..)  and  no matter what, it still seemed to come up as an offense to women.  What other terminoology could have been used to make it more neutral?

 They also touched on the actual house work that they feel are attributed to women and men. They agreed that for the most part males have the dirtier work, cleaning outside, keeping maintance of the cars, and the women would deal withe children and other cleanning around the house. In there conversation Kathy stated that  if she made dinner, then she would not be the one to clean up after, and eric agreed to this as well, that it wouldn't be fair. 

We say that things aren't fare and there should be more eqaul work but yet things continue to stay the same, In Gaunlettes book, on page 5 we see national statistics from 2006, that shows how much more time women spent on housework than men. Women on average spent 178 mins a day on housework, compare to 100 minutes for men. Women spent 159 min. cleaning,cooking, washings, and shopping, compared to 71min, that is about half the time women spend. Although these statisicts are older, what are the chances that there has been any change,  if we still continue to see women struggling for their rights.

Pre-school visit

On Tuesday April 2nd, I went to school with my daughter. It was her birthday and I wanted to spend the day with her.  While at her school there were many small things that I saw that pertained to gender.  Mostly the situations were when the children were playing or when lining up for lunch time or to go to the bathroom.  One situation that really stuck out to me was when the children had "free time," a time where they get to play whatever they wanted. My daughter along with other children both boys and girls, were playing. I was not playing much, but facilitating their playtime because, their younger children and they aren't so good at sharing. I looked over to tell a pair of children to share and then when I look back at one of my daughters classmates,  the first thing I heard was "look their humping".I looked at the little girl and she had two dolls, she was moving the boy doll on top of the girl doll.  She said it twice before I actually told her to stop, I was so shocked!!I was at a loss of  words,  at what she was doing. Luckily I was the only one that noticed her doing this, the other kids were busy playing with the dolls and playhouse.

I could not wrap my head around what had just happened because it was such an unexpected thing. I expected to see kids not sharing with each other because they were boys or girls, but to actually see someone doing that was so surprising.  As we have learned in previous class, about Piaget's stages of Cognitive Development, at age 4/5 (Preoperational stage) children are beginning to represent the world with words and images; these words and images reflect increased symbolic thinking and go beyond the connection of sensory information and physical action. This could explain the the child's reenactment of something that she could have witness but its still hard to think that at such a young age some children are witnessing sex. Obviously I don't know how the child knows about this, it could be through the parents, TV or other things, but still.. Also the language that the little girl used was not "sex" but "humping" this could also come to conclude the type of language that might be spoken around her at home.

Another thing that I found interesting, besides that fact that she did that "humping" action with the dolls, is that the dolls that she used were of her own race, African American.  I found this interesting because this could also potently signal that she could have seen someone close to her in a similar situation, or that she simply prefers to play with dolls that share things in common with her.

Even more interesting, when I was looking for a picture for the blog I googled the doll names and things showed but not what I was looking for. I had to google more specifically, black loving family dolls and I found this picture. A nice little family with  4 children. This was interesting because when I googled  "loving family" a white doll family showed up but they had no more than three children, yet the black family had 4 children in it.. coincidence or on purpose??
Why is it that society would attribute a large amount of children to minority families than white. We could say that because typically minorities do have larger families because they might not have the resources to birth control and to doctors,  but then again, it could just be society's construction and way of portraying minorities to younger children and in a way teaching or showing them what their families could possibly look like when they get older.