Backwards

This week we discussed gender and the effects of culture upon gender. Lassiter uses the image of grafting, to explain how we learn culture, especially that of gender roles. I thought the big picture of this week was how much enculturation really happens and how we are so deep in our culture we don’t even realize we were taught to think a certain way. There were a lot of good examples to explain this big picture, starting with gender. Sometimes we forget that sex is purely biological, but all the stuff that defines our gender and our roles in our gender are taught to us. I love the Fischer Price commercial which really showed how gender is seeped into our media as well, girls are cutesy and play with dolls and boys are rough and rowdy and play with cars. Although this may be true in America these standards and gender roles aren’t necessarily true in all cultures. A second example of enculturation is the teaching of beauty, in America we obviously put emphasis on being thin, so the article on the fattening room seems unfathomable to us, again something we were taught by standards of society and the media around us. To the Nigerians being fat is a sign of beauty and to them it could possibly be unfathomable that people get surgeries such as lypo, or starve themselves, or go on crazy fad diets in order to be thin and look good. These examples of beauty and gender really reflected the big picture of enculturation, because gender and beauty aren’t things we necessarily attribute to culture first off,we don’t realize all the roles and standards we put with these things, especially gender, are taught to us not encoded in our DNA.
When I was thinking about this week’s topic and big picture I thought it was interesting how everything I read on gender roles really related women to the nurture and housework gender, in many different cultures, but especially our own. So although I know this stereotype from some of my favorite tv shows like Leave it to Beaver or The Brady Bunch, to me it was still almost culture shock to read, because I guess I learned and lived/ was enculturated much differently. I grew up where the male/father did all the domesticated work, cooking, cleaning, caring for the kids, (and driving the mini-van) because his schedule as a teacher allowed it while the female/mother was the business woman/CFO busy at work. I thoroughly loved how my life seemed backwards to these culture norms presented about gender. Although I know there are many other families like this in our culture and probably other cultures as well, it really allowed for me see how culture and gender are taught and not inherited. I had a “backwards” view almost or at least was able to take a step back and see how different families even provide their own twists on enculturation with in a culture. What I learn is not what every one else learned about their culture, and in the big picture of the world it’s important to recognize that. Although another culture seems backwards, we must recognize what we learned is not what everybody else learned.