FD1

Lora Cheng
September 21, 2009
Eng215
FD1

The Plight of Becoming a Woman

From the time a girl is born, she is placed in a box in which she is expected to stay in. As she gets older, she may deviate from this box and be labeled as a social outcast. Her childhood dreams of being in a male oriented profession may be destroyed because of her sex. She could be ridiculed and face more obstacles than men in order to be recognized by her peers. [THESIS] Women experience trauma when they start going through puberty by being in a male dominated society. [THESIS]

When a girl experiences puberty, it is arguably her first experience of being self conscious. Her body shape may not be one of a model so she may try to compensate it by wearing expensive clothing. Wearing expensive clothing will make her feel better of herself and the men she may fall in love with may view her as a trophy. If a girl goes against the norm of dressing well, she will suffer for it. Her inner beauty may be overshadowed by low self esteem from the criticisms of others. Her body and looks appears to be the most important quality in a fickle society. Brains and knowledge are for a male.

Perhaps this is why women in powerful positions in society are awed at. It isn’t expected. Unfortunately, society also has the nasty habit of painting women in power to be dikes or lesbians. When can a woman in power sport a male hairstyle and not be labeled a “dike”? The type of hair styles are not supposed to be labeled for men or women. Women should be allowed to have spiky or short hair like men.

Women in power make less than males. According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) their statistics states that the ratio of women’s median annual earnings to men’s median annual earnings was 77.0 in 2005 for full-time, full-year workers, statistically the same as in 2004 (76.6) and virtually unchanged from 2001 (76.3). When you include part time workers the ratio is much lower because women are more likely than men to have their work scheduled reduced.

According to Pipher from our textbook Dialogues pg 430, it states adolescence is time limited and some girls are much stronger by the time they graduate from high school. The way girls handled their adolescence life can reflect on them later on in life because of their self-confidence and self-direction. Certain times girls hold back their pain and betrayed themselves. Most women are great with juggling a bunch of things at once such as the needs of their family, coworkers, friends, and children’s, and even strangers but they forget to add themselves.

Women are exposed to more pressure and are more vulnerable to sexual assaults because of how the media portrays women. On television, sluts are shown more frequently than respectful, conservative women because society thinks that they are boring. Female celebrities started off as innocent figures, and then became changed by the media into models of what America categorizes as hot or sexy. In photo shoots, women are encouraged to do sexy poses or more provocative poses to impress the public and get more attention. When strip clubs was created it made respectful women feel disgusted. It portrayed an image for men to think women are toys. This results in women having to live harder lives than they should be living.

According to Debra Ann Escalicas, “Gender roles can be traced back to stone age history. Men hunt and gather food, while women are left back cooking and taking care of their children. This information has been passed down for generations on what is expected of the other.” I agree with her because back then men were to do the working and women are supposed to stay home to cook and clean. After generations some families have changed their traditions where they have the men do what is supposedly the women job while women are allowed to work when it was considered the men role. Families will eventually adapt to the westernized culture.

In conclusion, it might take a while for old traditions to die hard. As families pass from generation to generation the old-fashioned family roles will start changing into non-traditional ones. Males will start taking on the female's role in the family (such as house chores, looking after the children) and vice versa. However, at this current state in time people are not used to seeing such things happen, and things such as prejudice result.

Work Cited

Debra Ann Escalicas. “Causes and Solutions.” Online posting. 11 September 2009. Laulima discussion. 14 September 2009

Pipher, Mary. “Saplings in the Storm.” Dialogues: An Argument Rhetoric and Reader. 5th edition. Eds. Gary Goshgarian and Kathleen Krueger. New York: Pearson-Longman, 2006. 411-417.

Pipher, Mary. Dialogues: An Argument Rhetoric and Reader. 6th edition. Eds. Gary Goshgarian and Kathleen Krueger. New York: Pearson-Longman, 2009. Chapter 11

“The Gender Wage Ratio: Women’s and Men’s Earnings”. August 2006.
< http://www.iwpr.org/pdf/Updated2006_C350.pdf >


Log of Completed Activities

_x__ Aug 24M- First Day of Instruction. Log in to our class blog, our Laulima discussion forum, and your hawaii.edu mailbox. Become familiar with these instructional media. Carefully review the information in our class blog, especially the schedule and catalog.

_x__ Aug 25t- Intro to Paper #1. Read the “Guidelines for Paper #1” by midnight, Aug 25.

_x__ Aug 26W- Laulima Discussion: Who Am I? Post your response by midnight, Aug 26. [5 pts]

_x__ Aug 31M- Complete readings for Paper #1 by midnight, Aug 31 [5 pts]

_x__ Sep 1-4- Laulima Discussion: What Is “Trauma”? One definition or many different definitions? Post your response by midnight, Sep 4. [10 pts]
Sep 7M- HOLIDAY: LABOR DAY

_x__ Sep 8-11- Laulima Discussion: Causes & Solutions: What causes gender role trauma? What’s the solution? Assume that there is more than one cause or solution. Post your response by midnight, Sep 11. [10 pts]

_x__ Sep 11- Complete the set up of your blog. See “Blogger” in the right sidebar.

_x__ Sep 14M- RD1 (Review Draft #1) due [50 pts]

_x__ Sep 17T- RD1 evaluations due. Click here for an introduction to reviewing drafts. [20 pts]

_x__ Sep 21M- FD1 (Final Draft #1) due [100 pts]