Our society tends to define masculinity and femininity according to rigid gender norm and majority of children are not questioning but accepting those while they are making up their individual characteristics, based on their identity. Among many factors that we know which creates individual’s identity is a gender. In class, we discussed how the gender role socially constructed and how this brought Ludovic into a big trouble finding his own identity in the movie ‘Ma vie en Rose’.
From the moment we are born, we immediately categorized to either a boy or a girl. Since then, boys were taught to do ‘boy things’ and girls were taught to do ‘girly things’ by their parents, and their society. In the movie, I found the media which controlled by a society, incorporating an impact on children’s development of their gender role. Luduvic watches a T.V, series, and in that, Pam, a beautiful woman, shows an ideal figure of female. Even though he wanted to dress up like her, put on a makeup like her, because the society already defined an image of Pam as one of a gender role of being female, when he attempted followed that, he considered as abnormal child.
I would definitely agree with the idea of gender is socially constructed, because like in the movie, society intentionally force children to follow a certain way to behave followed by their gender. By making boys play with toys and teaching them the rigid idea of masculinity, and by making girls play with dolls and expecting them to have femininity. We do not find this role of gender as an awkward thing, because parents and society control our subconscious when we were trying to find our identity in our childhood.
You do a good job of explaining how gender is socially constructed in relation to the film. I particularly like your observation that the media and popular culture play a key role in not only representing but also creating acceptable ideas of gender, represented in the film through the TV show Pam & Ben.
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