Prompts

Week 5

/

You walk the hallways of the school before first period begins. It’s Friday and all the people around you are making plans for the weekend. You overhear a group of guys planning a football game, but one says that they can’t make it. “Why?” the group echoes each other. “I’m performing in the school musical all weekend.” The group erupts with laughter, “That’s so gay, man.” “Just skip it, fag.” “Only chicks sing in musicals.” You hear the insults even after being a few feet passed them. They stick in your mind.

/

The kindergarteners are all on the playground for recess. The boys are playing with their trucks, and the girls are playing with their dolls. One the girls leave the group playing with dolls to see what the boys are doing. She asks if she can play with the trucks, too. “Yeah, but you have to use the girl truck,” and hands her the small pink truck.

/

You broke your phone, so you’re waiting in line at the store to see if it can be fixed. The people in front of you consist of a mother and her teenage son.  The son’s getting a new iPhone, but they seem to be out of the black ones. “The white ones fine, mom.” “No it’s not. No son of mine will have the girly color!” You’re confused. Since when was white ever considered “girly?” The mother’s beginning to cause a scene as the clerk tries to calm her down to no avail. The mother and son storm out of the store with no new iPhone at all, all because the white one was too “girly.”

/

The boy’s excited for his first day of first grade, with his brand new Spider-Man backpack and My Little Pony lunch kit. By the time he got home he was completely devastated. All the boys wouldn’t eat lunch with him because of his lunch kit. They called him a girl and continued to make fun of him. The next day, the My Little Pony lunch kit was left at home and was replaced with a brown paper bag.

/

You and a few friends are kicking back and playing some video games. As you get to the character select screen, everyone starts scrambling to pick their characters. You end up picking one of the girl characters because that’s whom you play best with, while everyone else picks a guy character. “Dude, why are you picking the girl? There’re like 3 other guys that didn’t get picked.” “I like the girl. She’s easily my best character.” “Only girls pick girls, man. You’re going to get the crap beat out of you.” You were the target of endless ridicule, at least until the match was over, and you were declared victorious.

/

Week 6

Week 7

The experiment I conducted with my niece is loosely based on the study done with the 2 to 5 year old American children with the toy catalogue. Like the adults who had decided on which gender the items were targeted at before they conducted th study, I did the same with what items I presented to my niece. The experiment differed in the fact that while the boys and girls were just identifying whether the toy was for boys or girls, my niece was choosing which she preferred out of the choices. While they boys and girls who were surveyed in the study usually relied on color as their main identifier on which gender the toys targeted, my niece differed in that fact in that color had no influence on her decisions, but on what she personally enjoyed more.