Studying Gender Roles in Literature and Life

The freshman literature survey course I teach offers readings rife with sexism and limiting gender norms. Romeo and Juliet, penned in the late 1500s, illustrates the way women were defined by their relationships with men, how they were treated as material objects to be admired and owned (the owners being husbands and fathers), and how physical beauty was the primary consideration in assessing a woman’s worth. Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is another. Beyond the more obvious theme of racism, there is also a strong undercurrent of sexism as Scout struggles to navigate her desire to “act like a boy” in a society with strongly polarized and clearly defined roles for men and women. When her brother laments, “Scout, you act more like a girl every day,” he does not mean to flatter.

The key step to making these narratives pertinent to today’s students—and that may help them formulate clearer ideas about the meaning and value of justice—is to have students examine how much of the media they consume reinforces the same gender-normative ideas. It seems easy for my students, at first glance, to view these works as outdated. Closer examination reveals something else.

High school relationships have always had a big helping of physical attraction at their core, and teenagers are still trying to understand what matters beyond the initial hormonal rush. Now, from my vantage point, cellphones and social media have made physical attributes even more of a preoccupation than they were when I was in high school. Between sexting and posting provocative pictures to Instagram and Snapchat, students are more frequently exposed to sexualized images—particularly of women—and young girls are increasingly pressured to take part in that objectification.

As a teacher, I see the cultural messages that continue to tell girls they are objects to be appraised by boys and that how women look is a key determinant in deciding who they are. Photo-edited images on magazine covers and in ad campaigns add to the pressure for girls to alter their weight, hair color and body proportions in real life.

It’s worth noting that standards of appearance are becoming increasingly unrealistic for men as well; the male cosmetics industry is exploding, and the normative belief that men should be broad and muscular also stands out from most magazine racks. Not only that, but the messages that limit what women are expected to look like and do undermine the authenticity and humanity of men as well, pegging them as conquerors, owners and judges rather than as individuals capable of empathy, collaboration and tenderness.

So as we cover the curricula we are given to teach, let’s make sure we keep contextualizing those points in terms of present-day media literacy.

• Have students examine the coverage of women and men occupying the same spaces. The recent Olympic commentary is a good place to start. Red carpet appearances in which men are asked about their craft and women are asked about their clothes is another. Teach them how these are vestiges of a time when women were literally considered property, objects to be owned. You can tie back to literature to make those connections.

• Have students write journal entries about times they have seen the value of girls and boys being measured by their looks or their willingness to engage in sexual behavior. Discuss the results of their writing, and talk about possible solutions to the problems. 

• Have students spend a week examining the world around them. Tell them to look at interactions among peers, their social media accounts, movies, television shows, music videos and lyrics as a start. Ask them to write down all the examples they can find of behaviors that match up with the standards they see in literary works written hundreds of years ago. Again, examine the underlying biases. 

• As a follow-up to that week-long examination, ask them to make an attempt to change what they have seen in some way. It may be as simple as telling someone they don’t want to see the picture on their phone or not buying a certain artist’s new album. Those who want to go bigger can create a school-wide awareness campaign or write an editorial for a local paper or website. Have them write a short reflection on that process, emphasizing what they objected to and how they took a stand against it. Teaching Tolerance's “Do Something” student tasks offer a variety of approaches to having students take action that builds civic engagement and critical literacy skills. 

We can use curricula to give students a better understanding of the past and present. More important, we can use them to help students think about how to solve today’s problems for a better, more just future.

Knoll is a writer and English teacher at a public school in New Jersey.