Bros Before Hoes: The Social Construction Of Gender

Although still problematic, gender roles constructed by society has progressed throughout the years in small ways, not as much as hoped. The social construction of gender in definition means the construction of gender roles created by others that determine their behavior and develop standards based on their sex. By social definition, women are to be what they are socially constructed to be; weak and submissive and men are also what they are socially constructed to be; powerful and dominant, if they do something outside of these rules they are to be ostracized in their community. These ideas run wildly at large; specifically, men are pressured to these ideas from way back then but also very much now. Not only are men being pressured to act a

Although this issue is not broadly discussed as much as for women, men are often always tested on their masculinity. They are always being yelled at to be manly, and if they do otherwise, they are to be named called and put down. They are told not to have any feelings, but to only be angry or mad instead crying or sad. Due to this constant push, men end up with a lack of feelings and become drained which causes detrimental issues that affect not only themselves but others. In Kimmel’s, Bros Before Hoes, he speaks about the Bro Code and how men are pushed to show their masculinity and in his article he emphasizes how at large this issue is, "The Boy Code leaves boys disconnected from a wide range of emotions and prohibited from sharing those feelings with others" (4). They are pressured to be this certain way that they essentially are prone to many mental illnesses such as depression and suicide, but have out of control behaviors which could be aggression and violence towards themselves or others. Sadly, this could be harmful to their relationships with others overall but specifically with women. However, the media chooses to portray women as an easy target to be violent towards to, which is essentially only instigated and acceptable more by the

Ads are only things that add onto the stigma of objectifying women because many ads contain pornography and the fetishization of products which gives them an erotic charge (Kilbourne 594). This only makes it easier to dehumanize and objectify women. For example, many ads contain subtle sexual things such as certain poses, postures and a certain item to serve a specific purpose. An example of a pornographic ad would be a commercial of a woman laid down with very thin clothing on a bed on the beach, a man next to the bed, and the next scene being a perfume for men. It could be interpreted that having the perfume would make it easy to swoon a girl and be able to have sex with her on the beach. This is an example of a sexualized product that’s being fetishized. Another example would be Victoria’s Secret. The store sexualizes itself by having women in bikinis all over their stores and their commercials, and it encourages people that wearing Victoria’s Secret products are sexy and that people who wear their products make them look sexy, therefore people buy the products to look sexy. Unfortunately, because it has the stigma of a sexy store and it being fetishized, it’s being used as a justification toward a rape victim. Kilbourne uses the example of a victim of rape, "yet when a young woman was accusing William Kennedy Smith of raping her, the fact that she wore Victoria's Secret panties was used