Eckert Learning To Be Gendered Analysis

If you are a woman, then you were probably deeply offended in one way or another by the title of this essay. Sadly, this is the way that some people still think in this day and age. The essay “Learning to be Gendered,” by Eckert and McConnell-Ginnet, at one point states “Gender is the very process of creating a dichotomy by effacing similarity and elaborating on difference, and where there are biological differences, these differences are exaggerated and extended in the service of constructing gender” (Eckert). Today, gender bias has become a disease throughout society. We say we want to cure ourselves of it, yet very little is actually being done, especially with television and media. One of the symptoms of this epidemic being the absurd portrayal of gendered characters, which only serves to drive

I have yet to bring up the high school dropouts, Cheyenne and Van. To start, take Cheyenne under consideration. Cheyenne, being a girl, is overly concerned about her appearance and other girly things. In the episode “The Shirt Off My Back,” she shows how she cares more about her husband’s appearance than his success in his career. Van decides to shave his head for reasons that will be explained later, and Cheyenne is distraught that he would lose his “perfect head of hair.” She is not only distraught, but outright and visibly distressed at Van’s decision. With this character model of the female character, they are doing nothing but promoting the idea that women care only about appearances. Women do have more of an inclination to things that are aesthetically pleasing, nevertheless this character takes that fact and pumps it full of smoke and hot air (Jantz). This goes hand in hand with Eckert and McConnel-Ginnet’s definition of gender, how society has taken a fact and blown it out of proportion in order to separate men and women more and more, especially for the purpose of entertainment and