'Codes In William Pollack's Real Boys'

Who are you? Do you define yourself as man or woman? How do you know? Born biologically male/female, do you know how to behave in a masculine/feminine way? Of course you do! On the one hand, most people probably behave in certain ways to get along with other members of the society, unwittingly corresponding to the deeply entrenched social norms called “Codes,” the concept introduced by William Pollack in his writing, “Real Boys”. On the other hand, there is an exception: numerous individuals around the world nowadays get confused about defining themselves on the scale of the masculinity and femininity. One may come up with question like this: “Given that most people seem to live their lives with the gender they were born with and have no problem

In many countries, nowadays, it’s very hard to distinguish minors from adults if they both get dressed in plain clothes. But, what if one wears school uniform? People will probably consider him/her to be a student because only students wear school uniform. Also, traditionally, Hindu women have to wear sindoor to indicate their married status; in this case, wearing a sindoor solidifies one's married status. Similarly, in the gendering process, “Appearance Code” helps people indicating their identities. Since long ago, we have considered men/women who just looked like men/women (varies with cultures) as males and females and have sought for things that would strengthen the intensity of masculinity/femininity. In “Night to His Day”, Judith Lorber notes, “Even societies that do not cover women’s breasts have gender-identifying clothing, scarification, jewelry, and hairstyles” (Judith, p100), and says, “When unisex clothing… beards and mustaches for men also came into style again as gender identifications”. Judith Lorber, citing those historical facts, clearly demonstrated the fact that people seek for things that would solidify

In our society exists another social norm, a code called, “Behavior Code”. Even at this moment, many idiosyncratic babies with different characteristics are born around the world. In their adolescence, however, many boys and girls question themselves whether their behaviors are in accordance with the behavior code. For instance, some girls grow into tomboys — “girls start wearing stylish clothes and watching from the sidelines as the boys acted and spoke” (Pipher, p1). But, unfortunately, at some points of their adolescence, those idiosyncratic girls lose thier authenticity and become a part of the society, behaving correspondingly to the behavior code. “You all die at 15”, notes Pipher in “Reviving Ophelia”. Girls “die” and set themselves apart from courage, competency and irreverence that a word “tomboy” accompanies with, ultimately developing themselves into oppressed wives. According to Judy Brady (Brady, p1), unlike what dictionary says, our society defines wife as coo, housekeeper, nutritionist, chauffeur, friend, sex partner, valet, nurse, social secretary, ego-builder, and more; There are a lot of works that are labeled as “women’s”: keeping house clean, serving dishes, taking care of children, etc. Socially considered female, women are expected to solely finish those jobs. Nevertheless, one may argue that now that the kind of task defines gender, everybody becomes “female” if one