Simone De Beauvoir

One is not born a woman, or a man. One is born a boy or girl, but these are just labels set in place to differentiate between the two sexes biologically. Although, these labels ultimately decide the future role of girl as a woman and boy as a man. A girl is born and then becomes a woman, but she becomes a woman because of the role society plays in creating her into such. Simone de Beauvoir tackles the idea of women “becoming” women in The Second Sex as Judith Butler interprets Beauvoir’s idea of “becoming women” in her essay “Sex and Gender”. “One is not born but rather becomes woman” (283). According to Beauvoir biology is not what makes a woman a woman, instead it is society and social roles and cultural norms, that makes woman a woman.

She menstruates for the first time, signaling the start of her climb into motherhood, but society scrutinizes her for this development, forcing her to be embarrassed about her period, making her want to hide the change from those around her. She starts to see herself differently and she is now aware of her body and its changes. There is attention directed towards her, and she is scrutinized of her changes. Her caring for a doll during childhood, has readied her for this new position she has been given. She is shown what she is going to become, a mother, wife, domestic duties, this is what is expected of her. Society is constantly reminding her of her place as a woman, creating barriers for her to see herself as anything otherwise and discouraging her from activities that boys and men might

While Beauvoir differentiates women and femininity, Butler adopts the idea of sex and gender. Butler agrees with Beauvoir’s idea of becoming a woman as “a purposive and appropriative set of acts, the acquisition of a skill...” (36), and to “be a woman is to become a woman... an active process of appropriating, interpreting and reinterpreting received cultural possibilities” (36). Butler argues that these appropriations form an identity to a specific gender. In her essay Performative Acts and Gender Constitution she explains this identity “tenuously constituted in time - an identiy, instituted though a stylized repetition of acts” (1). These acts are once again created by society, house duties, child rearing etc. and thus form a societally formed view of gender. Butler claims that is is our genders we become and not our