Unisex Restrooms

She has developed breasts and a vagina. He has a chest and a penis. Allegedly they think the same and are equal for all intensive purposes, hence the fight for gender equality and the feminist movement and the works. Although men and women are essentially equal on all accounts physically they are different. Men are usually taller, have more muscle mass, therefore stronger and other physical traits opposite women. Women are smaller, more agile, menstruate, give birth and are weaker than men among other physical traits. Yet for all intensive purposes they are equal.

          As equal as men and women are, yet still we have gender segregated sports; “The Women’s World Cup versus The World Cup, Men 100meter versus Women, etc.” All of this is understandable to a society that strives for equality in regards to gender among other things. However in regards to academia, men and women are categorized into one unit. The Spelling Bee is not ‘Boys’ or ‘Girls’ but unisex. When it comes to scholarships based solely on academia in which ever specified field the division between men and women will be minimal.

 According to the article by Restak this unisex grouping of boys and girls in means of academia is unfair to both genders. According to the very same physical components that separate men and women in physical activities, by these basis boys and girls should be separate intellectually.

It is not the case of boys being smarting than girls or vise versa but a case of learning differently. So would the resolution for this plight be to cause segregation of boys and girls for the sake of academia?

The answer to that is metaphorically a double edged sword. If placing boys and girls in separate schools in order to accommodate their collective learning will increase the number of person we have graduating high school, then this segregation may be just. Unfortunately this may not be enough because although collectively boys are learning style A and girls style B on an individual level there will always be in existence variants from the dominant group. In addition to that learning style factor this will create the issue of further gender inequality by separating boys and girls even further due to lack of continual social interaction.

For eight hours a day, five days a week boys and girls are forced to interact with each other in a unisex academic environment. As with any relationship more the more one is with another person the more understanding prosper from the relationship.

In Germany at approximately twelve years of age students undergo an assessment test that indicates the educational path that a student must go for the next six years and as such which school would be best suited to their intellectual style. This test decides whether the student has the brains for linguists and arts or science, whether or not they should enter into a technical school which would enable them to learn a trade by the time they graduate high school such as carpentry or any other, and then there is the option of an ordinary high school.  

If the current academic regulation is failing our student here then maybe we should adapt something akin to that in Germany. It is understood that children may not know what their career path will be at twelve or even at eighteen however an assessment to indicates which learning style is best suited for the child would be in the overall best interest for everyone. This would not separate children based on gender and what is common for the overall classification but would enable boys and girls with the same educational stimuli to be adequately facilitated, while simultaneously learning how to relate to another gender socially.  

Thin People Have Sex and Fat People Feel Terrible

To the people of Zanthrex 3, what are you really advertising? From the narrative you claim to advertise a weight loss supplement. From your models you stand to support that claim. Or maybe that’s what you should have said during your fifteen second commercial. It might have made you appear more sincere in your plight of selling a weight loss drug. However you job is not to be nice but to sell a product and make money.  So instead of the above statement, you stated, “Rapid weight loss, incredible energy. It’s great to be thin.” What is a better product than sex under the guise of dietary supplements for consumers? However should it come at the cost of insulting consumers while objectifying other persons, the models included?

In fifteen seconds your audience views a series of still shots that illustrates models attempting to eat each other alive in lustful infatuation.  Each is fully clothed in white against a white background. As a marketing strategy the use of white was good in that white is viewed by Western audiences as good and positive on the subconscious making it easier to accept the folly of your advertisement. Although technically fully clothed the woman wears low cut shorts and a top with a neckline plunging near to her navel. By the end of the advertisement the photographed pair is half naked in what is meant to be an intimate embrace.  

The statements that the dietary supplement would result in rapid weight loss, that the consumer would have appealing results, a brand new body or anything of that nature is what one expects from a dietary marketer. Instead you insult your audience.  With your models you tell the nation to look at them, they are so thin that their guaranteed to be able to have sex with anyone, specifically as thin as them. They are guaranteed happiness in that state. With the statement “It’s Great to be thin!”, you suggest to the majority of your audience that their lives are miserable and lonely because they are fat, overweight, obese or not as thin as your models.

Have you forgotten that the majority of this nation averages at an estimated minimum of thirty to forty pounds overweight? As recent studies have shown there is an increase of live births for the past five years which goes on to declare that those that do not look like your models are having sex. If sex makes you happy then there are alot of happy overweight people in the country.  To answer your question of, “This must have been written by a fat chick or dude.”, rest assured that your hopes are wrong because this is written by someone more on the “lower” side of the spectrum, to be more specific on the healthy yet non model waif thin side of the spectrum. What the average weight of a real person is, dissimilar to either of your models and your misrepresentation of feeling great.   

This is not to suggest that being overweight is healthy or everyone should be fat and happy like Santa Claus and the yo-yo dieting Mrs. Claus. It is suggested that your marketing, advertising and promotions department work on alternate commercial content, in other words stop being lazy with the sex sells theory and make a commercial for the people, also known as, your consumers.  That’s kindergarten tactics; the boy insults the girl he likes so she would like him back. Yes, America needs to lose weight when it interferes with their healthy but thin does not equal health if it does not consist of diet and exercise. That is simply making someone addicted to a drug that without, they will return to the sad, sexless life you have suggested in your advertisement. Then we have another epidemic involving anorexia, bulimia, addiction to laxatives, dietary supplements and related disorders.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRXHE7t0h08

Stereotypes Plus the Real World

To say that we have changed is not necessarily the accurate term in regards to gender roles and their portrayal in the media. This is due to the fact that many films include the male hero and the one-dimensional female damsel in distress. This is noted prominently in action films such as the Mission Impossible series, and the James Bond series. Yes, in these films female characters have some form of say; they can aide in fighting the bad guys, shoot guns, drive fast cars, etc, but it is never as good as the male protagonist. Throughout the film, even if it is in the last scene before the credits role by there is some moment in which the Hero has sex with his rescued damsel. The damsel is always someone hot, and sexy barely wearing anything.

Likewise this can be given to the recent James Bond stepping out of the lovely blue Bahamian waters in his tight trunks; skin obviously wet and muscles well ripped we could say that he was equally objectified as his Bond Girls. The question I would pose to Mr. Bond is if anyone really remembers that? That was an old Bond movie, and the latest one has already been out for two years and that moment has basically been forgotten.  In 1962 Ursula Andress was the Bond Girl in a Bond movie of whose name many have since forgotten. What the world remembers her for was not for her talented acting, her political activism which resulted in her being expelled from her own native country of Switzerland, or anything really from the last ten years. What we remember is the fact that she stepped out of the Caribbean Sea onto the Jamaican beach in a white bikini. Therefore her name has been carried on through film history for being a sexual object.

But that was almost fifty years ago, do we really expect to see the same thing in cinema. Yes, plus more. We expect women to be hot, and beautiful, sexually objectified and at times dependent upon their male counterparts. However, we also expect women to be all of this and still be able to kick ass in an action film, such Mila Jovovich in the Resident Evil series, and Kate Beckinsale in the Underworld series. Both have proved that they have physical strength equal to and superior to that of their on screen male counter parts, have a sense of certainty and independence, are allowed as much emotional moments as men are allowed to portray as being capable of, in other words completely equally to men on screen. Except, they have to still be a sexually seductive being in some manner or else the film won’t sell and neither will their career.

Men are told to be Top Dog, act macho and show no fear in the face of evil just as James Bond had done throughout the years. Just as the many characters portrayed by Tom Cruise have done throughout his film history, as well as Jason Bourne, willing to run into explosions and jump off skyscrapers, kill anyone that gets in their way without a blink, without becoming emotional and with minimal remorse to simply indicate to the audience that they’re macho men but they’re not evil. What if they cried about who they killed that was just at the wrong place at the wrong time or showed fear in having to jump off a skyscraper and run into a ball of flames. Would they be girly-men or would they be real men? If women were not sexually objectified and men allowed showing emotions would that be the media’s acceptance of real people? Yes, and so the media has already started apologizing in recent cinema by allowing men to be emotional and women to wear more clothes, but it is not enough because when asked for examples of these films the answer is difficult to find.

Lost in Gender Translation

In a world in which Gender is pre-dominantly binary it is difficult for society to accept the possibility of a third gender: the intersexual individual. Gender is used as one of the key features of an individual to assume a definition of the behavior codes, ethics, psychological traits and any other personality attributes that one individual may possess. It is a nature of habit in the most innocent of behaviorisms to attempt to categorize an intersexual individual into male or female. So when presented with the narrator of Written on the Body, the reader automatically searches to identify all associated features of the narrator, therefore gender identification is usually placed near the top of that list. For several reasons, we as readers will, when reading a novel, or as spectators watching a film, attempt to identify with a character, specifically the main character in an effort to obtain a better understanding of the material in front us.

 It is not uncommon for women to identify with other female characters due to the society we live in. Certain prejudices and gender role conformism presented to one woman maybe the experience of another. An example of this is being the less dominant partner in a relationship, or the one that stays home with the kids, or the one that works while solely simultaneously maintaining the home in a wifely manner. Likewise it is not uncommon for men to identify with a male character for several shared seemingly gender oriented behavior.  How well an individual fits to the stereotypical determines societal appreciation levels of a person they don’t even no. A man can either follow the gender code and be a Manly Man or actively disregard it and be called a Girly Man. Women can do either of the same and be labeled Womanly or Tomboyish.

Based on the behaviorism of the text, the Genderless narrator would more likely be male than female based on societal standards for acceptable male behavior against acceptable female behavior.

In his or her relationship with Louise, as many have pointed out, he or she is the dominant partner. Louise is a static character without much say in her own life throughout the novel. She is usually under some form of manipulation by either the Genderless narrator or by Elgin. This is not to say that Louise herself did not have any say when it came to what partner she wanted or how her sex life was to be regard both persons, however everything regarding Louise is placed in the realm of physicality. Historically women were treated as objects, their body not in their possession, although being able to have feelings and infatuations the liberties taken with her body were not usually of her choice but that of some male figure.  Likewise descriptions of Louise usually pertain to her physical form, the red of her hair and the burning scar under lip, the paleness of her skin. Even the issue of her health was an issue trying to be controlled by both Elgin and the Genderless narrator, illustrating dominant roles in a relationship usually that of a man.

Promiscuity and a high sex drive can stereotypically be associated with men. When a man has a high sexual appetite and sleeps with a large amount of girls he is thought of as a ‘Player’ or ‘the Man’ or some positive term. A woman in that role is called a slut or a whore and viewed in negative light. The narrator’s sexuality hasn’t really been marred extensively in the novel by other characters on the grounds of being slutty or whoring.

The fight between Elgin and the Genderless narrator can also be regarded as sexist in the sense of Elgin being so brutal in fighting a man or a woman. Most viewer would find the fight appalling on the grounds of a man beating up a woman as Elgin did to the narrator, however if it were two men fighting the scene is less appalling. In most situations men are less inclined to even enter a fight with women let alone be so brutal unless they are an abuser, something that has not been explored in Elgin’s character. Conclusively if a gender were to be found in the novel based on the previous information the narrator would most like be male, however all of these gender traits maybe applied to either sex hence the ability to write about a Genderless narrator.