Despite being fairly self confident, willing to challenge norms and having good self esteem I frequently find myself feeling inadequate as a woman because I don't wear make up. Why should that make me feel inadequate? Why should I feel pressured into fitting what society deems to be a suitable way for me to look and behave in order to be a proper woman?
Many people probably don't much question why a woman would pay more for a haircut that is no more complex than a man's, or why woman feel pressured by others to fit a certain model of femininity. Price differential in haircuts is just one example of a consequence of inequality in gender roles, assumptions and stereotypes.
You can argue that if the market is there then there is no link to inequality - as you appear to imply but I'm questioning how that market has arisen in the first place.
The rise in 'metrosexuals' ie men who take as much as care over their appearance as some women do, has led to a market for 'male grooming' products and services. But you can still get men's cuts which are cheap and no equivalent cheap cut for women.
There's still a distinction between men who like to look after their appearance and are willing to pay silly sums of money for it, and men who aren't so bothered about that. Yet the assumption about women is that we should all be looking after our appearance and paying silly sums of money to do so. Ad astra per aspera
Price differential in haircuts is just one example of a consequence of inequality in gender roles, assumptions and stereotypes.
I'm referring to price differential for what is basically the same level of service. Of course if people want highlights or haircuts that take 90 minutes it should cost more, whichever gender. Ad astra per aspera
For instance, might a pink electronic gadget be cheaper than a black one, on purpose? En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
Would it be this confusing if a taxi company established a price differential between rides for whites and rides for blacks? They could argue that blacks having a harder time to get a cab, are thus willing to pay a higher price. A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
Success is always defined in terms of earning potential and sexual access to attractive women.
In the same way that at least half the male population judges women purely on appearance, maybe half the female population judges men purely on 'success.'
But there are equivalent, but not identical, pressures on men - specifically to 'be successful.'
Of course. Are these inevitable consequences of the human condition or are they largely socially constructed?
If a man wants to be seen as being 'successful' he is expected to work long hours and prioritise his career over his family. Many men don't want to do that but don't really have much choice. Just as women don't have much choice often to share caring responsibilities more equally if they wish to.
Can we hope to evolve a little way beyond the present state? Ad astra per aspera
Are these inevitable consequences of the human condition or are they largely socially constructed?...Can we hope to evolve a little way beyond the present state?
...
Can we hope to evolve a little way beyond the present state?
You can probably modify them, but I doubt it's possible to eliminate them altogether - at least not without a deliberate breeding program to select for valued emotional characteristics.
With a deliberate breeding program you could probably make significant changes within ten generations or so.
This might not be a popular option, however.
a deliberate breeding program to select for valued emotional characteristics. With a deliberate breeding program you could probably make significant changes within ten generations or so.
Belyaev believed that the key factor selected for domestication of dogs was not size or reproduction, but behaviour; specifically amenability to domestication, or tamability. More than any other quality, Belyaev believed, tamability must have determined how well an animal would adapt to life among human beings. Because behavior is rooted in biology, selecting for tameness and against aggression means selecting for physiological changes in the systems that govern the body's hormones and neurochemicals.
Soon afterward, tuberculosis, a disease that moves with devastating speed and severity in nonhuman primates, broke out in Garbage Dump Troop. Over the next year, most of its members died, as did all of the males from Forest Troop who had foraged at the dump. (Considerable sleuthing ultimately revealed that the disease had come from tainted meat in the garbage dump. There was little animal-to-animal transmission of the tuberculosis, and so the disease did not spread in Forest Troop beyond the garbage eaters.) The results were that Forest Troop was left with males who were less aggressive and more social than average, and the troop now had double its previous female-to-male ratio. ... This unique social milieu did not arise merely as a function of the skewed sex ratio (with half the males having died); other primatologists have occasionally reported on troops with similar ratios but without a comparable social atmosphere. What was key was not just the predominance of females but the type of male who remained. The demographic disaster--what evolutionary biologists term a "selective bottleneck"--had produced a savanna baboon troop quite different from what most experts would have anticipated. But the largest surprise did not come until some years later. Female savanna baboons spend their lives in the troop into which they are born, whereas males leave their birth troop around puberty; a troop's adult males have thus all grown up elsewhere and immigrated as adolescents. By the early 1990s, none of the original low aggression/high affiliation males of Forest Troop's tuberculosis period was still alive; all of the group's adult males had joined after the epidemic. Despite this, the troop's unique social milieu persisted--as it does to this day, some 20 years after the selective bottleneck. In other words, adolescent males that enter Forest Troop after having grown up elsewhere wind up adopting the unique behavioral style of the resident males. As defined by both anthropologists and animal behaviorists, "culture" consists of local behavioral variations, occurring for nongenetic and nonecological reasons, that last beyond the time of their originators. Forest Troop's low aggression/high affiliation society constitutes nothing less than a multigenerational benign culture.
This unique social milieu did not arise merely as a function of the skewed sex ratio (with half the males having died); other primatologists have occasionally reported on troops with similar ratios but without a comparable social atmosphere. What was key was not just the predominance of females but the type of male who remained. The demographic disaster--what evolutionary biologists term a "selective bottleneck"--had produced a savanna baboon troop quite different from what most experts would have anticipated.
But the largest surprise did not come until some years later. Female savanna baboons spend their lives in the troop into which they are born, whereas males leave their birth troop around puberty; a troop's adult males have thus all grown up elsewhere and immigrated as adolescents. By the early 1990s, none of the original low aggression/high affiliation males of Forest Troop's tuberculosis period was still alive; all of the group's adult males had joined after the epidemic. Despite this, the troop's unique social milieu persisted--as it does to this day, some 20 years after the selective bottleneck. In other words, adolescent males that enter Forest Troop after having grown up elsewhere wind up adopting the unique behavioral style of the resident males. As defined by both anthropologists and animal behaviorists, "culture" consists of local behavioral variations, occurring for nongenetic and nonecological reasons, that last beyond the time of their originators. Forest Troop's low aggression/high affiliation society constitutes nothing less than a multigenerational benign culture.
I've, occasionally and idly considered the question: did the rise of the EU and the whole European social welfare states didn't spring-from the slaughter of a goodly chunk of the men during WW2 after the slaughter of a goodly chunk of the men during WW2 and the women saying, "Enough of this nonsense"?
Trümmerfrau (literally translated as ruins woman or rubble woman) is the German-language name for women who, in the aftermath of World War II, cleaned up the bombed cities of Germany and Austria, removing all ruins. This was the prerequisite for both the preservation and reconstruction of the inner cities.
Be darned. So there may be an existing answer.
Anyone who thinks economics is about money really han't been paying attention.
People who 'fail' economically have an interesting habit of removing themselves, and sometimes their own offspring, from the gene pool.
Yup.
For most men, hair style is not a status marker.
As for the argument, it seems to me we're talking about complex interplays of sex and status, and, as far as politics is concerned, the special degree of status that is spectacular celebrity. That women are willing to pay more for a haircut than men (and less for a car) may have apparently little to do with equality, but when that sex/status competition formats political representation, I'd say it clearly does.
I said sex/status competition as currently magnified by celebrity pressure in the political arena poses a problem of gender equality. How's that?
Despite being fairly self confident, willing to challenge norms and having good self esteem I frequently find myself feeling inadequate as a woman because I don't wear make up. Why should that make me feel inadequate?
Why should I feel pressured into fitting what society deems to be a suitable way for me to look and behave in order to be a proper woman?
(proper woman) = (average woman around me) = (look and behaviour of average woman around me)
so, if you don't look and behave like the average woman around you you'll feel "unwomanlike". Since you consider yourself an average woman, this dissonance feels like pressure to conform.
The interesting thing about this is that all it takes to change the way the "average woman" looks and behaves is for enough women to look and behave differently. En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
Gender bender - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gender benders may self-identify as transgender or genderqueer, feeling that the gender assigned to them at their birth is an inaccurate or incomplete description of themselves; some are transsexual and desire to change their physical sex through hormone therapy or sex reassignment surgery, while others were born intersexual. Others may identify as Two-Spirit or members of a third gender.
If we accept the assumption that we all have a strong need to fit group norms, hanging out exclusively with persons defining themselves as third gender would put a lot of pressure on any of us to redefine in that direction. A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
And let me retract "impossible" to substitute "highly unlikely to the point of approaching impossible."
Once a person has self-identified as to gender, defined as 'everything but physical attributes,' that person will almost certainly modify by Adjectives rather than Noun: GENDER +/- {Modifiers.} This is commonly communicated by, "I'm a {MAN/WOMAN} but {Modifier(s), Qualifier(s)} in a process of collapsing the totality of social Gender constructs/expectations into a Singularity -- the speaker. This self-identification has a low-to-high weighting, dependent on the individual.
Including the physical attributes, it is readily apparent that, for unknown reasons, an individual's neuro-epistemology (psychology plus cognition,) for unknown reasons, cross-identifies with respect to Gender. This cross-identification has a low-to-high weighting, dependent on the individual.
Thus we can say any individual 'Gender-Bends' to some extent but only within Gender Self-Identification.
To that I have no objection :) A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
:-)
a human's wish for social conformity which stems from our predilection for compliance with the perceived group consensus. The ubiquity of tendency towards compliance was discovered in the early 1950s (IIRC,) a basic study of Social Psychology found a person underwent stress when the test subject thought their answer to a question was unique among the test population; the researchers found the statistical likelihood of this was 1 -- meaning: always.
Getting rid of the concept of competition altogether is rather harder.
And it is all about reproductive status. Traditional bitchy queen bee devalue their competitors in public to reduce their status, increase their own status, and reduce the reproductive prospects of their victims, by reinforcing self-hatred and group contempt.
The mechanism is (inside your head) (proper woman) = (average woman around me) = (look and behaviour of average woman around me)
Smith - The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part III Ch. I [my emphasis]
The principle by which we naturally either approve or disapprove of our own conduct, seems to be altogether the same with that by which we exercise the like judgments concerning the conduct of other people. We either approve or disapprove of the conduct of another man according as we feel that, when we bring his case home to ourselves, we either can or cannot entirely sympathize with the sentiments and motives which directed it And, in the same manner, we either approve or disapprove of our own conduct, according as we feel that, when we place ourselves in the situation of another man, and view it, as it were, with his eyes and from his station, we either can or cannot entirely enter into and sympathize with the sentiments and motives which influenced it. We can never survey our own sentiments and motives, we can never form any judgment concerning them; unless we remove ourselves, as it were, from our own natural station, and endeavour to view them as at a certain distance from us. But we can do this in no other way than by endeavouring to view them with the eyes of other people, or as other people are likely to view them. Whatever judgment we can form concerning them, accordingly, must always bear some secret reference, either to what are, or to what, upon a certain condition, would be, or to what, we imagine, ought to be the judgment of others. We endeavour to examine our own conduct as we imagine any other fair and impartial spectator would examine it. If, upon placing ourselves in his situation, we thoroughly enter into all the passions and motives which influenced it, we approve of it, by sympathy with the approbation of this supposed equitable judge If otherwise, we enter into his disapprobation, and condemn it. Were it possible that a human creature could grow up to manhood in some solitary place, without any communication with his own species, he could no more think of his own character, of the propriety or demerit of his own sentiments and conduct, of the beauty or deformity of his own mind, than of the beauty or deformity of his own face. All these are objects which he cannot easily see, which naturally he does not look at, and with regard to which he is provided with no mirror which can present them to his view. Bring him into society, and he is immediately provided with the mirror which he wanted before. It is placed in the countenance and behaviour of those he lives with, which always mark when they enter into, and when they disapprove of his sentiments; and it is here that he first views the propriety and impropriety of his own passions, the beauty and deformity of his own mind.
Were it possible that a human creature could grow up to manhood in some solitary place, without any communication with his own species, he could no more think of his own character, of the propriety or demerit of his own sentiments and conduct, of the beauty or deformity of his own mind, than of the beauty or deformity of his own face. All these are objects which he cannot easily see, which naturally he does not look at, and with regard to which he is provided with no mirror which can present them to his view. Bring him into society, and he is immediately provided with the mirror which he wanted before. It is placed in the countenance and behaviour of those he lives with, which always mark when they enter into, and when they disapprove of his sentiments; and it is here that he first views the propriety and impropriety of his own passions, the beauty and deformity of his own mind.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
the assumption about women is that we should all be looking after our appearance and paying silly sums of money to do so
There are lots of men who spend silly amount of money enhancing their appearances depending on their subculture. Some people like grooming themselves, some other buy expensive watches, expensive clothes, expensive electronic gadgets... En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
Migeru:
The "marketplace" has a way of magnifying tendencies in this way.
Where do these tendencies come from? Are they 'natural' tendencies or are people feeling the pressure to conform to societal norms that have been constructed over long periods of time? Why were norms constructed so, what are the roots? By unpacking it all, which is what I am trying to do, can we go back far enough to see that there is perhaps a link to inequality? Gender roles and stereotypes manifest themselves in different and often subtle ways.
I am purely trying to explore this. I don't believe that anything is set in stone. Ad astra per aspera
Why should [not wearing make-up] make me feel inadequate? Why should I feel pressured into fitting what society deems to be a suitable way for me to look and behave in order to be a proper woman?
Because you are a female descendant of a bi-pedal, forward vision, pack-hunting, band of primates consisting of two in-group hierarchies based on gender where rank within a gender specific hierarchy, and band rank as well, is displayed by social signaling. Being "well groomed" is one such signal. Thanks to multi-billions of dollars, pounds, euros being spent on propaganda advertising by the cosmetic companies, et.al., being "well groomed" means wearing make-up.
Can you, or can you not, become a Martian?
(LOL)
Our genetic inheritance is strongly indicative but it is NOT determinative. At the molecular biology level environmental and mental processes affect and effect our behavior. The way we "feel" about things releases hormones (proteins) that changes the way the axion hillock and axion terminals ... uh ... "work" giving the potential to eventually changing the way we "feel" about things. Psycho-and-neurological pharmaceuticals are all about affecting this directly; clinical psychology is all about affecting it, from a molecular biology POV, indirectly.
The human Central Nervous System is plastic but it's not a bunch of goo to shape anyway we wish. Further, analysis and description(s) of the "average" human CNS, including the brain, is "average" thus indicative, but not determinative, of any individual.
As I've written before, and Mig has quoted elsewhere in this diary, individual humans seek group acceptance thus group compliance and undergo stress when either is frustrated, for some individually assigned value of "frustrated." And frustration leads to stress which leads to a whole bunch of things, one of which can be a feeling of inadequacy roughly approximate to their assigned value of frustration.
OK, anyone "feeling" inadequate long enough, with a high (enough) weight assigned to the "feeling," implies that person will "become" - personal sense of Being of - inadequate roughly approximate to the weight assigned to the frustration level. This the general outline of the process and WILL vary according to the individual, their psycho-epistemology, gender, biology, previous social stimulus, what degree of acceptance of previous social stimulus, & so on and so forth blah, blah, yadda-yadda-yadda.
In the light of current knowledge -- which ain't all that great.
Despite that, it IS possible to firmly, completely, and irrevocably state: You HAVEN'T failed nor are you a failure.
You're differently normal.
;-)
