The Pressure to Choose Between Binary Female Identities

The Game of Life: Attempting to meet expectations and trying to answer impossible questions

From a very young age we are asked a seemingly straightforward question – What do you want to be when you grow up? Throughout our lives we continue to be asked this question in various forms; educational aspirations, career prospects, marriage and family intentions. While we each have our own unique answers to these life questions (if they can ever truly be answered), there is often social pressure related to the normal or appropriate answer – and these expectations differ based on one’s gender and sexuality.

‘Normative’ life paths or choices are strongly influenced by traditional gender role stereotypes and heteronormative values. Gender role stereotypes refers to the features individuals assign to men and women, and these features are not assigned due to an individual’s biological sex (male or female) but in accordance to the social roles men and women hold (masculine and feminine) (Helgeson, 2012). In Western society gender role stereotypes commonly influence the educational programs and career choices of men and women (amognst many other things).  Heteronomativity refers to the hierarchical organization of sexual categories in society that has established heterosexual as superior and opposing to homosexual (GEA, 2013). In our society heteronormativity typically influences cultural acceptance of relational and family elements of our lives. Both of these concepts can often have a strong, constraining influence on a person’s gender and sexuality; affecting everything from our identity, our daily activities, our relationships, and our plans for the future.

While undoubtedly every person experiences the social pressure of expectations, I believe that young girls and women experience a unique and challenging form of pressure – the pressure of having to choose between binary female identities. The strong gender role stereotypes in Western society can often result in category based expectations – assumptions about individuals based on the characteristics of the general categories that they belong to (Helgeson, 2012).

Stereotypes of categorical expectations of women

And what are the categorical expectations of women and femininity? Do you fall into traditional or progressive/egalitarian (or dare I say feminist), positive or negative, caring or bitchy, attractive or ugly, sultry or slutty, underweight or over weight (we all know how average weight no longer exists), innocent or sensual, smart or cut throat, maternal or business orientated?? The categorization of women and women’s roles are endless, and yet they are almost always presented as binary opposites – dichotomous terms or concepts that are strictly defined through contrasting meaning and values; and one term often has a higher social value (for example good-evil, white-black, men-women, straight-gay).

Eve Ensler, a feminist activist and playwright among many other talents, directly addresses the social pressure involved in the binary categories associated with girls, women, and femininity in a three part segment entitled “Would You Rather” in the play Emotional Creatures.

 

 

“I am sick of having to choose between two horrible and impossible things […] I want different questions”.  Why does our society try to dictate that we can only have one primary identity, why can’t we be all of the aspects that make up our unique identity? While we may not always understand the various factors involved in the social pressure of performativity, we often recognize consequences such injustice and inequality that occur from the pressure to the perform aspects of our identity. Recognizing how social pressure and performativity impacts your life is the first step, breaking the discourse is the next – and Eve Ensler provides us with an excellent example of how break discourses of sexuality, gender, and ultimately female identity.

The education I have gained from my time at Trent and the opportunities I’ve had to be involved in Eve Ensler’s production of the Vagina Monologues inspires me to be a V-Girl, and I hope that by highlighting issues of gender and sex this blog  can inspire you too.