Women Coded Behavior
Throughout time women and men have been subjected to doing certain things based on society’s gender norms. These things range from playing with certain toys to the way one walks and everything in between. This particular paper will focus on women’s coded behavior in terms of style. Women have always been told to dress with elegance and femininity. For women dressing with this style meant wearing dresses, makeup, heels (or flats), skirts, etc. When a woman dresses this way, the woman is rewarded with compliments of beauty, mainly from those of the opposite sex. They are called “gorgeous,” “beautiful,” “sexy,” and viewed as being more appealing and approachable to the opposite sex. When I wear a nice dress, flats and a little eyeliner, I receive a lot of attention and compliments from guys. They call me beautiful and try to ask me out. Although, when I wear jeans the next day, and see those same guys again, they don’t even look my way. They don’t say anything. It’s as though I no longer appeal to them as I did the other day because I changed my style of dressing. This didn’t make me feel bad about myself, but for most other women it might have. When a woman receives such compliments it increases her self- confidence and love for herself because she knows that she is beautiful because society told her so. Even though, everyone should love him/herself the way they are regardless of what society says or thinks, but that just isn’t the way our world operates. While women are practically praised for wearing this style of dress, men don’t receive the same rewards for dressing more femininely. In fact, if a man were to dress more feminine wearing dresses, make up, heel, etc., he would have his masculinity taken away from him by society. In addition, he may shunned by his own sex. Men who dress more feminine are viewed as feminine, weak, and are deemed as homosexuals by society. Seeing that a large population of men struggle with homophobia, a man that dresses femininely may be cast out by others. His friends may no longer want to associate with him. In fear of losing friends and popularity, many guys attempt to be and dress as masculine as possible no matter how uncomfortable this may be. Some men go as far as to live a double life. During the day, they dress masculine in pants/jeans, looser shirts, gym shoes/men’s dress shoes, etc., but during the night they create a new identity and dress more femininely. In doing so, due to their new identity, these men are able to dress more femininely without the fear that someone will recognize him and deem them as homosexual. Society imposes the fear of the risk of not being seen as a man to society—society has its own definition of what a man is, looks like, and does—in men to keep them from dressing femininely. Society defines a man as one who is strong, masculine, a provider, and a man can’t be any of these things if the man dresses femininely. No man wants to be seen as a woman. It is through this view and fear that men are discourage from dressing femininely.
For those women who chose not to abide by society’s feminine style for women, like me, were criticized for having a plain face (no makeup), wearing jeans, and gym shoes most of the time. They don’t generally receive as much attention or acknowledgement by men. They aren’t complimented as much as they were had they dressed femininely. Seeing that society is what dictates to us what we are, these women may not view themselves as being beautiful or gorgeous because society refused to tell them because they dressed differently. This can and does cause for a woman’s self- confidence to diminish. Women need to feel good about themselves and their appearance. This is taken away from them when they choose to differ away from society’s clothing style for women. As for the men who may want to dress more feminine, they can’t because doing so would tell society that they aren’t men, but feminine. In being feminine, they are viewed as weak which can hurt a man’s ego and pride. It can make him feel that he’s not masculine enough because he chooses a different style of clothing. This is not and may not be true, but as long as society says “he’s not masculine enough to be a man,” then he not a man and won’t feel like one either. Society imposes a value of feminine style in women and a masculine style in men. Women who choose to not dress according to society’s feminine style for women will encounter challenges such as a diminished self-confidence, being called a tomboy, not being called beautiful or pretty, not being noticed by men, etc. In the beginning it will be difficult to overcome these things because it will seem like it’s all closing in on a woman at once. Once a woman realizes that she doesn’t need society’s approval for her choice of clothing and for her to know who she is, she will be unstoppable. At this point, she will begin to believe in herself, her self-confidence will rise, she will know that she is a woman, and she doesn’t have to be girly to be a woman. I was that girl, that tomboy, and now, to this day, I know that I am a woman and I am beautiful with or without a dress.