Essay on Gender Socialization

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Breana Goodwin
Professor Levine
Intro to Sociology
February 29, 2012
Gender Socialization From the very beginning of my life I was treated extremely girlie. I have 9 aunts all together all of who had many boys for children. When my mom found out that she was having a girl she almost did not believe them because on my mom’s side of the family there was only one other granddaughter out of 12 grandchildren total, with nine boys being born in a row. So she definitely had good reason to doubt the chances of having me, but when I finally came along she had no choice but to believe it. My mother and all of my aunts always wanted to keep me very girlie because I was always surrounded by many male cousins and a whole bunch of testosterone. They wanted to infuse me with as much estrogen as possible! Whenever any of them could, they would go out and buy me a brand new girlie outfit. They never wanted me to get tired of the clothes I was wearing. Dresses were their favorite things to get me. I did go through a phrase I one point where I absolutely hated everything about skirts and dresses. I would think “how did I ever wear one of these they are so uncomfortable.” It wasn’t until I went out looking for a dress for my eight grade semi-formal that I started liking dresses again. My mom took me to this one dress shop that had so many dresses in it, I couldn’t help myself, I felt like a seven year old playing dress up with my best friend all over again. Now I love to wear dresses only if it’s nice outside, or is for a formal occasion though! When it came to toys, Barbie’s were the main thing that everyone always seemed to get me. I swear I had over fifty different Barbie’s, not one being the same as another. I still have a collectible Barbie I got from my grandfather when I was five. It is still in the box and it will be worth a lot of money in many more years. I was also given numerous other dolls, like baby dolls and a Bratz head doll to mess around and play with. My mom taught me how to play house and pretend that I was a mom with the baby doll that she also happened to grow up with. I'm actually quite surprised I still have that doll. My Grandmothers both got me to have an extreme love for jewelry. Any time I would spend time with either one of them I would always see them wearing excessive amounts of jewelry. When I would spend the night at my grandmother’s house every once in a while, I would see myself going into my grandparents bedroom just to get my grandmother’s jewelry and put it on, then I would go model it to her. When my grandmother passed away she had all her jewelry go to me because she knew I would wear it and actually do something with it. All of my aunts and grandmother on my mom’s side of the family would treat me like and call me the little princess of the family. Since I was the youngest first of all and seventeen years younger than my only female cousin on my mom’s side, I would get away with just about everything, especially because I had that little innocent princess look to me. To get me involved with more girls and to make friends, my mom tried putting me in just about everything that she could possibly think of that was girlie to do. At the age of three she started by putting me in Gymnastics at our local gym. I was in that from when I turned three till about mid-summer when it got a bit too expensive to pay for. She then heard about a dance studio that was nearby from a close friend. She got the great idea to put in into a class in that studio with girls my same age. We were all three so we were all just starting, and I mean it’s not like it would matter if we messed up when we were only three, no one would care they would just laugh. I thank my mom so much for putting me into a dance class because it really helped me get in touch with my feminine side and I also happened to make a lot of new friends by dancing with them for 14 years straight. Hanging out with all of these lifelong friends I
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