– by Ryan Ancona – In this week’s Teen Talk I would like to talk about gender roles. First of all what are gender roles? To sum it up gender roles are expected behaviours from a certain gender. Certain examples of this would be like expecting a guy to like the color blue and a girl to like the color pink.
I have noticed in a lot people my age that I meet that they have this idea of what a girl should do and what a guy should do. This kind of mentality is a common concern, but if you do have this mentality it is not your fault. From when you are in preschool, society pushes this mentality on you. We were taught that girls play with Barbie dolls and boys play with trucks.
From when I was very small I already understood that this is a problem. I personally think all humans are equal. The only reason that boys and girls act differently is because we are raised differently. An example of this would be if a father teaches his son to play a sport but neglects to do the same with his daughter because in society sports is mainly a “boy thing”.
So how do we fix this problem? Unfortunately you can’t right now. There are too many people that think like this right now. It would take a couple decades for this mentality to vanish. So what can you do? Well you can fix yourself. Look through all your thoughts for anything sexist, then figure out why you think in that particular way. Then if you do not have a good reason to think this way (only that your elders thought it to you) then change it. If you have children, in the future make sure to raise them without the mentality that boys and girls have to act a certain way and encourage them to be themselves.
The good news is that a lot of mainstream media are starting to support this idea which will start encouraging more people to change their mentality; although, there is a newer problem that is starting to bloom which involves certain women calling themselves feminist. They have the idea that in order to empower women they need to put down males. This is completely counterproductive and creates the same problem they are trying to fix; just the other way around. Now not all feminists do this. This is only for a select few that don’t really put much thought into what they are doing.
Both male and females have specific personalities and traits society thinks they should emulate and it’s a really an unintelligent mentality that should change. I hope you got something from this article and maybe you are or know someone that thinks like this. Hopefully this will spark some new thought in your mind.
Click Here for More Teen Talk Articles on Ambergris Today Online
