Gender Benders

As a predominately gender separate society, we tend to notice when something is out of place. If a girls too tall, or doesn’t wear makeup or dresses she’s mannish. And if a guy is not big, athletic, hairy, and masculine he’s a “fag” or girly. So we decided to test the boundaries by taking it way too far. Typically when someone decides to take a stroll down to their local superstore they encounter some typically average people, men in jeans and boots with maybe a hoodie/jacket, and girls in some sort of tight pants/skirt and a pretty blouse also possibly carrying some sort of warm outerwear. As a group we definitely noticed these trends of clothing between guys and girls not only among those we observed but also within our own perceptions of how a person should dress. So in turn, as our gender norm experiment we took two rather masculine guys from our group and sent them shopping at Walmart, but with a catch. Each of them were wearing nearly a complete ensemble of a stereotypical college girl. Both of them entered Walmart at the same time, one wearing a very short dress and the other wear a short dress with a sweater to cover those scandalous shoulder straps. The gender norm violators then simply walked around to do their daily shopping while the rest of examined their behavior, as well as the behavior of the pedestrians, from afar.

We interviewed the gender norm violators before and after conducting the experiment, the initial responses were concurrent with both subjects, that they were nervous and felt awkward even wearing such formfitting clothes out in public. This was an interesting response because in relation to what a girl can wear out in public, these outfits were rather conservative. Also, guys typically walk around shirtless when it gets hot enough. After the test was conducted, the boys seemed a lot more lighthearted by saying that their performance in the store was funny that they are glad that was over. They did mention that they felt like the center of attention while walking through the store, as if they could feel when people were looking at them.

From a safe distance the rest of us observed the effects that these young men dressed in woman’s clothing had on other pedestrians. Surprisingly there no dramatic reactions, the most confrontational reaction that anyone had towards the boys is when another man jokingly commented towards them “looking good ladies”. Other than that the violators did not receive a lot of acknowledgement, people would just pass by and maybe have a second take once they were passed and kid sometimes pointed at the strange sight. From what we could observe there was really no impact on the pedestrians, most of them acted like either they didn’t really care or that it was rather funny.

In the eyes of any member of the general public this experiment might have been viewed as a failure, looking at the fact that we never received any dramatic effect on the pedestrians, but I believe we did yield some very important information from the violators. The violators stated that they were uncomfortable with the whole situation ever since the conception of this experiment and that they felt like they stuck out when walking through the store. This is important because we can only assume that this is how a cross dresser or trans person must feel as they live every day like that, as an outcast. The results of this test showed us that while society believes that we are ready to accept all kinds, we still unintentionally cast out these individuals because of our idea of gender boundaries with clothes that have been subliminally programmed into our brains since we were babies. While we have come a long way since the days when we would publically humiliate those who are different, we still have a long way to go before we can say society is truly accepting of gender boundary violators.