Diana Beauty And Gender Stereotypes

1. According to the text, emotion is often gendered; the belief that women are more emotional then men are has been documented for as long as stereotypes have been measured. Not only are women stereotyped as the emotional sex, but also particular emotions are attributed to women (Crawford, 2012). In other words women are not only known as the sex to experience the most emotions and they can express it openly while men are not known to do so. According to Crawford (2012) male emotions are known as anger, contempt and pride. While women’s emotions are awe, disgust, distress, embarrassment, fear, guilt, happiness, love, sadness, shame, shyness, surprise and sympathy. In the film, Diana expresses more “male” emotions then female emotions. Diana
at the very beginning of the film shows her anger towards a popular girl at school who slept with her best friends crush and refused to apologize for her actions, she instead of using verbal communication uses her fists and begins to fight the girl. Diana throughout the movie continues to express her anger physically, when a fellow boxer disrespects her brother she punches him. Not only does Diana show anger but also she displays her contempt. That boxer that disrespected her brother is named Ray, when her love interest tells her that he is going to fight him for the preliminary rounds for boxing she urges “why? He is trash and that he is worthless.” She feels as though he is beneath her consideration. When her lover is forced to fight her in a blind amateur fight, he refuses to do so and she tells him if he does not then he is less of a man, and is now worthless to her. Again she shows her contempt but also her pride. Diana’s pride is reflected through out the movie. Diana shows her pride by never giving up and she always shows that she is never hurt. When her love interest betrays her, she says and does nothing as though it didn’t affect her. When they are asked to fight in the gym he refuses to hit her and her pride immediately shines through when she says she refuses to fight him unless he hits her. Another way she express her pride is when she wins her amateur fight, she cannot help but be boastful about winning her first fight against her first female boxer. Diana again shows this when she wins the blind fight against her boyfriend. Stereotype threat is when people know that there is a negative stereotype about their group’s abilities; the pressure caused by their fear of confirming the stereotype can interfere with their performance (Crawford, 2012). In other words knowing that there is a negative stereotype about your group one is so afraid of falling into the stereotype that one tries to avoid and it will affect the way you perform and most likely your fear will lead you into falling into the stereotype. In the case of Diana’s father this is true. Being a Latin American man his stereotypes are lower class, antagonist, non-college education and ambitionless (Crawford, 2012). Already in the beginning of the film Sandro Guzman shows that he is a lower class citizen. He scuffs at his son’s college dreams; one insinuates here that he is not college educated. Snadro admits to his children that he wants to go out in the world, but it obvious that he is staying out playing his poker games and drinking his life away. The greatest way Sandro falls into the stereotype threat is that he is an antagonist against women; he proves time and time again that he refuses to help his daughter Diana or encourage her in any way. Sandro used to beat Diana’s mother and when he sees Diana come home with a black eye he assumes it was her new lover, he states that he will not let that happen in under his roof again, but when Diana confronts him about the situation he begins to get physical and throws her around the room until Diana retaliates and fights her way out. Sandro was so concerned trying not to be abusive as the rest of the world stereotypes him to be that he does so anyway when he is confronted by his daughter. However, Diana does not support the stereotype threat. Through out the movie numerous boxing coaches tell her she cannot box because she is a girl, but despite them telling her so she still pays Hector to train her. She defies every coach, one coach even said “this is a boys sport and there are something’s girls cannot do, is it so bad to say boys and girls are different?” He petitions for her not to fight against Adrian (Diana’s boyfriend) but she does so anyway and she wins. Diana does not let her stereotype of being a girl and doing a “boys” sport affect her. The sociocultural levels are changing in the sense that people are becoming more open minded and gender roles are being mixed to the point that there is no clearly defined gender role. This study examines the psychosocial impact of women’s precollege sports participation depends on the participant’s enjoyment of the sport and the benefits derive from athletic pursuits (Shaffer & Wittes, 2006). A sample of 245 college women were sampled and asked about their previous sport, their enjoyment, their self -esteem and their body image. The results proved that the girls who felt enjoinment while doing the sport had greater self-esteem later on during their college years. Not only was their self- esteem marginally high but so was their body image, greater physical competence and a more flexible gender role attribute. Meaning that women that participated in all type of sports they enjoyed had a greater out look on life and into their future. The research is applicable to Diana in the sense that more women are participating in sports which greatly changes their outlook on life. Gender roles are being challenged as to what is more feminine and masculine due to the positive effects it give the people participating in sports, that exuberates their self esteem and body image. For Diana this means a greater acceptance for her cause as to being a boxer and now more women will be open to trying all types of sports due to the open mindedness of the people due to significant studies like this one. Not only is this good new for Diana but for her brother as well. It is seen in the film that he wanted to be an artist, which in gender scripts it is more of a women’s job, and his father looked down upon it. However, because of the mixing of gender roles he will be able to be express himself through his artwork.

2. Women in sports according to Crawford (2012) are underrepresented relative to rates of participation in both print and broadcast journalism. In other words, women’s sports are generally overlooked and are not given the proper coverage in the media. Through out Diana’s experience as a boxer it holds true. When Diana begins to train no coach believes that there are any women boxers, until her trainer Hector finds her one match from a tiny newspaper clipping of a women who won many matches and Hector states “I was wrong looks like there is more of you out there.” After Diana continues to look for fights they are almost impossible to find, the only other women boxer in the entire movie gets sick and is unable to compete. The competing arena for women was so small that they had to open blind gender matches in order for Diana to compete. Gender stereotypes are networks of related beliefs that reflect the “common wisdom” about women and men. In other words, how we perceive men and women to be either physically, emotionally, or their role in society. It is clear that Diana does not follow the physical stereotype of a woman. Women are perceived as dainty, soft, and graceful (Crawford, 2012). Diana is stern, rough, never wears makeup, puts on baggy clothes and picks up her hair. Diana’s personality trait does not fit the stereotypical belief of a women’s personality. Crawford (2012) states that women are described as a person who is concerned with feelings and other people, while men are described as an active agent and an effective “doer.” Diana is an effective doer; she goes towards her dream and never gives up no matter what her obstacles are. Beauty is defined differently in every culture and the media seems to have a basic idea of what beauty really means.
In this study Latina, Black, and White women’s conceptions and perceptions of cultural standards of beauty where examined (Poran, 2002). The sample had 157 college women, 48 identified themselves as Latinas, 52 black women, 51 white women and 6 “others”. They were asked different questions about body image, their own self-esteem, and their personal definition of beauty. The Latina women had the lowest scores when it came to body self-esteem. 91% of the participants wrote typical standards of beauty that included thirty body party parts and weight concern when it came to sexual attractiveness. Diana can be seen in this same category since she was concerned about the girl that Adrian was with. She found her pretty because of the way she looked like while she hid behind baggy clothes. Although she expressed no concern about her body image it is clear that she had beauty insecurities due to the definition of beauty that she was so used to hearing from other male peers and through her own experiences that she was even ignore when a “pretty” girl walks by. Although the other women in the film were also Latin, and Diana found them to be pretty, she still hid behind her own self- conscious perception of
beauty.

3. A sexual script is one where sexual acts that is recognized by a particular social group, the rules or guidelines for expected behavior, and the expected punishments for violating the rules (Crawford, 2012). In other words it is a basic guideline for how people are supposed to act during sexual contact. A romantic love is a belief that love is all you need, that true love lasts forever, and anything done in the name of love cannot be wrong (Crawford, 2012). Crawford (2012) also finds that men are the initiators for interaction and to make advances. Diana through out the movie observes Adrian from a distance and never speaks to him. Once Adrian offers her a ride home that is when she begins talking to him. Diana basically waited for him to make the first move into their relationship. Once they begin their encounter they go out to eat, after they have talked and explored the city for many hours it is clear to see that Diana is sexually attracted to him and she keeps looking deep into his eyes but never does anything more. Adrian then kisses her, and she questions his motives, but soon after she goes in to kiss him no longer needing his initiation and no longer playing hard to get after she questioned him. However, Diana does change the script when she is first to initiate sexual intercourse with Adrian, he states he cannot because his coach told him he could not until he fought his next match. Adrian did deceive her with another girl. Although this hurt Diana, when he comes to apologize to her stating that he really loved her that she meant something to him and the other girl did not she accepts the apology. Diana did not feel so alone with him she felt like “someone”, he made her feel like “someone”. In the end of the movie Adrian is forced to fight Diana although he does not want to, she convinces him that if he does not there is no respect in their relationship that he is a lesser man for avoiding it, and so Adrian does and he gives it his all. Although he looses he still goes to her, even though he feels that she will leave him because he lost. The sexual script applies here because it shows what Crawford (2012) stated that the hero is initially cold, patronizing, sometimes even brutal, he actually loves the heroine and the power of love transforms him to a loving and caring partner. Even though he lost he cared for her above everything even over his credit in boxing. Physical attractiveness is an important factor in romantic relationships and good looks are especially important to men choosing a prospective sexual partner (Crawford, 2012). It is that pretty women in the film are shown as the popular girl that everyone wants. There is even a scene where a pretty girl walks past Adrian and Ray and they cannot stop staring at her while Diana passes by and they do not even notice her. It is clear that the film portrays this perception that women need to be wearing tight fitting clothing and makeup in order for men to notice them. Clearly Adrian in the film chooses the girl over Diana because she is pretty and dresses “like” a girl and wears makeup. However, as Crawford (2012) suggest that this is usually only important during hookups. Hence why Adrian choose Diana in the end because he likes the way he feels about her, how she makes him feel, and as he says “he does not always have to be Romeo”. It is seen that when it comes to romance people may not know that they really want. The beliefs of romance that Diana and the other women in this film do have an impact their lives.
In the study the goal was to explore positive and negative romantic experiences from young women's pre-teen and adolescent years in order to see where they learned about sexual education (Wisniesky, Sieving, & Garwick, 2014). The study included 28 women between the ages of 19 and 29, that self identified themselves as 10 Euro-American, 6 as African American, 6 as Latin, and 6 as American Indian. In the study one-third of participants named their mothers as the first source of information about reproduction. Their fathers were never an initial source of sexual education. One third of the other participants would not disclose sexual information with their parents and instead get their information from school. The other participants learned their education through peers. Half of the participants that learned through their peers had unwanted pregnancies and only a quarter of them attended college, the other quarter had jobs to support their families and the rest had sexually transmitted diseases. The ones who disclosed sexual information with their parents had protected sex only one participant had a sexually transmitted disease but all attended college. Lastly, the participants that learned through school half of the participants attended college; and the other half had stable jobs to support their families. This shows that family influences on romance impact the lives of young
women. This is applicable to Diana and any ethnic minority because without the support of the family or education at school it can greatly impact their lives. Since Diana does not have a mother figure anymore it is clear why she was so ready to have sex with Adrian, not knowing if he had protection or not. Clearly she could not go to her father because he already disproved of her having a relationship with Adrian. Thus she would have to stay in school to fully educate herself on such matters in order for her to have a bright future.