Liberty Jean Weston was still in her uniform when she arrived at the football team's practise session that Friday afternoon. Cheerleading drills had wound down early, and she had made her way directly to the football field instead of the changing rooms. She needed to catch Curt before he hit the locker room himself, need here being more representative of the strength of her motivation than of any actual necessity. She had his phone number and knew where he lived; what she lacked was patience. She often claimed to need instead of want, and was not used to taking no for answer. She came from an affluent family raised by a weak-willed father and a mother whose ambition was often misguided by pride. Her sense of altruism wasn't lacking, per se, but it was well buried beneath the twin dogs of haughtiness and entitlement.…
In Mark Edmundsons article “do sports build character or damage it?” Edmundson makes a very good case that supports his idea that sports can build character. He also gives good reasons as to why some people think that sports just breed brutality, and are a diversion from the business of education. Sports are a complex issue, and this article proves it is clear that we as a culture are unsure how to think about them. Edmundson goes on to tell about when he was a young man in high school, and his first year playing football. Football is a dangerous sport, and he tells of how many people get injured, whether its from concussions, broken bones, or…
“Alright listen, we may not have won and we may not have been the best team out there today, but I’ll be damned if we didn’t play our hearts out every last minute of that game,” our captain said. “That’s all Day would have asked for and I say we did that pretty damn well.”…
In Dorothy Allison’s novel Bastard Out of Carolina, the main character Bone suffers intense traumas that force her to mature far too quickly. The other women of the Boatwright family, have experiences similar traumas throughout their lives and have also suffered the consequences. The events that the Boatwright women have dealt with have led them to take on the roles of both caregiver and breadwinner for their families. These challenges also forced them to subvert the traditional gender roles of the mid-20th century American South by becoming rough and tough in opposition to the soft femininity that was expected from ladies. The women of the Boatwright family use subversion of gender roles to seize power…
“You sissy! Stop being such a girl! What are you afraid of?” These condescending remarks bounced through out my mind as I looked over the edge of a 30 foot cliff into the cold water. Soon the loud voice of my brother yelled at me from bellow-- “Just Jump.” I knew that I was going to live but I was held back by the harsh remarked thrown at me from my friend. I couldn’t comprehend what they were saying. Girls were afraid? That couldn’t be true, women had jumped off before I had. The misconception that the word “girl” is a symbol of weakness and fear, can only be labeled as gender bias. Equally so, examples of gender bias can be found in in the book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. From Scout and Mayela to the missionary society , gender bias sticks out as one of the large underling concept in this book.…
Elders in a family often tell youngsters stories of their past. Moreover, Steven Zeitlin, Amy Kotkin, and Holly Cutting Baker, assert in “Family Stories” that “Family stories are usually based on real incidents which become embellished over the years” (10). These stories tend to change as people age and experience various situations. Canfield’s short story “Sex Education” depicts Aunt Minnie, a woman who faced a traumatic sexual experience as a teenager, telling her story to an audience of younger generations at three different stages of her life; each account is told in a different manner as she experiences various situations that involve sexuality, namely experiences with her son Jake. Through the plot’s development of Aunt Minnie differently telling a terrifying experience thrice as time passes, and characterizing her differently, from immature to serene, as she goes through life, Canfield conveys the theme that time and experience may change one’s story.…
When I stood at the bottom I did not think I could make it. half way up, I knew that I could not make it. Now, standing at the top, I look behind me at the amazing challenge that I have just conquered. Not only is the hill at Eau Claire an infamous feat that every student must traverse, but it is also a metaphor for every hardship that has entered into my life. One hardship I have faced, was my sports injuries during high school. My junior year track season started off being the best experience i’ve had. Unfortunately, this time was cut short. I ripped a ligament in my leg ending my entire spring season. I was angry at the world asking, “why me”. However, I knew I still had a team depending on me. Day in, and day out, I would show up to practice…
In the story, “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid, the idea and tone come from a mother, who raises her child on her own past experiences and control of being a woman in her time and tradition, she is a guide to her own daughter in this changed world, to discipline her daughters new ways and views on society and their culture on how it used to be. The author shows in the story how she thinks the women should dress, behave and the jobs they should do.…
The main character in the story is Dina. She is an African American college student who is attending a prestigious university. Her character contributes to the theme in the sense that she has “denied” her heritage and upbringing by breaking the mold of what might have expected of her to accomplish as a young adult. While it is an inaccurate and ignorant stereotype to assume one is “selling out” or acting outside of their race for choosing to become educated and show an interest in learning, it is a stereotype that definitely exists. One of the places in the story that this is apparent is in her recollection of the trip to the grocery store. She recounts how unacceptable it was in her neighborhood to be seen with a book that one may be reading for simple pleasure as opposed obligation for school. She grew up in a poverty stricken neighborhood where going to a place like Yale was not something that happened to most of the youth brought up there. The theme of denial continues with her resistance to submit to her lesbianism. It’s very apparent that she has a deep seeded resentment of men that started with her father who treated her mother very poorly, and in her own words says, “My mother had died slowly. At the hospital, they'd said it was kidney failure, but I knew that, in the end, it was my father. He made her scared to live in her own home, until she was finally driven away from it in an ambulance.” Her disapproval of men in general also appears in the way that she speaks of her friend Heidi’s…
Imagine a young puritan girl out in the dark woods with her friends and a slave; dancing joyously around a warm pot when suddenly, everyone hears an angry shout and most scatter. Abigail, a group of other puritan girls and Tituba a slave danced in the woods, participating in hoodoo when Abigail’s uncle, one of the other girls dancing in the woods father, caught them and yelled. When the girls were caught by Parris, most scattered, but a couple fell faint, including Betty, Parris’ daughter. With two Puritan…
Mother in the both story “playing to win” and “Boys and Girls” doesn’t support their daughter when they wish to be more masculine than feminine. For example, the protagonist in the “Boys and Girls” prefers to help her father than to help her mother in the kitchen. However, because narrator’s mother has strong idea about indoor and outdoor territoriality, her mother thinks it’s wrong for a girl to work outside. “I just get my back turned and she runs off. It’s not like I have a girl in the family at all”. Even though there are two kids in the house the narrator’s mother only think of the narrator to help her in the house because she’s the only girl. Also In the “playing to win” the narrator disapproves of her daughter playing sports. She sates “my daughter is an athlete. Nowadays, this statement won’t strike many parents as unusual, but it does me.” This illustrates that her daughter doesn’t fit into society’s idea about women.…
In contrast, the short story “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid suggests that women are sentenced to patriarchy as a result of socially constructed gender stereotypes. She criticizes the idealized patriarchal norms and pressures which overshadow the lives of women. Starting early on in their childhood, little girls are explicitly exposed to the pressures and expectations of how they should live. As a result of gender stereotypes, young girls are brainwashed to believe that their role as a woman is a domestic homemaker and that they should always be kempt and maintain a feminine outer appearance. Kincaid ultimately criticizes how women and girls are trapped under a system of patriarchy that can not be erased.…
In the text, Gender and Women’s Studies in Canada by Margaret Hobbs and Carla Rice, is a story called, X: A Fabulous Child’s Story by Lois Gould. The main character in this story is not assigned a specific gender, so growing up, the parents of X gave their child both female and male characterized items to wear, play with, and watch. By doing this, X’s parents allowed X to expand and easily discover what it is that X truly is passionate about without the barriers of social constructs. “X was the president of student council. X had won first prize in the talent show, and second prize in the art show, and honourable mention in the science fair, and six athletic events on field day” (168). This story helped me understand that feminism benefits…
Good Evening Mr. Forrest, this is Sean Anderson. I wanted to send this report involving the girl's basketball coach from Northeast Middle School. Me and Jason Collins were the officials at West Creek Middle School vs Northeast Middle School. The games started at 4:45. During the second game, which was the girl's basketball game, my partner Jason Collins made a ruling against Northeast in the 4th quarter. The girl's head coach did not like the ruling and venting her frustrations toward us. She screamed" her player was not there for the foul". While I was administering the free throws I heard her screaming and gave her the stop sign signal and told her ok that's enough. I didn't administer no technical foul even though she continue…
To begin with, she gives a brief history of two parents, Susan and Rob who sent an e-mail to parents of their son’s classmates in preschool. It says “Alex has been gender fluid for as long as we can remember, and at the moment he is equally passionate about and identified with soccer players and princesses, superheroes and ballerinas (not to mention lava and unicorns, dinosaurs and glitter rainbows).” they explained that Alex had recently become inconsolable about his parents’ ban on wearing dresses beyond dress-up time (Padawer, 1). When Alex was 4, he pronounced himself “a boy and a girl,” but in the two years since, he has been fairly clear that he is simply a boy who sometimes likes to dress and play in conventionally feminine ways. Some days at home he wears dresses, paints his fingernails and plays with dolls; other days, he roughhouses, rams his toys together or pretends to be Spider-man. Even his movements ricochet between parodies of gender: on days he puts on a dress, he is graceful, almost dancerlike, and his sentences rise in pitch at the end, on days he opts for only “boy” wear, he heads off with a little swagger. Of course, had Alex been a girl who sometimes dressed or played in boyish ways, no e-mail to parents would have been necessary; no one would…