P A R T F I V E The Unfi nished Gender Revolution 8833887755 0055 333399--445500 rr11 kkoo..iinndddd 333399 66//2233//0099 88::5533::5500 AAMM 30 Betwixt and Be Tween: Gender Contradictions among Middle Schoolers Barbara J. Risman and Elizabeth Seale This research is based on interviews with middle-school children in a southeast- ern city of the United States. In this paper, we ask whether the gender revolution has freed these children from being constrained by stereotypes. We fi nd that both boys and girls are still punished for going beyond gender expectations, but boys much more so than girls. For girls, participation in traditionally masculine activi- ties, such as sports and academic competition, is now quite acceptable and even encouraged by both parents and peers. We fi nd, indeed, that girls are more likely to tease each other for being too girly than for being a sports star. Girls still feel pressure, however, to be thin and to dress in feminine ways, to “do gender” in their self-presentation. Boys are quickly teased for doing any behavior that is tradition- ally considered feminine. Boys who deviate in any way from traditional masculinity are stigmatized as “gay.” Whereas girls can and do participate in a wide range of activities without being teased, boys consistently avoid activities defi ned as female to avoid peer harassment. Homophobia, at least toward boys, is alive and well in middle school. T oday parents and educators tell children that they can be whatever they want to be. Children are taught that women and men and whites and blacks are equal.1 Changes in gender norms have created opportunities for girls that never before existed. For instance, in school, Title IX has encouraged girls’ participation in athletics. But are boys and girls actually free to construct personal identities that leave behind gen- der stereotypes, even when their parents and teachers encourage them to do so? 340 8833887755 0055 333399--445500 rr11 kkoo..iinndddd 334400 66//2233//0099 88::5533::5500 AAMM Betwixt and Be Tween: Gender Contradictions among Middle Schoolers | 341 How free are middle-school boys and girls to form identities outside the constraining gender expectations that have traditionally disadvantaged girls in the public sphere and repressed boys from exploring their emotional side? We approached this subject by interviewing forty-four middle-school children in a mid-sized southeastern city. They were not yet teenagers but were already adapt- ing to pressures to view the world through the eyes of their peers. Middle school is a time when peers become a crucial reference group. Conformity to group norms becomes central to popularity, fi tting in, and self-image.2 What do the experiences and perceptions of these preadolescent kids (tween-agers) tell us about growing up in contemporary society? How much have their expectations and self-images transcended traditional gender norms? Peers become centrally important as tween-agers face new and complicated situations in which they must negotiate friendships, issues of sexuality, self-image, confl ict, stratifi cation, cliques, and the like. In this so-called “tween” culture, these kids try to make sense of things in their daily lives by using new tools as well as old ones taken from “cultural tool kits.” The lives of tween-agers provide a glimpse into how contemporary defi nitions of race and gender are shaping the next generation, and what new realities the children themselves may be creating at a time when their core identities are developing. Our data suggest that American middle-school children, at least in the mid- sized southeastern city we examined, have adopted an ideal of equality. Nearly all the kids say that men and women are equal, and that race no longer matters, or at least that it shouldn’t. These children have been raised in a society that posits the ideals of gender and racial equality, and the kids seem to accept and believe in those ideals, at least when you scratch the surface of their opinions. But that ideal of equality is not what they experience in their real lives, and at least half of them recognize and identify contradictions between what should be and what is. Despite their acceptance of the rhetoric of gender equality, these tween-agers hold very gender-stereotypical beliefs about boys, although not about girls. Any male gender nonconformity, where boys engage in behaviors or activities tradi- tionally considered female, is taken as evidence that the boy is “gay.” As a result, boys are afraid to cross any gender boundaries for fear of having that stigma attached to them. By contrast, the lives of girls are much less constricted by ste- reotypes about femininity. In fact, girls are more likely to be teased for being “too girly,” than for being a tomboy. Girls still police each other’s behavior, but the rules of femininity that they enforce now seem to focus almost exclusively on clothes, makeup, diet, and bodily presentation. The girls in our study still “do gender,”3 but mostly by how they look. 8833887755 0055 333399--445500 rr11 kkoo..iinndddd 334411 66//2233//0099 88::5533::5500 AAMM 342 | Barbara J. Risman and Elizabeth Seale Research on Gender and Youth Research on how traditional femininity constrains girls is contradictory. Some studies suggest that girls are viewed as less feminine if they participate in sports. Others argue that athleticism is no longer seen as incompatible with femininity and may indeed be part of the “ideal girlhood” package.4 In their study of middle-school cheerleaders, Adams and Bettis also point to fundamental contradictions in the contemporary ideal of girlhood. Traditional feminine characteristics like passivity and docility, they argue, have been replaced by independence, assertiveness, and strength, and participation in sports is con- sidered an “essential component of girl culture today.”5 At the same time, when it comes to popularity, attractiveness trumps all other attributes. Cheerleading, in keeping up with changing gender expectations, has incorporated the new ideals of girlhood, including “confi dence, rationality, risk-taking, athleticism, indepen- dence, and fearlessness.”6 But it continues to attract girls who value feminine looks and who are interested in attracting boys. Becoming a cheerleader is one way to cope with the contradictions of girlhood because it allows girls to be ath- letic and adopt some desired masculine traits, while retaining feminine charac- teristics that the girls enjoy and that make them desirable to boys.7 A few studies address how race and class differences among young women affect their standards of femininity. Bettie found class- and race-specifi c ver- sions of femininity among high-school girls.8 Lower-class white and nonwhite girls adopted a more sexualized style of femininity than white middle-class girls. Bettie suggested that “las chicas,” the Latina girls, adapted a style of femininity that emphasized their ethnicity, preferring darker and more visible makeup and tight-fi tting clothes. Working-class white girls also generally wore more makeup than middle-class students. While school offi cials and middle-class peers com- monly interpreted these bodily expressions as evidence of “looser” sexual morals, Bettie found that these girls were less interested in romantic attachments than outsiders supposed, and that their styles of bodily presentation had more to do with incorporating racial and community markers into their gender displays. For example, working-class white girls expressed resistance to middle-class culture by “dressing down” in torn jeans, whereas Mexican-American girls, feeling that their brown skin was already perceived as a “dressed down” appearance, would dress “up” in an effort to deny any link between color and poverty. Bettie also found that although these girls presented a very sexualized version of femininity, they did not want to or expect to lead traditional lives as at-home mothers and wives and they were in favor of gender equality for adults. Many studies of middle- and high-school girls fi nd strong evidence of pressures to be attractive to boys.9 Lemish fi nds that widely different modes of femininity 8833887755 0055 333399--445500 rr11 kkoo..iinndddd 334422 66//2233//0099 88::5533::5500 AAMM Betwixt and Be Tween: Gender Contradictions among Middle Schoolers | 343 are acceptable among preadolescent girls, as long as the girl is also “pretty.” One of the paradoxes of contemporary girlhood is that there are confusing and con- fl icting messages about what a girl should be like, as well as what type of girl should be (de)valued. There is very little latitude or tolerance for boys to behave in ways that have been traditionally labeled as girlish. Engaging in any traditionally feminine activity, from dancing well, to knitting, to playing the piano opens boys up to being taunted as “gay.” Usually it is boys who tease other boys, but sometimes girls do as well. Researchers suggest that homophobia is not merely antihomo- sexual prejudice. It also reinforces sharp gender divisions through the deploy- ment of fear. This is seen particularly at the high-school level, but some research suggests it is also evident in elementary school and in middle school.10 Thorne found that by the fourth grade “fag” is sometimes used as an insult. But Plum- mer points out that homophobic insults used in grade school do not actually carry sexual meaning.11 Rather they are used to tease boys who are different, including boys viewed as effeminate. The use of homophobic terms as insults, Plummer maintains, increases with adolescence. Eder and her coauthors dis- cuss homophobic insults among middle-school boys as a ritualistic way to assert masculine dominance, as a way to insult and further isolate the lowest on the peer hierarchy, and as a self-defense mechanism in identifying oneself as het- erosexual and normal.12 Their research illustrates the intense anxiety over peer approval and acceptance, and how that fosters bullying in middle school for both girls and boys, although more so for boys. By middle school, any sign of gender boundary crossing by boys is taken as signifying homosexuality, and elic- its strong homophobic teasing. As boys grow older, the gender expectations appear to become more rigid and regulated. Among high-school youth, masculinity is defi ned as toughness: a potential if not an inclination for violence, lack of emotion, and sexual objec- tifi cation of girls. By high school, it is a major insult for a boy to be called gay and the label may be applied to any boy who is different from his male peers in some way, any boy who is considered feminine or unpopular, any boy who is a target for being bullied. Among young people, the word “gay” has acquired such a negative connotation that it is commonly used to describe anything that is bad, undesirable, or “lame.”13 Pascoe (2005) identifi es a “fag” discourse through which high-school boys use the term as an epithet on a daily basis. Any boy, she notes, may be temporarily labeled a “faggot,” and so all boys continually struggle to avoid being stigmatized. With the possibility of being called a “faggot” only an insult away, constant work is required to be suffi ciently masculine to avoid the label. In fact, the primary use of homophobia in policing the activities of boys is not to root out, expose, or 8833887755 0055 333399--445500 rr11 kkoo..iinndddd 334433 66//2233//0099 88::5533::5500 AAMM 344 | Barbara J. Risman and Elizabeth Seale punish potential homosexuals, but rather to regulate gender behavior and nar- rowly channel boys toward accepted activities and away from others. It is not clear whether or how this use of homophobia to police boys’ gender varies according to race. In Pascoe’s (2007) study of “fag” discourse among high- school boys in a working-class California school, she found that behaviors that incur a “fag” stigma for white boys, such as attention to fashion, or dancing with another man, are accepted as normal by nonwhite boys. She suggests that the use of homophobic insults is more common among white than nonwhite teenagers. Froyum studied an underclass African-American summer program in a large East Coast city, however, and found heavy policing of heterosexuality among both boys and girls.14 She argues that these impoverished urban kids use hetero- sexuality to carve out some self-esteem from the only stratifi cation in which they can feel superior to someone else, that they take solace in the fact that “at least they aren’t gay.” Methods The authors and several graduate students interviewed forty-four middle-school students. We asked the children a set of questions, told them stories and solicited their responses, and had them draw pictures and write poems in order to fi nd out what these boys and girls thought about their own lives, their friends, and their interactions with peers at school. We wanted to delve into middle-school students’ expectations around gender, to examine how it feels to grow up in a society that proclaims gender equality, and to encourage “girl power.” We wanted to fi nd out if children today still see limitations based on their sex, or if they really feel they live in a post-feminist world. We asked about family life, friendship, popularity, cliques, pressures to conform to stereotypes around being a boy or a girl, what “girl power” means, and attitudes regarding racial inequality. This was a diverse group of children, mostly white and African-American, and we paid careful attention to whether the answers to our questions differed by race and/or ethnicity. The interviews took place between the fall of 2003 and the summer of 2004. They typically lasted between one and two hours and were recorded. Respon- dents were in the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades and ranged in age from eleven to fourteen. The children were recruited at a racially integrated magnet middle school, a diverse YWCA after-school program and summer camp, and an urban, mostly black Girls’ Club. All attended public middle schools in a mid-sized city in the southeastern United States. Because we did not get data on many top- ics of interest from two of the middle schoolers, we reduced our sample to be 8833887755 0055 333399--445500 rr11 kkoo..iinndddd 334444 66//2233//0099 88::5533::5500 AAMM Betwixt and Be Tween: Gender Contradictions among Middle Schoolers | 345 discussed here to forty-two. The pseudonyms and specifi c demographic infor- mation for each student are listed in a chart in the appendix. Most were middle class, although a few were from working-class or upper middle-class professional families. We paid careful attention to any racial differences in the responses. But having only four nonwhite boys, two of whom were black, hampered our ability to examine racial or ethnic differences among boys. We hoped to learn something about what it is like to grow up in today’s world. Interviewers asked the children many questions. How are you similar to other boys/girls? How are you different from other girls/boys? We also asked about likes and dislikes, activities, friendship groups, cliques at school, and favorite subjects. Many of our questions dealt specifi cally with the children’s perceptions of gender. What does it mean when someone is called a “girly-girl”? What does it mean when a girl is called a tomboy? Is there a word (like “girly” for prissy girls) that refers to boys who are really tough or macho? Is there a word for a boy who is quiet and thoughtful and likes to do arts and crafts, one who likes the kinds of activities that girls more often like to do? Using a hypothetical scenario to draw them out, we asked students to describe what their lives would be like as the opposite sex. We asked: “If an alien with supernatural powers came into your bedroom one night and turned you into a boy/girl, how would your life be different in the morning?” We also asked: “How would your life be different if an alien made you gay?” We asked students to write a poem or paragraph beginning with “If I were a boy/girl . . .” If they preferred they could draw a picture elaborating on that theme. We also explored their acceptance of nontraditional gender behavior by using vignettes and asking how they or their peers would react to a person who crossed a gender boundary. To understand the boundary of female behavior, we used this hypothetical story: “Pretend for a moment that there is a girl in your grade named Jasmine. Jasmine is very athletic and loves competition. She decides that she wants to start an all-girls football club at your school. She places posters all over student lockers and the hallways promoting the girl’s club and asking for players. Then she approaches the principal and asks if she can start the team.” For male gender non- conformity, we constructed this story: “Imagine that there is a boy in your grade named M arcus. He loves to dance. He has taken gymnastics since he was little, and is very good. Now that he is older, he wants to be a cheerleader. He knows that [Name of University] has male cheerleaders and he wants to join that squad when he goes to college.” Students who seemed mature enough were asked about homosexuality, including how they and their peers would react to a gay student. Due to time constraints, variations in maturity levels, and the occasional tape malfunction, we do not have responses to all of these questions from every 8833887755 0055 333399--445500 rr11 kkoo..iinndddd 334455 66//2233//0099 88::5533::5500 AAMM 346 | Barbara J. Risman and Elizabeth Seale student. Although we do have a wealth of information from almost every student to utilize for analysis, with such open-ended qualitative data it is very challenging to compare responses across kids for interpretation. There were several limitations to the methods we employed. Because we did not directly observe interactions between the middle schoolers, we had to rely on what they told us, and how they explained their thoughts on boys, girls, gender non- conformity, gender expectations, homosexuality, heterosexuality, and life in general. Nonetheless, we believe the method is useful because the thoughts and feelings of these preadolescents help us understand how they experience and react to peer pressure. Moreover, in one-on-one interviews, children and adults may reveal more about their thoughts and feelings than they would if others were present. Contradictions and Equality Rhetoric When we asked these students questions about gender or race, their responses indicated that most have assimilated both the feminist-inspired ideology that women and men are equal and the post-civil rights ideology that all races are equal. Nine out of twelve male students and seventeen of twenty-two female students (for whom we have appropriate data) professed some belief in gender equality. For example, Molly fi nished the phrase “If I were a boy” in a poem that read: “If I were a boy, / Nothing should be different, / Because all people are equal.” For the same exercise, another student, Marney, wrote that “I think I would be treated mainly the same by parents, friends, teachers.” Brady similarly argued that “all people should be treated the same,” although he felt life would be “very freaky” if he were turned into a girl. Micah told us that girl power means that girls now have every right that men do. The kids appeared to believe that males and females either were equal in reality or ought to be. Despite this equality rhetoric, there were serious inconsistencies in their responses. For example, when the kids answered questions about what would happen if they were turned into the opposite sex, most expressed a belief that gender stereotypes were based in biology, despite earlier declarations that “we are all the same.” With these questions, we found that many kids were well aware of the consequences for not conforming to gender norms. This contradiction between the rhetoric of equality and more experience- biased appraisals of gender inequality was further revealed when we asked the children to place cards with occupations written on them under the categories “men,” “women,” and “both.” They were fi rst asked to place their cards according to whether men or women are more likely to hold each job, and afterward accord- ing to how they think it should be. This activity showed us whether students felt 8833887755 0055 333399--445500 rr11 kkoo..iinndddd 334466 66//2233//0099 88::5533::5511 AAMM Betwixt and Be Tween: Gender Contradictions among Middle Schoolers | 347 there was occupational segregation by sex and how they judged it. None of the boys and only fi ve out of twenty-three girls thought that men and women were equally distributed among all occupations. Six of twelve boys and ten of twenty- two girls told us that all occupations should be distributed equally among men and women. The others, who believed gender segregation was appropriate, usu- ally explained that men and women were different. In most cases, when asked how it should be versus how it really is, students put more occupations under the category of “both.” Nurse, secretary, and librarian were commonly thought to be women’s jobs, whereas police offi cer, fi refi ghter, mechanic, and engineer were often seen as men’s jobs. Sixteen out of thirty-four students expressed the belief that men and women were or should be “equal” and that girls and women should be able to do anything they want. These children, even those consistently committed to equality in theory, how- ever, often expressed contradictory views in other parts of the interview, display- ing a belief in the essential differences between boys and girls or holding their peers to gendered expectations. In many cases, advances in ideology were not consistently guiding reported behavior. Between Tomboy and Girly-Girl We asked boys and girls to answer questions about what girly-girls and tomboys are like, how girls think they are similar to and different from other girls, and what boys thought would be different if they were “turned into a girl.” Nearly all the students could describe a typical girly-girl and a tomboy. Many boys and girls alike defi ned girly-girls as preoccupied with appearances, in con- trast to tomboys. One female student, Kay, described girly-girls in these terms: “ ‘Oh my gosh!’ totally into stuff like that. Always having their hair, you know, down like that, you know, kind of prissy. Want to wear high-heeled shoes all the time. Laughing and fl irting and stuff like that.” Marney, who stated that she did not consider herself a girly-girl, responded that “they’re afraid to get dirty, you’re obsessed with your hair, you like to wear makeup a lot.” Kay indicated that girly-girl meant being obsessed with boys or talking about boys. Although this description was less common than references to appearance in characterizing girly-girls, romance-centered behavior (e.g., being “boy-crazy” or obsessed with boys, fl irting, talking about boys, or gossiping about relationships) was mentioned by four girls and two boys as characterizing “girly-girls.” Several more mentioned such behavior when discussing “typical” girls in general. Nearly 80 percent of those who responded provided what we interpret as a “negative” description of a girly-girl, and the rest gave neutral responses. Of the 8833887755 0055 333399--445500 rr11 kkoo..iinndddd 334477 66//2233//0099 88::5533::5511 AAMM 348 | Barbara J. Risman and Elizabeth Seale nine males, fi ve gave negative descriptions and four gave neutral descriptions of girly girls. A neutral response, for instance, might refer to girly-girls as wearing pink often, without indicating that wearing a lot of pink is objectionable. There was not a single overtly positive defi nition of a girly-girl. No one told us, for instance, that girly-girls are kind, looked up to, or even desirable to boys. We did not count the suggestion that girly-girls are the most popular as being positive in itself, because such comments were often paired with expressions of disdain for the “popular” kids. Common descriptions of girly-girls included fear of getting dirty, breaking a nail, or getting sweaty. Seven girls and two boys used the word “prissy.” Samantha suggested that a girly-girl is “prissy,” wears makeup everyday, and is obsessed with hair. She mimics such a person: “ ‘Oh my gosh, it has to be perfect. I have to put hairspray in it.’ Glitter, gel, whatever. Like, always running around screaming [high-pitched], ‘Oh my God, a spider! Oh my gosh, my nail broke!’ Just little things that are like your nail breaking. Crying over it or something. That’s a girly-girl.” Girls were, overall, more censorious, but boys sometimes described girly-girls in a similarly contemptuous fashion. With a disgusted expression on his face, Jason told his interviewer that, “To me, it means makeup and a whole lot of other girlie perfumes and . . . l ipstick and mascara and eye shadow and other makeup that they put on that I don’t even want to mention.” At the same time, when researchers asked explicitly whether “being a girly-girl is a good or bad thing” the kids were divided. Karlin, for example, initially por- trayed girly-girls in a contemptuous fashion, saying that they are girls who would say, “ ‘Guys are better. I don’t do sports. I might get my shoes wet.’ Or like, ‘I can’t kick a ball. I try to look good but I don’t have any specifi c talent.’ ” But when asked directly whether being a girly-girl is a bad or good thing, her response was that it depends on the person. If they are selfi sh, that is bad, but if this is just how they were brought up, then “it’s fi ne.” Several kids indicated that being girly made a girl popular, whereas others (and sometimes even the same respondents) suggested that it was annoying, or that they themselves did not like these people. Mona talked about the “bad preps”—girls who dye their hair blonde, wear too much makeup, wear revealing clothes, and draw their eyebrows in after waxing them. She reported that she and her friends despise this group and frequently make jokes about them. But in other parts of the interview she associated girl preps with playing a lot of sports. Girly-girls were often defi ned in the abstract as girls who do not play sports, but in actual references to peers, being a girly-girl and playing sports were not always incompatible. 8833887755 0055 333399--445500 rr11 kkoo..iinndddd 334488 66//2233//0099 88::5533::5511 AAMM