Femininty vs. Gender

Long hair, make-up, dresses, the color pink. These are typically the ideas that come to mind when one thinks of typically "feminine" qualities in a woman. But femininity does not define a woman, nor her gender. This is the idea outlined in one of our sources, "Media, Minorities, and Meaning" by Debra Merskin (2011). Merskin coins "gender" as a euphemism for the sex of the human being often intended to emphasize the social and cultural, as opposed to the biological, distinction between the sexes. (2011) Merskin makes the claim that people often define a woman's "gender" by her feminine traits. This is wrong because gender is the biological differences that are physiologically different from men. Femininity refers to the distinct traits that society believes a woman should possess. If women, especially women in the media, do not exhibit stereotypical feminine traits, then they are harshly criticized and scrutinized for it and can even have their own biological sex put into question.

I am not surprised by these findings because society puts such a heavy burden on women to be "perfect" and by "perfect" it means they absolutely need to possess feminine traits in order for them to not have their own sexuality questioned. This is seen all the time on movies and on television. For example, talk show host Wendy Williams has always had her gender questioned because she is a woman with strong physical features that resemble those of a man. She has a deeper voice, a larger build, and a sharp jawline. These supposed "masculine" traits forces people to ask the question if whether or not she was biologically born a woman because of what society has instilled in people's minds as to what is respectively masculine and feminine.

It will be interesting to see how this phenomenon works with minorities in the media. Females like Wendy Williams, who also represents the African American minority on television, whose femininity is constantly scrutinized have an even larger disadvantage in the media because they are also in racial minorities as well as being a woman possessing ambiguous feminine traits.