Representation and Resistance

We live in a society that is dominated by imposed representations that are based on people’s identity. Take gender for instance. Media representations are constantly telling us what is ‘normal’ based on our gender. The problem lies when individuals start to believe and live by these prescribed roles. I too, have experience these gender biases in my post secondary education. As a visual arts major, I had the option of taking several forms of visual arts including painting, drawing, print making and metal/wood working. During the four years of my undergrad I found that these different categories of visual arts were highly gendered. Painting for instance, was highly dominated by women as it was seen as a more feminine art form. Metal/wood working however, was much more male dominated as the heavy lifting, welding, and working with heavy machinery such as bandsaws, was seen as very masculine. The problem here was not that the school was not allowing students to take classes that may not fit with their prescribed gender, but that students, constantly seeing these gender norms in society, were choosing not to take them because ‘it was weird for a woman to learn how to weld’ or ‘painting class was too feminine’ for a man to take. In this weeks film, Reel Injun, representations of Indigenous people in popular culture impacted the way they saw themselves; they started to believe they were the way they were being represented. Similarly, gender representations in the media impact the way males and females see themselves and their capabilities. This was definitely true in my secondary schooling experience. As discussed in Stack and Kelly’s article, Popular Media, Education, and Resistance, educational systems both perpetuate and allow for the resistance of these social inequalities. My resistance of the gendered education I experience was done in the educational institution itself, by taking the classes that were generally male dominated and ‘masculine’. This allowed me to both break the stereotypes of normative gender roles as well as prove to myself that portrayals of women in the media do not define who I am as a woman and what I am capable of doing.