Gender and body image - Looking at women and men through the life course.

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Miranda Hazell                    Psychology and Sociology

Gender and body image

Looking at women and men through the life course.

        Throughout our lives we are governed by how we look and act according to society. One of the main leaders throughout history has been which sex a person belongs to. This governs our every aspect in life from a baby, through to adulthood.

Opinion changes constantly to whether children should live a certain way and especially act certain ways at different ages and stages throughout life. We are socially constructed from the start of our lives, if a baby wears blue or pink determines societys view of how to treat the child and most importantly whether it is male of female.

We are judged in our abilities and skills just by from which sex we belong to. It is one of the most influential factors in life, being male or female.

        I will be looking at the perceived differences between males and female body image and actions throughout the life cycle, from birth through to old age.

One of the first things we notice about a person is which sex they belong to. Today due to changes in societies impressions and opinions on sex and sex orientation, it is generally possible to immediately determine the sex of a person that gives out first impressions and places stereotypes. Every culture distinguishes between male and females and this accompanied by beliefs and psychological and physical behaviours belonging to each sex. It is not a recent act to distinguish differences between the sexes. In pre-industrial Britain children were sent off to work at an early age between 6-7. They were kept apart and designated a job. At this age physicality’s of gender differences would not be differentiated because of no puberty growth in the children causing no differences in physical ability and strength yet girls would be sent to become servants while boys would be trained to be apprentices. In the sixteenth century boys were increasingly sent to boarding school, while girls were mainly kept at home, any small amount of girls who were sent to boarding school were trained for domesticity.  Their father or their masters controlled any girls in a family, like an ownership. The males possessed them. Any money that was made was not their own to keep but passed on to their masters or their family for their parents personal use or placed back into the family for food and supplies. Both boys and girls were used for their bodies yet in completely different ways. In the early nineteenth century working class children would be used in working class factories for cheap labour. Boys would follow the men with physical work while girls were sold for prostitution. Girls where not seen to have many uses apart from their bodies or domesticity uses. This treatment of girls continued through the years in society.

Towards the First World War girls were not sold for such explicit reasons but used in different ways (Humphries 1977). Families became dependent on the wages of their siblings. With men called to war the children would work to help the families upkeep. Girls would be expected to help their mothers with domestic tasks and to take the role of second mother for their younger siblings. While boys and young men where used for their physical abilities.

By the twentieth century psychologists identified that childhood was a vital part of a persons identity. Freud dedicated his life to the study of people and the affect of childhood on their adult lives. Children could be scared for life because of their childhoods. This could explain judgements of people on sex opinions later in lives because of their upbringings, which had forced the stereo types into society.

Post war brought the decline of infant mortality and the decline in birth rate. Children where not therefore depended upon for their help with the families income. Adults began to see children as pleasurable company. Children soon became the main focus of life.

        The division of home from the workplace resulted in an isolation of women and children. The home in middle-class households represented a haven from the competition of the market place and from the public world.  Men would stay in the workplace and women and children were kept ‘confined’ and ‘protected’ in the home. This soon broadens from the middle-class household to the working class home. This image of the western family soon became the model norm of the western societies, which influenced many people throughout their lives.

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Female and male children are segregated and classed as different, which has continued up to the present day. From birth they are given different clothes and toys and are subjected to socialisation. Children were even segregated at school, boys may have been sent to a different school than girls and be taught different curricula. Children now share schooling and have moved closer together in the curricula but in many other ways they are treated differently. Although today boys and girls may study the same curriculum, some subjects are still labelled as being male or female subjects.  

Increasing anxieties ...

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