In the middle of the living room floor, there is a box. It really shouldn't be there; I keep meaning to throw it away, but I tend to forget when I'm standing up. There is bubblewrap overflowing from the top. I feel guilty when I look at it for too long. It contained the Wii U that I bought on impulse this weekend with money I was supposed to be saving. Maybe I am leaving it there to remind me of my mistake. Or maybe it is just pure laziness.
When I showered this morning, all I could think about was waffles. I didn't want to forget my waffles in the toaster like I did yesterday morning. I hate leaving my breakfast because I was in too much of a rush to get out the door. Those were my waffles that I carefully toasted twice, and I didn't even get to enjoy them. My every thought was consumed with shampoo suds and the highly focused desire for carbs.
Falling asleep last night was hard for me. I could hear my roommate Nash in his bedroom across the hall quietly talking to Emma on the phone. Normally I can fall asleep even if he is loudly laughing and stomping around, but knowing he was talking to his fiancee made me lonely. My best friend in the world has someone who he cares more for than I. I couldn't sink into unconsciousness until after his whispered, "Love you, too; good night."
School has never been something I've enjoyed. Perhaps the closest I have come to true enjoyment of a class was the ballroom dance course I took in high school. I felt uncomfortable dancing around my peers, but the way my body moved to the music once I had learned the steps sent a thrill through me that satisfied my synesthesia and made my hair stand on end. I took the class again, but the thrill was never quite the same the second time around.
I feel like I fight a lot with Rinne, the resident female in our apartment. We argue ceaselessly about the dumbest of things. Last night we argued about the Wii sensor bar atop the TV. If she would just reach around the tv instead of over it, I pleaded, it wouldn't fall off and require re-taping. She snapped that it took too much effort to lean around the flatscreen, which I hardly believe since that's always how I do it. She left in a huff. When I greeted her this afternoon, she did not reply.
My stomach is in a small knot right now. I am dreading going to work tonight. It has been three days since my last shift, so I am sure the cat urine-soaked "pee-disks" have been cleaned. Still I am afraid that the precariously-stacked games still remain at my workstation with a pair of blue rubber gloves and a bottle of disinfectant spray. I love my job, but how does one get cat pee on 56 video games anyways?
I am still not used to the neighborhood that my apartment complex is in. We have been here almost 3 weeks, but I still get lost just trying to reach the highway 2 blocks away. My family is almost half an hour away. The only people I know are Nash and Rinne, and Rob from apartment 255, who admired Nash's car the night the fire alarm was pulled and we all had to stand in the parking lot for over an hour. It is a place of anxiety for now, until I can figure out how the winding streets connect and memorize the placement of the too-many speed bumps.
In what ways does Midwestern culture shape the gendered expectations and identities of young people?
If you really think about it, the gender binary is a strange topic that people automatically accept without ever thinking about it. People rarely question why women are supposed to be "ladylike," or men are supposed to be "manly." If you asked them to explain why these gender roles exist, you would probably get a response like, "That's just how it is," or, "Because men are the dominant gender," or something else that does not fully explain the reason behind this trend. If an alien race with no concept of gender roles asked you why women must be feminine and men must be masculine, would you be able to answer? With the current trends of increased visibility in the LGBT community, it is important that people think about the gender binary system in America. For us folks living in the Midwest, studying how our culture influences our ideas on gender can help bring us closer to understanding the identities and experiences of gender-nonconforming individuals.
This is a very personal question for me as a gender-nonconforming individual who has to deal with all sorts of comments and critiques from both strangers and people I have know for years. Americans, particularly in the Midwest, have expectations about how a person behaves based solely on their gender presentation. For example, if someone with long hair is wearing a dress and jewelry, they are perceived as being female and are held to certain standards of behavior (such as being "ladylike," eg. taking up less space in public areas, being quiet when men are speaking, extreme levels of modesty and humility, etc). Projected gendered expectations onto strangers based solely on their appearance is a behavior rooted deeply in our culture and is experienced by everyone in Midwestern America.
For the first project of this course, I have plenty of experience with projected gendered expectations and gender roles with my family and peers. For the second project, I might interview other gender-nonconforming individuals (transgender students on campus, nonbinary people in my social group, etc) who may share their experiences with being genderqueer in a society interested solely in gender binaries. For the third project, I might make a Youtube video asking young parents about why they have gender roles for their infant children, or a video asking gender-conforming individuals to engage in behaviors that are typically not encouraged for their particular gender (such as hyper-masculine men wearing makeup and feminine clothing, or hyper-feminine women portraying aggressive/dominant roles around men to see their reactions).
I don't yet fully understand the specifics of projects 2 and 3, but from what I do understand about them, I believe that this topic will be possible for me to pursue. I know that I have several options that I could pursue for the multimodal text, and quite a few people in mind that I could interview for the ethnography project. My only concern is if my question is narrow enough. It feels narrow enough to me, but I am not the teacher so my opinion is irrelevant. Other than that, I am very excited to begin these projects to explore the gender-binary culture of the Midwest.
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