Blog 3: Question draft 2 & Article free write

At the suggestions of my peers, I have revised my critical question:

How do American gender roles affect young people?

I believe this question fits all of the criteria for a critical question. It is personally meaningful to me, and it affects the youth in our society. There are many answers to this question. My classmates left me 2 different examples on my peer-review paper, and I have several other ideas for answering it as well. I have several sub-questions already devised, such as how the gender roles for youth today are different from how they were, say, 50 years ago. Originally my question had asked about the Midwest specifically, but my classmates suggested that I broaden the topic to all of America, so I believe this fits the scope criteria. I have a personal belief already of how this question can be answered, but I know that if I look at it from other perspectives and ask questions of other people with different opinions, I will be able to come up with many different answers to this question.


The artifact I am thinking about using for my first project is my blue baby blanket. It is small, barely covering my legs, even when I am only five feet and six inches tall. The faded pastel-blue fabric has been with me since the day I came home from the hospital with my mother. From the time we are born, we face gendered expectations. Today, baby girls are swaddled in pink, and boys in blue. Before World War II, however, it was the opposite way around; the colors were reversed after the pink markings signifying homosexuals during the holocaust caused society to associate pink with femininity. The idea of colors having a specific gender associated with them is funny, since, as this example shows, our perceptions of the genders of colors are easily changed. In my case, where my birth was heralded with "It's a Girl!" balloons, I find it interesting that the baby blanket I have held onto for all these years is blue. Since I was young I have never worn feminine clothing or been dressed in pink. I was raised in a masculine gender role from infancy, and so it was no surprise to my family when I came out as transgender and began the process of becoming male. I think that the gender role I was raised in had a large part in the formation of my gender identity, and the blue baby blanket is symbolic of that. For a lot of people that defy gender norms, they have some sort of physical object that is very symbolic of their identity: a tomboy's favorite snapback, a flamboyant boy's colorful and cutesy car, etc. I think I will use my baby blanket since it is something that always reminds me of my masculine identity and reminds me that gender is not set in stone.