Doing Gender: A Self-Reflection

In the article “Doing Gender” by Candace West and Don H. Zimmerman, the authors claim that gender is performed and reproduced by people in social interactions. They state that “To ‘do’ gender is not always to live up to normative conceptions of femininity or masculinity; it is to engage in behaviour at the risk of gender assessment” (West & Zimmerman 1987, 136). When I consider the various ways in which I “do” gender, I believe that many of my actions are strategically performed in order to guarantee that gender assessment occurs, and that my gender is observed in the way that I want it to be viewed. The component of my own gender performance that I have chosen to critically examine is the concept of physical appearance, and the different ways in which the gendered performance of my appearance has influenced various aspects of my life and social relationships. The ‘within’ components of physical appearance that I will be referencing include gendered presentation via outfit choices, ‘malleable’ facets of appearance such as makeup and hair, and overall presentation of the self within what West and Zimmerman refer to as “a sex category.”

The importance of gender performance to me has gone hand-in-hand with the importance of gender in my life at any given time. In the past, there were periods where I wished to be a boy and grew upset that I did not physically appear to be one. As a very young child, I remember getting upset because my dad was teaching my brother how to ‘shave’ with a fake razor but wasn’t teaching me as well; he ended up letting me ‘shave’ too, because it was the only thing that would calm me down. When going to McDonald’s as a little kid and getting a Happy Meal, I always asked for a ‘boy toy’ because they were more fun, and I would refuse to play with the ‘girl toys’ that were often figurines or other trinkets I considered useless; I received these when I didn’t get a choice, in situations where either the employee saw me and made the decision that I was a girl and would get a girl toy, or where the adult with me didn’t bother to ask me what I wanted. I don’t believe that I ever actually wanted to be a male, but I still understood that there was a divide between boys and girls, and I found it unfair from a young age.

There was also a period during which I identified with ‘she/they’ pronouns. I was never fully sure, but it seemed right to do; I had recently discovered a part of my identity that laid within the LGBTQ+ community, and I already wasn’t dressing or acting like a model of femininity presentation. That was enough proof for me that if I wasn’t going to be a straight woman, neither would I be a cisgender one. This is still a minor point of internal confliction, but I am now in a period where I present myself in a more traditionally feminine fashion and I tell people that I identify with ‘she/her’ pronouns. In a sociological sense, the label of ‘they/them’ pronouns existing in my life brought in what felt like a pressure to not be ‘too’ feminine or present ‘too much’ normative gender behaviour, so that I couldn’t be accused of labelling myself with something that isn’t true. In other words, the existence of the label made me feel that I needed to reproduce label-appropriate behaviours and appearances, in order to reinforce that the label was a part of my identity.

The “doing” of gendered appearance is, to me, a performance that reigns over many arenas of my life. Whether I’m going to class, to work, or out with friends, I insist on getting ready by putting on makeup and fixing my hair, which often makes me late to leave or inconveniences myself or others in a similar way. I will wake up early enough to ‘get ready for the day’, which is a process that has me in the bathroom doing my hair and makeup for nearly 2 hours at a time. This time reduces the time I spend studying, or seeing my friends, or sleeping; and ironically enough, I’m currently struggling to find a concealer that is effective at covering up my dark undereye circles. I will spend money on a new setting powder, or a new hair product, or a new sweater that makes me look good, and then I will wonder if there is enough gas in my car to last me until my next payday. In these ways, I prioritize my gendered appearance over tasks, duties, or other things that would be a more beneficial use of limited resources such as time and money.

It is worth noting that even though I gain an internal sense of reassurance by performing my gender in these ways, it is largely built around the idea of interacting with others, both in whether I will interact with other people and in what they’ll think of me if we do interact. In other words, if I am certain that I won’t leave my bedroom all day, it’s likely that I’ll pull my hair back and forgo wearing makeup. The majority of the time, my appearance is a gendered activity that is performed for other people, and in that performance, I find the reinforcement and affirmation that encourages me to continue performing in this way.

This gendered performance is one that I maintain as often as possible, but it is prioritized in circumstances where I may interact with people I don’t know very well. In the majority of scenarios, the most important part of a potential interaction with an unknown person is that I am viewed as inarguably feminine by the other party throughout our interaction. However, this is not always the case. In some scenarios, I find myself performing a modification of my gendered appearance in order to align myself with the smartest or safest outcome in a given situation.

A recent example that comes to mind is of ‘dressing down’ before taking my car to an autobody shop. In this context, I use ‘dressing down’ to refer to a less feminized appearance achieved by restraining my hair, avoiding wearing makeup, and dressing myself in the clothes that I typically would wear to work on my car. As a female who is familiar with issues faced in male-dominated places like autobody shops, I try to appear as ‘unfeminine’ as possible so that it won’t be assumed that I don’t know what’s going on or that I can be scammed easily due to a lack of knowledge simply because I’m a female. This is one of very few ways that I actively modify my gender performance in the ‘wrong direction’ in order to gain benefit, or at least reduce a risk that goes hand-in-hand with being a woman. However, this adjustment of my perceivable femininity does nothing to change the fact that I am a woman, for better and for worse.

West and Zimmerman say that “Women can be seen as unfeminine, but that does not make them ‘unfemale’.” (West & Zimmerman 1987, 134). Due to my historical relationship with gender and feelings of both envy and confusion towards masculine and androgynous gender identities, I feel that I don’t always have the ability to be viewed as female without femininity simultaneously existing as a support of my ‘femaleness’. Reinforcing gender through my appearance is a controllable way to be sure that I am a woman and to remind myself and others of that fact, and as West and Zimmerman put it, that I have established a “categorical status as female” (West & Zimmerman 1987, 145).

I have stated that my gender performance as a whole is usually overarchingly interactional and done for other people before myself, but there are actually two notable exceptions to that statement. The first is that when I am around other people that I’m fully comfortable with, such as close family members and friends, I do not feel the need to perform in any way. Gender and the performance of it are not factors that have an impact on the personal relationships between myself and those closest to me. In other words, I don’t feel the need to perform for and impress the people who already know me.

The other exception is that occasionally, I will perform gender for myself. If I need to study, I will put up my hair and put on my makeup and dress in something that I think a smart person would wear. If I need to deep clean my house or apartment, I will do my hair and put on makeup, and I’ll dress up in nicer clothes that I deem ‘worthy’ of the tidy, put-together environment I want to create. These gendered appearance-based performances are done for myself as though I’m trying to absorb the personality, intelligence, and values of another person who might present themselves in this manner consistently, instead of just for the accomplishment of a few tasks. It’s done as though I don’t believe that my usual gendered appearance is the appearance of someone who has those traits as well as the drive to apply them to succeed. This is another way in which committing to a label or a kind of persona, even for a short period of time, gives me a sense of being pressured. The modification of my performance in order to achieve certain tasks is a method of utilizing this pressure in a way that is productive.

I find myself pressured to prove that the labels I choose for myself are correct, and to live up to a standard that I choose to think is set by the label or persona that I’m trying to successfully emulate; in actuality, this standard is almost always set by myself. This persona-based behaviour raises several questions for me when viewed through a sociological lens; to what extent does a person need to imitate a persona before they become it? If they imitate it well enough to be viewed as being that persona by the people they interact with, does that make it true? Can one “do” gender badly, or is any effort at gendered activity considered successful in reinforcing an individual’s gender, regardless of how “well” gender is performed?

As Frye says, “We do become what we practice being” (as cited in West & Zimmerman 1987, 146). Gendered activity is a performance that reinforces gender in social interactions, which leads to internal reinforcement and encouragement to continue performing in the same way. Through the course of my life and the different institutions and social relationships that I have been a part of, gender has fluctuated in meaning and importance to my life. Sometimes I don’t think about it at all, and at other times I consider it the most important thing that I could think about. The gendered activity performed by an individual is, in my opinion, a window into their personal values. It can explain how they view their own gender identity, and how their relationship with that identity may or may not be influenced by interactional factors in their life. Gender is an underlying topic in everything we do and whether we address it, it has the power and potential to dictate a wide range of things about an individual. The way we dress, walk, talk, and conduct ourselves are all gendered actions, whether or not we actively consider them to be so or if we think we’re just behaving as ourselves.

References

West, Candace and Don H. Zimmerman. 1987. “Doing Gender.” Gender & Society 1 (2): 125–51. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243287001002002.