Photo Assignment

I decided to take a picture of the place I work because ever since I started I have noticed the social issue of how the store is set up.  I work at Once Upon a Child and have experienced many situations where parents have made comments to their kids about how they have to follow the gender norms and can’t wear certain things or colors just because of their sex.  Often times we have children come in that want a certain toy and the parents will not allow them to get it just because it is not “supposed” to be a toy that they would play with.  For example, boys will come in and often times want a Barbie or doll and their parents say no because it is a toy for girls or will say “do you want to be like a girl?”  Another thing that I have noticed since working there is that we only have girl workers.  That is not necessarily a bad thing about the business but it is just more proof that there is a division between men based norms as far as what job they have and women based job norms.  The social norms for men and women start from a young age and are everywhere influencing our youth through popular culture and everyday norms.

            The picture that I took shows how our culture relies heavily on gender norms and how they begin to influence us at such a young age.  The store is divided into a girl section and a boy section.  The signs we use to distinguish these sections are photos of children with either pink/purple or blue backgrounds; pink/purple for girls and blue for boys.  In the photos of our youngest babies the only way you can tell the gender of the child is by the color of the background.  Also, our shoes, which you can see in the far right side of the photo, are labeled with either a pink shoe for the girl’s or a blue shoe for the boy’s.  I think it is a problem that our society is set up in such a way and children, especially, should have the choice to be whoever they want to be and they should not be expected to like certain things over others just because of their gender.