This semester I'm taking a linguistics class entitled "Language and Gender". We're exploring gender stereotypes, assumptions, and expectations (and/or lack thereof) as manifested through language. It's a pretty interesting, engaging topic for me, and lately I've noticed three very interesting things about myself as a result. One is explicitly linguistic, the other two are more personality/mindset-based, two are things I know about myself already, but have been struck by recently, and one is really kind of surprising.
I'll start with the personality-based, already-known point first. I get crushes on girls. I don't want romantic or sexual relationships with girls, although I appreciate the female form. These crushes are more of the kind in which I think someone is just SO cool, or pretty, or interesting. I admire girls, and want to be like them. I have a crush on Amy Adams (the purse girl from Season One of The Office, the princess from Enchanted), and a local radio dj personality, and other people around me. I got a bit of a crush on Marilyn Monroe last week, which I kind of wrote about a few posts ago. I want to be these women. There's something I admire/find striking/want to understand better about these people, and it comes out as an expression of adoration and interest. I don't get crushes on boys in quite the same way (though I'll save that thought for a later post), and I think that this is interesting to observe. Even about with male movie stars, I just don't get as enthusiastic about them, or notice as many of them, as I do with their female counterparts.
Number dos: the linguistic-based, already-known point. I've found lately that I talk and think more within the male stereotype lately than within the female stereotype. Maybe not more, but in ways that are surprising to me. The 'Difference Theory' that Deborah Tannen preaches says, essentially, that boys and girls grow up in different 'sub-cultures'. Different worlds from which they learn to relate to one another. Girls look straight at each other when talking, boys seldom make eye contact with one another; boys view life as being one-up or one-down on everyone they come into contact with, while girls want to be equal and emphasis sameness; etc, etc. Several aspects of this have struck me as the opposite for me in the way I communicate lately. ***** My best solution for this is that i've spent the better part of my adult life learning about communication and trying to improve the way I communicate with others, especially with men, and especially with my male significant others. So maybe I've picked up these manners of talking as a way to improve the way I related to men? The funny thing is that I can see where the roles have actually reversed in some relationships, so that I've communicated in the "masculine" way at times, while my partner used "feminine" tactics in communicating with me! *****
But the third point that I'm writing about is the most surprising and most recent one for me. Tonight I watched Quantum of Solace, and SOOOO enjoyed it. I've seen James Bond movies before. They were ok. I can't really recall much about them except the Ice Palace in one of them that was pretty cool, and that Halle Berry was a Bond girl, I think in the same movie. And I get a few of the spoofs from Austin Powers, but I couldn't tell you who was being spoofed or from which movie. But, Man! I loved QoS tonight! All the chase scenes and destruction of rooms and leaping off of roofs and fighting and intrigue...it was great! I want to tear apart some room and break glass and not have to worry about fixing or replacing everything. That would be fun! I could understand what it would be to fantasize about the chase scene where I outsmarted the 10 cars chasing me and walked away from my car unscathed. That would be awesome. And this is what has thrown me off the most tonight. I'm not a violence/action/blood kind of movie fan. I watch action movies, and usually enjoy them. But I don't usually wish I were in them! Tonight I wanted to be James Bond in all his masculine glory!
somehow, a boy has gotten into my brain...
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