The establishment of marriage has come to hold different meaning along the years. In the US, the meaning of marriage originally came to hold the meaning of union between two people and to be known as the most important day in the bride’s life, however as time has progressed, marriage has come to be an equal portrayal of both the groom and the bride. Weddings have always been held to a social standard in which women have always pinned their ideal wedding to the last detail. However, in creakingly along the years many women do not wed until well into their 30s or not at all. This has created a huge shift in when marriages would take place at the earliest age of legal consumption between two people. In the US, many couples would get married as soon as possible and would remain together for decades under the old beliefs of men being the one with higher status in the marriage. Not only until recently have women and men gone into their wedding day with equal statuses. This shift created a different belief in holding marriage at all. It gave opportunity to more modern day acceptances like same-sex marriages. Same-sex marriages did not consists of patriarchies in between marriages and families to come.

In many different cultures however, marriage was a motive for power and dominance. In asian cultures, many women marry men because they are told they have to in order to create good relations in between families or gain financial benefits. Women were often forced into marriages to care for a strange man who was typically much older and she needed to be attentive and always serve him. While many arranged marriages still exist now a days, there has been a shift in the power within marriages. Women are seen as more equal and bot the wife and husband share responsibilities that were once seen as solely the woman’s job. The same stands for US marriages, in where women were mostly seen as trophy wives and someone to cook, clean, love, bear children and not much else. The progression of values has allowed for women to create something for themselves outside the household, has created a share of responsibilities, and has allowed for both people to earn money for themselves. Modern day marriages stand more on the belief that both parties are equal and share the victories and backlashes together.

In looking through published magazines and ads, the form of beauty has a very distinct and established face. While many people argue that we are in a modern world and diversity is very much a thing, it still does not stray from the fact that audiences prefer caucasian females over any other image. Many of the magazines have in their cover a white woman with the majority of blonde hair and blue eyes. This image has been incorporated in people’s heads that that is what true beauty is and will always be. The men portrayed in the magazines are few and usually are also almost always caucasian as well. However, audiences like to see more women because fo their sex appeal and ability to sell more products. With marketers portraying certain women as the appointed face of beauty, many of the women in the audience rush to buy those certain products in hopes to be beautiful like them as well.

The concept of diversity in the marketing world is something that its existence and effectiveness is very minimal. While many women in the audience approve and strive for more diversity with their praise, they will always still pay more attention to the caucasian woman with blue eyes on the cover. They may find the other black, asian, and Latina women beautiful but they will retort back to the original face of beauty despite diversity efforts. Society has admired one face for too long that no matter the extent of beauty another more diverse face may have, they will choose that in which is almost impossible to duplicate for themselves. This stems back to society only favoring those of white skin color are placing them on the highest pedestal of beauty. Marketing knows that that women of pale color will receive the most desire and they use their advantages to portray them as sex symbols for their products which have nothing to do with sex. These techniques are used only for the rise in sales not for the general publics greater good.

As I walk in to a toy store I realize that each product is placed in a strategic manner to appease customers. Their main customer being a child and secondly their parents to approve, the aisles are sectioned off accordingly; toddler, four years old and up, and preteens. This sectioning each has its own subsection, meaning that the girl toys and boy toys are separated. This separation of gendered toys are evident to the customers eyes as the colors differ greatly and the aesthetics of the product covers also contribute greatly. The boxes in which each toy is contained in already determines whether its directed for a boy or a girl. Marketers use this technique to target certain audiences to develop a norm win which girls will continue to buy girl toys because they feel as if they are made for them, which they are. however, there are very few toys which are gender neutral but those are more targeted to older audiences because of the need to establish gender appropriations at an early age. This form of targeting is effective because girls want girly things and boys want boy things most of the time. This is evident through the increasing sales and demand for each gender.

The evident visuals of placing boy and girl toys separate give way to further sectoring the gender difference between both male and female. Toys in which are directed to boys have more of a rough play, adventure, or outdoors image and feel to the cover of the toy. It always surrounds being involved in some sort of group play and more of a masculine touch. With girl toys however, it always encompasses more maternal and caring characteristics. Girls are directed to caring for baby dolls or kitchen sets to make their own food. This targets girls into molding them into what society expects of them. Nonetheless, girls are pushed towards solidarity toys in where they learn skills that will mature later in life. On the other hand, boy toys are more directed to building up their masculinity to help them as adults in being thrown into the workforce.

The Military has become a place in where people of all backgrounds can enlist to fight for their country, however it has come to be a place in where people are being discriminated. Gender discrimination has become an issue in determining ranks and effectiveness in the workforce especially among women. Women have come to face inequality in their military jobs whether it stem from harassment, threats, or sexual discrimination. The male audience in the military look at women as inferior to them through their inability to complete certain tasks simply because of their gender. The work of a woman in the military will rank from being positioned into a less combative and more of a stationed job because of the view that they are incapable of completing the same labor tasks as the males appointed to the jobs. Men often try to set back the accomplishments of females in sabotaging their efforts and assuming the credit for a job well done. Not only do males undermine the work of women, but they also find it easy to threaten them from further accomplishing more for themselves. They begin to hinder the work of the women on the force to make themselves seem bigger and more powerful.

Not only do men continue to attempt to undermine the effort women put into their tasks but they also find it easy to complain of the positions given to them. Women are often given lenience on their workforce jobs like perhaps getting positioned into a stationed and non-combative job for many factors. However, the main factor will always be the initial discrimination given to them from the start before they step foot into an enlisting agency. Women are discriminated for their gender way before they are placed into their task force because of the innate discrimination among the officials and their beliefs that women are naturally inferior than men and cannot complete the same tasks as them. Men also come to complain about the allowance of staying home when a woman gives birth. Of course they simply over look the healing time and process in which a woman has to break her own body to bring to life another human. The male influence in the military has only made it more difficult for women to prove themselves. Women have always had to work harder to simply prove themselves in the slightest in the eyes of men.

Appearances tend to play a bigger part in people’s lives more than one cares to notice. Many people are quick to judge others because of how they display themselves. Many quick assumptions are made about the person because of the way they portray themselves, most importantly, their attractiveness. Beauty has been a major factor in determining how a person is to be treated. While many people deny that they treat anyone else differently because of something as shallow as beauty, various evidence proves that it plays a major role in how others react. Those who have more physical qualities that are more desired by the public, will find themselves in more opportunities than those who lack those certain qualities. Beautiful people are constantly being given more success for doing the same or less quality of work than a person without beauty. This leads to the unfair rewarding system in which we have created because of appearance. 

Not only does beauty give people certain advantages, but it also leads to certain assumptions about a person’s character. A person may look at someone and convince themselves they are nothing but trouble or that they are dumb because they aren’t as physically attractive. However, when they look at someone with great amount of beauty, they place them on a pedestal in comparison to everyone else. The appearance of beauty if the key in receiving special treatment from others even when it is not intended. The reason because many of the A-listers today are as recognized and appreciated as they are is because they are all beautiful. Not one A-lister has a quality of unattractiveness. This proves that beauty holds more stigma among people than what was thought before. 

The style of communication comes differently to people, especially when the background of the person differs. Both men and women react to certain things in different manners. This leads to easy miscommunication between the two. It is almost as if the two had a separate set of jargon in which only women understand women and men understand men. Women tend to be more sensitive and handle the matter in a respectful sort of way. This causes them to interact in a nicer tone and make up for the other person’s lack of understanding of what they are saying. For example, a woman can be thanking a male or apologizing to them and they’ll respond with a close ended retort that seems rude to the woman. This is because women have different expectations on how to talk to others. In analyzing women, they have been found to be more submissive in conversations in attempt to be respectful and not to overstep in their status. However, men tend to find the female way of communicating to be strange without even realizing it.

The way that men communicate is more direct and avoids sugar coating what they are trying to get across. As a result, many communications from male to female go miscommunicated because of the lack of understanding what each is trying to say. While a man can seem like he is trying to make a woman seem inferior to him because of his way of arguing, the truth is that is simply how they know to argue. Women style fo arguing goes farther into listening and understanding, while men tend to make an illustrious argument on why they are right. Men tend to take the women’s rebuttal and expand on small details as to why they are incorrect. This creates tension in who is in a higher position, not through status, but by one making the other seem inferior. Men’s style of communication relies more on being straightforward without any added statements that may give the wrong impression.

The worlds of boys and girls are completely different from each other in the sense that both genders grew up with different societal norms. It seems normal to us now that boys will be boy and girls will be girls. However, in reality, girls and boys both get their tendencies through the distinct separations they develop in their early school years. While boys have more tendencies to be rougher and tease others, they slowly absorb these tendencies from others. In early years of schooling, boys act in a more affectionate way and are more friendly with each other but they slowly start to develop tendencies separate from what is considered girly. In doing so, boys begin to act more like the boys that are stereotyped in society. It is very common to see the mixture of what plays a role in molding a typical boy, including sports, teasing, and same gender interactions. The separation of genders is what plays the most important role in the distinct separation of the development of boys and girls. 

            In girl interaction, its evidently very different than boys. Their priorities are more circled around popularity and gossip within each other and about each other. They tend to look at boys more than boy look at them. However, they don’t interact with them willingly because it is simply not done. Girls hang out with girls and boys hang out with boys, that’s the stigma that leads their social lives for most of their beginning years in a social setting. The difference between boys and girls mostly stems from the outside influences that convince them that is the way they are supposed to act. No one ever tells them differently but rather adults encourage the gender separation at early ages and raise their kids to not act certain ways because it’s not appropriate. They instead tell boys to not be soft like girls and tell girls that it isn’t cute when they try to act tough like boys. This further separates the genders and limits their interactions to what is later seen as normal and expected. 

Role strains in my daily life have consisted mainly in between being a full time student. My days consist of attending classes every morning and going home and having to do homework for every single class for various hours. It becomes a heavy load because of all the work I have to do for all of my classes. Each day I’m assigned new work and I have to study for the quizzes I have every other day. Not to mention the priorities I have at home like cooking and cleaning to maintain my environment balanced. It becomes a strain with all the different tasks I have to accomplish within a single day. Sometimes school isn’t the only event in my agenda but I sometimes have doctor and dentist appointments that take up a lot of my time. In attempt to keeping my schedule organized and finish my tasks on time I have to distribute my time accordingly. Some Role conflicts would be having to also maintain a job throughout the week and weekends in which I need to sit down and do homework.

As much as I try to manage my time I can’t help the various conflicting events that also need my attention. while its all manageable, it does create stress to finish everything in time and preserve a good image in both school and work. Another conflict would also be my trips to the gym for my daily workout. Granted I would have more time if I cut the gym out completely but its a part of my daily routine that I really enjoy and it serves as a small break from all the hectic activities going on. The role strains of having to be doing everything all the time has also cause conflict in attending my other priorities. However, my system in doing what is most important and needed first has proved effective. I somehow always find a way to manage and complete everything that’s laid out in front of me.

The female expectations on the perfect image and perfect manner of presenting themselves has stemmed and been implanted into young girls’ minds for years. Society has taken every chance possible to tell young girls that they must act a certain way and look a certain way. In doing so, this has brought up girls pressuring themselves into molding themselves into what society wants. It starts as early as when the female mind can comprehend that we are different than males. We are told we couldn’t do certain things, had to dress a certain way, couldn’t play with certain toys because it wasn’t lady like. Since the minute we are born we are either categorized as female or male, with this decision our whole lives are mapped out a distinct way. Therefore, the stigma for what a girl is supposed to be only grows furthermore. Schooling has a big impact in telling us what we can and can’t do, for example the dress codes in school are far more conservative for girls than it is for boys simply because of gender. We are told by teachers at an early age to go play with the other girls in recess and that playing with boys isn’t necessarily appropriate. There comes a certain point in where we are no longer being told what to do but we become the people who judge and criticize ourselves. 

            As we grow older, we notice the drastic changes in how girls act towards others. They become catty and judgmental of others because they don’t look like the supermodels on magazines. This is a reaction of what they’ve been told to believe and look up to their whole lives. They take the environment they are in, which consists of continuous degrading and a one-way close-minded perspective on what a girl is and should be. This form of following the stigma in which society tells young girls is what creates a division in what girls come to think of themselves. It becomes a continuous cycle that engraves itself into young minds which becomes dangerous for young girls. It is not simply just female perspective but also males who judge girls for not looking a certain way. While giving direction into a healthy lifestyle is beneficial, there is a fine line between suggestion and brainwashing. 

The differences between male and female, other than biological, come from the societal norms in which we are meant to follow. Since before birth, we are put into a category and are raised to follow the set of rules laid out before us. In doing so, society is the one in control of how we each behave and portray ourselves in certain aspects. Our parent’s views and rules come from their parents and theirs from their parents, however, they mostly come from our surroundings. The stigma that comes with being either a boy or a girl, stems from what we are expected to be. Girls are into feminine things like makeup and looking pretty and boys are into more masculine things like sports and being rough. These stereotypes are what keep the both genders separated but its only what society has created. Now a days, because you are born a male of female doesn’t necessarily mean you have to follow that is set out for you. Girls can participate in having masculine traits and males can participate in having feminine traits. Society has decided it is okay to cross traits. However, only because society has deemed it appropriate, people now are more likely to display how they really feel. However, we are still held to certain standards of what a male and a female is before were able to decide for ourselves. Parents look deep into the stigma and in order to avoid criticism, they follow traditional norms. In doing so, it’s a continuous cycle of what is to be expected without really any change. 

Males are expected to behave courteously and polite despite their innate male traits and females are expected to behave accordingly to please those around her in a physical and well-mannered form. The more this stigma develops the more controls other have over how you are supposed to act from what they deem appropriate. The expectations for males are the masculine point of view and they have to protect and care for others. This image of a man’s man is created and boys are groomed to follow it to truly be called a real man. This ideology leads to the constant dependency of males to be providers and be courteous and respectful to everyone because it is the manly thing to do. Not only do boys have to grow up to the expectation but they are also told since they are small to not act like girls and to toughen up. This form of bringing up boys has been passed down through generations to what society now deems is appropriate.