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My club took a trip to this music & game store. I thought it was a bit endearing that a lot of the girls in the group beelined straight to this pink arcade machine. As I sifted through photos, I thought it was interesting how concepts concerning gender (mainly femininity and feminism) began to present themselves.

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Getting a closer look, it was interesting that a lot of more feminine things on display were a bit objectifying, Judy Tzu-Chun Wu in Asian American Feminisms and Women of Color Politics introduces the term "triple oppression" where women face, "patriarchy, racism or imperialism, and capitalism" (Wu 52). All three of these factors coming into play with the iconography of Asian women through pop-culture in a store.

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The performativity of gender is seen through these two animals found in the store. Messerschmidt in Goodbye to the Sex-Gender Distinction, Hello To Embodied Gender emphasizes that both appearance and behavior are, "essential to validating masculinitiy (and femininity)"(Messerschmidt 66). This edgy rat is meant to be seen as more human, but also more masculine from the staging of the darker clothes and the green lighting.

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Messerschmidt makes another point how an unbalance between appearance and behavior can lead to violence. This bunny holding a chainsaw may not seem to be threatening, but thinking in such binary ways can be harmful. As evident from the Roughgarden readings, animals do not always fall in societal expectations of masculinity and femininity.

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Yet, Allan G. Johnson in Patriarchy the System proposes that these oppressive systems are, "an ongoing process that's continuously shaped and reshaped" (Johnson 37). At the end of the day, the items photographed are decor and while they may uphold certain narrow portrayals of gender, they don't perpetuate it. Already this is proven by how much positive attention the arcade machine received, even upon further inspection. Gender shouldn't be something to divide people but rather something to help affirm people.