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Berger, John (1972) Ways of Seeing. UK, Penguin
Jackson, Stevi. and Scott, Sue. (2002) Introduction: The Gendering of Sociology. In Gender: A sociological reader, edited by Stevi Jackson and Sue Scott, 1-26. Routledge, New York.
Richardson, Niall & Locks, Adams. (2014) Body Studies: The Basics. New York, Routledge.
http://www.menshealth.com/sex-women/11-qualities-of-the-perfect-woman, accessed 11/8/2016

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Gendered norms confirmed by website for women

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Gendered norms confirmed by website for women

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http://www.mamamia.com.au/about-mamamia/
When I read the Mamamia mission statement (pictured below) on their website I thought it could be offering something different than the mainstream women's magazines, like Women's Day etc. They use phrases such as "social justice", "making a difference in women's lives", and "women's representation in the media needs to improve". To my thinking this could mean choosing limit beauty regime content, which perpetuates the idea that women are defined by their appearance. It could mean offering diverse representations of women to include images and stories of people who identify as transgender and intersex. It could mean highlighting instances of discrimination towards women who challenge the norm of female iconography and performance. Perhaps I was too optimistic. As I took a look through the headlines on the homepage on the Mamamia website I did not see one headline that in anyway met my (hopeful) expectations. Instead I saw messages which strengthen and reaffirm normative gender coding: putting appearance at the forefront of women's concerns and perpetuating the narrative  of women being superficial as they have a strong interest in their bodies. And, because women's preoccupation with maintaining their appearance takes a substantial amount of their time and energy, Mamamia have very conveniently summed up a days news in 5 minutes, as women don't have the time or the cognitive capacity to take in too much information about what is going on in the world outside of their own head.
Examples of headlines on Mamma's homepage 11/8/2016:
"Thursday’s news in 5 minutes."
"Melbourne brides face their worst nightmare after dress shop goes bankrupt."
"The 9 most fabulous things about having small boobs."
"Edwina Bartholomew gives us a completely honest look inside her handbag."
"The universal rules of the ‘Girl Code’."
"How to raise a child genius? Be a stay-at-home mum."
"We can all learn a few things from The Bachelor’s Eliza."
"How to care for your skin in winter."

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These three pictures are selected from a book called "We're going on a bear hunt" by Helen Oxenbury I have been enjoying reading with my son over the past several weeks. The text is delightful - dramatic and comic, the illustrations are beautiful and poetic, and the book has been the recipient of several awards. Here comes the frustration and heart break for me - I have become aware of the gendered messages captured in the illustrations. I say heart breaking because I experience a lot of pleasure reading this book and it is very challenging to find children's books which don't perpetuate gendered norms in terms of appearance and behaviour of the characters. But perhaps that pleasure comes from being in that zone of recognition which presents the dominant narrative of a heterosexual binary world, one that is familiar and reassuring due to my conditioning. In these three selected pictures we see a boy who is always holding something in his hand - a stick or a rock. They are objects which invite action - throwing, prodding, banging, and depict a boy as someone who does something, who acts. The girl by contrast in these pictures is portrayed as someone needing help - the mother taking off her shoes, or needing comfort/reassurance - hugging her father at the moment when they enter the cave and are confronted by the bear. In this scene the boy by contrast is heading the family with his stick in hand, ready to take action if needed. As innocent as these drawings my seem and as delightful as they may be, I have to ask myself how are they conditioning my son - assuming he identifies with the little boy in the story, what information is he been giving about 'little boyness', informing how he relates to the world around him and the kinds of behaviours he explores and displays. And it leaves me feeling uneasy continuing to read it to him. Through our stories together I would like him to be invited to imagine all the possibilities of expression which he might enjoy exploring through his body, rather than be conditioned so early in life by social norms of the binary gender dichotomy that is so prevalent in our society.

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School deputy orders female students to lengthen their skirts

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School deputy orders female students to lengthen their skirts

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http://www.newshub.co.nz/nznews/school-skirts-stirring-controversy-2016040917#axzz45Z3LKLem
At a high school in New Zealand recently female students were told they needed to lengthen their skirts to below their knees. The deputy principle told the students this was to "keep our girls safe, stop boys from getting ideas and create a good work environment for male staff". The message from the teacher to the students is that the female body is an object to be looked at and acted upon by men; the materiality of the female flesh is a distraction pulling boys away from their task of mental cognition towards crude desires stemming from their own physical natures. It is a message that sexualises young girls, that says women's bodies are sites of sexual fantasies for the viewer. It is a message which says women are objects needing to be protected from and by men, that they are not capable of their own decision-making or independent action, or that they don't have the strength to resist temptation when their own bodily desires arise, and they need men to be stronger than they are and control their desires so as not to allow female desires to run rampant and uncontrolled. These underlying views perpetuate a mind/body dualism - aligning men with controlling the mind and rationality, and women with the brute materiality of the body, being vulnerable to the excesses of her body. As long as women's bodies are kept in check then men will be able to control where their minds go. The woman is responsible for any failing of a man to restrain his own desires. These students have a tough task on their hands to challenge the sexualising of their bodies by the men in their school and present themselves as empowered, independent young women not afraid to speak their mind and who wish to be appraised for their academic achievements rather than the appearance of the bodies.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRn3jntfhj0&list=PLLhBoDG6xz7NKirs4jMSXxWHiHZaLWGhr&index=9
This is a video made by the Mamamia team discussing the question "would you buy your son a doll?". The premise for the discussion is a claim by child psychologists that dolls can increase the emotional intelligence in children, so parents should be encouraging their sons to play with dolls as well as their daughters. The views in this video present an essentialist and gendered worldview which says that girls play with dolls and boys play with trucks. Mia, on the right (see image below), says that if her son had a doll he would inevitably "end up using it as a digger or a weapon", and if she gave her daughter a weapon she would end up "wrapping it a blanket and singing it a lullaby" (making rocking motions with her arms). This view in perpetuates an essentialist perspective of sex and gender - that males and females, because of their sex inevitably have certain tendencies which are performed through their gender. Sex and gender share a direct correlation. Whether is due to the hard wiring of the brain, genetics, hormones, physical structure of the body - boys will be boys who like to build and destroy things with diggers and weapons, and girls being girls like to enact being the care giver with dolls. The suggestion is that upon seeing a doll for the first time a girl would 'naturally' take care of it and a boy would use it to bang something with. Does that mean boys have to be taught how to play with a doll ( social constructionism) whilst girls innately know, because of their biological make-up (essentialism)? This logic is flawed and inconsistent, however continues to circulate in the mainstream media.
The woman in the centre goes onto say that she has in fact bought dolls for a little boy previously across the road from her, who "(snigger) likes dolls". This innuendo suggests that a boy enjoying playing with dolls is displaying behaviour that is not normal for boys, something to 'watch' as he grows and develops - perhaps a suggestion that his effeminate nature may mean he will be homosexual, also 'not normal'.
I find the views in this discussion to be strongly affirming gendered norms; the perpetuation of such contradicts Mamamia's commitment to "bringing new perspectives to the issue" or addressing 'social justice' by creating a safe space of acceptance for people who do not identify with the strict codes of behaviour and appearance governing the male female gender binary.

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Gendered conditioning from a young age, loud and clear

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Gendered conditioning from a young age, loud and clear

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http://www.gap.co.uk/browse/division.do?cid=86337
This advertisement for children's clothing on Gap clothing website sums up John's Berger's phrase perfectly "Men act, women appear". Little boy, your intellect will get you far in life, prepare for a bright future, sparked by your genius nature, filled with many career opportunities. Little girl, the best thing you have going for you is your appearance and your social nature; combine and cultivate the two and you will always be appreciated and valued. This montage of images and text affirms a Cartesian dualistic paradigm where in values such as intellect, cognition are held in contrast to and superior to values such as appearance, emotional intelligence, which are both clearly mapped onto the male and female bodies in this example. The gender values articulated in this division maintain a hierarchical relationship between the male and female.
A couple of the comments left in response include:
"So just buy the blue tshirt with einstein for your daughter. It's a tshirt for kids. You can buy whatever you want. Or does it have to be a pink einstein?"
"The Internet is constantly looking for reasons to be outraged nowadays...
No; I don't think this ad is even remotely sexist"
Clearly not everyone considers important to look at the effect of such conditioning. I think for a lot of people maintenance of normative gender appearance is really important. It clearly structures the world, informing people how to relate to one another and underlies many traditional and popular practices and institutions such as heterosexual marriage. So consciously conditioning children from a young age how to perform their gender role ensures that their child has a place in the world, and that power relations and social structures are maintained.

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According to an article in Mens Health magazine (http://www.menshealth.com/sex-women/11-qualities-of-the-perfect-woman) men consider the perfect women is one that wears red in someway - whether it is on the lips (calling for attention) or underclothes (to be discovered) - so I thought this an appropriate backdrop to open up a space to look at ways in which institutions, for example educational, the media, fashion industry, subtly or not so subtly give directives of appropriate iconography and performance for conformity to binary gender norms.  As Jackson and Scott (2002, 1) write, "Gender as we define it denotes a hierarchical division between men and women embedded both within social institutions and social practices."  The gendered ordering in this hierarchy maps onto the Cartesian dualistic axis of mind over matter; "while men have always been associated with reason, intellect and scholarship... women have always been identified in terms of their bodies" (Richardson and Locks 2014, 8).  This ordering is succinctly put by John Berger: "Man act, women appear". As Jackson and Scott (ibid) go on to further suggest, "gender is thus a social structural phenomenon, but is also produced, negotiated and sustained at the level of everyday interaction." Conforming to gendered codes of appearance and performance (by aligning our representation of gender with the biological sex we identify with)  is vital to maintaining the hierarchy of power between men and women and the dualistic structuring of our society. I have drawn together several examples which direct a person towards gender conformity.

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According to an article in Mens Health magazine (http://www.menshealth.com/sex-women/11-qualities-of-the-perfect-woman) men consider the perfect women is one that wears red in someway - whether it is on the lips (calling for attention) or underclothes (to be discovered) - so I thought this an appropriate backdrop to open up a space to look at ways in which institutions, for example educational, the media, fashion industry, subtly or not so subtly give directives of appropriate iconography and performance for conformity to binary gender norms.  As Jackson and Scott (2002, 1) write, "Gender as we define it denotes a hierarchical division between men and women embedded both within social institutions and social practices."  The gendered ordering in this hierarchy maps onto the Cartesian dualistic axis of mind over matter; "while men have always been associated with reason, intellect and scholarship... women have always been identified in terms of their bodies" (Richardson and Locks 2014, 8).  This ordering is succinctly put by John Berger: "Man act, women appear". As Jackson and Scott (ibid) go on to further suggest, "gender is thus a social structural phenomenon, but is also produced, negotiated and sustained at the level of everyday interaction." Conforming to gendered codes of appearance and performance (by aligning our representation of gender with the biological sex we identify with)  is vital to maintaining the hierarchy of power between men and women and the dualistic structuring of our society. I have drawn together several examples which direct a person towards gender conformity.