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Fashion has always been something that has interested me despite it being historically seen as a women's interest. In this class, I have learned about the social construction of gender from the reading by Judith Lorber and how gender is just based on acts and the things we as a society have labeled to be for boys or girls. For example, the color pink is commonly seen as only being a color for girls and that any man who wears is it must be homosexual or part of the LGBTQ community. That has been a "gender norm" and now I know it is part of the social construction of gender that I have gone against. For me colors, patterns, and styles have been about feeling confident in the way I dress and express myself with my clothes. Despite being constantly put down throughout the years for having "feminine" style and wearing "girl" colors, I continued to live my life the way I wanted to and felt confident doing so.

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Similar to my post about fashion, self care is also something that society and its gender construction has deemed to be something for women only. Taking care of your skin with cleansers, face wash, sunscreen, and serums is commonly associated with being part of a woman's routine but that's only because that is how we as a society have made it out to be. For me, feeling good about my face and the way I present myself has nothing to do with my gender identify but rather my own confidence. Society likes to create seperate tasks and duties for women such as this one and rather than going and feeding into it, I am proud to go against it and change the way our future generations view this.

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Throughout my life, I was never really into sports but more interested in things like art and street photography. The few times I felt pressured into being involved in a sport, I did not enjoy it. As we saw in this course in the reading "What it means to be a man" by Peggy Orenstein, "bro culture" or "jock culture" is real and it is something that is almost unescapable when you are in a male sports team. The amount of uncomfortableness that came from bro culture and the way they would speak about women, sex, and things like pornography not only made me feel unsafe but it went against my own values. I found myself steering away from the "typical male" interests and enjoyed doing things on my own in the form of art that much of society would not consider manly but rather more feminine.

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Along with cooking, cleaning has also been a passion for me that I have picked up throughout the years. Going against the norms of the toxic machismo that I was raised around feels liberating. Relating it back to the Peggy Orenstein reading and the topic of male dominance, not putting my responsibility on my mother and the women in my life feels good. Being able to be in charge of my own messes and not degrading the women in my life has made me happy with the decisions I have made. I still get put down and get called names from some of my family members who still have the male dominance life style and mind set but I know that what I am doing is beneficial for the future of many generations.

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Being raised in a latin household, I always saw my family and those around me have gendered household roles where the man was always dominant similar to the Feminist Men reading by Byron Hurt from this course. The women were always doing the cooking and cleaning while the men would be at work making the money. I would always see my uncles and my own father feel like they deserved to be cooked for and they expected to have meals made for them every single day and if not they would fight and throw tantrums. Growing up I thought this was normal until I learned that this was a form of machismo and that life was not meant to just be lived this way. I began to explore in the kitchen and go out of my comfort zone, being judged from my family for playing the role of a "woman". Although I knew and felt comfortable with my own sexual identity, these comments were hurtful and discouraging almost making me feel like I was doing something wrong but it feels good to know that this type of machismo wont continue within my own family as it has for generations.