Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Ethnography

For this ethnography I utilized the dining area outside of Sierra Center to make my observations. I noticed for the most part that there weren’t many couples. I saw an African American couple wearing stylish clothes. The girl pulled at the guy’s arm but the guy pulled himself away. They stood talking to each other and then the guy went a different direction. He called out to the girl, “Call me when you get to your car.” I saw another couple who also dressed similarly and they were both overweight. This couple kept alternating between holding hands and letting go.

I observed some physical contact with a pair of male students who greeted each other with smiles, salutations, handshakes, and pats on each other’s backs. As their conversation continued, while the taller of the two talked, the one who listened put his waist as he stood in a casual stance. There was another group of young males who were seated at a table. This group kept looking around at the people walking by, focusing especially on a female student who walked by. There was no indication that the males knew the female in any way. What I found in the guys but not in the girls, was that most guys seemed to dress more for comfort than for appearance. They also seemed careful not to sit too close to each other. A lot of guys as they were sitting would fidget; they would shake their leg, play with their hands, and one guy was even drumming on his knees with his hands. As for any radicalism within the gender, what I found rare was stylishness and femininity. Once in a while I would see a young man wearing fancy shoes, dark jeans, and a nice collared shirt but this seemed to be more common in older students. I found one male student in particular who stood out. Appearance-wise he was clean-shaven, his hair was crisply cut, and he was wearing shorts that went above his knees. He was sitting and conversing with a girl, using his hands as he talked, and at one point I heard him say the words “jazz hands.”

To focus on the female students, I found that most girls were either sitting alone studying, eating, or talking on their cell phones, or sitting with a group of girls conversing or studying. One woman in particular got most of my attention. She was an old lady wearing a tan hat and a black dress. She had a large cup of soda and she was eating an apple. She struck me as very odd because she kept putting on and taking off her sunglasses, and it seemed like she was talking to herself. I also observed a co-ed group of Asian students where a girl was acting a little strange. She kept smiling, playing with her hair, and at one point she had her hand under her chin. A Hispanic-looking girl came up to the group and stood there, touching a girl’s head to get her attention. There wasn’t any room for her to sit and no one made room or an offer for her to sit with them. Girls had more variety in their outfits than guys, which mostly consisted of tight pants, short shorts, colorful tops, big bags and dark eye makeup. They also sat closer to each other than guys did and would greet each other with hugs.

Applying various theories we have discussed in class helps in analyzing the meaning of the aforementioned observations. Binary relationships can be easily applied to explain the differences between the appearances and behaviors of males and females. It can be useful to apply the concept of “othering” to ideas of masculinity and femininity. It seems without question that our American society is patriarchal. Women dress much differently than men and engage in more feminine behaviors such as playing with their hair, wearing makeup, and tight clothes. Our consumerist society, in terms of semiotics, signifies that if you wear a certain type of clothes, you will attract the opposite sex. Since females tend to put so much attention on their appearance, by othering, males are differentiated by their lack of attention to their appearance. In this way, males make sure to be as masculine as possible also, by keeping their distance from other males, to avoid being seen as another other: homosexual. It is a common stereotype, that homosexuals are more feminine than masculine. However, it seems that some homosexuals embrace this practice by taking care of their appearance, wearing tighter clothing, hanging out with females, and speaking more expressively with hand gestures. This could be a culturally-produced effect or it could be our stereotypes. It is certain that othering and binary relationships play a heavy role in gender identity.

Othering also plays a role in self-identity and in human relationships. For example, the group of Asian students had “othered” the Hispanic female, by not offering her a seat at the table, leaving her standing there awkwardly. Her using her hands to get her Asian friend’s attention seemed necessary only because the Asian may not have wanted to associate with her, the “other.” If we see couple who is overweight, we are surprised as observers, because we are taught by our culture that fat people are undesirable, through othering. We have been taught, especially by the Marxist idea of consumerism that the ruling class is generally beautifully and wealthy and the subordinate class is ugly and poor. We are taught that if we buy certain products, such as expensive jeans or a big trendy bag, that we will appeal to the opposite sex. These visual signs, from Saussure’s semiotics, signify an idea. For example, a man wearing a bag instead of a backpack is seen as more effeminate which leads us to think he is homosexual. It seems that humans are no longer complex creatures but a simplified set of signs manipulated to represent ideas. If the signs don’t match up, if someone wears the wrong kind of hat or the wrong kind of shorts, then it must mean that they are breaking the norm in some way and are therefore different, or the “other.” All of these norms to which people live their lives are under an umbrella of false consciousness; no one knows that they are being manipulated by the ruling class because they believe that society is supposed to work that way, and they are tricked into thinking they have choice, when really it’s the dominating class which controls their options.