Thinking About Culture

Final Conclusion:
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Throughout our search for gendered sites and different ideas of gender on the web, we have managed to find insight as to why there are marketed toward one gender or another, and why. We have also found how they perpetuate the cycle of masculinity, femininity, and gendering.

The website gendered towards women include everything down to specific colours, advertisements within websites (feminine hygiene products, etc.), styles of design, and wording which targets the caretaker or homemaker of the family. These more feminine ideals are then placed upon the generalization of all women. These websites also portray the heterosexual norms in which place heterosexual relationships as the ideal. The one blog ‘Google Search’ touched on a website http://www.gurl.com/ that projected resistance towards the ideas of feminine but in the end it was also pulled back into the vortex of the heterosexual ideals.

Social networking sites such as Facebook, www.facebook.com are gendered as feminine because women are seen as linking into relational stereotypes, whereas men are much more autonomous. A woman’s liking to gossip and social chit-chat makes networking sites a tool which allows women to do this more frequently. Whereas, there are notions that men do not constantly update statuses, however they partake in the viewing pleasure of creeping other people’s pages. This directly links these men to the male gaze that is placed upon other, which may entail people to curtail their pages to meet that masculinised gaze. The creeping created a successful union, allowing the reader to be fulfilled with their viewing, and then the feminized relationships are fulfilled as well. Facebook allows people to follow the lives of others, similar to soap operas. The three aesthetic essentials that make up a soap opera are very similar to Facebook and social networking site features. For example, light entertainment is related to the applications on Facebook like “Farmville” or “Bejewelled” or the constant questionnaires people partake in. Facebook is an emotional engagement with friends or acquaintances, or even strangers. It also allows a realism that reveals their true or made up self. (Roth, 2010). Facebook allows people to show their truthful reality and allows them to makeup, avoid or disallow people from seeing through to all their information which could potentially portray them as someone completely different than themselves. Like Soap Operas, Facebook allows people to create a more glamorous lifestyle than what is true.

The LCBO Food and Drink Magazine directly links the woman being the home entertainer and caretaker with the phrase, “the art of entertaining”. This directly links to women in that stereotypical lifestyle of homemaker and cultural broader social norm of women’s place in the home. Therefore, perpetuating the cycle of women’s place in the home which would could been seen in centuries before.

Home Depot http://www.homedepot.ca has developed a masculinised title because they offer a linear lay out of their store which links to the patriarchal set up. Home Depot presents sections their products in aisles where everything is easy-to-find, straight-forward and presents a Linear set up. This links back to French theorist Cixous, who brought forth the proposal of linear being masculine and the circular formation to be feminized(Roth, 2010).For example, products and household things targeted towards women, are organized in a more circular way and scattered throughout the middle of the stores, rather than organized in a linear fashion. Making the majority of the store set up speak to the masculinised masses which obviously, are their target audience.

While these websites are gender specific, they also typically speak to upper middle class people who are from financially stable economic backgrounds. These website make the lower classes strive to reach those impossible societal ideals that are deemed necessary. These products make it necessary for the intended audience to have access to internet which does not include everyone in society. Furthermore, these intended viewers require the means to consume these name brand products. In reality, consuming these products is not a necessity but rather a luxury that is pushed upon people to consume in order to conform to the societal ideal.

There are few cultural jams that resist the perpetuating cycle of product gendering and gendered websites. Therefore, completely resisting the process of societal norms is virtually impossible. So with the realization of these gendered texts and product marketing, it brings forth some deeply rooted fundamental questions.

We believe that basically, it all boils down to purchasing and consuming whatever makes you happy as an individual – no matter what gender, race, class, cultural belief, religion, or sexual orientation. However, the ongoing questions will still remain: Why is it that we like what we like? Where do these ideals come from, and where does the cycle end? Does the cycle ever end? Will we ever TRULY think ‘for ourselves’?

Works Cited:
Roth, J (2010). "Popular Culture and Counter Culture Lectures". January 5, 2010 to March 4, 2010. Lakehead University.