embarked upon, to the point where many don't feel like trail- blazing feminists but see opportunities once denied to women as nothing special, just a natural and ...
teaching
The crisis for our adolescent boys: how adolescent girls objectify adolescent boys and the challenges for gender equity
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Dr Donna Evans, Education consultant, Compass Education, Sessional lecturer and researcher, Federation University, Victoria
his concern for our young boys has been mulling around inside my head for some time waiting for a coherence of argument to develop for it to be put down on paper. It’s not completely whole yet – but this first iteration of it will, hopefully, be the beginning of an engaging and passionate discussion. As a teacher and educational leader spanning three decades, 12 years of which have been working in girls’ schools, I have been proud to see the journey of empowerment young women have embarked upon, to the point where many don’t feel like trailblazing feminists but see opportunities once denied to women as nothing special, just a natural and normal part of their daily lives. This is great, since it is a far cry from my own adolescence growing up in a regional community where girls who worked at the local council offices were forced to give up their jobs once they married. The condemnation of such practices fuelled our feminist rhetoric of the 70s that meant at my all girls’ school, morning hymns were replaced by more meaningful and contemporary anthems such as Helen Reddy’s I Am Woman. Authors such as Simone de Beauvoir and Germaine Greer became mandatory additions to our English curriculum. The heady messages of those times we received from our school and from the challenges we could see to established patriarchal hegemonies, encouraged my friends and I to act and feel ‘liberated’. Since then, as an observer and participant in empowering female colleagues and girls to challenge and break through gendered stereotypical conventions, with varied degrees of success, there appears to me to have emerged an absence or omission, an empty space, in feminist discussion. It centres around an uneasy feeling that while the egregious way that women and girls are stereotyped and sexualised has been railed against (and rightly so), I remain unconvinced that the same distaste for gender stereotyping and objectification has not been directed to the sexualisaton of men and boys and there has been a failure to accept responsibility for the negative consequences we now see have emerged. Most specifically this appears to be evident in the way our education of young girls fails to address the way they continue to impose sexualised constructions of masculinity on adolescent boys and the insidious impact that this has on boys’ perceptions of body image and sense of self. My concern is that whilst the objectification of girls by boys has been ‘outed’ and challenged (and remains a work in progress), there has not been the same vigilance in addressing the ways adolescent girls objectify adolescent boys, resulting in a failure to take responsibility
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for the consequences of this kind of behaviour. There seems to be an uneasy and silent acceptance of what appears to be a gender double standard. Whilst there is still much to do and many glass ceilings still to smash, I am wondering if a similar ‘patriarchal’ sin has been committed by not challenging the objectification of men and boys which I think diminishes the many achievements the women’s movement has made. Attention has been directed towards the deplorable situation encountered by so many women and girls judged unfairly and unjustly purely on the basis of their gender, but without a new approach to the way young girls are educated, the adversarial nature of gender politics will prevail and so too will many men and boys remain marginalised outsiders. A couple of events have sparked my concerns, beginning several years ago, when I visited a locked child psychiatric facility and met with a 12-year-old boy being tube fed because he was suffering from bulimia. Repeated physical and emotional abuse regarding his slightly overweight and less than athletic physique on a school football camp by older boys, led to an obsession with attaining the ideal profile. This began with obsessing about food and later developed into an exercise addiction (after leaving hospital) and drug and alcohol abuse, which continued well into his teens and early twenties. It is naive to hold on to the view that eating disorders are ‘girls’ diseases’. Ten to 15% of people with eating disorders are male, yet Metzger (2013) suggests this is a conservative figure due to under-reporting and that it is more like 30%. Eating disorders in boys are the highest cause of death from any psychological illness AEL 39 (2)
teaching causing around 20% of fatalities. Boys’ bullying, as well, is often about body image. If we apply the argument, as many have, that women’s body image is closely related to the gendered stereotypes applied to them by men (remember Barbie?), then boys’ perceptions of the most desirable body image must, ipso facto, be strongly constructed by similar influences. So, rather than what males desire in females, pressures around the most desirable male attributes have their base in men and boys endeavouring to meet, what they believe to be, the desires of women and girls. Young girls of 12, 13 and 14 are adamant that they do not want to be judged for their looks or their physical attributes. Yet, it is not too far into any discussion with them, before they offer a clear and alarmingly consistent description of their ‘ideal’ boy. Their male ‘hotties’ still fit the stereotype – a relatively simplistic binary construction that boys are either physically buff and dumb or intelligent and nerdy. The media deals with this conundrum by shoving a book or iPad into the hand of the attractive skater (see photo). Girls describe the most desirable qualities in boys as being confident and having high self esteem, someone who believes in himself but isn’t arrogant. To be desirable to young girls, heterosexual adolescent boys aspire to developing these qualities. It would seem that having self-confidence and high self-esteem has little to do with body image, yet, paradoxically, much of boys’ sense of self-confidence is significantly influenced by perceptions of their body image. So, whilst on the surface it appears that girls have moved beyond the superficiality of making judgements based on appearance, they are in fact doing exactly that. It is also concerning that boys see many of these gender contradictions yet do not feel empowered to act. A recent article in a respected educational magazine referred to a school principal taking down a ‘hook up’ wall of photographs of young men set up by senior girls at the school. While this is deplorable for just what it is, it is even more concerning that when interviewed, one boy revealed that the ‘wall’ was common knowledge and had been there for some time but no action had been taken because he said it was ‘only of boys’. A double standard is immediately apparent when we consider the loud and angry condemnation that would take place if the genders were reversed. And, what does it say about young boys when they are seem to be AEL 39 (2)
prepared to accept this double standard? A search through the literature does not provide an expanse of scholarly articles addressing the objectification of adolescent boys. It appears, however, that the tall, dark and handsome stereotype is alive and well in the minds of adolescent girls. A cursory search also identifies a range of sites offering ‘helpful’ advice to adolescent boys as to how they might maximise their ‘attractiveness’ to girls. A large number of them are, to put it plainly, insulting. For example, on one site (but also evident on numerous others), the top two tips for young men to be more attractive to girls were: number one, wear deodorant; and number two, shower each day. It’s not so much that this ‘advice’ is so commonplace and a simple click quickly removes it, but more that anyone might feel that such humiliating advice has any currency or legitimacy. Boys don’t seem to have too many advocates, or champions as we like to call them today. In girls’ schools and in relationships education generally, addressing gender inequity and its negative consequences is a strong focus. For instance, considerable time and attention is placed on educating girls to pursue curriculum of their choice without concern for gender (the significant funding and attention towards STEM education for instance); building their self-esteem and resilience as young women who can deal with the inequities they may encounter as a consequence of their gender; acknowledging and highlighting the achievements of noteworthy and successful past female students; employing highly talented and capable female teachers who act as positive role models; and celebrating events such as International Women’s Day. Somehow, however, all of this feels just a little bit empty – it’s like being at a party for one. How do we encourage young girls to take those feelings of individuality rather than gender, of success rather than failure, of a powerful and noteworthy sense of self rather than an objectification of sexual stereotypes and empower young boys as well? What’s happening in relationships education for boys that addresses these same concerns? Are there alliances of male schools, education leaders, grappling with these issues? Are there academics and organisations highlighting the need to direct our attention to these areas? And where are the girls’ schools paving the way in opening up these inclusive discussions that demand girls to critically examine their own roles
in perpetuating objectified constructions of masculinity and then educating them to address this gender imbalance? I might be very wrong, there may be quite a lot of attention being paid to this issue, but it seems to me that it’s remarkably silent. If we perceive ourselves as a progressive society that seeks to challenge the inequities associated with gender stereotyping, we cannot feel comfortable that our attention and actions appear to be so unbalanced, even largely uni-directional, given that the objectification of boys is as unacceptable as the objectification of girls. However, an essential difference is that I see influential, intelligent and insightful advocates who prevail on the behalf of young women, but there is an absence of voices – either male or female – raised on behalf of young men. It may be that this is happening, hence my opening comment that any ensuing comments relating to this discussion would be welcomed. And, whilst it is certainly important that programs and educational opportunities are offered to young boys to deal with body image and challenge prevailing male stereotypes, I feel strongly that it is as critical that these topics are addressed in the education of adolescent girls. Much of our moving forward in addressing gender inequity is the need to bring men and boys along on the journey. Failing to facilitate this still pits one gender against the other and it will be women who will be lesser for it. I fear that if discussions such as the ones I’ve outlined are not seriously engaged with, many of the still intact glass ceilings will remain impenetrable for today’s girls and tomorrow’s women. About the author Donna Evans has been a secondary teacher who has worked extensively in both the public and private education sectors, regional and metropolitan schools (largely in Queensland), religious and non-denominational, single sex and co-educational environments, undertaking a variety of teaching and leadership roles including Head of Department, Director of Curriculum and Learning, Head of Middle and Senior Years (Yrs 7–12), Deputy Head of School (P–12) and Acting Head (P– 12). Since moving to Victoria in mid-2016, she has completed her PhD, which has a focus on building organisational capacity by promoting teacher efficacy, established an educational consultancy (www.compasseducation.com.au) and also works as a sessional lecturer and researcher with Federation University, Victoria.
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