Breaking Gender Norms

For this project, we were to break a gender norm by doing something that challenged the public. As it turns out, this was more challenging for myself than it was for anyone else. I used six random strangers, three women and three men, and gave them a compliment on the clothes they were wearing. For each person, I said, ”I like your (insert article of clothing). It’s really cute.” My thoughts going into were that the women would be either flattered or completely creeped out, and the men would just be weirded out by the act of another guy complimenting their clothing.

After several nervous walks around the food section of Walmart, I started round one not really expecting to know what response I would get. I found my target, walked past the lady and said my line. She just giggled and said, “Thank you.” I walked to my next lady, and got the same response. I found my third lady and yet again, another grateful, “Thank you.” All three women were appreciative of the compliment and went on with their shopping. There was no response where the subjects seemed weirded out or awkward. They just took the compliment.

The easy part was over. Now for the part of the experiment I was dreading, the men. It’s not every day that a guy walks up to another guy stranger and compliments the outfit they chose for the day. In the event that it does happen, it is highly unlikely to hear the word “cute.” But in the name of gender studies, I went through with it. My first subject was a man walking with his daughter. I walked by and said, “I like your shorts”. He responded with a polite, “Thanks man.” I finished with, “They’re cute.” He just chuckled and gave me another “Thanks.” My second male was a college student. I complimented on his shirt and received another chuckle and a thanks. When I told him I thought it was cute, he just kept looking at his bag of chips like he didn’t hear it. My final man was wearing several earrings in each ear and had big rings on the four punching fingers of each hand. I walked by and gave him my line and oddly enough, a third straight thank you and chuckle for a response. After all six subjects, all six thanked me for the compliment. My biggest expectation was for at least one guy to act out at me, another guy, calling his clothing cute. So, I believe that people just enjoy compliments. It doesn’t matter if it comes from the same sex or not, or if you call another man’s clothes cute. Gender norms are something people try to keep in practice in their daily lives, but when challenged, sometimes they don’t even matter. Some people just take it as it is and move on. A part of me wonders if it is the small town, west Texas culture. If I were to try this experiment in a bigger city, I may expect different results.