Event

Authors: Bestie Garner and David Grazian (Garner will present)

Abstract:

Although accomplishments of human behavior, masculinity and femininity appear natural because gendered individuals adhere to an institutionalized set of myths they learn through everyday forms of socialization in their formative years. As family-oriented cultural attractions, zoos and their animal displays provide symbolic resources for “naturalizing” masculine and feminine gender roles. We will illustrate this socialization process by highlighting three normative gender roles children are socialized to embody in the interactional and interpretive context of a city zoo: hegemonic femininity represented by “girly girls” and an attention to poise and attractiveness; a masculine ideal of physicality and toughness emphasized by the notion that “boys will be boys”; and contemporary redefinitions of heroic femininity as represented by models of “girl power” in popular culture. In each of these cases, families construct distinct gender ideologies through their imagined visions of the natural living world.