Ann K. noticed something funny about the products sold at Novelty Trophies. The ones available for the adults involved were split into two categories: Coach and Team Mom.
To be fair, they had a female coach option, but there was nothing for Team Dads. This is consistent with the norm in society that women are allowed to be masculine (be knowledgeable about sports), but men are not allowed to be feminine (caretake a team). Notice also the artificial gender dimorphism: her tiny body compared to his.
Just another everyday, mundane, rather boring example of the constant reminders of who men and women are supposed to be.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Comments 6
Larry Charles Wilson — October 13, 2013
If more men will become Team Dads trophy companies will produce Team Dad Trophies.
Agrajag — October 14, 2013
This follows logically from a certain kind of feminist narrative. If the patriarchy holds all the desirable positions, and women are universally repressed, then it is logical that one of the repressed who somehow gains one of the desirable positions, is to be lauded, while for a man to do a stereotypical feminine thing, would be a step backwards for him as a person.
If one class is universally disadvantaged, then voluntarily stepping into that class, is not something any sane person would want to do - nor something you'd give them a trophy for doing.
Of course this narrative is broken. Overall, it's still fair to say women are disadvantages (how much, depends on what country you're talking about), but not that they're -universally- disadvantaged. I.e. today, atleast in countries with decent equal rights it's more a case of 1000 examples big-and-small of men holding the advantage in various ways and 500 examples big-and-small of *women* holding the advantage. A more nuanced view than "men opressors, women opressed" are needed for dealing with such a reality, but this far mainstream feminism has been somewhat slow on this front.