{"id":52722,"date":"2012-12-04T11:01:57","date_gmt":"2012-12-04T16:01:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=52722"},"modified":"2017-09-17T16:27:03","modified_gmt":"2017-09-17T21:27:03","slug":"liu-xianping-doing-gender-and-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2012\/12\/04\/liu-xianping-doing-gender-and-age\/","title":{"rendered":"Liu Xianping: Doing Gender and Age"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at the Huffington Post<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Anjan G. alerted us to an internet sensation,\u00a0Liu Xianping. \u00a0The 72-year-old man in China has risen to fame modeling for his granddaughter’s clothing store, Yuekou<\/a>. \u00a0The clothes are designed for teen girls:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Commenters<\/a> are impressed about Xianping’s ability to “pull off” this look, but we shouldn’t be surprised. \u00a0Masculinity and femininity are performances, and so is age.<\/p>\n

While the idea that we “do” gender is no surprise to SocImages regulars, we also “do” age. \u00a0In fact, we have a whole language of age-related chiding that serves to get people to act in ways that we deem suitable for their number of birthdays. \u00a0Says sociologist Cheryl Laz:<\/p>\n

\u201cAct your age. You’re a big kid now,\u201d we say to children to encourage independence (or obedience). \u201cAct your age. Stop being so childish,\u201d we say to other adults when we think they are being irresponsible. \u201cAct your age; you’re not as young as you used to be,\u201d we say to an old person pursuing \u201cyouthful\u201d activities.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Age, then, is a social construction too<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Accordingly, Xianping’s adoption of feminine poses and youthful fashions makes him appear younger and more girly than we think he should<\/em> look. \u00a0Importantly, though, he is no more an actor here than are actual teen girls. \u00a0Each is playing a part, both with the help of just the right accessories.<\/p>\n

\n

Source: Laz, Cheryl. 1998. Act Your Age.\u00a0 Sociological Forum<\/em> 13, 1: 85-113. (link<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/div>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at the Huffington Post. Anjan G. alerted us to an internet sensation,\u00a0Liu Xianping. \u00a0The 72-year-old man in China has risen to fame modeling for his granddaughter’s clothing store, Yuekou. \u00a0The clothes are designed for teen girls: Commenters are impressed about Xianping’s ability to “pull off” this look, but we shouldn’t be surprised. \u00a0Masculinity and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[349,225,55,2096],"class_list":["post-52722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ageaging","tag-clothesfashion","tag-gender","tag-gender-femininity"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52722"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52722\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71633,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52722\/revisions\/71633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}