Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls—that was the topic of “Genderize It,” an event put on at California State University, Stanislaus on Wednesday, March 28 to promote awareness of gender roles and the effect they have on society in contemporary time.
The event featured an activity that divided the audience into two groups who were asked to define either masculinity or femininity through any method they chose. Both sides acted out their respective gender, with masculinity being portrayed through a focus on strength, organizational hierarchy, and emotionlessness depicted in the form of a drill sergeant dictating orders to his men. Femininity was portrayed in less than flattering terms, acted out by representing the emotional, submissive, and stay-at-home stereotype of a housewife. 
“I enjoyed the acting,” Beatrice Moreno (sophomore, Kinesiology) said. “It brought up issues I was aware of, but it made the event interactive.”
The role-playing led straight into the next segment of the event, which featured videos about gender roles in America. The videos followed trends in gender roles as they developed through American history. It brought up ways in which people begin assigning certain attributes to male and others to female often from birth. Boys, for example, are associated with the color blue, while girls are given the color pink. 
The videos then evolved into a look at the media and the sexualization of women as sex objects. Popular commercials were shown and the videos discussed how these could be broken down to show stances of power and submissiveness between men and women. The message behind these videos was to bring awareness to the way that media affects the “genderizing” of our society. 
“It was about bringing awareness to the effect of the media in determining gender roles, and showing students the effects this has in everyday issues, from childhood, to the work-force, to society in general,” Bertha Giron (sophomore, Biological Sciences) said.
In the end, the event managed to inform about how false these ways of defining gender can be.
“We were trying to show that gender roles as expressed by the media shouldn’t really define us,” Brittany Volk (junior, Biology) said.