When I was a child, I watched movies that took place in suburban American high schools, such as “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” and “Mean Girls.” These movies had jocks and preppy girls, who seemed to be the dominant forces in schools.
I didn’t have much experience with people like this, growing up in public school in Providence. They didn’t seem real to me – until I attended the University of Rhode Island.
I took WRT 104: Writing to Inform and Explain in my first year, where we had to share facts about ourselves. Almost all of the men in the class talked about football and video games. Most of the women talked about the beach and Starbucks. I understand that most people tend to copy what others say in boring activities like this, but it still made an impression on me.
Many of the students here tend to follow somewhat modern, but still very defined, gender roles.
They are modern in the fact that women are encouraged to chase their academic and career dreams, and are never told that men are more intelligent than them. This is a huge positive and should be expected of any university culture.
However, the gender divide culturally on campus is apparent, which can be seen in campus fraternities and sororities. Frat guys on campus are loud, boisterous and athletic, while sorority girls are more tempered, feminine and have a focus on bonds between female members.
Unless you are more involved with Queer communities on campus, you rarely see men taking on more feminine traits or women with more masculine traits. Despite this, I like to think that URI students are somewhat accepting of people who deviate outside of these norms, even if they do not participate in it themselves.
The gender equalizer that brings men and women together on campus is the gym. You’ll see a mostly even split between men and women working out alongside each other at the university gym. Even then, the types of workouts they do are different. Women are more focused on cardio and leg strength, while men are more focused on the strength and ‘bodybuilding’ aspects of working out.
I have heard from women who do weight-lifting workouts that they are casually mocked and belittled by the men around them in the gym. It is expected of women that their reasons for working out are typically wellness or weight loss, even if those aren’t their goals.
I don’t think that students at URI need to become genderqueer or whatever, but I would say that we should be more critical of what we consider ‘normal’ for men and women.
We are seeing a rise in a conservative culture that seeks to restrict women’s bodily autonomy and convince them that men’s wants are more important than their needs. Do what you want and do not let other people try to restrict your expression.
Feel free to get more creative as well, even if it’s not in line with your friends or the dominant culture on the campus. You might discover something about yourself that could give you more freedom and happiness; you won’t know until you try.
