Miss Congeniality

Miss Congeniality is an American police comedy film, starring the beautiful Sandra Bullock. This movie can be considered as one of the girly movies, and it includes the ten common traits of the girly films that we learned in sociology class.

Define Gracie Hart

Gracie Hart (Sandra Bullock) is FBI agent shows no signs of having any femininity in her behavior or appearance. Her appearance is a crucial aspect of her identity. She has the feeling of ambivalence about the role of romance, marriage and work in woman’s life. Thus, Gracie can be defined as the protagonist, because she is a single woman who works for a living, and whose work defines her.

Eric Matthews (Benjamin Bratt), is Gracie’s colleague whose assigned to lead the high profile case of a terrorist called “The Citizen” instead of her to stop the attack. Both of them determine that “The Citizen” 's next target will be the Miss United States beauty pageant. Eric assigns her to go undercover as a pageant contestant to see if she can catch “The Citizen”. This movie takes place in a large, well-known city, which is San Antonio, Texas; where the beauty contest takes place.

The Transformation

The FBI used the assistance of the previous pageant contestant coach Victor Melling (Michael Caine), to do the impossible task of transforming Gracie, not only into a woman, but into a credible beauty pageant contestant. Victor represents the consumer culture, in which everything goes right with him. There is a theme of personal transformation, as she becomes beautiful and attractive. Gracie enters the contest as Miss New Jersey. She suits the example of the Miss United States beauty pageant. She had the ability to transform which helps her lead to resolve her conflicts and to achieve her goals.

The Past.

Gracie has difficult time to proceed in the transformation. Victor continues to teach the tomboyish Gracie how to dress, walk and act like a contestant. She is not used to such behaviors. She has the sense of nostalgia or glorifying the past during the contest when she demonstrates self-defense techniques during the talent competition. She has the hard times when she can’t continue in this undercover job. She thinks she doesn’t belong to this place.

The Happy Ending

Gracie gets to know the other contestants. Then, she discovers the evil element is present at the pageant. She will do whatever it takes to crush that element and protect her new friends, namely the other innocent contestants.

Gracie displays some femininity during the movie. She begins to have more womanly feelings and that attracts the attention of men, in particular, she starts to attract Eric.

When Eric fails to support Gracie, he then realizes that Gracie’s suspicions are correct, and he returns to help her. Gracie surprises everyone, including herself by discovering “The Citizen”. She and Eric save the day, and they arrest the criminals. At the end, Eric admits his crush on her, and she starts a relationship with Matthews. She finally lead succeeds in her goal of having affair with the man of her choice.

Shopping Habits: Women and Men

People’s taste varies from a person to another. It depends on what is your gender. Men usually do not care what to wear as along as it is emphasizing their muscles. On the hand, women likes to wear what can represent them as a sexy cute attractive female that men will keep an eye on. It is a fact that men care about how a woman look compared to her personality. In some books that I read, 80% of men’s attraction to women is based on their looks and 20% is based on their personalities. In contrast, women 80% care about the personality and 20% about the looks. In general, women like to go shopping to look good and keep on track on the fashion revolution that is occurring. Women are usually accompanied with their men or their girlfriends. In the Qatari Society, women here go to shop alone, leaving men at work or home.

I went to Villagio Mall yesterday to observe the sociological pattern of how people go shopping and with whom. I found a lot of interesting facts that I have not known before. Qatari women in Qatar go shopping alone, or with kids and girlfriends. Qatari men do not interact with the shopping process and buying clothes. It is the mother’s mission to buy clothes for herself or the kids. However, non-Qatari people from different nationalities go shopping with anyone they find available. Asians, other Arabs, White, Black and people from different ethnicities go with their wives. Social class has nothing to do with people who go shopping. It is all about the mentality. Qatari men buy their own clothes without the help of women. They have their own tailor.

In Sociology, this discrimination, if I may call it, varies from a society to another. I just wanted to experiment the concept of gender socialization. I found out the norms here. It is interesting that only non-Qatari men interact with women to buy clothes and different stuff for the house. What was not clear to me is that even it was a Friday night, not a lot of children were there. This is made it a bit harder for me to observe another pattern which is the shopping for kids. Who does it? And with who? Overall, I found what I want, and it was interesting to learn these things about the Qatari society.

Gender Socialization Conflicts in Doha

Food culture in Doha is one of the most important traditions that people uphold in Qatar. For example: if someone is visiting Doha for the first time, one of the things the citizens of Doha insist on offering the visitor is the food. Although the food recipes doesn’t necessarily originate in Doha, but people in Qatar perceive food as great social icebreakers.  

 Interestingly enough, when I observed the food culture in Doha I realized that the gender socialization notions and its applications in the Arab culture is conflicted. First, let me explain what I mean by the gender socialization. Gender socialization is the female and male genders’ learning process to the socially acceptable behaviors and attitudes to each gender’s role. 

In Doha’s culture, the culinary experience is one of the factors that gender is stratified by. Knowing how to cook in the Arab world is strongly affiliated with being a woman. Men are encouraged to know how to cook, however women are supposed and should know how to cook. They should also know how to serve the food for their fathers, husbands, and guests. From observation, I realized that this ideology conflicts with what’s taking place in the Arab restaurants of Doha. 

When I went to Bait El-sham, a Syrian restaurant,

 most of the waiters were males. I checked with the manager and he mentioned that the chef was a male too. Another Arabic restaurant that I went to is the Orient Pearl, which had very few female waitresses, much like Al Saha restaurant, Tajin, Damasca, and Morjan, which had mostly male waiters. Thus, the gender socialization that both genders were exposed to in their upbringing is conflicted with what’s applied in these Arabic restaurants. 

To further understand the conflict that’s taking place, I analyzed more Arab ideologies and gender socialization patterns that can be connected with this conflict. In Doha and the Arab world, there’s a huge distinction between the private, in the house, and public, outside of the house, sphere. The public sphere is more restrictive towards females. In Doha, part of the gender socialization that both genders are brought up with is that women can’t go out late, and can’t go out all the time, where as men are allowed to. 

 In trying to balance between the two deeply rooted beliefs that Arab men and women are brought up with, what became socially acceptable is that men should cook in these Arabic restaurants because it’s a male dominant society. Never mind the strong belief that cooking is associated with females, if the issue is one that has to do with gender, females are almost always contained in the private sphere of the home, something that we, females, are starting to break free from nowadays.

 

Gender Differences!

In our last sociology class we learned about how does gender affect people’s behaviors, and does genes or environment influence those behaviors. First let me start by demonstrating the difference between “gender” and “sex.” Sex is the biological characteristic of being a male and female, whereas gender it refers to the social roles that men and women play. So, the society and the environment have a great influence on how does male and female act.

When men or a women act the way they does it is not due to genes, in fact it is mostly due to the expectation of the society. When first a child is born and it’s a boy people will start treating him differently that if it was a baby-girl. Though he is just an infant yet his parents will keep saying, “you’re a man you should be strong.” They will start getting him balls, cars, painting his bedroom walls with blue and many other thing that the society have decided that those this are only for boys. If it was a girl on the other hand, they will start treating her more tenderly and getting her Barbie dolls, and pink stuff. But the question is why does the color blue and the color pink are associated with boys and girls respectively?

It is the Gender Socialization effect!

Gender socialization is the process of learning the social expectations and attitudes associated with one's sex. And because people tend to link blue with boys and pink with girls, it is unexpected for a baby-boy to wear pink cloths. Gender socialization gets people to know their roles according to their genders.

Women at the house are expected to do the housework and the men are breadwinners, thus due to gender socialization people tend to do the job that is expected from them.

Driving cars in Qatar

In Qatar Driving cars is associated with men, most Qatari families do not allow their daughters to drive because it is a men task. They’d rather have a driver than allowing their daughters to drive! However, many Qatari girls are breaking those rules that the societies setup. However, it is unusual to see a man breaking the gender rules. Men do not get involve in activities that are seen “girli activities” by the society! It is their masculinity that is affecting their actions. Masculinity is set of qualities that are considered to be characteristic of a male. This explains that it is easier for a female to gross-gender boundaries than for a male!  

Arabs and Working Women

Women were and will always be the other half of the society that we all live in. different societies have different ways of treating women, and most of the time it is not equal. In the Middle East it is a normal thing to see men working and women staying home with the kids. The notion of mothers should stay home and raise their kids to be the “best” was stated by many families. While having a normal conversation with a friend of mine, I pulled out a question “Do you think women should go out and work or stay home and raise the kids?” That was her response:

Although this answer makes since to many of us, women hate to stay at home. They feel that their life is surrounded by kids, cleaning, washing and all the boring home duties. Whereas the man goes out, work, travel and have a business lunch. Women want to take a break from the home duties and go out to explore what this world has to offer for them. If the women is out working who is going to take care of the kids? The maid? Why would someone leave her/his kid with someone who is only supposed to do is taking care of the house? Well the answer would be that women want to explore the life outside the house, and that is why some parents who both work keep their kids in a nursery school if the kids were young.

In sociology, the breadwinner system means that the man goes out to work and the wife stays home with the kids. This been the system for Arabs for a long time, and it will, from my perspective, continue for the next few decades. The man will always be the man of the house. The breadwinner system varies from a social class to another. For example, women from the high middle class are not supposed to work because they have enough money that the man gets. On the other hand, women from the working class or the low middle class might not have enough money to support the family. Therefore, the women also work to support their husbands to provide the best support for their kids.

As an Arab, I think women should be given the chance to go outside and work, but work should not conflict with their other duties to their husbands and kids.

Which door can I take?

Earlier this semester, in our Sociology class, our professor, Geoff Harkness, showed us a video of a sociology experiment that was done in the US. Watch below:

I thought if this experiment was done here in Doha, Qatar no one would conform and we would most likely have different results. On the other hand, our professor had a different hypothesis, where he believed people would conform.

So I went out and actually did the experiment as one of my assignments. I placed “ladies only” and “men only” signs on the Carnegie Mellon building doors here in Qatar. Here are my results:

I thought of many different reasons to why people acted in this manner. One of which is that here in the Middle East, specifically in Qatar, there is a stereotype that women are more oppressed and can’t always do what they wish on doing. So when they saw such signs in Education City, a space with six different American universities, they were disappointed and angry. Instead of being able to express themselves in their universities, they had to deal with the cultural restrictions there too.

Whereas for the men, I believe that the men acted out this way as a sign of masculinity. They refused to walk into the “ladies only” door and confidently walked into the “men only” one. We don’t see any of the men acting out on the experiment as being something they disapprove of. However, in minute 2.47, we see how this young man refuses to be pulled in to the ladies only door and forcefully walk into the “right” door, dragging the lady with him.

Our professor pointed out an interesting fact too, women happen to cross gender boundaries more often than men do. An example of that is, imagine a “man’s” sport, like football- that is usually accepted and women won’t get as many negative sanctions as a man, let’s say, doing ballet- now, THAT is out of the ordinary.

I would love to hear what other people think of this, please share any thoughts on why you think people here didn’t conform to this like they did in the US.