User:Roshelle.Firdman05/sandbox

Body image
There are many different factors that affect body image, "including sex, media, parental relationship, and puberty as well as weight and popularity". The intersectionality of these factors causes individualistic experiences for adolescents during this period within their lives. As their body changes, so does the environment in which they live in. Body image is closely linked to psychological well-being during adolescence and can cause harmful effects when a child has body dissatisfaction. The article "Body Image and Psychological Well-Being in Adolescents: The Relationship between Gender and School Type" explains that an adolescent's high school experience is closely linked to their perceived body image. She analyzed over 336 teenagers and found that ratings of physical attractiveness and body image remain relatively stable across the early teenage years, but become increasingly negative around age 15–18 years because of pubertal changes". This shift during the high school years may cause serious psychological problems for adolescents. These psychological problems may sometimes manifest into eating disorders causing serious and longterm health issues. Due to findings, it is shown that these body image issues are especially prevalent in females but as males enter puberty, societal expectations of height and muscle mass change as well. The article "Body image in boys: A review of the literature" claims that "girls typically wanted to be thinner, boys frequently wanted to be bigger". This statistic displays that gender difference may cause different beauty ideals. Gender can have an impact of affecting an adolescent's body image and potentially high school experience.

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Gender-based harassment
It is very common for gender-based harassment to occur throughout the academic years of a person's life. This serves as a form of gender boundary policing. People who identify as women are expected to conform to stereotypical gendered appearances, as are people who identify as male. Students regularly take part in policing gender boundaries through bullying. Male students frequently harass male and female students, while female students generally only harass other female students. The practice of male students bullying other male students is explicitly linked to machismo that boys are expected to subscribe to in order to be constructed and related to as 'normal' boys. Many girls report that boys tease and ridicule them on the basis of their appearance, which is linked to boys asserting masculine power through sexist practices of denigrating girls. This also serves to perpetuate the idea that appearance is a female's most important asset. The ways in which females typically go about harassing other females is more of a mental, emotional, and psychological tormenting whereas males take a physical approach. Unique appearances and attempts to stand out among girls are regarded very negatively. These types of female to female bullying set the standard for norms on appearance and the importance of conforming to the societal expectations of that appearance for females. Overall, gender-based harassment serves to define and enforce gender boundaries of students by other students.

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Gender identity
According to Lisa M. Diamond, gender identity is not a stable, fixed trait – rather, it is socially constructed and may vary over time for an individual. A study by Bandura and Bussey shows that kids want to be like others of their sex. Social conformity has been widely studied on adolescents. Results showed that 6-year-old children tend to conform to choices that their peers find more popular. They begin labeling objects as "for girls" or "for boys" and conform to what is expected of them. West and Zimmerman argue that the notion of womanhood or femininity is accomplished through an active process of creating gender through interacting with others in a particular social context. In their research review of "Gender Identity in Youth: different paradigms and controversies", Tuban & Ehrensaft write: "Terminology in the field of gender identity is constantly evolving (Turban, Zucker, & deVries, [112]). The following terms are in common use at this time, and we acknowledge that different cultures and individuals may have different preferred terminology (Table 1). Sex assigned at birth refers to the sex assigned to a newborn by a clinician, generally based on external genitalia at birth or through prenatal diagnostics like ultrasound. Gender identity refers to an individual's psychological sense of one's gender as male, female, or other. Individuals whose sex assigned at birth is opposite to the gender they know themselves to be are often referred to as transgender, although this term is also used as an umbrella term for individuals whose sex assigned at birth does not match their gender identity in a myriad of other ways (Turban, Ferraiolo, Martin, & Olezeski, [113]). An individual assigned male at birth who identifies as female is typically referred to as a transgender woman/girl, and an individual assigned female at birth who identifies as male is typically referred to as a transgender man/boy. In the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM‐5), the diagnosis of gender dysphoria refers to individuals who experience clinical distress secondary to an incongruence between their sex assigned at birth and their gender identity. (Table 2; American Psychiatric Association, [ 6])."

Sexuality/sexual orientation
In recent years, elementary schools in the U.S. have started carrying chapter books that include either non-traditional families with same-sex parents, homosexual role models, or (in fewer cases) an adolescent who is figuring out their own sexuality/sexual orientation. Hermann-Wilmarth and Ryan acknowledge this rise in representation, while critiquing the way that the limited selection of books present these characters with an eye towards popularized characterizations of homosexuality. The authors characterize this style of representation as "homonormative", and in the only example of a book where the protagonist questions their gender identity, it is left ambiguous as to whether or not they are a trans man or that they were simply pretending.

Diamond and Butterworth argue that gender identity and sexual identity are fluid and do not always fall into two essentialist categories (man or woman and gay or straight); they came to this conclusion via interviews with sexual minority women over the course of ten years. One woman had a relatively normal early childhood but around adolescence questioned her sexuality and remained stable in her gender and sexual identity until she started working with men and assumed a masculine "stance" and started to question her gender identity. When 'she' became a 'he' he began to find men attractive and gradually identified as a homosexual man.

The perception of sexuality by others is an extension of others' perceptions of one's gender. Heterosexuality is assumed for those individuals who appear to act appropriately masculine or appropriately feminine. If one wants to be perceived as a lesbian, one must first be perceived as a woman; if one wants to be seen as a gay man, one has to be seen as a man.

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Intersections of gender identity with other identities
Gender is constructed for an individual based on the gendered interactions that the individual has with others, as well as, the other identities or roles that the individual may hold. Gender, race, class, and other forms of oppression are all potential omnirelevant categories, though they are not all identically salient in every form of social relationships in which inequality occurs. Multiple oppressions are not seen as having "additive" or "multiplicative" effects but are seen as simultaneously depending on each other to create a unique form of oppression. Although West and Fenstermaker do not elaborate on exactly how intersectionality can be incorporated into social constructionist theory, they do say that intersecting social identities are constant "interactional accomplishments".

While men and women are held accountable for normative conceptions of gender, this accountability can differ in content based on ethnicity, race, age, class, etc. Hurtado argues that white women and women of color experience gender differently because of their relationship to males of different races and that both groups of women have traditionally been used to substantiate male power in different ways. Some women of color are subordinated through rejection, or denial of the "patriarchal invitation to privilege". For instance, some white men may see women of color as workers and objects of sexual aggression; this would allow the men to display power and sexual aggression without the emotional attachment that they have with white women. White women are accountable for their gendered display as traditionally subservient to white men while women of color may be held accountable for their gendered performance as sexual objects and as recalcitrant and bawdy women in relations with white men. West and Fenstermaker conclude that doing gender involves different versions of accountability, depending on women's "relational position" to white men.