User:Starsn9/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Femininity

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate
I choose this article because I would like to be better informed on this topic, I don’t feel like I have a good understanding of what is femininity or what defines it based on true and reliable sources, my understanding of femininity has been based on my own experiences and the interactions I’ve had with this topic. Therefore, I would really like to see how femininity is explained and defined by an unbiased, neutral party. After reading this article for the first time, some part I found interesting was the idea of whether it’s true that femininity and masculinity are opposing qualities. I also was intrigued that the article weighs in on how femininity is affected by biological and societal factors. Therefore, my first impression of this article was that it is well-written and explained well.

Evaluate the article
The lead section does give some information and descriptions of what will appear later in the sections of the article, while it doesn’t include descriptions of all of the sections, it appears to touch on the important ones such as the idea that femininity might be socially constructed, impacted by different cultures and biological factors. Overall, the lead section is concise, includes only relevant information, and gives an adequate definition of femininity.

One part of the article that stood out to me was that it include how femininity was understood in the past and how/what we currently think of femininity now. Additionally, various different sections touch upon things that have changed over time, for example in the clothing and appearance section they talked about how heels used to be considered masculine, but now a day they’re very feminine, or also how boys used to wear pink but now they tend to wear blue. Therefore, I believe that much of the content is relevant and very inclusive. One section that I was a bit confused about what Julia Serrano’s critique, but I believe that this was because this section was very short and I don’t have a lot of preexisting knowledge on the topic. I also do wish this article covered more about the things a lot of females do such as plastic surgery to appear more beautiful and feminine.

The tone does appear neutral, I didn’t sense any bias within the article, but that can also be because the type of writing I’m used to always tends to argue in favor of one belief or stance. Additionally, all the writing make sense and was clear, I didn’t see any grammatical or spelling errors. I do feel that this article should have more sections, one could possibly be about the progression of femininity over time.

The images were very good in this article, the images would help me see and understand some of the things described in the article. For example, I didn’t know and couldn’t picture the part about necklaces that elongated the neck, so the image really helped me visualize what was being said. Overall, the article is very visually appealing and the images are well-captioned with descriptions.

The article does in fact have many sources, it has 114 sources, and the majority of the links work. They all appear to be reliable and there’s a wide variety of sources from different individuals and articles, and are reflective of the information that’s within the article.

On the talk page, the article is rated C class and ranges from mid to top importance. Its included in various wiki projects such as gender studies, feminism, sociology, and women’s history. Some of the discussions going on within the talk page are whether or not one should the term “biologically created” from the social construction sentence should be removed, there has been an 18,000-word discussion on this so far. There’s also the discussion of whether or not femininity is socially constructed. Additionally, there has been some argument about whether the lead section should just use the word female, instead of women and girls.

In the end, I believe that the article is well-written and developed, obviously, there will always be room for improvement. I think the article would also benefit from the addition of more new information and sections. The masculinity article appears to have more sections. Perhaps the article can also touch on how femininity varies within different cultures and expand on how it differs within religions. Some of the article’s strengths are that it includes ideas from a broad range of people and intellectuals in the history and overview section. I do wish this idea that femininity and masculinity are connected was expanded on. As long as more information is on how femininity is believed to be socially constructed as well as a section on how it can be based on biological factors.