Social Norms

I was very interested in the way that Deborah Tannen introduced 'marked' and 'unmarked' human beings in society through her piece, There Is No Marked Woman. After reading the essay, I found that she had written it back in 1933. This shocked me, as I made connections about certain styles that she had seen then that I notice in modern society today.  I decided to dig deeper in searching for basic styles that we see today that compare/contrast with Tannen's piece.

Tannen explains how business men's hairstyles go unmarked with "no hair, standard length of hair, parted on one side, and colors of brown or gray or graying" (paragraph 12).  By researching hair styles of the early 1930's, I found images that mostly looked like this:




Even today, this type of hair style would still classify as 'unmarked' but you can clearly see that the styles of how men dress and do their hair has changed. 
The image seen above is what anyone would see walking around town today and would still be seen as unmarked. I believe that men couldn't really go marked back then, but could go marked today. In modern society, the media and people in general are more judgmental and harsh towards people that don't follow the 'social norms'. For example, if you see a man walking down the street with a neon mohawk, a bright, cut up orange shirt, and basketball shorts you would be prone to take a second look and offhandedly judge him. The same thing could go for women as well. Teenagers especially feel the pressure to be able to fit into society's expectations, so they won't go as marked. 

I feel that in today's day and age, going as marked is shown not in a positive light than as if it ever was earlier in time.

Comments

  1. Ellen KimFebruary 2, 2020 at 3:44 PM

    I love how you connected her article to modern examples to show how society changed throughout the years! I totally agree with your statement that men could go marked in today's society, especially since people are more prone to judgement now compared to tens of years ago.

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