Gender Roles

It has always been accurate to say that a woman should worry more about her physical looks than a man, but now as the years have progressed, men have been taking many measures to maintaining their outer appearance as well. When presented with the image above, why would I choose the orange pair of legs to belong to the men, if I am aware that in this day and age, there are men who shave their legs just as there are women who do not shave their legs, although the latter being less common. There are certain expectations to both genders and that classifies what society believes is masculine and feminine. 

By observing this image alone, the colors chosen to represent each pair of legs signifies what is to be expected of the genders. Orange, being close to pink in that they are both components of red, is darker and holds that non-feminine feature of boldness and strength in comparison to a heavily tinted form of red that we all know as a girl's color. It is incorporated into daily lives that certain colors belong to certain genders, such as pink, lavender, and light green being some of the few lighter colors expected to be associated with femininity. Usually, as a contrast, masculinity is associated with darker, more dirty colors. The choice of a darker color in the orange pair of legs already retains that masculinity that holds true to the answer expected of many to choose that those are the male legs.

Another major factor in this juxtaposition is body hair. Who is to say that both of these pairs of legs are female, or that both are male. A grand majority of people, if asked, would assume that men are the ones with hairy legs and that women have smoother legs. This assumption is again based on what society expects of the genders to be like. Women should groom and men should maintain their brute masculinity in its entirety with body and facial hair; although in that case, women cannot normally grow thick facial hair, so it would be safe to assume that anyone with thick facial hair is most probably a man. Even so, women can grow out their leg hair, and walk around with unshaven legs. This is definitely not common in Western culture, but many European women, and other women without those teachings are sure to have legs just as hairy as those of men. 

I thought this one long and hard, as to which is the man and which is the woman. I want to say that the pink pair of legs are female, but only because that is what I was grown to believe, and I myself expect. Although the times of sexism are coming to a close, there will always be that separation between the sexes in what is expected of them, whether that be in how they physically look, to how they should act. Stereotypes will always linger in the minds of the people.