Gender norms and gender roles are perhaps the most pervasive form of socialization present in our society today. We have very set in stone ideas about what a woman should do/wear/say/etc. and what a man should. These ideas are so concrete in most of our heads that it makes many of us uncomfortable when someone breaks them. At the same time, very few of us could explain why it makes us uncomfortable or could tell you why such gender norms are the way they are. Why is it a norm for women and girls to hold their books by their chest, while men and boys are expected to hold them at their side? Perhaps there exists some physiological reason for this, but most likely it is in fact simply a socially constructed norm that has no 'real' function beyond reinforcing the gender binary. How these gender norms are enforced and socialized into us through social pressure is something that is impossible to understand without going out and experiencing what it is like and how you are treated when you deliberately break such norms, so our group did just that.
We decided to go to the gym up at the SDC, and the two other male members of the group, Grant and Stevie, wore bras that were visible underneath a cut off shirt. Obviously, it is not typical for men to wear bras and it is very typical and in fact, often expected of women to wear bras. Bras have a utilitarian function that does not necessarily have to do with gender, though physiological differences between males and females make it something that is much more useful in general to women.
What happened when they broke this gender norm was basically discomfort all around. The attendant who scanned us in clearly found what they were doing funny, and the two of them got tons of stares and weird looks from the other people in the gym. Someone who Grant actually knows came up and asked him about it. Grant responded with asking him why it was so wrong and weird, which stumped him. We just know that it is. The boys were clearly uncomfortable with the attention they were receiving, me and our other group member were uncomfortable just watching them, and the people in the gym were very much uncomfortable with the two men wearing bras.
This social force of gender norms, perpetuated and enforced by every one of us, has huge implications for the world. We like to think we have free will and are in control of our lives. We tell our kids that they can be whatever and whoever they want to be when they grow up. And surely nothing is absolutely stopping them, however, should we ever decide that what we want goes outside gender norms (and kids who haven't been fully socialized yet often do want to do that), we would have to put up with a lot of scorn and discomfort. So, most of us simply give up and internalize these norms, we worry about constantly fitting in with them, and indeed we contribute to the socialization of others into these very norms by giving them weird looks, staring, pointing it out, etc. whenever someone does something outside their gender norms, something we find 'weird'.
Gender roles and norms can be understood in many ways. One of the ways, something called the functionalist perspective, would look at norms in a way that focuses on their overall function in society, and which institutions it supports/support it. Perhaps, one might say that gender norms support the continuation of the institution of marriage, which supports continued birth of children, ensuring a constant supply of workers for labor.
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