Gendered Identity: A Creation of Consumption - Essay Example

Self-help books abound on book shelves nationwide, most offering women some sort of advice on how to improve themselves through a variety of different means.  If a woman is unhappy with her life, there seems to be a solution right around the corner if she is just willing to make the mental adjustments necessary to find happiness.  The subject of female identity has been very muddied and turbulent since the ending of the First World War in which women’s roles first began changing from the highly constrained wife and mother of the past to one that was increasingly more open to other possibilities.

  Following the Great War, as it was called at the time, various societies throughout the globe began accepting expanded legitimate roles for women outside of the home as long as the woman stayed primarily dedicated to her role as mother around these other roles (Grayzel, 1999).  The control over women’s bodies remained in the province of the state rather than in the power of the woman, but women were beginning to move into a more social sphere, even adopting military uniforms in cases in order to fulfil non-combatant roles close to the front lines.

  However, in order to avoid the embarrassing issue of having men accidentally or by necessity salute women, who were necessarily inferior by virtue of their gender alone, “women of rank received a rose or fleur-de-lis to designate their grade rather than recognized badges of military rank.  The body underneath the uniform continued to matter more than the similarity of roles many men and women now performed in the military” (Keene, 2001).  As women increasingly joined together and fought among themselves regarding how best to define women’s identity within the greater social sphere, it is not surprising that physical appearance and motherhood continues to be a contentious issue even into the present day.

 As women began asserting themselves, gaining rights, entering the workforce and are now beginning to achieve higher social positions such as CEOs of companies, powerful positions in politics and key researchers in a variety of fields, these issues of female identity remain unresolved for many women.  Magazines geared toward business women sold in supermarkets continue to highlight titles that focus on how to balance work and family, home and office or motherhood and career.  Although the choice to work has largely been taken out of the hands of women in today’s economy, these titles reveal the degree to which women continue to struggle with forming their own identity, whether they wish to be associated more as a mother or as a businesswomen, a professional or a housewife, with the implication being that these concepts are necessarily and perpetually mutually exclusive.