Doing gender means creating differences between girls and boys and women and men, differences that are not natural, essential, or biological. Once the differences have been constructed, they are used to reinforce the “essentialness” of gender. (West and Zimmerman, 137)

West and Zimmerman write about Doing Gender, and they cite a number of ways that gender is being done in childhood, at work, at home, and even in the bedroom.  They wrote this piece in the late 1980s, which begs the question… have things changed? Do we still do gender in ways suggested by West and Zimmerman?

Select a cultural artifact (see Kellner for more on this) that you see as an example of doing gender today. Provide us with a brief cultural analysis (as discussed by Kellner) that explores production and political economy, textual analysis and audience reception. Explain how your artifact does gender, and why it has cultural significance. Provide us with your cultural artifact (either by inserting an image into your post, posting a Youtube video of commercial or movie clip, linking to another website that you are analyzing, etc.)  Use at least two quotes from the readings to support your answer.