GIST Web Paper 1

Mirella Deocadiz
Gender, Information, Science and Technology
Beauty: A Cultural Construction or the Natural Order?

In the article, “The Face Value of Dreams”: Gender, Race, Class and the Politics of Cosmetic Surgery, Bañales argues that the reason why women choose to get plastic surgery is that it serves to alter or erase racial or ethnic markers. However, in Dull and West’s article “Accounting for Cosmetic Surgery: The Accomplishment of Gender”, cosmetic surgeons talk about restoring the ‘natural order’ of things rather than conforming to a societal standard. This paper aims to discuss whether the perception of beauty and attractiveness are social constructions or whether this perception takes root in more biological grounding.

GIST

Professor McCormack

2/8/11

Webpaper #1

“Interpretations of Gender in Two Communities: Transsexuals and Third-World Women”

First day of class, the gap between gender and technology seemed so large that most of the students in my gender and technology class had trouble describing the interaction between them. However, we have learned that technology has served an important role in altering gender in the current society by reading articles on sex roles in virtual society and medical procedures such as hymenoplasty. Before discussing the interaction between gender and technology, I believe it is important to talk about how my initial thought about gender and technology. Before taking this class at Bryn Mawr College, I, personally, did not have a good idea of gender and was being ignorant about it because I did not know about the complexity of the subject.