Week 4 Blog
This week we saw how every day life is similar and relates to gender and power. We don’t control what our everyday life is like, we “do� it and therefore we live it. Different parts of life play into what one’s everyday life might be like.
By looking at Cusp, Alice is a young girl who is not only feeling stuck in between two stages, but is faced dealing with her everyday life in ways she never knew before. By looking at Alice’s everyday life, we can see how both gender and power play a role. She is a young girl, yet she wants to have more responsibility at times she sees right. She therefore wants more power in her life. She wants to be seen as an older girl, someone that the boys want, someone that is “cool� at school, and someone who can do what she wants. She still has to do what her mother says, she still has to do her chores, she still has to do things “little girls� do. She is still tortured by other girls, and she is still bothered by the boys. This in way shows gender and power. It’s because of how she does her gender that is why is treated the way she is.
Alice life isn’t the easiest. She lives with just her mother and brother. They don’t have a lot of money. They have to work for what they have. Alice doesn’t always like that, but it’s the reality of her everyday life. Her everyday life is helping her mother, it’s doing the dishes, it’s helping her brother out, or it’s running on errands. She doesn’t always like it but that is what she has to do.
Alice has limits of power. She is still young so she can’t do whatever she wants to do. When she fights with her mother, she realizes she is still the one that needs to follow rules. She doesn’t have the power yet to tell people what to do. She has trouble with this at first but starts to realize it later. She has trouble understanding how certain kids at school have more power and are “higher� than she is. She finally understands that it is just how the “norms� are and that the people who think they can push others around aren’t actually the people to be. She finally grasps the fact that she should be who she is, she should express herself through what she believes, and that should be good enough for everyone.