Born, but Rather Becomes, a Woman. Simone

¶ … born, but rather becomes, a woman.

Simone de Beauvoir

In her famous quotation from The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir challenges the notion that biology is destiny, and one's sex determines one's character. Although males and females may possess different physical characteristics, the interpretation of those characteristics is cultural in nature. For example, women menstruate -- this is a biological fact. However, the social interpretation of this fact, that women are somehow inferior to men because they menstruate, is a product of culture. Different cultural notions are imposed upon the sexes from a very early age, in both explicit and subtle ways. A boy may be told not to cry when he falls down playing soccer; a girl may be praised for loving pink. However, over time, these messages come to shape the human personality and because human beings are social animals, such gender-related pressures are difficult to resist. This becomes particularly true in adolescence, when there is pressure upon young men and women to find a partner.

Although both the social shaping of men and women affects their developing psyches, De Beauvoir believed that for women, the social strictures were particularly onerous. In the case of middle-class women, gender assumptions tied women to the home and rendered them economically dependent upon males. Women were told they 'could not work,' at least not at occupations that were given the same social prestige as males. Of course, there were many social fictions behind such assertions. Lower-class women worked -- and worked very hard, as if they were somehow not deemed 'women.' And the fact that there were so many class and race-based assumptions within the construction of 'womanhood' highlights how the feminization process is an imposition, rather than something natural. Is a middle-class woman who does not work more of a woman than her lower-class maid? De Beauvoir suggests that in the narrow definitions of sexuality and womanhood, the answer is often 'yes.'

Also, when certain characteristics are embodied by a woman they are often seen as 'less than' or inferior to the same qualities and characteristics as when they are embodied by a man. When a woman is strong and aggressive, rather than stating it is part of her individual nature, this is deemed to be unnatural, antagonistic, and against her true nature as a woman, while aggressiveness praised when embodied in a male. When a woman cooks, it is seen as natural, domestic and part of the home. When a male cooks, he is praised for being a chef.

De Beauvoir's concept of identity as a construct does not have to be limited to maleness and femaleness. Members of certain races, religions, and ethnicities likewise have ad certain characteristics attached to them, based upon cultural assumptions. In the early 19th century, Irish and Italian immigrants in America were viewed as inferior and not 'white' in the same ways as residents of America of long-standing. This changed as the culture changed. People of African, Jewish, and Latin-American ancestry have been demonized because of their nation of origin or skin tone, but the stereotypes which attach to certain groups are often not consistent, and such stereotypes reflect the needs and preoccupations of the group projecting its anxieties upon the 'other,' not the group itself.