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Film Analysis: A League of Their Own Essay

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A League of Their Own (Marshall, 1992) explicitly characterizes an American era when a woman’s place was in the home. Even our modern perspective implicitly follows suit. Although women have gained rights and freedoms since the 1930’s, sexism remains prevalent in America. This film offers an illustration when men went to war and big business men utilized women as temporary replacements in factories, sports, and so on. Here, course concepts, such as gender socialization, gender expressions, role stereotypes, emotion expressions, and language, correspond to the film’s characters and themes. A central theme in this film correlates to the first concept of the 7 principles describing gender socialization in the United States (Rozema, notes, …show more content…

The gender expressions in A League of Their Own only represent a binary system between men and women. Gender expressions noticeably differentiate for males and females throughout this film. Gender expression defines how a person characterizes and presents his or her self to the world as masculine or feminine through dress, personality, and so on (Killermann, 2013). Killermann (2013) suggests gender is expressed through what is socially accepted as normal for each sex. Gender expression exemplifies how the ball players are recruited from appearance, how an impractical hyper-feminized uniform was chosen, and how other women portray them in the media. Firstly, the women were practically recruited based solely on their looks. “America’s looking for dolls, easy on the eyes to play ball” (Marshall, 1992). A doll, in my understanding, is every man’s dream woman. Furthermore, a woman must dress appropriately feminine, be happy, and perfect all the time (Gamble & Gamble, 2003). On the contrary, Marla’s appearance and personality contradicts all aspects of a doll. Ernie’s face said it all. He was disgusted by her appearance. Initially, Ernie refused Marla, but with Dottie and Kit’s inquiries, “You aren’t going to take her because she ain’t pretty?”, he reluctantly gave in (Marshall, 1992). Also, establishing the feminine uniform opposed to the practicality of pants; the uniforms

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