Soooo who isn't marked nowadays?

I wanted to expound on our in class discussion on being marked and why I think that both men and women cannot be unmarked with this new age media and self expression.

I think that before the mainstream use of social media, men fit easily into one category and had the ability to be invisible to judgement in society; but now with this overt concentration of aesthetics, men can't just don a suit and blend in. One tap on a screen can bring us past appearance and into the lives and decisions of others through their posts. We now even mark ourselves by choosing defining fashion that fits into one category or another. You can just tell what a guy does in his spare time by how he dresses, especially in highschool. An Aeropostal hoodie is usually paired with a nerd who doesn't shop for himself, and a Calvin Klein hoodie is associated with a sporty and popular guy. In the Tannen piece, the men were unnoticeable because of their similarities, but nowadays variety is the new self definition. Just because someone fits into their own self defined category doesn't mean that they fit into other categories, other places. I don't think any one person can go anywhere without getting compared to someone else, without being judged in some sense.

Tanned says that "Some days you just want to get dressed and go about your business. But if you're a woman, you can't because there is no unmarked woman." As I read this piece, I felt that what Tannen said doesn't apply to now. That there is no unmarked man. Now as the millennials ideals penetrate the population, tattoos peek out from under business suit cuffs and hair becomes styled in different ways. Self expression is normalized, yet your appearance ends up defining you (from highschool to the work world).

When we say that men are unmarked, we think about things such as the most recent theater production put on by our school, Guys and Dolls. The men had the ability to be uniform, to not stand out. The women on the other hand were either prudes or prostitutes, defined by their bright makeup or subtle looks. The gangsters all blended together as one macho man, they were unified in their label, they weren't marked beyond their occupation. But this shows us that this is of the past, that now everyone is marked. Everyone stands out in some sense, everyone has something that can be noticed or picked apart. Appearance doesn't make you fade into the background, this is left to personality. Women still face a substantial amount of sexism that, in my opinion, is worse compared to the sexism that men face (which still needs to be addressed) but both men and women are marked.