Article Analysis Essay on Throwing Like a Girl by Iris Marion Young

The essay by Iris Marion Young tries to explain what it is meant to be a woman in the society and how different things lead up to her position within the community. She begins by discussing Beauvoir's claim that the woman's existence is constrained and she believes that in the discussion neglects some important aspects which make it look as if the woman body determines their being unfree. She goes ahead and explains the different mind perception that has been drilled into the minds of the women that their bodies are less strong than that of a man hence reduces their ability to perform most of the tasks that a man can perform. She tries to explain this with how the girl child and the boy child is brought up. During growing up the boy child is let free to do all kinds of activities (Young). Simply the boy child can go and get dirty while on the other hand, the girl child grows in a constrained environment, don't get dirty, no tear clothes and more. This instills the mindset of the girl child as fragile and the I can't do perspective rather than I can do perspective. This causes lack of practice of so many things within a woman due to the "I cant do" approach on different matters. This leads to lack of confidence, and hesitate to do the tasks thinking their bodies are fragile. This leads to distractions from accomplishing their task ahead of them. From my personal experiences, the women gender has been looked down upon and seen not to be able to do what the male gender can do, but over time this has started changing in almost every aspect (Young. A new mind perspective of what a man can do a woman can do better has started taking effect although not as fast as we would want it to.

Over the past few years, we have had women enrolled into the military in different countries, we have had women as presidents of different countries all over the world as well as other competitive positions have been occupied by the women. This shows a change in the perspective of what the woman can do (Rowbotham). A good example is a TV series referred to as the America Ninja Warrior. The show consists of obstacles which participants have to tackle so as to emerge winners. There are no obstacles for women and men, but all the obstacles have been unified. We have seen women make history in the show. Men are unable to accomplish some of these obstacles, yet we see the women succeeding. This teaches us a lesson in relation to the full potential of a woman.

I growing up as a girl child had to learn a lot, especially in the Asian society. One had to learn how to dress like a girl, sit like a girl, carry yourself around like a girl and many more things. This got into my mind and I could feel the difference in my mind and this happens to almost every girl out there. The society probably does not know how this impacts the development of a girl into a woman. The body of a woman is no different from that of a man only the mind set which draws the difference. The girl child has started growing on a different mind set and is exposed to everything just like the boy child although not in every part of the world (Rowbotham). We still have places in the world where the girl child is still in the shadows of the Boy child. The Feminine movements all around the world has done a lot so as to try and change this perspective of the world, educating the girl child, for instance, has opened up their eyes to greater things. The female gender is no different from the male gender all that is required is a different mindset on how we look at the society and then set our minds to it.

Work Cited

Young, Iris Marion. "Throwing like a girl: A phenomenology of feminine body comportment motility and spatiality." Human studies 3.1 (1980): 137-156.

Rowbotham, Sheila. Woman's consciousness, man's world. Verso Books, 2015.