West Side Story and Gender: What if Tony lived?
Instead of writing my 7-page paper due tomorrow on West Side Story and the youth's intersections of race, gender, class, and how all that contribute to nation-making, I'm taking a break from writing my outline to do some creative exercise for my brain. There's a lot of gender going on in West Side Story. Anybodys is the tomboy who really really really wants to be in the Jets, but on multiple counts the boys dismiss her and ask her to conform to feminine standards of beauty. Anybodys even incessantly hangs around the Jets boys and imitate their masculine behavior, including spitting on the ground and insulting girls. Then there is the divide between the Shark boys and girls. They all acknowledge the opportunities and luxuries that America accords them, but while the girls really enjoy the new found freedom with all the nice buildings, roads, glamorous lives in New York City, the boys lament that they are discriminated against in America and the girls are getting too out ...