Gender: A Social Construct in Ma Vie en Rose

The notion of coming of age is an idea that not only sparks our curiosity but creates feelings within all of us that prompts anxiety. As we get older we begin to “discover” ourselves, delving into a world which not only asks us to define ourselves but as we do the defining, we must keep in mind the social confines which limit the ways in which we should define ourselves. Although we attribute this notion of “finding oneself” to the young adult, we often forget that children are also vulnerable to this notion of the self. Ma Vie en Rose (My Life in Pink), uses 7 year-old Ludovic to  explore the way in which children deal with sexuality and how normalizing powers work to ensure that his sexual identification follow society’s structure. Throughout the film, we see Ludo’s identification as female, although his sex has determined him male. As Ludo outwardly conveys behavior which deviate from what society considers the norm, we see outside forces working to deter him from this behavior. His parents, classmates, and individuals within the community make every attempt to remind Ludo that he is a boy. It is this constant reminder and reinforcement that allows the question of the true nature of gender. While the normalizing powers work to ensure that Ludo conform to the gender roles of society, Ludo’s identification as a female conveys that gender identification may not be so black and white. The actions of those in the community bring about this notion that gender in itself is socially constructed. By constantly reminding Ludo that he is a boy and labeling his attraction to the same sex as “bent” there is an implication that there is something wrong with him and he needs to be fixed.By attempting to “fix” Ludo, the normalizing powers convey that society works to keep us in line with the gender roles that seem normal to us.

As we explore the way in which normalizing powers work to ensure Ludo’s identification with the gender society sees fit, it is important to note the role of Pam in helping him embrace his identification as a girl. The fictitious character Pam works not only as a form of escape from society, but also allows Ludo the opportunity to be himself. As watches the show, he internalizes what it means to be a girl according to Pam. Marrying a boy and being beautiful are lessons he learns from Pam and brings into his own world. When he pretends to marry Jerome, he is mimicking the feminine fantasies he has learned from the show. However, Pam does not only work to Ludo's benefit, because it is through Pam that his mother finally learns to love her son the way he is. Pam allows Ludo's mother into his world and allows her to see that she can't change him.

Ma Vie En Rose

If there was anything dominant in this film it was that of normalizing/normalizing forces. Ludo's behavior is, at first, taken lightly by his parents as well as the neighbors. At the beginning of the film, during the housewarming party, Ludo's actions of wearing a dress, earrings and heels to introduce himself is laughed off when his dad claims he is the joker of the family. No one bats an eye to this and instead just treat it as a phase. It's only as the film progresses and Ludo becomes more persistent in doing what feels right to him that the adults, his father, mother, neighbors, begin policing him and his behavior in an attempt to guide Ludo to what they perceive as normal. This policing of the adults gets intense especially after Ludo begins engaging with one of the neighbor's son. This particular neighbor is seen as the "leader" of the neighborhood; the most powerful of all the families. So it would be obvious that he becomes one of the most powerful forces that makes it his duty to rid the neighborhood of Ludo's behavior. Ludo's father is heavily into changing his son and even almost resorts to violence when he raises his hand to strike his wife for getting in the way of what seemed to be him beating Ludo for not being a "normal" boy. His mother who is, throughout the movie, calmer and more accepting of Ludo quickly shifts her ideals and begins to treat Ludo very nasty. She blames him for all their misfortunes and for ruining their lives after the father loses his job and they are driven out of the neighborhood. The comfort zones that Ludo turns to through all of this would be his grandmother and his television show (Le Monde de Pam). His grandmother is the only one throughout the movie that realizes that Ludo is not just going through a phase and accepts him for whoever he chooses to be. Ludo eventually moves out of his parents house and stays with his grandmother. As his grandmother, Ludo uses Le Mode de Pam television show to get lost in his own world where he is a girl and away from all the negative forces around him. He is constantly escaping to this very pink and colorful world.


Ludo does not understand why he is not a girl or why everyone does not believe that he is going to turn into a girl in time. He constantly is telling his mother that he understands that two boys cannot get married but is going to marry the neighbor boy when he finally becomes a girl. Before his sister explains to him the biological factors that make up a boy and a girl Ludo found comfort in keeping his hair long and trying to do things like a girl like pee sitting down which he believed would eventually pave the way into his transformation. After the talk with his sister Ludo came up with a theory of his own where he stated that God planned to make him a girl but the other X-chromosome got knocked into the trash by accident. In Anne Fausto-Sterling's text How To Build A Man, she explains how scientists have "into the fabric their own deeply social understanding of what it means to be male or female."(pg.3) She is showing that even these biological chromosomes are a scheme that scientists use to define normality. Male and female become the only two destinations that are available after fertilization. She explains that females are also considered the default sex since they lack the almighty Master Sex-Determining Gene (Y). So basically this master gene has to activate to stop the embryo from becoming female. This in turn shows that "the male is in constant danger."(pg.4) This I found very comical since Sterling is effective in showing how many, including scientists, perceive females in comparison to males. It's like having a female is just because the SDY gene failed to show up to the party; so now there's nothing else to do but be female. It requires something special to get a male if that is not present then hey better luck next time.

Ma Vie En Rose

Ludo's search for his gender identity is confronted right away in the film.  He is shown dressed completely in drag.  At a party, he wants to look "pretty" so comes out wearing a pink dress, makeup, heels, and women's jewelry.  He comes out of the house just as his parents are introducing his sister, Zoe.  Assuming that he is Zoe everyone smiles and claps, after realizing that Ludo isn't actually a girl everyone is silent and shocked.  His father than defends his appearance by saying he is the joker of the family.  Ludo is at his happiest when he is able to wear a skirt or a dress, but instead of accepting it his parent tend to make an excuse as to why they've allowed, one being that they hope it'll get out of his system.  Treating his desires to be a girl like an illness that can be cured.

Aside from dressing in drag Ludo performs acts that only girls do.  In the bathroom scene, he tries to convince Jerome that he is really a girl because he is able to pee sitting down.  Everyone knows that boys pee standing up and girls sitting down.  He also stole Sophie's costume so he could play Snow White in the school.  Lastly, Ludo overhears his mother tell Zoe that she is a true "lady" after getting her period.  Not understanding what a period was Zoe tells him its because she has cramps.  Cramps is something only girls feel, so when Ludo wakes up to having stomach pains he excitedly runs out the door screaming he's got his period.  In Ludo's young eyes, in order to truly be a girl she also has to act the part.

Pam and the fantasy sequences represents a world with no social construction.  People are able to be who they are with no judgement.  This world is introduced when Ludo's carefree grandmother says when she wants to escape her everyday life, she just closes her eyes and imagines a world where she could dress like she was 20 and no one would care.  This is the point in Ludo's life where he begins to realize that his thoughts and feelings aren't "normal" so he begins to makeup his perfect world.  The fantasy sequences answers all his questions for him, like when he "X" chromosome falls into the trash which is why he ended up with the "Y" instead. Ludo's thoughts are far beyond what his family can and want to understand. So its his outlet from the uptight society he lives in.

Ma Vie en Rose

The film really encouraged a broader look on not just gender and sexuality, but on the effects it has on all ages, not just people going through puberty or later as a young adult. I consider myself to have a considerably open mind, but to see this little boy going through so much trouble, some parts really shocked me. Young boys should be playing with friends and siblings, going to school doing homework, etc. Instead, this boy was picked on, blamed, and humiliated; not something an eight year old should experience daily. In my opinion, Ludo knew that his body was that of a boy. However, mentally, he believed that he was supposed to be the female gender. Ludo knows the difference between boys and girls, but when it came to identifying the "self," he was unsure. Also, the difference between drag and productivity was displayed in the film. Drag would be the scenes where he wears the dresses, the high heels, the make up, etc. Performativity on the other hand is when he claims to have his period, or when he sits down in the bathroom. According to Anne Fausto-Sterling, proper socialization and good mental health are important to growing kids. In the film, the mother at first wants to let Ludo be who he is and see if he'd grow out of it. Then the mother becomes the one to blame Ludo for everything that's happening to the family, and the father is the one who tries to let Ludo be who he wants.  It seemed impossible to Ludo to have a clear and playful mind, when he's constantly being ridiculed for who he is. One thing that I did not like, although I know it does happen, was the scene when Ludo goes into the freezer. This movie touches on very important concepts that really happen in today's society, but doesn't get much attention. To be in the parents situation, I would imagine, would be very hard, and I think that at least for me, you would have to live in that situation to know exactly how you would handle it.

Ma Vie en Rose

1.
Ludo vs. normalizing forces

In Ma Vie en Rose, Ludo is in constant battle with the normalizing forces of the society around him. There are constant attempts to get him “in-line” from a family and community who finds his behavior to be strange and peculiar. At home, his parents chastise him for wanting to dress like a girl. At school, he is mocked by his peers. He is even brought to a psychiatrist. These are all attempts to “fix” Ludo by the people surrounding him, to whom his actions seem unhealthy and bizarre.

The issue is that Ludo finds himself in a gray zone in the social conciseness, a no-man’s land (no pun intended) beyond the scope of popular consensus. He is, to use Judith Butler’s terminology, somewhere off the “grid of intelligibility”. As Butler explains, our society has a certain (if faulty) understanding of things such as gender and sexuality, and anything that doesn’t conform to that pre-conceived understanding is hard for society in general to digest. Ludo has fallen off the grid of intelligibility into a world where those stuck on the grid cannot hope to reach him. Faced with something they do not understand, the normalizing forces of his family and community respond the only way they know how: by trying to “correct” it. For those who have never seen beyond the grid, realizing that there is nothing to correct can be a hard pill to swallow.


2.
The World of Pam

In his daydreams, Ludo frequently retreats to The World of Pam, a world from a TV show of the same name that is basically a Barbie Dream House come to life. It is a world of idealized femininity, a world of pink houses and pretty dresses and wholesome relationships with men. This concept of pure femininity is also Ludo’s ideal world. He wants to be Pam – to like pink and dresses and boys in a world where all of that is not only accepted, but celebrated. And so Ludo wishes dearly to be swept away to such a world. It is his refuge from the harsh reality that forces him to conform to conventional ideas of male gender and sexuality.

Alas, this world is not for him – it is a world for little girls, not little boys, and sure enough when he shows up to school with Pam dolls he is mocked. The World of Pam remains a dream, an idealization just beyond his reach. Trapped as he is in his masculine role, the feminine world of Pam remains an unreachable goal, and it taunts him.

Ma Vie En Rose

1. There are several normalizing powers in Ma Vie En Rose which serve to police the comfort zone. Ludo’s parents and the school try to suppress Ludo’s cross dressing habits. These comfort zones seem to have a very old school mindset when it comes to gender. They won’t even entertain the idea that Ludo might actually be transgendered. His parents bring him to psychologist to try and “fix” him. The scene in the locker room also gives us a glimpse at how Ludo’s peers view him. The boys crowd Ludo and threaten to harm him just because he wears dresses sometimes. As opposed to the parents, the boys in the locker room are using force to police the comfort zone. He is being physically punished for not adhering to their idea of a normal comfort zone. In all of these examples Ludo is punished by these normalizing powers. He is kicked out of school, his parents constantly yell at him, and the bullies beat him up.

2. Le Monde De Pam serves as Ludo’s safe haven. It’s his escape. Pam lives in a perfect world where nobody fights and has an ideal boyfriend. This is everything Ludo wants. In every fantasy he has, Pam comes to him and tells him everything is going to be alright. Pam is one of the only characters in the movie that doesn’t judge Ludo for dressing like a girl. She is the ideal woman in Ludo’s eyes. When the show comes on he lives vicariously through the character of Pam and he is able to peek into his fantasy of being a woman. At the end of the film, when his mother goes looking for him, she climbs up a billboard and in a fantasy state sees Ludo running off with Pam. Even his mother knows this is his escape place because Ludo was not present when she fell off of the billboard.

Ma Vie en Rose

      1.      Ludo’s choice of clothing is one of the most important factors in his own search for gender identity, as well as his parents' mounting concern for him. The most prominent scenes in which Ludo engages in drag are the first and last. The first scene of the film with people in it shows the husbands of the three main families in the neighborhood each zipping their respective wives’ dresses, getting ready for the Fabres’ welcoming party. These women all epitomize the stereotypical, obedient, feminine wife. In sharp contrast to these women, Ludo makes his grand entrance to the party wearing his older sister Zoe’s princess attire; at first, everyone applauds, thinking Ludo is Zoe; when they realize it is a boy, they become silent and uncomfortable. In an even bigger contrast, the last scene also includes Ludo cross-dressing, but this time, his reception is more positive: at his masculine female friend’s party, she makes him switch costumes, leaving Ludo with the girl’s frilly dress, which at first angers his mother, but she soon comes to realize that he is still her son, no matter what he wears on his exterior.

      4.   Pam, the French fashion doll and Ludo’s inspiration, appears in the film to help develop Ludo’s fantasies. The rest of the film happens in a very practical, rational, logistical fashion: the sequence of events unfolds, the characters react, and the cycle occurs again. Within the Pam fantasy sequences, however, time and space are irrelevant. Ludo employs these fantasies to escape the torturous reality of his life, over which he has no control. He doesn’t understand why his parents are constantly mad at him, or why the boys (and girls, for that matter) in his class treat him differently, or how any of the bad things happening to his family are his fault. The fantasy of Pam provides Ludo with an opportunity to act, speak, think and dress how he wishes – which is exactly what he does. By the end of the movie, when Ludo’s mother “sees” him climbing up the Pam’s billboard to be with her, Mrs. Fabre truly understands her son’s intentions and desires.

XY=XX

Ludovic is a little kid, a reluctant part of the male gender trying to fit in with his "normal family", 

his brother's play soccer, his sister is a teenager who does teenage girl activities his parents 

are typical working class parents (father works, mother is a home-maker). 

Ludovic's theory of gender and sex is a lot similar to that of Anne Fausto-sterling.  

 

Anne Fausto-sterling's article on "how to build a man" talks about how men are made and not born.

she uses the term "social construction to drive home her point. she outlines fact's that detail how at birth if a newborn does not live up to some physical expectations to assure membership of one category, a rapid decision is made for the newborn and this newborn is immediately put into a differnt category. her argument is, if such decisions and practices are carried out in scientific institutions that allegedly hold answers that are supposedly true, then the truth in reference to gender is definitively skewered because gender is a doing, not a being. no one is born with a manual on how to be a man or woman, we all live  and learn these roles. all through this movie we see gender performativity, i.e. a member of one gender is forced to participate and carry out actions of another gender. one good example occur's in the scene where ludovic is forced to play soccer with his brothers and other kids, his actions clearly showed ludovic had no idea how the game was played but sure enough his dad was there cheering him on telling him " son, eventually you will get the hang of it". another example will be the scene where ludovic and Jerome sneak into the girl's bathroom, ludovic sits on the toilet and attempts to pee like a woman. he perform's this action without hassle, he then proclaims 

to Jerome that he is indeed a girl because he just performed an action supposedly carried out by only women. 

Pam in my opinion is the uniting force between all gender's. she is sort of a figure of authority that wants happiness for all, including herself, an embodiment of what society is supposed to be.

Ma Vie en Rose

3) Ludo believes that he is able to choose the gender you want to be. Even though his sex is male, he chooses to be a female. Ludo believes he was supposed to be a female but one of his X’s was thrown in the garbage rather than being dropped down the chimney.  Ludo enjoys having his hair long and wearing dresses, make-up, and high-heels. As he reenacts a wedding with his school friend, he wants to be the bride. This scene shows he is not confessing his love for other males, whereas he just rather be a female. In another scene, Ludo pretends to have a stomach ache because he has “received” his period.

4) Pam plays a major role in Ludo's life. Ludo inspires to be like Pam one day. In school, Ludo brought in his doll of Pam for show and tell since Pam is a role model to Ludo. For show and tell, most of the girls also brought in the Pam doll. Pam accepts Ludo as he is. Society shows that he is different from all the other 7- year old boys because Ludo is not following social "norms". In Pam's world, Ludo and Pam are able to fly and do whatever they would like to do without worrying about being accepted by others. Throughout the movie, Ludo sings and dances to Pam's theme song as a way to imitate Pam. Pam allows Ludo to have confidence to be able to act and dress how he wants to, even if he wants to wear a pink dress.

  

Ma Vie en Rose

The social institutions that are key factors in Ma Vie en Rose is both Ludo's family and the surrounding families in the suburban neighborhood in which they live. Ludo, who is a seven year old boy, identifies as being a girl. The first time that the audience is introduced to Ludo is at the housewarming party his parents throw, that all of the neighbors are invited to. The opening scene of the movie that depicts several of the surrounding families (specifically the dynamics between the husband and wife) show there is very little cultural, socio-economic, or racial differences between the surrounding families. They are all very similar in demeanor and way of life. The bubble of the neighborhood in which they live is close knit and this affects the movies' plot entirely. Not only is there opposition of Ludo's gender specificity within his family (his parents), the opposition is sparked and further dramatized by the parents in the neighborhood. Due to their dislike and discomfort of Ludo's choice to be/become a girl, his parents lives are affected; therefore, fueling their disapproval. His grandmother, the only source of compassion, is not in disapproval because she is introduced as a free-spirited, carefree older woman. The parents are immediately introduced as wanting to fit in and be socially accepted by the neighbors and their society. The main way in which this can be seen is the difference in Ludo's mother's behavior when they live in the first neighborhood compared to when they move. After the surrounding parents make her feel as though her son is a "bent boy," and therefore not welcome/a bad person, she is angry and disappointed, blaming her son for the families' outcasting from the social status. When they move to a new neighborhood, and the parents scorn her for the way she reacts to Ludo wearing Christina's dress, saying "It's only a costume," she becomes more understanding and tells Ludo that she loves him no matter his choice/decision. One can look at the surrounding families as a Cult, like in the Bornstein reading. It is not that the families are bashing Ludo because they are concerned with his "bent" ways and envisioning the ways in which these practices play out. "It has a lot to do with seeing that man violate the rules of gender in that culture." 

The fantasy scene in which Ludo imagines himself via The World of Pam is vital to understanding his feminine desires and feeling of acceptance. Ludo's character is only accepted as he is in this specific world. His grandmother tells him when she sees him dancing to the show's song, that when she wants to do something "ridiculous," she closes her eyes imagining it is okay and acceptable. The only place in which Ludo feels he is fully accepted for his desire to be identified as a girl is in this very world. The importance of Pam as a role-model for Ludo is seen throughout the film in several ways. When the students in Ludo's class are told to bring in an item for show and tell, there are girls that also bring in Pam and Ben dolls, as well as Ludo. His reinforcement of being in touch with being a girl is seen through his recreation involving these dolls. They also serve as a protection. One of the students makes fun of a boy who brings in a blanket. In society, children have often used baby blankets as a protective force. When Ludo brings in the Pam doll to class, one can interpret such as a "protective," force that Ludo uses in order to feel accepted. The vitality of the The World of Pam can be seen throughout the film, not only by the repetitiveness  but also by the mise en scene in which the fantasy moments are presented. The colors are both bold and bright, while the setting is very much exaggerated. It is a place where Ludo feels he is accepted and is comfortable, and can be seen in a Freudian theory of dreams and the subconscious. His upmost desires and yearnings to be accepted by his family and the surrounding families, as well as his desire to be a girl are all portrayed in his fantasy land that the viewer sees numerous times.  

Ma Vie En Rose

3. Ludo’s sex is male as he is a boy however he believes that his gender is female as he loves to wear makeup and put on dresses. We see this first by the title of the movie Ma Vie En Rose translated to English to mean My Life in Pink. This title refers to Ludo’s understanding of his gender as he associates with a non-gender natural color. The color pink is usually associated with little girl as their life style when growing up is filled with the color. A girl’s life style being filled with the color pink starts as early as she born.  When she is born the doctor and nurses check to see if the new born baby is a girl or boy and then if it is a girl put a pink hat on her.

Ludo is not professing his love for the boy next store as boy but rather as he believes his gender is as a girl. We even see this the first time we meet Ludo in the film he is wearing a pink dress. And throughout the film almost every time he is wearing a dress it is pink. We even see him try to identify with   this gender of being a girl by being happy when his stomach begins to hurt. The reason for this he associates this with a women’s period and assumes that he is having his period. Him assuming this mean that if he is having his period everyone around him was wrong and he is a little girl but one of his X’s was throws away.

 4. The role of Pam in this film is to give Ludo a sense of a fairy god mother. Her role when she is presented in the same scene as Ludo it to take him to his own special world that his grandmother tells him about. This world is the world where he has no pressure from his surroundings about him be able to be what he believes god intended him to be. The world expressed through Ludo’s imagination as the lighting of the film becomes brighter and the scenery in the film becomes more colorful.  Pam takes him to a world where he can be happy and comfortable with the clothes he is where and being the girl he is.  This world of Pam is believed to be a magical place as he not only can fly but is given the freedom of what he wants to do. She accepts him for who he believes he is and not what other people think he is. Pam never changes her mind in the film of her accepts of him unlike his parents and even his grandmother.  Her acceptance though it might be in his head is the parent or adult in his life he wished he had. He sees himself to grow up to be women like Pam, someone who is beautiful and who could marry a man. This is specifically seen in his imitation of the dances Pam does on television.

Search for Acceptance - Ma Vie en Rose

In the film Ma Vie en Rose, Ludo finds an escape from his real life in Le Monde de Pam, or The World of Pam. Pam is a doll fashioned after the real life doll Barbie. For many young girls (and a few not so young), Barbie is a symbol of the perfect women with all the right things. She is (depending on relativity) beautiful, has a large number of material things and has a (once again, depending on relativity) handsome boyfriend/husband. Ludo uses Pam as a role model and someone with who life would be perfect. Ludo sees Pam’s world as a place where everything he wants is possible. He wouldn't have to fight for what he wants, and he wouldn't be seen as strange for wanting. The few fantasy scenes throughout the film are flashes of insight into what Ludo is thinking and wishing for – If only he could escape and be where everything is seemingly perfect, in Le Monde de Pam.

Even at Ludo’s young age of 7 his non-educated (can also read non-brainwashed) logical line of thinking causes him to come to the only conclusion possible, that he is a girl born in the wrong body. His simple way of thinking about it is that his second X was lost. Anne Fausto-Sterling’s theory of five sexes, with each having different variations of the current two sexual options, comes to mind when I saw Ludo’s idea of his gender and sex. He was not like other boys in his activates or in his mentalities. He mentally identified with the social ideas of being a girl so therefore in his mind he was one, and one day his physical state would match his mental state. The idea of intersex people, who are not entirely one or the other in terms of the two current sexual options come in many different forms, is scene not only in Ludo but also in another character who appears later in the film. This is Christine, a little girl who until we hear her name is portrayed to be a little boy. I loved this part as you could almost see a light bulb go off in Ludo’s head when he finds this friendship with someone who was not within the social norm either. This then spreads to his family who had a rough time at their first home, and now finds this new understanding and acceptance from their new neighbors. 

Two Worlds. Same Grid.

Throughout Ma Vie En Rose, our lead character Ludo, as well as everybody around him, is constantly bombarded with normalizing powers of heterosexuality, or as Judith Butler puts it, the "grid of cultural intelligibility."  Despite the status-quo standing its ground and gradually pummeling Ludo into succumbing to normativity, Ludo doesn't budge and stands his ground, and pummels the status-quo into realizing who he really is.  This ties in with Butler really well because the influence of this grid has been so institutionalized in our culture, that Ludo, like society, has identities that "naturalized."  Even in the face of irrefutable "evidence" that he is a boy, Ludo, with rose-tinted glasses, insists that God will finally give him an X chromosome, and that he'll finally become what he was meant to be; a female.  The fact that the movie brings up how sex-determination is considered factual also reinforces the influence of the heterosexual matrix.

This is also evidenced by the "World of Pam."  In a way, it can be argued that the parallel universe of the "World of Pam" serves to parallel society's norms as the other end of how the grid of intelligibility influences people.  It's implied that through his attraction to this show, Ludo identifies as female.  The world that's presented through this fictional show reinforces Ludo's gender identification.  The fantasy sequences serve as a representation of Ludo's ideal world, a world where nobody can berate or reject him for how he acts and how he carries himself, a world that accepts his actions while rejecting those who go against them. The film spends some time going back and forth from the "real world,"  to the "World of Pam," demonstrating that in a way, these worlds are absolutely no different from each other at all, and that Ludo is being treated unfairly just because his personal norms don't line up with society's.  Ludo's ideals are no different from the ideals of his parents, friends, neighbors, or society.  In other words, this movie shows that the influence of the grid of cultural intelligibility and heterosexual matrix has "naturalized" people's perceptions of the body, gender, and desire.  And it's because of these social constructs, that the grid fuels the main conflict of the movie.

1.     Through out the whole movie Ludovic believes that he is a girl: He dressed up like a girl when the family was having a house party; he seemed very happy and confident. When his Mom told him that he can’t dress like a girl anymore, he said “but I like to be pretty”. When his sister was talking to him about X -and Y-chromosomes, he came out with a theory that God made him a girl but when he was throwing the X and Y chromosomes to him, one of the X chromosomes accidently felt into a trash can. That is why he wasn’t born a girl. He is very clear about his sexuality, even when his mom told him that “ boys don’t marry boys”, he said “ but ill become a girl”. Even though the whole world was judging him about his sexually, he still made it obvious that he believe he is not a boy because he doesn’t like the thing boys suppose to like. At the end when the family moved to a new neighborhood, he had no choice but change his behavior for his family.

2.     

I     In Ma vie en rose, social norms takes a big part of the story. The community believes that Boys should have short hair, play with cars and sports, boy can only likes girls. Ludovic is a boy who likes dresses and dolls and he doesn’t like sports like other boys do. The community thinks that it is unacceptable when a boy is not acting like other boys or according to social norms, Ludovic’s behavior is not masculine but feminine and boys can’t be feminine. Therefore the community wanted to get ride of Ludovic from school because they think that his behavior is a bad and abnormal behavior. Ludovic’s family also thinks that he is not normal, they even took him to see a psychiatrist. The mother was actually very nice in the beginning, and she became very mean to Ludovic because she blames everything that was happening to the family on Ludovic.

Hello Everybody,

Please go ahead and post your comments to the Ma Vie en Rose screening. See you Tuesday.
Be sure to let us know what you're responding to and you can keep your posts to about 150 or so words.
JF

In the world that surrounds Ludo, the binary distinction between male and female is a strong social construct. The people in the neighborhood Ludo lives in are not open to questions about gender but rather instill society’s norms about gender. Proving that gender and sex are culturally determined just as Judith Butler expresses. The neighbors, teachers and even principal are bullied by society into thinking that gender is a set distinction and that one is either a boy and behaves masculine or is a female and should act feminine. Once Ludo enters the community these people are faced with questions and opinions that rock the foundations of how gender should be interpreted. Ludos only escape from society’s construction of gender is the world of Mode De Pam, in which he can enter a world that has no restrictions about being who he feels he is, even if it is not the way he is perceived. The use of colors and the fantasy style of the world of Mode De Pam allows Ludo to escape the social constructs of surrounding world and enter a realm that accepts him for who he feels he truly is.