Teaching Sociology

http://tso.sagepub.com/ Using Nail Polish to Teach about Gender and Homophobia

Nelta M. Edwards Teaching Sociology 2010 38: 362 originally published online 13 September 2010 DOI: 10.1177/0092055X10378821 The online version of this article can be found at: http://tso.sagepub.com/content/38/4/362

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Teaching Notes

Using Nail Polish to Teach about Gender and Homophobia

Nelta M. Edwards1

Teaching Sociology 38(4) 362372 American Sociological Association 2010 DOI: 10.1177/0092055X10378821 http://ts.sagepub.com

Abstract How might teachers help students investigate the relationship between gender and homophobia? This article describes an exercise that uses fingernail polish to do just that. The authors uses anecdotal evidence to describe the exercise in which students pair with someone of the opposite gender and paint each others fingernails. Additionally, the author uses a randomly selected sample of 19 students to formally evaluate the teaching goals of this assignment. Students regard the nail polish assignment favorably, with average scores ranging from 3.37 to 4.26 (out of 5). The evaluation and anecdotal evidence confirms a continuing need to address homophobia in everyday life and in the classroom. This activity offers an innovative approach to doing so.

Keywords gender, sexuality, homophobia, breaching, experiential learning

Here I describe a simple, but powerful, exercise using nail polish to teach about the relationship between gender and homophobia. I ask students to find a friend of the opposite gender and take turns painting each others fingernails. Most students choose partners from outside of the class, although they may do the exercise with classmates if they wish. Students may choose any color polish except clear, and each participant must attempt to wear the fingernail polish for at least 24 hours. I provide students with a set of questions that they must answer for themselves, and they must interview their nail polish partners about the experience. Students write up a description of the experience and use terms and concepts introduced in the course to analyze their experiences (see Appendix A). The nail polish assignment is an example of a breaching exercise in which experimenters engage in unexpected behavior to observe the reactions of others. This sort of assignment is a mainstay in American sociology, drawing from ethnomethodology developed by Garfinkel (1967). Sociology teachers have refined and expanded Garfinkels work by using a waiting-in-line exercise, in which students do not move to the front of a public line, to get students to see how norms and values structure even mundane activities and to teach the concept of anomie (Rafalovich 2006). Halnon (2001) has students do nothing in a public place for 30 minutes, in order to teach the concept of stigma. In addition to being a breaching exercise, the nail polish assignment is an experiential exercise in that it asks students to do something and then reflect upon it. It is modeled after other experiential learning exercises and assignments that have sought to teach particular aspects of gender and sexuality. For example, Boyle (1995) directs students to their local shopping mall to make observations about gender. Specific observations of interactions, displays, and

University of Alaska Anchorage, USA

Corresponding Author: Nelta M. Edwards, Department of Sociology, University of Alaska Anchorage, 3211 Providence Drive, Anchorage, AK 99508, USA Email: afnme@uaa.alaska.edu

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products reveal the social construction of gender in everyday life. Taylor (2003) uses content analysis of popular childrens books to uncover gender stereotypes. In small groups, students look for gender stereotyping in the text, pictures, the use of color and symbols, and the characters. Taylor uses this exercise as a jumping-off point for a take-home assignment in which he asks students to make broader observations about gender stereotypes in the media and contemplate the affect these stereotypes may have had on their own gender identity. Experiential exercises have also been used to teach about various aspects of sexuality. Eichstedt (1996) uses active-listening exercises, as well as observation of public displays of affection, contrasting heterosexual and same-sex couples. Through observations made in public places such as the bus depot, airport, or shopping mall, students count all of the displays of affection between people the students read as heterosexual and between those students read as gay. Students must also record how it is that they determine who is straight and who is homosexual. This exercise helps students to see that perceptions about who is flaunting it depend very much on the couple involved. Anderson (2001) uses a coming out role play to explore societal attitudes toward gays and lesbians. He divides students into groups of parents and children and asks them each to discuss societal opinions of gays and lesbians and how gays and lesbians are treated. The group of parents discusses the fears of and implications for parents who may have a gay or lesbian child. The group of children discusses the fears and issues of children who are thinking about coming out to their parents. After the discussion, volunteers act out what the group has come up with, once for a male child and once for a female child. De Welde and Hubbard (2003) developed an assignment in which they ask students to come out to someone important to them in a letter. The letter is never sent. Instead, students use the text of the letter as data to analyze their own reactions, especially their internalized homophobia. This assignment gets heterosexual students much closer to the actual fears experienced by their homosexual classmates than if they were simply asked to think about what it would be like to come out. The above pedagogical endeavors point to the efficacy of experiential learning, including breaching experiments, as a way of helping students to develop a sociological imagination. Indeed, Grauerholz and Copenhaver (1994) maintain that it is almost impossible for students to develop

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a sociological imagination without some sort of experiential learning. I would add that experiential learning is especially effective in teaching about gender and sexuality because the gender dichotomy and heterosexuality are so deeply embedded in our cultural psyche that they become invisible (Lorber 1997) and are seen as natural (Seidman 2003). My intention with the nail polish assignment is to demonstrate the relationship between gender and sexuality in order to show how gender conformity is enforced by homophobia and heterosexism. Miller and Lucal (2009) have examined the relationship between gender and sexuality in terms of what Butler (1991) refers to as the heterosexual matrix. In the heterosexual matrix, men who are masculine in their appearance and behavior are assumed to be straight. Likewise, women who are feminine in their appearance and behavior are assumed to be straight. Thus, men who are not masculine in their behavior and appearance are assumed to be gay, and women who are not feminine in their appearance and behavior are assumed to be lesbian. Gender and sexuality work in relation to each other, as we usually read gender first and from that make assumptions about sexuality (Miller and Lucal 2009). Describing gender and sexuality in this way draws a neat box of dichotomies for gender (man/woman) and sexuality (heterosexual/homosexual), with the corresponding causal arrows going from gender to sexuality. My intention with this exercise is not to reinscribe the heterosexual matrix, but I do want to make it explicit because I want students to understand the homophobia (and heterosexism) that underlies what students often think of as more benign gender categories. I want students to see what is at stake around gender conformity and that the impulse to conform is related to the shame, hatred, and violence endemic to homophobia. This matrix, though socially constructed, is part of the cultural reality, and straight students as well as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) students benefit from understanding the way that it operates. In fact, this exercise may be particularly interesting and useful to LGBT students in that it names the normative structure under which they struggle.

THE NAIL POLISH ASSIGNMENT

My teaching goals with this assignment are (1) to get students to deconstruct the relationship between gender and sexuality, (2) to help students to recognize the homophobia that underlies gender

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conformity, and (3) to get students to empathize with people who do not have normative sexual and/or gender identities. Below I describe student reactions to the exercise, using anecdotal quotes from students collected over the years that I have been using this assignment.

Teaching Sociology 38(4)

persuading, and as requiring a great deal of skill and patience. Some women resort to a sort of bribery: First I had to buy him lunch and He agreed to do it but said that I owed him, big time. Women, who are not subject to a parallel homophobia, learn a lot about the power that homophobia has on male behavior. I warn women students that they may have difficulty securing a nail polish partner, so they should plan accordingly. Students describe the setting in which the nail painting takes place with some sense of unfolding dramaIt was a Saturday night, no one was home. Students often report that painting each others fingernails makes them laugh. They laugh at the process of having one or more inexperienced painter. They laugh at the look of polish on large nails. They laugh and act out stereotypical feminine behavior and make girl talk. Laughter seems to be a way of affirming that what is happening should not be taken seriously. Others, however, report constant discomfort: He moaned and groaned through the whole process. Upon looking at their painted nails, male participants report a range of reactions from It feels funnyheavy, wet, foreign to I felt out of place, weird to Why did I let you talk me into this? and Oh my god, what have I gotten myself into? and I look like a freak! Words commonly used to describe how men wearing nail polish felt when they first looked at their painted nails include stupid, ridiculous, embarrassed, wrong, humiliated, ashamed, insecure, and vulnerable. Steinem (1997) makes the point that behaviors and characteristics associated with men are celebrated in patriarchal culture, while those associated with women are not. When men wear colored nail polish they are doing what society has deemed as appropriate mostly for women. Because women are beneath men in the gender hierarchy, doing what women do may lead men to have negative feelings about themselves.

Polish as Gender and the Color of Gender

From the start, nail polish gets students thinking about gender. First and most obviously, nail polish on men violates male gender norms for adornment. While some men may wear clear or black nail polish, nail polish is not widely considered part of the culturally accepted adornment repertoire for men. This is certainly true at the university where I teach, where students are primarily first-generation college students. Colored nail polish is worn almost exclusively by women in this and in many other areas of the United States. In and of itself, however, there is nothing inherently gendered about nail polish. We, as a culture, have designated colored nail polish as appropriate for women. Second, this exercise gets students to think about gender in relation to nail polish color. Students report that men participating in this exercise choose the color of their nail polish with their gender performance in mind. Most men choose black because it is the most masculine color. Students commonly note that men who belong to the Goth subculture wear black nail polish, and thus black polish is the only acceptable color for men. The next most preferred color reported for men is blue. Blue, of course, is seen as the quintessential masculine color in American society. A few male students or partners will deliberately choose a loud or girly color because they enjoy the prospect of gender bending or deliberately breaking social norms around gender performance. Women most often report choosing their nail polish to match an outfit they plan on wearing.

The Consequences of Gender Bending Finding and Becoming a Gender Bender

Women students often report having a difficult time finding a partner with whom to complete the exercise. One student wrote, I asked eight different men and finally my boyfriend agreed. Other women describe securing a partner with descriptions like, long negotiations, pleading and Women, especially those accustomed to having painted nails or those who are neat in their personal grooming habits, often express dismay at the prospect of going out in public with sloppy or messy nails. Indeed, many women report that other people questioned them about the shoddy nail job, Who painted your nails, a five-year-old? For some women, the gendernonconforming behavior is not the nail polish

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itself but the poor jobs that their nail polish partners may have done in applying it. Personal discomfort and/or public disapproval of women for having messy nail polish exemplifies the importance of physical appearance for these women. However, for other women, especially for those who have never partaken in this particular aspect of feminine gender performance (Butler 1990), getting recognition or even compliments for wearing nail polish often comes as a surprise and seems to be taken with some chagrin. Another surprise for women students is that some men turn out to be rather talented at applying nail polish and that they take the task quite seriously. Male participants who do go about their daily routines wearing nail polish often endure a substantial amount of teasing and harassing. Common terms used against the male nail polish wearers include sissy, faggot, homo, and fairy. Homophobic epitaphs such as these encourage both children and adults to conform to gender roles. The lions share of the harassment comes from other men. Students seldom report that women, both those known and unknown to the male nail polisher wearer, engage in namecalling. Occasionally, women report that they are not comfortable with their partners nails: Having him out of that masculine role bothered me a little. Male participants cope with gender bending in a variety of ways, the most common of which is simply not to go out in public while wearing the fingernail polish. While students may take ribbing or even haranguing from family and friends, most prefer this to getting even the slightest questioning look from a stranger. Male participants often report that they kept their hands in their pockets while in public. One student kept the assignment sheet in his front shirt pocket and if he perceived that anyone might have observed his fingernails, he whipped out the assignment sheet and explained, Its for a Soc. 101 class! This disavowal of nonnormative behavior is similar to what De Welde and Hubbard (2003) found in their coming-out letter assignment. Despite explicit instructions to assume the identity of someone who is lesbian, gay, or bisexual, straight students would assert their heterosexuality and rely on heterosexual privilege in both writing the letter and their analysis of it.

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we believe that gender-appropriate behavior signals heterosexuality and that gender-nonconforming behavior signals homosexuality. In raising children, we encourage boys to act like boys and girls to act like girls, whatever that might be at the particular historical moment, because then, we believe, everyone will turn out to be heterosexual (Pogrebin 1997). Men who engage in womanly behavior, according to this cultural logic, must be gay. The stinging fear, when many male students think about or see themselves with painted nails, is that other people might think I am a fag. This conflation of gender with sexuality in the cultural logic makes it difficult to unpack the relationship between the two. Students jump from gender nonconformity to sexuality without noticing that they have made the leap. Homophobia also explains why most male participants do not report dismay with family, friends, coworkers, and/or strangers who negatively sanction their wearing of nail polish. In fact, most male participants seem quick to condone the homophobic sanctions, citing that they themselves would have reacted in the same way. I expected it. I would have acted the same way. Men arent supposed to do stuff like that and I would have thought my friends were weird if they said it was cool. Only occasionally will a student note disappointment about homophobia: If I had not been with my friend during the 24-hour period, the hostility may have escalated to a more dangerous level. I think that it is a sad commentary about this society that something as trivial as nail polish could actually infringe on a persons safety. However, nail polish is not trivial when it is thought to signal the wrong kind of sexuality. Vasquez (1992) found that gay bashing is most commonly triggered by perceptions on the part of the attacker that the victim acts in gender-nonconforming ways: He acts like a girl. For men, part of proving their masculinity is asserting their heterosexuality, often through homophobic thoughts, language, and even violence (Seidman 2003). Because students most often fail to note any dismay about the homophobiathey are upset about their sexuality being misinterpreted, not about the homophobiaI point this out when handing back the papers and ask students to think about how their attitudes reflect and perpetuate homophobia and heterosexism. If students felt uncomfortable, threatened, and/or scared during this short exercise, I ask them to think about how it would feel to be under constant threat of violence, at the most extreme, or

Gender Nonconformity and Homophobia

As hinted at above, what makes this exercise most powerful is that it unearths the relationship between gender and homophobia. In this society,

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Disagree (2) Response 0 0 2 10.5 7 36.8 8 % Response % Response % Response Neutral (3) Agree (4) Strongly agree (5) % 42.1 Average evaluation 4.00 % 10.5 2 1 5.6 1 5.6 1 5.6 7 36.8 9 50.0 4.16 2 10.5 2 10.5 4 21.1 9 47.4 2 10.5 3.37 1 5.6 1 5.6 1 5.6 8 42.1 9 50.0 4.26

Table 1. Summary of Four-Question Student Evaluation of Nail Polish Assignment (N = 19)

Strongly disagree (1)

Responses

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The nail polish assignment helped me to see the (socially constructed) relationship between gender and sexuality. recognize how homophobia influences conformity to gender expectations and behavior. empathize with people who do not have normative sexual identities, e.g., homosexuals, bisexuals, and transsexuals. think about the concepts learned in this course.

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under widespread social disapproval, at the least. By giving heterosexual students a taste of the fear and hostility under which nonheterosexuals and/or gender nonconformists live, I hope to give them empathy for their nonconformist peers.

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Respondents evaluated the following four statements: The nail polish assignment helped me to (1) see the (socially constructed) relationship between gender and sexuality, (2) recognize how homophobia influences conformity to gender expectations and behavior, (3) empathize with people who do not have normative sexual identities, e.g., homosexuals, bisexuals, and transsexuals, (4) think about the concepts learned in this course. Students evaluated the statements using a 5-point Likert-type scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neutral, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree. As Table 1 illustrates, students generally regarded the nail polish assignment favorably, with average scores ranging from 3.37 to 4.26. The lowest score, 3.37, was on the statement about empathy for those who have nonnormative sexual identities. This score is disappointing in that it is barely on the upside of neutral, and helping students develop empathy is one of my main goals with this assignment. However, my expectations may be too high. It may be too much to ask that one assignment, in a survey course, overcome institutionalized heterosexuality, a central organizing feature of national life that relies on homophobia to sustain itself (Seidman 2003). Instead, this low score may point to the need to develop more teaching techniques that interrupt the homophobia inherent to everyday life and in our classrooms. I also provided space on the survey for students to share any other information about the assignment. One student, who disagreed that the assignment helped her or him empathize with those with nonnormative sexual identities, said, In relation to homosexuals and transsexuals, I cannot empathize as I am not one of them and cannot understand the process that leads them to this life style. I do not feel that putting on nail polish in any way brings me close to feeling the way they do, as part of their feelings are the need and perceived right to do this. One cannot be taught to understand anothers thought process, only loosely understand the benefit to the other individual from it. This is similar to what De Welde and Hubbard (2003) found in their coming-out letter exercise students would assert their heterosexuality and heterosexual privilege in the assignment. By mincing terms, this student wants to suggest that she or he could not possibly empathize with someone nonheterosexual because I am not one of them.

Evaluating the Exercise

To evaluate the nail polish assignment I used the e-mail feature on Blackboard to solicit student responses (see Appendix B). I wanted to use random sampling to avoid the methodological problems with convenience samples, including positive bias and nongeneralizability. I thought that students would rate the exercise more favorably if they were in my class when I queried them, as would be the case for convenience samples. Plus, I wanted my results to be generalizable to the population of my students who had completed the nail polish assignment. I attached a combined survey and consent form to the e-mail (see Appendix C). The internal review board (IRB) at my university requires that consent be obtained from students if the instructor intends to publish the data. The IRB approved my protocol, and I asked the selected students to fill out the survey/ consent form, save it, and send it back to me as an attachment. I sent the e-mail and attachment to 20 randomly selected students from each of the previous seven sections (from fall 2006 to spring 2009) who had completed the nail polish assignment in my Introduction to Sociology sections. This gave me a potential sample size of 140. However, due to the vagaries of Blackboard (e.g., student names inexplicably missing from the e-mail list) and full student mailboxes, I ended up with a potential sample size of 103. I sent out three requests for participation every three weeks over the summer of 2009 and received 19 surveys, for an overall participation rate of 18 percent. Although the sample size is rather small, the response rate is better than the 10 percent response rate expected in old-fashioned mail surveys and has the advantage of being generalizable. When students e-mailed me their filled-out survey/ consent forms, I could see their names. However, the survey/consent form itself has no student identification. I kept the students data confidential by opening the attachments, printing them out, and putting each students completed form in a paper file. This maintained student confidentiality, as the data were manually detached from the identifying e-mail.

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However, another student, who was neutral on the empathy question, said, Seeing how society really constructs the identity of a man and woman was an eye opener. This assignment does really get you thinking about why we are the way we are and why is it that we are ridiculed for being non-normative i.e., transsexuals, bisexuals, etc.

Teaching Sociology 38(4)

dinner, was verbally threatened by his father about what happens to those kinds of people. The coworkers of a students husband harangued him so much at the auto parts store where he worked that he came home close to tears. Another student was reminded of a painful childhood in which he was continuously harassed about his gender by an older brother. In addition, this exercise may make students who do not in some way fit into the normative categories of gender and/or sexuality, for example, transgender, intersex, and/or gay students, uncomfortable. However, as suggested earlier, it may also be particularly interesting for those students, as it makes explicit the cultural logic under which they negotiate their own sense of self and place in society. Although none of my students or their nail polish partners hasto my knowledgeever been physically abused, it is always a distinct and frightening possibility. The possibility frightened me so much that after the above-mentioned incidents, I stopped using the assignment for a time. Then, I brought the assignment back as one of a number of possible assignments. In my Sociology 101 class, I offer four writing assignments and require that students complete three. This way, students can skip the nail polish assignment if it makes them terribly uncomfortable or if they cannot find a partner. In the spring of 2008, I broke my own rule, and all students had to do the nail polish assignment. This was because I wanted to add an assignment based on my universitys newly instituted Book of the Year (T. C. Boyles [1996] Tortilla Curtain). About a week before the assignment was due, I read on the Sociologists for Women in Society listserv about an eighth-grade boy in Oxnard, California, named Lawrence King who was shot by another eighthgrade boy (Saillant and Griggs 2008). King reportedly identified himself as gay, and in the months before his murder had started to accessorize with nail polish, makeup, and high-heeled boots. According to classmates, Lawrence had recently revealed to the shooter that he had a crush on him (Saillant 2008). Of course, I was horrified by the brutality of this crime. I was also worried, once again, about homophobic violence my students or their nail polish partners might encounter. The next day in class, I showed a picture from the news story about Lawrence King and talked about what happened to him. I had also hastily come up with an alternative nail polish assignment that did not involve nonnormative gender behavior for men; it just required writing about nonnormative behavior. About a third of

The Main Complaint

Students, particularly male students, often lament, Why dont you make the girls [sic] do something?! This opens up an opportunity for a rich discussion about gender and power. In response, I usually ask, What could women do to gender bend that would be as powerful and as temporary as nail polish? Most often, men students say that I should make the women shave their heads. This never fails to astound me. This exercise puts men under so much pressure that they will seriously suggest that women do something that would take months and months to undo, while wearing nail polish can be undone in minutes. Students also suggest that I ask women not to shave their legs or underarms. This usually falls flat because other students aptly point out that not shaving is perfectly acceptable for hippy chicks, some African American women, and some European women. I try to keep the discussion going by repeating the question, What could women do that would be as powerful, but as temporary, as nail polish is for men? When the discussion has tapered off, I remind students that gender roles are stricter for men than for women and that women, as the subordinates in the gender hierarchy, have more leeway to act like men. Men who act like women are ridiculed. I remind students, who have done the mall exercise (Boyle 1995) earlier in the semester, about the differentiation between toys appropriate for girls and those appropriate for boys and how boys are subject to much more ridicule for crossing the gender boundary than are girls.

Avoiding the Pitfall

The biggest impediment to this assignment is one of the very things it seeks to teach: homophobia. There is always a possibility that a male student or male nail polish partner of a student will be subject to emotional and/or physical abuse because of this assignment. A male student, while doing this assignment at a family Thanksgiving

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the class ended up doing the alternative assignment. I thought that the men in my class might jump on the opportunity, but to my surprise, equal proportions of men and women did the original assignment and the alternative assignment. Based on student papers, I did not find that the alternative nail polish assignment was as powerful as the original. De Welde and Hubbard (2003) likewise argue that there is a qualitative difference between intellectually understanding the stigma of homosexuality and experiencing it, if only for a brief moment, even under artificial conditions. I once again resolved to use the nail polish assignment only when I could provide a choice of assignments.

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Pogrebin (1997), which lays out a very succinct explanation of the relationship between gender and homophobia: We want boys to act like boys and girls to act like girls because we think that then everyone will grow up to be heterosexual. This cultural logic is based on the notion that opposites attract and that homosexuality is the worst thing that can happened to someone. I draw on this piece for lecture and to prepare PowerPoint slides before the nail polish assignment is due. A discussion of Butlers (1991) heterosexual matrix would work well too. The most common mistake students make in the analysis section is to simply repeat the descriptive section. I spend some time in class, before the assignment is due, reminding students of the difference between description and analysis. To help students get the connection between gender and homophobia and heterosexism, early in the semester I raise the question about what drives gender conformity. I schedule the nail polish assignment in the middle to the later part of the semester so that students have had a pretty good introduction to various aspects of gender, and especially gender socialization, by the time of the nail polish assignment. When I am teaching gender I ask the class things like, Why do we care if girls act like girls and boys act like boys? Most students will initially argue that gender differentiation is natural, but after learning the sociological perspective on gender and especially after having done the mall exercise (Boyle 1995) students are more reluctant to argue this. The mall exercise introduces students to some of the ways, across the life course, that gender is constructed, reinforced, and policed. This is an eyeopening experience for students and discourages them from simplistically adopting a realist ontological stance toward gender. Occasionally a student will still argue that the gender observations made at the mall reflect natural differences, rather than constructing them, but most students are swayed by the evidence they themselves collect at the mall. After they have turned in the mall exercise and to set up the later nail polish assignment, I ask them, If gender is natural, why do we work so hard to differentiate between men and women? Several weeks later, when we get to the section on sexuality, I remind students of these questions to help them make the link between gender conformity and homophobia and heterosexism. I have used the exercise off and on over the past eight years at the medium-sized public university in Alaska where I teach. I have mostly used this

Contextualizing the Assignment

The assignment asks students to describe the experience, using the interview questions provided as a guide. I grade students on how well they describe their experience but not on the content of the experience itself. I also ask students to analyze the experience. For the analysis section of the assignment, students must find three terms or concepts, define them, and then say why their experience with the nail polish assignment exemplifies or fails to exemplify the term or concept. Students commonly choose terms such as gender, sexuality, homophobia, heterosexism, gender bending, gay bashing, norms, deviance, and sanction. For my Introduction to Sociology classes, I have relied heavily on the textbook that I use for that class, Andersen and Taylors (2005), Sociology: Understanding a Diverse Society, which has excellent chapters on sex and gender, deviance, and sexuality. I have also used the film from Media Education Foundation Tough Guise (Jhally 1999), which does a brilliant job deconstructing masculinity and notes the homophobia inherent to dominant forms of American masculinity. Unfortunately, this film has become somewhat dated. I have more recently used HipHop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes (Hurt 2006), another excellent film that has a more explicit class and race analysis of masculinity. Students draw on these sources when looking for terms to use for the analysis. Years ago, when I was developing this exercise in an Introduction to Womens Studies class, I used a reader titled Feminist Frontiers IV (Richardson et al. 1997), which has several appropriate articles, providing many terms and concepts helpful in providing analysis to this assignment. Particularly useful was the piece by

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exercise in Introduction to Sociology classes, which I teach regularly, and I did use it in an upper-division Feminist Theory class that I have taught only once at this university. The sections of Introduction to Sociology almost always fill to their capacity of 48 but rarely have more than 40 students actually enrolled by the end of the semester. The Introduction to Sociology classes usually include more women (60 percent) than men (40 percent), although the numbers seem to be moving closer to parity. Most students take the class to fill a university general education requirement in the social sciences, although some students, like those in nursing, social work, and education, specifically need to take Introduction to Sociology for their degree programs.

Teaching Sociology 38(4)

APPENDIX A Nail Polish Assignment

Find a friend of the opposite gender and paint each others nails with any color but clear nail polish. Each of you must wear the polish for at least 24 hours. Answer the following questions about the exercise and then interview your nail polish partner and record her/ his answer to the same questions. Questions 17: You answer for yourself 1. What color did you choose? Why? 2. Describe the painting of each others nails. 3. What did you think when you first finished painting and looked at your hands? 4. How did you feel about yourself when you looked at your nails? 5. How did people react to your painted nails? 6. What did you think about their reaction? 7. How long did you wear the nail polish? If you removed it rather soon, what influenced your decision to do so? Give a brief description of your partner and then ask her/him questions 814 8. What color did you choose? Why? 9. Describe painting each others nails. 10. What did think when you first finished painting and looked at your hands? 11. How did you feel about yourself when you first looked at your hands? 12. How did people react to your painted nails? 13. What did you think about their reaction? 14. How long did you wear the nail polish? If you removed it rather soon, what influenced your decision to do so? Write-up: Describe what happened and what the experience was like for you and for your partner. Write an analysis of what happened using at least three terms from the text book, films, or lectures.

CONCLUSION
I have used this exercise in Introduction to Sociology, Introduction to Womens Studies, and Feminist Theory classes. It would also be useful in classes on sociology of gender, social problems, and sexual politics. Although I have mostly used this exercise in introductory courses, when I used it in an upper-division feminist theory course students reported surprise and chagrin at the degree to which this exercise challenged their notions about gender and homophobia. I thought I was beyond all that, one student said. The nail polish assignment is particularly effective if it comes after the mall exercise (Boyle 1995). The mall exercise illustrates for students the way that gender boundaries are constructed, enforced, and reiterated. The nail polish assignment can teach students about the underlying homophobia. Although discussion of the assignment often elicits giggles from students when it is first introduced, it is a simple way to get students to think about the relationship between gender and homophobia and to develop at least some empathy for those with nonnormative gender and/or sexual identities. Students are often unaware of the way that gender expectations are rooted in homophobia and the ways in which their own seemingly harmless and playful teasing about gender-nonconforming behavior contributes to a context of intolerance. As Eve Sedgwick (1988) has noted, heterosexuals have the privilege of unknowing, and this exercise can be used to tease out the relationship between gender and sexuality and to sensitize students to the consequences of homophobia.

APPENDIX B Email to Solicit Respondents

The subject heading of the email read, Sociology 101: The Nail Polish Assignment, [1st, 2nd, 3rd] request. The text of the email said: Hello: You took Sociology 101: Introduction to Sociology from me in [_____ semester ____].

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One of the assignments for that class was the Nail Polish Assignment. I would like to ask you some questions about that assignment. I will use your responses and those that I get from other students to write a paper for a journal called Teaching Sociology. If you are willing to participate, please open the attached document, fill it out, save it, and send the copy with your responses back to me. I will not keep track of who sent which sheet back so you can be assured that your responses are confidential. Thanks in advance.

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3. empathize with people who do not have normative sexual identities, e.g., homosexuals, bisexuals, and transsexuals. ____strongly disagree ____disagree ____neutral ____agree ____strongly agree 4. think about the concepts learned in this course. ____strongly disagree ____disagree ____neutral ____agree ____strongly agree 5. Please feel free to share any other information about the assignment in the space below.

APPENDIX C Survey/Consent RESEARCH PROJECT: USING NAIL POLISH TO TEACH ABOUT GENDER AND HOMOPHOBIA
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR: Nelta Edwards CONSENT: I would like to ask you some questions about the Nail Polish Assignment that you did in my Sociology 101: Introduction to Sociology course. I will use your responses and those that I get from other students to write a paper for a journal called Teaching Sociology. The responses from students will be added together so there will be no way that you will be individually identified. In addition, I will not keep track of who sent which sheet back so you can be assured that your responses are confidential. If you are at least 18 years old and willing to participate, please put an X on the appropriate line. _____ Yes, I would like to participate

NOTE
The reviewers for this article were, in alphabetical order, Kristine DeWelde, Susan Ferguson, and Helen A. Moore.

REFERENCES
Andersen, Margaret and Howard F. Taylor. 2005. Sociology: Understanding a Diverse Society. 4th ed. New York: Wadsworth. Anderson, Travis. 2001. A Coming-Out Role Play. Pp. 123-30 in Sociology Through Active Learning: Student Exercises, edited by K. McKinney, F. D. Beck, and B. S. Heyl. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press. Boyle, Catherine. 1995. Seeing Gender in Everyday Life: A Field Trip to the Mall. Teaching Sociology 23(2):150-54. Boyle, T. C. 1996. Tortilla Curtain. Rockland, MA: Wheeler Pub. Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge. . 1991. Imitation and Gender Subordination. Pp. 13-31 in Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories, edited by D. Fuss. New York: Routledge. De Welde, Kristine and Eleanor A. Hubbard. 2003. Im Glad Im Not Gay!: Heterosexual Students Emotional Experience in the College Classroom with a Coming Out Assignment. Teaching Sociology 31(1):73-84. Eichstedt, Jennifer L. 1996. Heterosexism and Gay/ Lesbian/Bisexual Experiences: Teaching Strategies and Exercises. Teaching Sociology 24(4):384-88. Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Grauerholz, Liz and Stacey Copenhaver. 1994. When the Personal Becomes Problematic: The Ethics of Using Experiential Teaching Methods. Teaching Sociology 22(4):319-27. Halnon, Karen Bettez. 2001. The Sociology of Doing Nothing: A Model Adopt a Stigma in a Public Place Exercise. Teaching Sociology 29(3):423-38.

SURVEY QUESTIONS: For each of the following questions, please type an X on the response that most closely corresponds to your opinion. The Nail Polish Assignment helped me to:

1. see the (socially constructed) relationship between gender and sexuality.

____strongly disagree ____disagree ____neutral ____agree ____strongly agree

2. recognize how homophobia influences conformity to gender expectations and behavior.

____strongly disagree ____disagree ____neutral ____agree ____strongly agree

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Hurt, Byron. 2006. Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes [DVD]. Northampton, MA: Media Education Foundation. Jhally, Sut. 1999. Tough Guise: Violence, Media and the Crisis in Masculinity [DVD]. Northampton, MA: Media Education Foundation. Lorber, Judith. 1997. Night into His Day: Social Construction of Gender. Pp. 33-47 in Feminist Frontiers IV, edited by L. Richardson, V. Taylor and N. Whittier. New York: McGrawHill. Miller, Andrea and Betsy Lucal. 2009. The Pedagogy of (In)Visibility; Two Accounts of Teaching about Sex, Gender and Sexuality. Teaching Sociology 37(3):257-68. Pogrebin, Letty Cottin. 1997. The Secret Fear That Keeps Us from Raising Free Children. Pp. 17176 in Feminist Frontiers IV, edited by L. Richardson, V. Taylor and N. Whittier. New York: McGraw-Hill. Rafalovich, Adam. 2006. Making Sociology Relevant: The Assignment and Application of Breaching Experiments. Teaching Sociology 34(2):156-63. Richardson, Laurel, Verta Taylor, and Nancy Whittier, eds. 1996. Feminist Frontiers IV. New York: McGraw-Hill. Saillant, Catherine. 2008. 1,000 March in Oxnard in Tribute to Slain Teen. Los Angeles Times,

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February 17. Retrieved February 17, 2008 (http:// www.latimes.com/). Saillant, Catherine and Gregory W. Griggs. 2008. Oxnard Student Declared Brain Dead. Los Angeles Times, February 14. Retrieved February 17, 2008 (http://www.latimes.com). Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. 1988. Privilege of Unknowing. Genders 1(Spring):102-24. Seidman, Steven. 2003. The Social Construction of Sexuality. New York: W. W. Norton. Steinem, Gloria. 1997. If Men Could Menstruate. Pp. 358-59 in Feminist Frontiers IV, edited by L. Richardson, V. Taylor and N. Whittier. New York: McGraw-Hill. Taylor, Frank. 2003. Content Analysis and Gender Stereotypes in Childrens Books. Teaching Sociology 31(3):300-11. Vasquez, Carmen. 1992. Appearances. Pp. 157-66 in Homophobia: How We All Pay the Price, edited by W. J. Blumenfeld. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

BIO
Nelta M. Edwards is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Her research interests include the scholarship of teaching and learning and environmental justice.

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