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Antonella’s 5th Assignment

C.J. Pascoe starts out her book by looking back on a school event she had seen during her fieldwork in River High School. The Mr. Cougar pageant was descried to be a celebration where the student body would vote for the most popular senior boy out of six candidates performing skits. She focused on the skit that was performed by two boys named Brent and Greg. So, the skit starts off with these two boys dressed up as the stereotypical nerd trope. They started a laughable dancing performance involving outdated dance moves like the Running Man and the Roger Rabbit. They would then have rubbed their butts together in tune with the music. Two girls had shown up playing the part of the nerd’s girlfriends, dancing with the nerds. These two so called “gangstas” appeared and started to push the “nerds”. The “gangstas” then steal the two girls. Whenever the nerds would speak, they would do so with a high-pitched feminine voice. This girl dressed in sweats came in to teach the “nerds” how to quote on quote become “men”. With this new strength, the nerds went on to the gangstas’ hideout and rescue their girlfriends. Finally cementing their transition into manhood (Pascoe 2007 1-3). The teacher Ms.Mac had started to take away these condoms that were handed out by the safe sex party. Though the reason that Ms.Mac had taken the condoms would be that be seen as a discretion in the classroom. Pascoe begins to point out that condom was a cultural object to show the importance of heterosexual activity to masculine identities. The male students would then see the condoms as proof of them acting on their heterosexuality and their masculinity (Pascoe 2007 34-35). A student named Huey, he was an outsider compared to most of the male population due to his clothes and just the way he was. He would try to fit in by pulling some sort of stunts to gain their approval. Both the Mr.Ford and Mr.Kellog would tease Huey due to his lack of success with the female sex. At times, Mr.Ford would go from the art class to the auto shop class just to make fun of Huey. One instance where Mr.Ford had told Mr.Kellog that Huey had flipped him off during a lesson. Mr.Ford would then tell Huey that he should be doing that to girls and not to Mr.ford. These teachers would also point out that as Huey was a male that he should be having sexual relation with girls and not Mr.Ford who is a male (Pascoe 2007 35-36).