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Going Against Gender Norms

The new audience I am addressing in my translation are children and their

parents/guardians. I tried to focus more on children around the ages of 5 to 7 years old because in

my experience, that is around the age where children begin to play instruments. I thought it was

important to also include the parents because the opinions of the adult people in children’s lives

can have a big influence on their choices. The audience I aimed for in my book is different from

the audience my academic article addressed because, considering that it is a peer reviewed

scholarly journal, the article was geared towards other scholars and researchers in the field of

gender studies.

When I was around 7 years old, I began to learn how to read music and so after a couple

of months, I decided that I was ready to pick up an instrument. Being that I’m a girl, my music

teacher really only gave me an option between the clarinet and the flute. I thought nothing of it

back then because I was continuously told that since I’m a girl, these small instruments were the

only options I had. In addition, seeing that all the girls in my music class played one of these

instruments didn’t help because I didn’t want to be the odd one out. Nonetheless, I wanted a

challenge and ended up picking the clarinet because I thought it was more difficult. However, I

do believe that had I not been influenced, I would have chosen a very different instrument. Due

to my personal experience, I chose my new genre – a children’s book – because I found it

important to educate children that going against gender social norms is a good thing and not

something to be afraid to do. I made sure to include a “note to parents” at the end of my book

because had the adults in my life not convinced me to follow gender norms, I’m sure my musical

life would be very different. I believe that using the genre of a children’s book would effectively

communicate with my intended audience because parents usually sit alongside their children
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when reading books, thus, both readers would be receiving the same information at the same

time. To follow the conventions of a children’s book, I kept the texts semi-short,to not lose their

attention, while also making the text bold so it was clear enough to read. Additionally, I did my

best to include interesting pictures that follow and go along with the story. I also included some

extra pages before and after the story that could help parents start up conversations about the

story and its meaning.

I integrated information from my article into my new genre by picking out what

information I found was most important and would be easy for children to understand. At first I

wasn’t sure what I should include or exclude and so I thought back to the “Reflection is Critical

for Writers Development” reading we did earlier in the quarter. I did a small rough draft on what

the storyline could look like with the information I had chosen. I began to reflect on the first

draft and it allowed me to “relocate the knowledge and practice acquired from one writing site to

another” (Taczak, 1). I took my knowledge from having read many children’s books growing up

and took that experience into consideration for my own book. Something I kept was how other

people’s opinions – especially other kids around the same age – tend to sway kids away from

what they truly want in fear of being an outcast or looked down on for not following the social

norms. Another thing I kept was that kids learn from example; thus, if they were to see more

women playing bigger and “masculine” instruments and more men playing smaller, high pitched

instruments, it helps them understand that no matter what they identify as, they can play any

instrument they want. Even if it’s outside the norm. I didn’t have to change any of the

information that was in the article but just had to boil it down to what I believe was the most

important and then simplify it into a story that children would enjoy. I did, however, change the

vocabulary because the article – which was written for other scholars – had a considerable
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amount of terms that would have not made sense to most children. Something I did leave out are

the surveys and experiments that the authors conducted because I couldn’t find a way to integrate

that into a children’s book. Furthermore, I had to add a story that would be easy for children to

follow. In that story, I had to include a plot and a message that would stick with the audience.

Some challenges of the genre translation was that I initially wanted to create a pop-up

book in order to better captivate the attention of children. As a child, I enjoyed reading pop-up

books as I found them very captivating and would re-read those books until I practically

memorized them from cover to cover. Thus, I thought the same would happen with my audience.

I also thought it would be a fun activity, however I soon realized that it was going to take a lot of

time which, unfortunately, I didn’t have. So, I was forced to change it into a normal book instead.

With the book itself, the challenges I had was coming up with a story, plot, and a message behind

it all. This was a genre in which I had never written before, thus, I couldn’t simply rely on my

cognition. According to Howard Tinberg, when writers find themselves required to work in

unfamiliar contexts, what they need to use is metacognition. Metacognition allows writers to

evaluate which skill and knowledge sets apply and which don’t (Tinberg, 4). When trying to

figure out how to format my story, using metacognition helped me to determine what writing

style was appropriate to use and how to ensure that the plot flows all throughout. Also, according

to my reader's response, I had to make sure to make the story flow better and more naturally.

They said that it seemed a little rushed; thus, to solve this issue, I added more pages to my book

and included a little more text. Another challenge I faced was the inconsistent pictures of my

characters. Since I couldn’t draw and had to make my book digitally, all I had available to me, at

first, was google which gave me a large variety of different characters, but every slide the

characters looked very different. I tried overcoming this by using Shutterstock and Canva but I
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was only able to find so much. I had to improvise and use the reactions of characters that looked

as similar as possible.

Overall, I was inspired to write the book because of my experience in having fallen in the

gender norms when I was a child. I have many musical friends who have unfortunately been in

the same position. I wish there was a book like this when I was younger as I strongly believe that

I would have chosen a completely different instrument had that been the case. I had fun writing

in a completely new genre and also having to translate a very formal piece of writing into

something completely different. It was something I have never done before in any of my writing

classes and it taught me that you can get the same information through to different audiences in

various forms.
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Works Cited

Tinberg, Howard. “Metacognition Is Not Cognition.” Naming What We Know: Threshold

Concepts of Writing Studies, Classroom Edition, edited by Linda Adler-Kassner and

Elizabeth Wardle, Logan, Utah State University Press, 2016.

Taczak, Kara. “Reflection is Critical for Writers' Development.” Naming What We Know:

Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies, Classroom Edition, edited by Linda

Adler-Kassner and Elizabeth Wardle, Logan, Utah State University Press, 2016.