Femininity is Black and White: Racial Differences in Reflected Gender Appraisal and Implications for Health Inequalities

• In Event: Examining Gender Inequality through the Lens of Social Psychology

Abstract

Gender self-appraisal measures seek to capture a person’s internalized view of their gender, including their gender expression, identity, and adherence to gender roles. By comparing “how feminine do you think other people see you?” between white and Black people assigned female at birth (AFAB), we can begin to assess whether Black AFAB people internalize narratives about their femininity (a looking glass-self perspective) or their “failure” to achieve femininity within society (a symbolic interactionist perspective) and consider how reflected gender appraisal may pattern health outcomes differently for Black and white AFAB people. This study compares measures of reflected gender self-appraisal in two samples, the General Social Survey (2024), and The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescence to Adult Health (Wave 5, 2016). We find that Black AFAB people rate themselves as more feminine than their white peers, and that a more feminine reflected appraisal corresponds with better self-rated health for AFAB people. Black AFAB people’s more feminine reflected gender appraisal challenges notions that Black women are internalizing white-dominated society’s views of femininity. We argue that it is problematic to view Black women from the lens of whiteness and assume “internalized oppression.” Perspectives such as the “looking-glass self” assume we would reflect broader social stereotypes in our self-appraisals, ignoring the ways Black women are resisting white supremacy and stereotypes about their femininity. These reflected gender appraisal patterns also partially explain why Black AFAB people may have "paradoxically" better self-rated health than their white peers.

Authors

• Jennifer Tabler, University of Wyoming

• DLane R. Compton, University of New Orleans

• Claudia Geist, University of Utah

• Shantel Gabrieal Buggs, Florida State University