Gender Conditioning

I found this image and I'll admit that my initial response was that the hairy legs must belong to a man. Almost straight away however, I thought to myself, "why did I assume that?" and I realised it was because of gender conditioning. This is another topic I want to illustrate in my book. 

I came across this article about how we tend to raise children to fit into one of the two gender roles. This is why people who don't feel like they fit into either of the binaries, find it so hard to fit into society. 

As children grow up, we tend to buy them toys or encourage them to participate in activities based on their gender - we make assumptions that they'll like them because they're a boy/girl. Stories, toys, clothes and games etc, all subtly reinforce gender binaries. How often do you see pink clothes in the 'boys' section? Children pick up on these cues and they grow up thinking that because there were no pink clothes in the 'boys' section, pink must just be for girls.