When considering what topic I would be willing to spend the semester writing about, I decided to choose

something I was barely comfortable talking about — my high school relationship. After rereading old journal entries and revisiting the confusion, frustration, and loneliness I experienced during that time, I realized there was still a lot I wanted to understand about why it wasn't as easy for me to be happy in that relationship as I had wanted it to. I wasn't sure exactly where my writing would take me, but I knew I had a lot to explore.

For my first experiment, I chose to write a satire piece, exaggerating some of the worst moments of my relationship

to make light of them. While the piece was hardly serious, writing in a genre designed to be relatable to many made me realize how curious I was about how many others shared my experience and also helped me determine my target audience, young women around my age. 

I realized that one of the main things I struggled with during my first relationship was the negative stereotype

surrounding women who make their desires known to their partners. These women are typically cast off as needy or high maintenance, and as a result, their needs are not taken seriously; I find this to be especially true with young women, who are quicker to be categorized as dramatic or overly emotional. In my next two experiments, I found evidence in research articles as well as interviews and surveys I conducted that this phenomena is more widely experienced than I had anticipated. 

When reaching out to my peers for interviews and survey responses, I found myself met with an audience eager to

share their experiences. While my interviews allowed people to explain their experiences in greater detail, my anonymous survey allowed those I didn't know personally to be open about a fairly sensitive topic. I found that while not everyone shared my experience, a large number of female respondents felt hindered in communicating with their partner. 

My final project takes form in a magazine article for a feminist magazine. The piece combines my personal

experience with academic research and responses from my peers to give a multi-faceted view on why this stereotype is pervasive and how it can negatively affect people in relationships. I hope the article sheds light on an issue that many might not realize is affecting their behavior in relationships and encourages them to think twice before perpetuating harmful stereotypes about women. Because my initial focus was on a heterosexual relationship and the ways in which gender expectations can influence predispose people to make assumptions about how the other will act in a relationship, the project is fairly heteronormative; however, in the future I would be interested in exploring how similar stereotypes might affect people of all genders and sexual orientations.