Two weekends ago I participated in the first-ever Great Lakes Valley (GLVC) Sports Endeavor Forum in Indianapolis, Indiana. After two days full or lectures and seminars, on Sunday night the candidates and I attended an etiquette dinner. The etiquette lessons were taught by Maria Everding who founded The Etiquette Institute for the purpose of training and certifying adults to teach business, social, college, and children's etiquette programs; as well as, the popular dining etiquette tutorial. At this dinner we were taught proper dining and manners. One of the topics that we covered was how to present a “good” hand shake. She proclaimed that a hand shake from a female should be strong and powerful instead of weak and dainty. A male student-athlete confessed that he would not shake a women’s hand as hard as he would shake a man’s hand. All the female student-athletes at the table were all offended including me. Ms. Everding was shocked as well, and said that it was certainly acceptable to shake a female’s hand with a firm, strong hand shake. I wonder if this is how all males feel??

Now that I understand the idea of what you are looking for in a blog, I wanted to add some additional ideas to this piece. After reading Gauntlett’s introduction, I wanted to tie femininity into this post as well. On page 11, Gauntlett describes, “that the ideas of ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ have been pulled through the social changes of the past few decades in quite different ways.” He also explains that, “Modern women are not generally very bothered about fitting their identity within the idea of ‘femininity’ and femininity is not typically a core value for women today.” I have to completely agree with Gauntlett because I do not think femininity is a huge important as it was a centuries ago. Women today are very independent, self-motivated, and confident than the women centuries ago. Times have definitely changed and it’s important for women to keep showing off their strong characteristics to set themselves apart! However, who is still presenting femininity in modern society? Magazines? How do women feel if they are criticized for her ‘lack of femininity?’ A woman should express herself how she wants without media or public outlook judging her.

http://www.theetiquetteinstitute.com/