Blog 2

The House episode “Skin Deep” relates with many of the concepts presented in Kate Borstein’s “Naming All the Parts.” This episode focuses on a female teenage supermodel whose aggressiveness and collapse on a runway brings her under House’s care. Tests revealed the patient is chromosomally a male whose testes are internal. A potential reversal of roles then takes places to account for the ‘abnormal’ behavior of the patient.
Borstein’s piece discusses what can be seen as the focus of this episode, the concept and identification of gender in dominant Western society. As a newborn, the patient had been identified as female according to Western standards of what external genitalia signify. This classifying procedure is addressed by Bornstein as an initial factor in gender construction.
The article’s description of “gender attribution” (Bornstein) provides understanding to the contradiction that develops on the episode. According to Western standards the patient’s observable characteristics are attributed to be feminine. The contradiction arises when the patient displays aggression as an initial symptom, which is a characteristic generally attributed to males. This aggression conflicts with the initial female attributions and leads to suspicion because it is ‘abnormal’ according to constructed characteristics of women in Western society.
In addition, although it is consistently recognized that externally the patient is stereotypically female, the gender category and label immediately change upon the identification of testes and a Y chromosome. This identifies the centrality of genitalia above all else in gender determination. Thus it supports, as described in the article, the observation that “in our Western civilization, we bow down to the great god Science” (Bornstein) in terms of gender categorization. Doing so leaves little credence for individual self identity.
Another commonality to the article is associated with the author’s statement “as a culture, we’re encouraged to equate sex (the act) with success and security” (Bornstein). The patient in the episode is a supermodel which, in Western society, is often objectified as a highly sexualized figure. House plays into this by constantly referring to her body parts in derogatory, sexualized ways. In conjunction, the episode also can be seen as portraying a stereotype that depicts women as being manipulative seductresses because it is revealed that the patient has used sex to ‘benefit’ herself.

“Skin Deep.” House: Season Two. Exec. Producers Marcy Kaplan and Steven Heth. FOX. DVD. Universal Studios, 2006.

Bornstein, Kate. “Naming All the Parts.” ITPeople.org. 2003. 17 Jan. 2009 <http://www.itpeople.org/namingallparts.php>.