Feelings on Femininity, by ahealthyskeleton
"This is a man’s world
But it wouldn’t be nothing
Nothing, without a woman or a girl”
-James Brown
YouTube’s algorithm thinks it knows me.
I might have been searching for hair styling tutorials or skincare tips, but let’s get this straight, I don’t need instructions on how to be more feminine. I’m plenty feminine, and I have nothing to prove.
I must have gotten lost on the wrong side of beauty YouTube because I ended up being preached at by women about how women “today” have lost touch with femininity because they’re “trying to be men”. Women, from their personal experiences, suggest that they had to take on more masculine roles in the household, and they came to believe femininity meant showing weakness. According to them, they need to learn to let a man take the lead... Well, that’s their personal journey with femininity that I can’t argue with, but I do have an issue with anyone trying to apply it to all women, or WOC.
It all depends on your personal experiences with and definitions of masculinity and femininity, but ask a hundred people and get a hundred different answers. Femininity and masculinity are difficult definitions to pin down. Almost as if they’re social constructs (almost as if I studied social science) based on a myth of binary oppositions. The mistake would be to interpret the “Yin and Yang” of it all as two parts of a whole, rather than each of us being a multifaceted whole.
Gender Weaponized
Much to the wanna-be controversial YouTubers' despair, I don't share their formative experiences. In the religious society I was a part of at the time, the gender binary was in fact reinforced like it was going out of style.
You’d have to ask a man how this looked for them, but I believe they were kept in line by being told not to be women (read don’t be weak). Don’t ask for help, don’t show emotion. Don’t. (It’s now obvious to me that my interest in ageplay and petplay kinks has less to do with my identity and more to do with curiosity about the man who can be a caregiver, who doesn’t limit himself by believing nurturing to be a feminine activity, or one he could never take part in).
From my experience, I felt that the concept of gender was weaponized. It may sound dramatic, but who wants to live with the constant threat of not being feminine, when we thought it was our birthright? There were very few ways to be more feminine (except for shutting up) considering typical activities like wearing makeup or jewelry or elaborate hairstyles were also frowned upon as vain attempts to attract male attention. You have to look in the mirror long enough to appear “neat”, but not so long as to be narcissistic. Where do you draw the line anyway?
You’re not feminine for being too messy, too loud, talking too much, not talking enough, being too skinny, gaining too much weight, being too tall, wearing the wrong clothes, not wearing enough clothes, having children too young, not having children at all.
Femininity was about making other people comfortable at my own expense, not taking up too much space, and especially making space for men.
Never speak up (you see where this is going, right?) So I let men talk over me, even when they were dead wrong and I had proof, or at least there was another perspective worth sharing. I all but disappeared.
I was told in no uncertain terms that I, as a woman, didn’t have the intellectual capacity for grade school math and science and logic other “left brain” pursuits. (That’s not even how it works, the whole left/right brain dichotomy is oversimplified in pop culture and based on flawed assumptions that the brain is indeed a machine. Imagining it applies neatly to the masculine/ feminine binary is misguided if not malicious.)
So, I’m finding my voice, and sometimes it shakes, because I’m used to being dismissed out of hand.
Math and science and logic are about literacy, and even if I was never meant for mastery in these particular subject areas, I think they are important for anyone to have a basic understanding of to function in society. It’s a life skill, you don’t have to win a nobel prize.
Speaking of life skills… I remember living in co-ed dorms in school was eye-opening. A group of young adults with vastly different upbringings coexisting in a space brings our differences into focus. One of my friends was from an all-female family and I remember being impressed with her ability to do basic repair and improvement jobs herself in her room. It had never occurred to her to wait for a man to help, and that’s a good thing.
I used to ride a bicycle, and it was always getting bent out of shape in minor ways. My housemate at the time was an engineer and I asked him for help getting it up and running again. I knew he could probably do it easily. The problem was never the bike, it was my lack of interest in getting intimate with the greasy gears and all.
He agreed to help, but “I’m not going to do it for you”, he clarified. So I got down on the basement floor and tweaked the parts as he stood over me and instructed me. Meanwhile, he informed me, as an engineer, that man-made things sometimes break and they’re actually designed to be possible to repair. I shouldn’t give up, just look closer, try something else.
There’s something erotic about that scene, looking back on it now, but that’s not how it was.
As a child, I bet he was the type to take apart everything- pens, clocks, and radios- then fit them back together before anyone could scold him for it. Maybe he was praised for it - look how inquisitive he is. (Meanwhile, when I feel the need to take ideas apart and see what doesn’t fit when I piece them back together, I’m labeled an overthinker.)
There’s no need to be a damsel in distress. So the second time I moved out, one of my first purchases was a toolbox, as the engineer so aptly advised. No one necessarily believed in my ability to build furniture, but I did build a few pieces. It may have taken hours, and I might’ve ignored some safety warnings here and there and scratched up myself and the floor a bit. But if I can cook by following a recipe... handling a screwdriver to combine pieces of wood is not much different.
Divide and Conquer
I say if you feel feminine, then express it however you choose. But there’s a desire for conformity, and to pit women against each other.
The trope of the femme fatale tells a lot about the need to put women into boxes. You can be good OR evil, the Madonna or the Whore.
I find soap operas manipulative, because you get invested in the characters enough to put up with an otherwise abandon-able storyline. Dawson’s Creek is the classic 90s will-they-won’t-they boy (Dawson)/girl (Joey) next door coming of age story, and I got the point that they probably won’t. Dawson’s black and white filmmaker’s mind has cast Joey in a role that’s safe, comfortable, and easily overlooked.
When Jen (the bad girl from New York City) arrives, she throws the small town into disarray by seeming to disrupt the delicate balance of the Dawson and Joey planets that were apparently on a collision course (no, they would have orbited each other for eternity). I almost gave up on the show once but Jen makes you want to keep watching. Plus I heard a rumour that she dies, and now I’m curious as to her fate.
So, there’s Dawson, the overly sincere boy-next-door aspiring filmmaker. His foil, Pacey, the “loser” who is seen as a disappointment by his family for his poor grades and overall recklessness. Joey, the brilliant and sarcastic girl-next-door. And her foil, Jen who actually does the things everyone only thinks and talks about. Sex, drugs, rock and roll, the lot.
The show relies on opposition not just between genders but within them. Bad/good girl/boy. The story is told more from Joey’s perspective at first, so you’re meant to see Jen as a kind of villain, just for daring to exist in Joey’s world. But Joey was there all along hanging out with Dawson, with her ponytails and jeans, and Dawson never saw her. (That is until later on in the series when he saw her in makeup and a dress. I know…)
So, Joey… Josephine… a tomboy raised by her older sister is used to not having anyone to rely on. She’s tough and independent. Does that make her masculine? To everyone’s surprise, her first romantic relationship isn’t with Dawson at all, but his best friend Pacey. Pacey calls Joey “Jo”, possibly a nod to Little Women’s similarly independent Jo, or Pacey’s way of embracing the “masculine” aspect of her personality.
Dawson and Joey never seem to learn. After each external romance ends, they come back to each other over the years, wondering why it never worked out between them. They blame timing, but it’s more than that. Based on the laws of their fictional universe, their characters are both the “good” part of the equation, so they can never be a stable pair, can’t get a spark. It’s like trying to start a fire with wet wood and broken matches. Or magnetic poles, if you wanna get cliche.
As the characters grow up they thankfully take on more dimensions. So far, Joey the supposed good girl gets into the murky waters of almost (?) beginning an affair with her professor. And at the moment, Jen, who is supposedly no-good, shows a remarkable aptitude for what she calls a healthy, adult relationship with none other than Dawson. (I’m not finished the show yet…)
Maybe Jen and Joey aren’t different people, but two sides of the same coin. They both exist inside each of us.
Exaggerating Differences
So far, femininity has been about oppositions: differentiating ourselves from men, underscoring and exaggerating this difference. And, the condemnation of women whose femininity doesn’t fit the preferred mold. A little too Madonna, or a little too Whore.
What if significant differences aren’t really there, and it’s an illusion magnified a thousand times?
In class once, my professor was reminiscing about the 70s. He showed us pictures of the hippie style of dress, and mentioned that with their long hair and loose clothing, you couldn’t always immediately tell from far away or from behind if someone was a man or a woman.
So that’s all it takes, a couple flowy style choices and the whole delicate ecosystem falls apart? It’s so incredibly fragile. Men can grow hair, and women can cut it off. That’s not always a sign of rebellion or a breakdown, it could be creative expression, or have cultural or religious significance.
Makeup? Male rock stars and male newscasters have that covered.
Heels? Ever heard of Prince being stylish in heels? (Although they aren’t meant for dancing in). Or the fact that heels were originally invented for men?
Body hair? If women naturally grow some then what would be masculine about that?
The scientific term is sexual dimorphism/ monomorphism: whether sexes of the same species exhibit significant differences, or are they are indistinguishable from each other. For example, male birds such as peacocks are colourful, whereas their female counterparts are plain.
In many species, notably primates, this pattern also applies to physical size. However, in humans, there is a low level of sexual dimorphism compared with other species. But sure, let’s exaggerate and pretend that we have something in common with peacocks. The differences are feeble, and require layers of artifice to accentuate, otherwise they begin to disappear into the void.
“Heresy!” you say?
Well, we are all just healthy skeletons, after all.
What’s Left?
My femininity isn’t about proving I’m not a man. I’m obviously a woman, just as much in a formal gown as I am in an old pajama shirt. Newsflash, a pushup bra isn’t going to make the difference to transform me, make me womanly. This isn’t the movies.
If at any point in my life I was hesitant to conform to (heteronormative, eurocentric… ) ideals of femininity, it’s because I’ve been there, against my will, and I needed some critical distance. At the moment, I’m not afraid to be a “girl” in some ways, hell, I even own a vanity. But spending time with your physical body is universal, and what exactly I choose to spend time (and money) on is a personal choice.
There is no universal definition of femininity that works across geography, culture, and time periods, without enough exceptions to render it useless.
Femininity is in the soul. It’s how you feel, and it can’t be bottled or sold. It’s time to stop backing people into a corner with it, expecting women to hide their power because it’s incomprehensible in a man’s world.
It’s not Yin and Yang suspiciously circling each other, either at war or searching for the equilibrium of falling into place with a missing piece.
We don't define ourselves only in relation to each other. We are complete wholes that aren’t afraid to collide, not because they need to but because they want to.
“If you’ll be my bodyguard
I can be your long lost pal
I can call you Betty
And Betty, when you call me, you can call me Al”
-Paul Simon