Femininity
(Cross-posted with edits from a friend's locked post, because I figured it was worth sharing.)
As an engineer, and a bi girl, I've always had a rough time embracing my femininity. It's centered around my engineer's loathing of marketing that says if you put on makeup and jewelry and perfume, it's not "really" you... I feel like somehow the only authentic me is the one that they will see the morning after, slightly tousled hair, smelling a bit like I need a shower, and not wearing a scrap of makeup. My engineer says it's also time out of my day that I could be spending saving starving children, designing the cure for cancer, or doing something not.....frivolous. I feel frivolous when I put makeup on, and I feel deeply guilty for it, every time. Apparently my inner engineer is a raging Puritan. There's this perception deep inside my head that says to be feminine is the same as to be useless. All form and no function. An arranger of flowers, a Martha Stewart bringer of graces in all things, but helpless in the face of burst pipes, dead car batteries, and any problem that would require a little ingenuity to solve, or be useful once you solved it.
And of course, that's damned silly. I can, and have, changed flat tires in lipstick, and it doesn't seem to have impaired my ability to use a tire iron. And a little frivolity is good for the soul (in balance with other things.)
But still, every time I see a woman who has obviously spent hours on her makeup, and does every day, I find myself wondering what else she could have learned or done in that time. Would that hour a day get her a master's degree in art, or chemistry? Is the potential to be the next James Joyce buried underneath that perfect coif if only she took the time to write? Or is she an object of art because that is all she really can be? And is it an acceptable life's goal to be an object of art?
As an engineer, and a bi girl, I've always had a rough time embracing my femininity. It's centered around my engineer's loathing of marketing that says if you put on makeup and jewelry and perfume, it's not "really" you... I feel like somehow the only authentic me is the one that they will see the morning after, slightly tousled hair, smelling a bit like I need a shower, and not wearing a scrap of makeup. My engineer says it's also time out of my day that I could be spending saving starving children, designing the cure for cancer, or doing something not.....frivolous. I feel frivolous when I put makeup on, and I feel deeply guilty for it, every time. Apparently my inner engineer is a raging Puritan. There's this perception deep inside my head that says to be feminine is the same as to be useless. All form and no function. An arranger of flowers, a Martha Stewart bringer of graces in all things, but helpless in the face of burst pipes, dead car batteries, and any problem that would require a little ingenuity to solve, or be useful once you solved it.
And of course, that's damned silly. I can, and have, changed flat tires in lipstick, and it doesn't seem to have impaired my ability to use a tire iron. And a little frivolity is good for the soul (in balance with other things.)
But still, every time I see a woman who has obviously spent hours on her makeup, and does every day, I find myself wondering what else she could have learned or done in that time. Would that hour a day get her a master's degree in art, or chemistry? Is the potential to be the next James Joyce buried underneath that perfect coif if only she took the time to write? Or is she an object of art because that is all she really can be? And is it an acceptable life's goal to be an object of art?