And furthermore...
(and again, I'm saying this to me as much as anyone), if as a person of femaleness you find yourself judging the appearance or apparel of another person of femaleness...
Remember that getting women to judge and look down on each other is a tactic of The Patriarchy. As is getting us to believe (as someone pointed out on my flistee's journal) that if we just look Good Enough they (sexist men and the sexist system) will Care About Us, and that this is a Lie.
Respect for others' humanity is only a finite resource in a dehumanizing social system, and instead of fighting over scraps of the appearance of respect from such a system, we should be demanding huge flavorful mouthfuls from the limitless cornucopia of "All of us have intrinsic value regardless of what we look like."
(This is directed at me because I sometimes wince at the teenage girls wearing shorts so short their butts crease below them when they walk... and then I realize that they are not to blame for either what is available in stores (likely nothing between Daisy Dukes and knee-length shorts), nor what the fashion industry says they should wear (to be popular and/or attractive), both of which are designed and decided by adults.
(And that there are entire legions of teachers and principals and general jerkwads out there claiming that girls need to dress certain ways because boys certainly can't be expected to focus on geometry if they can spot a visible bra strap, and I emphatically want to be on the opposite side of the discourse from those people.)
Remember that getting women to judge and look down on each other is a tactic of The Patriarchy. As is getting us to believe (as someone pointed out on my flistee's journal) that if we just look Good Enough they (sexist men and the sexist system) will Care About Us, and that this is a Lie.
Respect for others' humanity is only a finite resource in a dehumanizing social system, and instead of fighting over scraps of the appearance of respect from such a system, we should be demanding huge flavorful mouthfuls from the limitless cornucopia of "All of us have intrinsic value regardless of what we look like."
(This is directed at me because I sometimes wince at the teenage girls wearing shorts so short their butts crease below them when they walk... and then I realize that they are not to blame for either what is available in stores (likely nothing between Daisy Dukes and knee-length shorts), nor what the fashion industry says they should wear (to be popular and/or attractive), both of which are designed and decided by adults.
(And that there are entire legions of teachers and principals and general jerkwads out there claiming that girls need to dress certain ways because boys certainly can't be expected to focus on geometry if they can spot a visible bra strap, and I emphatically want to be on the opposite side of the discourse from those people.)