Fearless Friday

[wordsrmylife]

Fearless Friday explores gender. (Icon via garwlban)

Since I started StT, I've been thinking so, so much about the meaning of femininity. This week I thought I'd share a few of those thoughts.

Before I dive in, here's a paraphrasee of Malinda Lo's excellent definition of gender:

Gender is the social meanings that society assigns to the biological

Comments

[patesden]

Interesting thoughts--and I'm afraid my brain isn't that fast right now.

What came to my mind was also how age also effects how women feel they should dress--restricting how comfortable they feel about dressing sexy and girly. But do CD's change their style as they age? I have no idea.

[wordsrmylife]

That's a really interesting idea. I especially like the way you phrase "how women feel they should dress." I think some women do feel they should dress less sexy as they age. But I think there are also women (like me) who may deliberately dress to be attractive as they age, perhaps because they are more comfortable with themselves. Mind, it's not high school girlie sexy (the baby doll look definitely looks more fetching on the young). Do CDs change their style--that's a good question, one I'll have to ask at some point.

Hm.

[annan_dum]

Interesting...well, you inspired two thoughts in me

Re: Hm.

[wordsrmylife]

The whole comfort thing is pretty big in northern New England as well, so I totally understand what you mean about dressing up being a matter of taking time to fuss once in a while.

What I know of Jung comes from a couple of psych classes in college. But given how uncomfortable so many men seem to feel about shifting gender expressions in other men, I think Jung was absolutely on to something. I do remember thinking that Jung made a lot more sense than a lot of Freud.

[philia_fan]

Comfort is very big for me. And also TIME. A lot of the "feminine" stuff like makeup and stockings, etc., is both uncomfortable for me and time-consuming. And, for me, it seems to have a big emphasis on artifice, on putting on a look for the world that isn't what I actually look like. Whereas most men get to walk out the door looking like themselves, with perhaps a morning shave to keep the beard away, unless they like a beard. "Our" idea of the feminine (not actually mine) is also so very tied to our time and place. In the US, women shave their armpits (well, not me...), but not so much in Europe. Also in the US, often the women considered prettiest all look alike, thus all those Hollywood movies where I can't remember which female character is which, whereas a good French or Spanish movie may have 5 women who look nothing whatever like each other

[wordsrmylife]

I've noticed the exact same thing about women in American-made movies vs. women in English or French or Spanish movies, which is why I often prefer them.

I do agree with you that for us, here and now, how we present ourselves can be a matter of choice.

I can understand the makeup more easily than the heels, which are not comfortable to walk in. Make-up, to me, is a way of calling attention to your face, kind of like the way men decide to grow this or that style of moustache or beard. I use concealer under my eyes and mascara on a daily basis, and most days I add some light shadow and eyeliner, because I think my eyes are my best feature and I want to call attention to them.

But you know, I went for decades not wearing makeup because I wanted people to accept me as I am. I still want that, as I think most of us do. But I felt like experimenting, because I wanted to think about what it would be like to be more "traditionallly" feminine. It's about play, at the moment.