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So, there was a thing on Pandagon critiquing some article in cosmo. Which is, admittedly, kind of like shooting fish in a barrel. But if you read the comments there’s a whole lot of talk about The Beauty Myth and discussions of wearing makeup vs not wearing makeup and how that compares to things like body-hair removal vs not bothering, for example.
So I thought I’d talk about that for a while.
See… The whole Femininity = Bad/Stupid/Worthless thing that I see both in Patriarchal culture in general AND in a lot of branches of feminism… that’s always bothered the hell out of me.
Way, WAY before I was able to articulate why, or that I identify as femme, or what-have-you, I was irritated as hell that my penchant for playing Barbie as a kid, loving makeup, and always wanting to wear dresses somehow meant that, on some level, I wasn’t a Real Feminist. That Real Feminists played with lego and tinkertoy as kids, and wore jeans a polo shirts (notably referred-to as “I dress… like a lesbian” by one otherwise charming just-out-of-the-closet baby-dyke) now, and never wanted any of that girly crap, ever, at all in their lives.
But I did, and I do.
I *like* that I lucked out, as a skinny white chick with a fast metabolism, and got super long legs, full lips, big-but-not-“too-big” hips, little-but-not-“too-little” tits, and hair that grows long and straight and more-or-less behaves itself.
I *like* that, other than being 6’4” instead of, say, 5’11”, I basically hit the patriarchal genetic jack-pot in terms of how I look.
I have, by and large, light coloured hair that doesn’t grow that fast or in particular profusion.
My tits are small enough that I don’t need a bra, but they’ll still fill out a tight t-shirt nicely.
I’m university-educated (and middle class), which means that I’m not *stuck* (necessarily) working in service-industry jobs (such as the retail job I worked for six-and-a-half years) that require me by company policy to present all the more feminine-and-therefore-docile-and-therefore-useable because of my subservient position to my (company’s) clients/customers, while also not being *stuck* working factory, cleaning, or other labour jobs that will give me calluses, heat-damage, and so-on due to my intense working conditions.
I’m tall and skinny and come by that genetically which means I don’t particularly have to work at maintaining my “figure”.
My lips, hips and scalp-hair scream “Socially Accepted Forms of Femininity” loudly enough that my lips can be chapped, my hair can be greasy, and my hips can be draped in some seriously frumpy skirts… and the “social fall-out” of that is that some “concerned citizen” might ask me if I’m feeling alright today. I’m not going to get the kind of flack (typically) that gals who are shorter, heavier, or darker-in-skin-or-hair could (do) get from random strangers under the same circumstances.
In our culture, femininity is skinny, Caucasian, and 23 years old.
One Tenacious Baby-Mama has some really excellent blog-posts about being a femme of colour and how her body is hyper-sexualized by Society, not only because she’s a woman, but also because she’s Black (see also: the hottentot venus, exoticized cabaret belly dance, infantalized hawt asian girls, the assumption that aboriginal women are probably doing sex-work and/or that it doesn’t matter if they get raped and murdered vs the manhunt that went on after Ardeth Wood’s body got discovered, etc. etc).
I’m skinny, Caucasian, and 29 years old. With a baby-face that means, if I dress 23 (and sometimes even if I don’t), people will believe that I am.
So – thanks to genetics – I don’t have to work that hard in order to present as feminine in order to gain the tacit approval of our patriarchal culture and its norms and mores – and getting/not!getting that tacit approval does have concrete repercussions in one’s life. For example, transwomen who present obvious male physical traits (facial hair, pattern baldness, etc) get hit by pretty massive discrimination – everything from verbal harassment to murder – for not presenting the “required amount” (???) of socially accepted forms of femininity. (Example from pandagon found here).
So. I don’t *have to* work as hard to present as feminine, etc. etc.
This means that I can look at femming it up with makeup and lingerie and all that stuff more as a fun game than as a burden I’m required to bear if I want to get by in my culture.
Maybe that’s part of why I like it. Because, for me, makeup is art. It’s grade-four face painting taken to a different extreme. (Why do you think I spent my late teens and early twenties with eyeliner all over everything? ;-)
I tend to wear more makeup – and jewellery, and better-fitting clothes - the better I feeling about myself. Personal adornment is a symptom, if you will, of my liking myself. Not a cause.
That said: I also get myself dolled up when I want to be noticed – specifically when I’m feeling ignored and want to grab people’s attention specifically so I can ignore them while they give it to me.
Likewise, I like having smooth, hairless legs (among other things) because I like the softness of my skin, because I like the way my calves feel when the rub together and don’t have stubble, etc. But I also like having smooth, hairless legs because I don’t feel like I’m wearing fuzzy leg-warmers with my office skirts and/or lingerie, and because I know my girlfriend like my legs smooth, too. (Granted, I like her legs smooth as well. It’s not like we aren’t both depilating in this scenario).
And, yeah. I don't have a bus-pass. And the walk to work is refreshing. But it's also an hour and a half of walking every day, which means I'm actually getting some small amount of low-impact excersise every day. Which is good for me and which - yeahyeahyeah - may help to keep me from gaining back the weight I lost post-divorce.
Right.
All that ambivalent stuff being said:
It just bothers me to hear stuff like “It’s so sad that you don’t think you can be beautiful without makeup” or living up to some other patriarchal standard of beauty.
It kind of falls into the same boat as “You like fucking, ergo you are oppressed and living in false-consciousness!” Jaknow?
It’s like:
O, hai. Mirror? Can haz. Kthxbai.
I know what I got and I like it.
Heaven forbid I actually *like* what I look like and *not* have somebody punishing me for liking it. Honestly. :-P
Anyway. That’s my not-too-sensical ramble for the afternoon.
- TTFN,
- Amazon.
So I thought I’d talk about that for a while.
See… The whole Femininity = Bad/Stupid/Worthless thing that I see both in Patriarchal culture in general AND in a lot of branches of feminism… that’s always bothered the hell out of me.
Way, WAY before I was able to articulate why, or that I identify as femme, or what-have-you, I was irritated as hell that my penchant for playing Barbie as a kid, loving makeup, and always wanting to wear dresses somehow meant that, on some level, I wasn’t a Real Feminist. That Real Feminists played with lego and tinkertoy as kids, and wore jeans a polo shirts (notably referred-to as “I dress… like a lesbian” by one otherwise charming just-out-of-the-closet baby-dyke) now, and never wanted any of that girly crap, ever, at all in their lives.
But I did, and I do.
I *like* that I lucked out, as a skinny white chick with a fast metabolism, and got super long legs, full lips, big-but-not-“too-big” hips, little-but-not-“too-little” tits, and hair that grows long and straight and more-or-less behaves itself.
I *like* that, other than being 6’4” instead of, say, 5’11”, I basically hit the patriarchal genetic jack-pot in terms of how I look.
I have, by and large, light coloured hair that doesn’t grow that fast or in particular profusion.
My tits are small enough that I don’t need a bra, but they’ll still fill out a tight t-shirt nicely.
I’m university-educated (and middle class), which means that I’m not *stuck* (necessarily) working in service-industry jobs (such as the retail job I worked for six-and-a-half years) that require me by company policy to present all the more feminine-and-therefore-docile-and-therefore-useable because of my subservient position to my (company’s) clients/customers, while also not being *stuck* working factory, cleaning, or other labour jobs that will give me calluses, heat-damage, and so-on due to my intense working conditions.
I’m tall and skinny and come by that genetically which means I don’t particularly have to work at maintaining my “figure”.
My lips, hips and scalp-hair scream “Socially Accepted Forms of Femininity” loudly enough that my lips can be chapped, my hair can be greasy, and my hips can be draped in some seriously frumpy skirts… and the “social fall-out” of that is that some “concerned citizen” might ask me if I’m feeling alright today. I’m not going to get the kind of flack (typically) that gals who are shorter, heavier, or darker-in-skin-or-hair could (do) get from random strangers under the same circumstances.
In our culture, femininity is skinny, Caucasian, and 23 years old.
One Tenacious Baby-Mama has some really excellent blog-posts about being a femme of colour and how her body is hyper-sexualized by Society, not only because she’s a woman, but also because she’s Black (see also: the hottentot venus, exoticized cabaret belly dance, infantalized hawt asian girls, the assumption that aboriginal women are probably doing sex-work and/or that it doesn’t matter if they get raped and murdered vs the manhunt that went on after Ardeth Wood’s body got discovered, etc. etc).
I’m skinny, Caucasian, and 29 years old. With a baby-face that means, if I dress 23 (and sometimes even if I don’t), people will believe that I am.
So – thanks to genetics – I don’t have to work that hard in order to present as feminine in order to gain the tacit approval of our patriarchal culture and its norms and mores – and getting/not!getting that tacit approval does have concrete repercussions in one’s life. For example, transwomen who present obvious male physical traits (facial hair, pattern baldness, etc) get hit by pretty massive discrimination – everything from verbal harassment to murder – for not presenting the “required amount” (???) of socially accepted forms of femininity. (Example from pandagon found here).
So. I don’t *have to* work as hard to present as feminine, etc. etc.
This means that I can look at femming it up with makeup and lingerie and all that stuff more as a fun game than as a burden I’m required to bear if I want to get by in my culture.
Maybe that’s part of why I like it. Because, for me, makeup is art. It’s grade-four face painting taken to a different extreme. (Why do you think I spent my late teens and early twenties with eyeliner all over everything? ;-)
I tend to wear more makeup – and jewellery, and better-fitting clothes - the better I feeling about myself. Personal adornment is a symptom, if you will, of my liking myself. Not a cause.
That said: I also get myself dolled up when I want to be noticed – specifically when I’m feeling ignored and want to grab people’s attention specifically so I can ignore them while they give it to me.
Likewise, I like having smooth, hairless legs (among other things) because I like the softness of my skin, because I like the way my calves feel when the rub together and don’t have stubble, etc. But I also like having smooth, hairless legs because I don’t feel like I’m wearing fuzzy leg-warmers with my office skirts and/or lingerie, and because I know my girlfriend like my legs smooth, too. (Granted, I like her legs smooth as well. It’s not like we aren’t both depilating in this scenario).
And, yeah. I don't have a bus-pass. And the walk to work is refreshing. But it's also an hour and a half of walking every day, which means I'm actually getting some small amount of low-impact excersise every day. Which is good for me and which - yeahyeahyeah - may help to keep me from gaining back the weight I lost post-divorce.
Right.
All that ambivalent stuff being said:
It just bothers me to hear stuff like “It’s so sad that you don’t think you can be beautiful without makeup” or living up to some other patriarchal standard of beauty.
It kind of falls into the same boat as “You like fucking, ergo you are oppressed and living in false-consciousness!” Jaknow?
It’s like:
O, hai. Mirror? Can haz. Kthxbai.
I know what I got and I like it.
Heaven forbid I actually *like* what I look like and *not* have somebody punishing me for liking it. Honestly. :-P
Anyway. That’s my not-too-sensical ramble for the afternoon.
- TTFN,
- Amazon.
