9th
okay, but it kind of is, right? i know this is going to make me sound kind of neurotic and like a total hypocrite but femininity isn’t really um, good. femininity is a learned, cultivated, practiced set of behaviors. it’s not natural or “a part of being a woman” it’s not something that women just are. if you can’t be feminine without a host of products and regimens that are painful and expensive, (and don’t actually enhance you beyond the point of making you more palatable to the ever encompassing male gaze) then, uh, it isn’t exactly something that you naturally exude, yeah? being feminine just makes you patriarchy compliant. like, “oh, hey! no don’t worry i’m not taking that feminism thing too seriously, see? i’ve still got makeup and heels! they are respectively carcinogenic and hideously uncomfortable but it’s worth it to get the approval that comes from appeasing the oppressor!”
and i mean, i’m not saying i’m immune to/don’t do this. i totally do. but i’m realizing that probably i shouldn’t? it’s really hard to stop when literally your entire life you’ve been taught to desperately seek out these little head pats and the brief acknowledgement that maybe you’re being a woman - performing femininity - correctly. it’s easy for the condescending approval to become like, a primary objective. but i think it’s kind of harmful to say explicitly that “femininity is not anti-feminist” because femininity is a construct built around the idea that one: there are two things, men and women, and they are opposites. and two: the ladies are inherently worth less than the dudes. which is the opposite of feminism.
(via sapphrikah)
