Fascinating how what's considered feminine and what's considered masculine can change over time. The rebranding of being a horse girl into being a stereotypical feminine girly trait needs to be studied.
Look at classic children's novels. As recently as the 50s and early 60s, being obsessed with horses as a girl was depicted as strange and tomboyish, and the very concept of being obsessed with horses from early childhood and loving toy horses and desperately wanting your own horse being a "little girl thing" and not a "little boy thing" would send someone from the 1800s and earlier into a coma.
There's maybe a point to be made here somewhere about how when keeping and riding horses stopped being necessary to the functioning of society and became a more "frivolous" thing, it was rapidly rebranded as silly and girly and for women, but what do I know.
i wrote a paper in my masculinity studies class in college about this exact phenomenon, specifically about how high heeled shoes started as a practical way for Persian cavalry to keep their feet on their stirrups, then likely due to that association, became a popular fashion item and status symbol among the upper classes of Europe, before the Great Male Renunciation of the 18th-19th centuries, when men started shunning opulence in favor of utility, leaving them as a fashion item for women instead.
I've joked that the two genders are Aesthetic and Utility before but thats just kinda the case
This is just making me think of all the Aesthetically masculine products that've entered the market over the past few years. Like, the only funtional difference between Dude Wipes and regular wet wipes is the color of the package, and the word "Dude" on the lid. The lines between aesthetic and functionality have started to blur in fascinating ways. Granted, I am honestly lacking in the proper knowledge to talk about this for lack of true education in any form of gender studies. So what I've got are fairly simple observations.
