Not shaving, wearing makeup, or prioritizing wearing uncomfortable clothes has really changed my perspective on other women and allowed me to more clearly seen women as I’ve always known them to be. Especially in the media and in romances.
I’ve realized how much more attracted to other women I am when they look like myself, and when they are not performing femininity. It’s really given me a new perspective on what I actually want to see when it comes to depictions of women in the media, and why there always felt like there was, subliminally, something off when I compared them to other male characters. They are, by comparison, so archetypal, so stripped of their humanity. And I never understood why I was so attracted to women in books and in friendships where we were dressed down and vulnerable, but seeing what men and even other women would call attractive in females (heels, shaven everything, makeup and curls, tight dresses, that “seductive” and coy demeanor void of individual personhood) always made my stomach feel knotted. It made me doubt that my attraction in other women was even real.
And how sick is that? Doubting what I know of myself and other women because our greatest representation has been in our objectification, and it was tough even believing or readying myself to observe that same raw personhood, that individualism and independence, that makes someone whole. Makes them someone to even be attracted to in the first place, outside of their role in your life. It makes you devoid of empathy for other women, because there is a mirage and an illusion that makes the only woman you can truly see, safely, yourself.
“But I didn’t and still don’t like making a cult of women’s knowledge, preening ourselves on knowing things men don’t know, women’s deep irrational wisdom, women’s instinctive knowledge of Nature, and so on. All that all too often merely reinforces the masculinist idea of women as primitive and inferior – women’s knowledge as elementary, primitive, always down below at the dark roots, while men get to cultivate and own the flowers and crops that come up into the light. But why should women keep talking baby talk while men get to grow up? Why should women feel blindly while men get to think?”
“The “kick” of girl/girl porno lies partly in its catering to the fantasy of violating the privacy of lesbians, of making even sex between women—something quite threatening to male sexual prerogative—serve a male agenda; the other, tacit element is the kick of seeing “normal girls” made to emulate homosexual activity. The assumption is that homosexual activity is repulsive, and that therefore the models are disgusted by it and endure it under some compulsion—whether the compulsion of money, force of personality, or physical threat. Pictures of real lesbians—at Gay Pride rallies, for example—kissing, necking and flirting are often considered “disgusting” and “ugly” by the same men who enjoy “girl/girl fantasy” porn. Lesbians in the public world who kiss, hold hands, or otherwise behave like a sexually intimate couple (in a restaurant, in a park, at a movie) have often been subjected to abuse, threats, and violence from hetero men—the same men who constitute the market for ever-popular girl/girl porno. What is disgusting in the case of real lesbians in the real world seems to be the women’s autonomy; what is attractive in the case of commercialised, fictionalised documentary porn is the evidence of reduced autonomy, the dissonance between what the porn consumer assumes are the real wishes and feelings of the model, and the actions she is being bribed or forced to perform. If the model were a real lesbian she would experience violation and humiliation due to the invasion and exploitation of her sexual privacy by men; if the model is conventionally heterosexual then she is presumed to experience a degree of humiliation in being made to commit, or mime, homosexual acts.”
— D. A. Clarke, “Prostitution for everyone: Feminism, globalisation, and the ‘sex’ industry” from Not For Sale: Feminists Resisting Prostitution and Pornography
(via reading-blog)
btw "a woman learning to embrace femininity after being a tomboy and resenting it for awhile" is a bad message to put in media. it insinuates that "femininity" is part of her natural state that for some reason she has denied for a long time. "femininity" is inherently unnatural. this is not misogynistic, because women are not naturally "feminine." "femininity" is entirely artificial.
if you relate to this sort of story, it's likely because you struggled with how restrictive and encumbering "femininity" is while growing up, and resented it because it was forced upon you by a misogynistic society, but are now trying to ward off the cognitive dissonance of knowing that you aren't actually naturally inclined to be "feminine" because you have given up and succumbed to society's demands for you. you are trying to rationalize your choices as self-motivated, because it stings too much to accept that you are putting yourself through suffering to make your life easier, simply because other people would make your life much harder otherwise.
and for those who cry out "why can't we have depictions of women who are competent AND feminine": i want you to show me the surplus of popular media in which unfeminine women are not only depicted, but depicted as competent, good/not evil, or both. hell, i would love it if you would point me towards the apparent surplus of media that contains more unfeminine women than feminine women. y'all act like femininity isn't practically a requirement for female characters to simply exist in most forms of widely distributed media, and it's either completely disingenuous or entirely misogynistic, because your concept of "unfeminine" is "not literally a barbie doll."
as for me, i want to know why for every five hundred stories of women "learning to embrace their feminine side," there seems to be exactly 0 stories of feminine girls realizing femininity isn't for them and that life is easier without it are. i can take a few guesses.
As your bones lose density, the only way you will protect them is by keeping your muscle mass; building strength in middle age is part of what will define the shape and tempo of your old age. “
Online, stock images tend to show older women exercising with featherlight weights. Personal trainer Anna Jenkins knew this wasn’t represent
When 50-year-old Anna Jenkins, the founder of We Are Fit Attitude (Wafa), a woman-only health and fitness club, looked online for images of older women exercising, she was irritated by the pitiful size of the weights: the stock image is of a woman with grey hair lifting a 1kg weight, as if doing so were some kind of milestone. My personal bugbears are the photos in which there is a personal trainer with an expression of infinite patience next to the older woman, as if the latter is weak and half witted.
Stock photos are the internet’s idea of what the world should look like, sets of generic images intended to illustrate articles and advertising, often revealing more worldview than they probably set out to. There are famously a lot of photos of white women laughing near salad, meant for healthy eating content, but also reinforcing inane cheer and self-denial as cornerstones of femininity. If fitness imagery of the young is all about aspiration – six packs, muscle definition and impossible body fat percentages – fitness imagery of older people is almost anti-aspirational. Its message is: “You probably can’t do anything at all, but look over here, there’s a lady managing this tiny thing.”
Jenkins runs the Wafa classes remotely and in person for women ranging from their late 30s to their mid-70s. One Saturday, at a class in Merton, south London, they decided to create a new set of photos, repopulate the ecosystem of stock photographs, so that when you search for “older women exercising”, you will be able to see what that really looks like. “These are proper weights,” says Annette Hinds, 60. “We’re not pussyfooting about.”
Jenkins went into group work and coaching from personal training because she had noticed that, in the gym: “Women would go straight to the cardio machine because they knew how it worked. It’s a frightening environment when you think you don’t belong, when you’re unhappy in your body shape. But they didn’t need more cardio – at 45-plus your body needs strength work. Especially during the menopause. It’s just a fact.”
As your bones lose density, the only way you will protect them is by keeping your muscle mass; building strength in middle age is part of what will define the shape and tempo of your old age. But as Glenda Cooper, 51, who usually does this class remotely five times a week, says, there is more to it than that. “Women at this time of life have parents we’re caring for. I’ve got two kids. You don’t want to take up too much space, you feel invisible anyway, you don’t make time for yourself. It’s so important to have a sense of your own strength, which I think is absent from the rest of our lives.”
The atmosphere is fierce: as Lorraine Turner, 59, says: “I never used to think I was competitive, but later in life, I’ve realised that I am. I get a lot out of it if I push myself more.” Karen Silvestri, 60, remarks archly: “My husband’s a chef so I eat a lot and drink a lot. I still manage to retain this normal shape.”
Palmer’s daughter paid her a compliment on her butt the other day: “She said it wasn’t flat like a lot of women my age.” Downward comparison is very motivating, and it is also fun to watch when people are so unabashed about it.
“We’re a funny bunch, women, aren’t we?” Teresa Klasener, 61, says. She was very active until she got rheumatoid arthritis, then it all hit the skids until she started with Wafa two years ago. “We have all these mental blocks, we don’t prioritise ourselves, but once we’re in a group, we’ll fly.”
Jenkins says: “When I first became a personal trainer, I’d see a lot of women who were yo-yo dieters, and it was often because they were trying to be skinnier than their bodies were meant to be. I think exercise makes you confident in your shape as it is.” That might be the ultimate break with the visual norms of the fitness industry, that these are images of strength and exertion for their own sake, not for how they’ll make you look in spaghetti straps.
“I never knew what people were talking about with the endorphin thing,” Redford says. “And now, I do feel a sense of joy and self-congratulation, knowing that I just fucking went for it.”
there’s this moment of awareness for a girl when she realizes her legs (and/or arms, armpits, upper lip…) are unacceptable.
she’s just minding her own business, bopping along, when maybe a classmate starts mocking her for having visible body hair. or she goes to a sleepover and someone points out that her legs look different from all the other girls’. or she walks in on her mom shaving and asks why, and the answer is “because a woman’s body looks nicer this way.” or maybe her mother or sister actually approaches her and says, “looks like it’s time you learned to shave that jungle.”
the point is, the day before that realization, however it happened, the girl didn’t give a shit about her hair. she put on shorts and tank tops without a second thought. she didn’t feel unclean. she didn’t feel like a monster when she looked in the mirror (at least not because of body hair). her hair didn’t stop her from riding a bike or climbing a tree.
only after someone draws her attention to it does she start feeling self-conscious and wanting to remove it. removal, in this culture, is never a choice made free of coercion. it’s never born of a girl’s own naturally occurring desires. the seed of shame was planted in her by someone else (family, friends, bullies, magazines, razor commercials) and chances are that seed will stay with her forever- a sinking realization that her body can be wrong, that she can look ugly or dirty even when clean, that a thing she never even noticed about herself before should be a source of retroactive humiliation.
that feeling is like a scar. every time we look at it, the humiliation and judgment we experienced as kids comes rushing back and the little nasty patriarchal voice in our heads (the same one that says shit like “jesus you’re getting fat,” “ugh why did you think you could pull off this outfit,” “god who would ever want to touch THOSE boobs,” etc) says “ugh, looks like it’s time I shaved that jungle.” and it’s just parroting back what we’ve already been told.
And we are taught to hate our natural human selves so effectively, that this thinking not only becomes second nature, but we also begin to defend thinking of ourselves this way, because if we didn’t self-criticize, self-control, self-hate, how ugly would we become?
The images beg the questions: why does little girls’ clothing “need” to be tighter, shorter and more constricting than boys’? Is it easier to move in such clothes? Play in them? Run in them? What is it grooming girls to wear later? How is it grooming them to perceive themselves? - Peggy Orenstein
I’ve seen this post before and it makes me angry every time, by the time these kids are adults they will think this is normal, that this is the norm. Finding comfortable clothes shouldn’t be as difficult as it is, and even more in the case of children.
Patriachy be like that. Girls aren’t supposed to be comfortable or to move around. They’re supposed to be “pretty”, constricted, to show themselves. Even if you try to find more confortable clothing in the female section it’ll have something that ties back to this horrible set of “rules” about gendered clothes. Even patterns are more scarce in the female section. I was tired of just seeing the same stamp from my fandom in 2 diferent colours (usually black and white), then you go into the male section and there are so much more options, more colours, more designs, and it just makes you go wtf??!!! Why???!!!
one time long ago I read a book by a comedian named Celia Rivenbank and one of the stories she told was abt how frustrated she was that she couldn’t find age appropriate attire for her young daughters. that book was published in 2011 and to this day it gets more and more relevant as time passes
My mother almost always bought my clothes in the boys section, (unless it was something like a skirt obviously) even school shirts. Because you know that school shirts/blouses for girls are more see-through than the identical ones for boys? And even when I hit puberty and got female curves, the female blouses would just gape horribly but the boys ones wouldn’t because they were looser in general. There’s literally no difference in the seams or how the clothes are cut other than smaller/thinner for girls over boys. Buy your child clothing from the boys section unless they specifically want a skirt or dress. They’ll thank you for it later, and they’ll get used to ignoring arseholes wondering why as young women they’re shopping in the male section.
Hey, do y’all remember how Tencent said they were developing faceID AI to identify people in riots, and then they suddenly created an AI art generator to turn your selfies into anime?
Do y’all remember that time that someone discovered facial recognition cameras couldn't see through Juggalo makeup, then Facebook had a fun “see what you'd look like with Juggalo makeup” thing, and then facial recognition cameras could suddenly see through Juggalo makeup?
Do y’all remember how, on Twitter, Elon started a tirade against artists who ask for credit when their art is reposted, and he suddenly he created one of the first big art AI programs?
Do y’all remember how AI destroyed the field of translation, despite the inferiority of the machine translations, because people didn’t care about the quality of the translations? They just wanted it done for free?
Do y’all know how companies will see a lot of money going into a New Tech Thing (like, say, AI art apps) and will jump to try and implement that New Tech Thing into their tech? For example, how it felt like every big company and celebrity had an NFT to sell?
I was a defender of "do not post your face online because you are feeding an AI" but now with art? I don't know shoul we go back to art only for a select few by stopping online sharing of art? I am starting to think we should. Because while I won't get to see art, at least someones labour won't be ripped from them to be used in the kitchen sink of some random AI while the artist gets nothing.
But I also don't know how that artist is going to make a living without their medium.
(context: the video says that girls with long hair and no makeup, or girls with short hair and makeup are lesbians. these are the top two comments on the same video)
two main things here.
1. hundreds of girls are agreeing with the statement that wearing less makeup makes them like women more. none of them have come to the realization that this is because makeup dehumanizes women. getting used to your natural face helps you realize how beautiful the natural features of a woman are, at which point you start to be attracted to WOMEN rather than caricatures of femininity.
2. hundreds of girls are also saying that cutting their hair made them start wearing makeup more. none of them have come to the realization that this is because getting rid of one patriarchal beauty expectation makes them insecure and causes them to take up a separate patriarchal beauty standard. short-haired women can still be considered attractive by men if they conform to femininity, etc etc.
women will proudly declare they’re “using a man for his money” as if men haven’t been willingly and joyfully paying for access to women’s bodies for centuries. as if that were a price he wasn’t willing to pay. as if he doesn’t know exactly what he’s doing. as if he were at some sort of disadvantage within this arrangement. as if they’re in a position of power by providing something the man can’t get anywhere else at any time with that same exact money. you’re not using him for his money, he’s bribing you to fuck him.
There was a commentary on a post about that blush trend inspired by hentai, and it said it’s sad because some of these girls don’t know they’re imitating porn but the men do. And that got me thinking about boyfriends that are “irrationally” mad about how their gf’s dress. And the gf just thinks it’s a trend. But to the guy he views it as signaling. He’s so used to getting off to women who dress that way to arouse them, that he can’t see it any other way. Porn leaks into real life. Those yoga pants designed to go up your buttcrack and give you cameltoe aren’t accidental. And porn stars use these all the time. The way these women see the world isn’t the same way men see it. Women aren’t blind and stupid they know these clothes are supposed to be sexy. They just have no idea how men truly see them.
Another layer of this is with kids. Little girls trying to imitate women. And all they see it as is an imitation. Mothers dressing their daughters like them and thinking it’s just cute fashion, and you then have women who can see it be uncomfortable but they are told THEY are the ones sexualizing little girls for being concerned. Men are being trained by cues. They are getting off to femininity more than the female form. And we are too quick to tell concerned women to shut up, because we are starting to give little girls more and more access to imitate the very cues men are aroused by.
“We’re in 2019.
Female hair is CENSORED everywhere. You don’t see it on TV. You don’t see it in magazines or adverts.
There is an injunction of society for women to remain ‘soft’ and completely hairless. Just like a little girl. I don’t believe that’s a coincidence.
Young, skinny, hairless girls have been very popular in the media for years and it makes me wonder. Who’s behind it all? Who’s perpetuating this message about women looking like adolescent girls? It sometimes feels rather paedophilic. It worries me.”
– Camille Alexander. Musician (2019)
“Years ago I did think about getting laser hair removal for my navel hair, but then I realised I’d be paying a couple of hundred pounds just to conform to expectations that I don’t even care about– I’d much rather use the money for a holiday or circus lessons! I think that’s one of the things which annoys me so much about society and the media’s expectation for women to be basically hairless– they’re pressuring us to invest serious time and money and endure pain. It’s a double standard and it’s unfair.
Being able to accept your body– hair, scars and all– is freeing. I remember seeing my Aunt Glynis dancing to reggae in the 90s with her armpit hair showing– she looked so confident, happy and free. As a child, I couldn’t put my finger on ‘why’, but I can now. On a practical level, it feels pretty darn good when I consider how much time, money and pain I’ve saved by accepting my body as it is. I like to think that that memory of my aunt being free and totally comfortable in her own skin is one that I can emulate and pass onto other girls and women.
It hasn’t always been received well though. At Lambeth County Fair one year, a friend of a friend was seriously freaked out when he saw my armpits. He asked me “what’s wrong with you? Why would you do that?!”, which was pretty amusing but bewildering. It reminded me there will always be people out there who may react and judge me like that. Thankfully, the opinion of people who think like that means very little to me! For me having hair and not caring is a bit like being part of a secret club. When you notice someone else who is resisting society’s expectations and staying hairy you feel solidarity and respect. It’s nice to be part of that.”
– Isabel (2019)
“As a teenager, I remember trying to stuff myself into a box of what a girl should be like. It always felt uncomfortable; padded bras, shoes that hurt and shaving rash. Running, swimming and climbing have helped me to see the strength and resilience in my body and to love it for what it is. Growing my armpit hair has been a recent experiment and the longer it gets, the more I like it! I like the way it looks & feels. It has given me a new respect for myself. So I say, embrace growth & if it pleases you, let it all grow!”
– Jess (2018)
“Shaving, epilating or waxing hurts. I was tired of suffering, trying to adapt to the image of a ‘beautiful young woman’ society is selling us. Everybody told me to shave. As a teenager, it’s a huge subject among girls; where do you shave? What method are you using? It takes so much time and costs so much money (the majority of hair removal products are also not recyclable). All of these reasons coming one after another motivated me to stop shaving. I would often have irritated skin after shaving and being a very sporty person, the sweat and the friction of my clothes would cause pain.The worst thing was having sex on the second day after shaving my vulva. I didn’t understand why women would suffer and waste so much time on hiding who they really are. By showing my body hair on stage, I would like to stimulate and change people’s point of view. I’d like to motivate women to make their own choices.”
– Darian Koszinski. Circus artist (2018)
“I stopped shaving completely when I was a teenager because of two instances. The first? I got tired of all the time wasted on maintenance and the discomfort that came with it. The second was when I went on a few multiple week-long backpacking trips; it would have been extremely inconvenient to spend hours ripping my hair out, so I let things grow. Being so close to nature let me dive deeper into and re-examine the relationship with myself and the world, acting as a mirror. In nature, there is wild; it is as beautiful as it is untamed. How could it be anything other than that? I felt so relieved and free when I let it grow out. It felt like being able to breathe. It was incredibly comfortable too. I felt a confidence and boldness returning, like I was replenishing some kind of primal power. I will say that a very pleasant side effect of having armpit hair is its ability to ward off rude people whom I wouldn’t care to interact or associate with anyway. Because the people that care about that sort of thing and make it a point to say how disgusted they are, are precisely the kind of people that I don’t want in my life.”
– Kyotocat (2017)
“At this point in life, I feel that the real question shouldn’t be ‘why did you let your armpit hair grow?’ But actually, ‘why did you shave in the first place?’ Please celebrate your body! Own who you are and be that! Those who celebrate who and what they are, are creating a much open and safer space for those who are struggling to understand who and what they want to be in life. It might be easier said than done but give it a try. We’ll then help create a healthier and understanding society with less bullshit than there already is…”
– Alex Wellburn (2017)
“I never stopped shaving because I never started.
I do remember my mother shaving when I was younger and I thought that was pretty unnecessary since she was a strict muslim.
I later realised it’s a thing women do to look more desirable to men.
It really irritated me that the people who reacted negatively to my natural armpit hair were men.
Like it was the most disgusting thing in the world. It really gets on my tits.
This is just one more reason that I don’t shave it off. It belongs to me and I don’t make noise about the “ugly”; hair on men which are sometimes pretty painful in the eye… But you’ve got to get over it and don’t let these idiots get under it.
I would recommend growing it to any women.”
