This post has really blown up (well, by a relatively new blog’s standards) and i’d like to add to it.
First of all, whoa, i had no idea that so many other people related.
I also had no idea that i’m not the only one who hates the way makeup feels.
When I was a little girl, I was heartened by those messages talking about how it’s okay to be tomboyish and like to play in mud and do “masculine” things and like “masculine” interests. It made me feel comforted and comfortable in myself that at least some people thought it was okay to not be Girly™.
Now I haven’t seen one of those in 3 or 4 years. Guys, the message of “girls can be tomboyish/not conform to gender stereotypes” has vanished. I haven’t seen people sharing posts about it and writing about it, except maybe in the context of lesbian women. What i have seen is piles and piles of discourse upholding a woman’s “right” to wear makeup and heels and care lots about the way they dress and shit. Posts attacking “internalized misogyny” and defending makeup-wearing, heel-donning, jewelry-loving women and telling us that we all have to love and respect and avoid criticizing women that don these traditional markers of femininity. It’s not acceptable anymore to celebrate gender-non-conforming girls for being non-conforming because that’s offensive to girls who DO conform, but it is acceptable to celebrate those that conform properly for no other reason than that they conform.
“Yas girl! You’re wearing heels! Slayyyy!”
I have to say, it’s just extremely weird to see the entire conversation around something that I was pushed and pressed and forced to be by like, society as a whole and all my “friends”, turn into “It’s okay to be this way.”
I’m sorry you feel broken for not conforming to society’s standards, did you know that conforming to society’s standards is completely okay and we will all support you in it? :)
What happened that it was JUST becoming acceptable in the mainstream for women to be unfeminine for like, a few years, and now feminists have decided that there’s such a war on lipstick and heels that they have to bolster and uphold cosmetics and clothes with every other breath they breathe? I can’t talk about how difficult it is to survive as a young girl who CAN’T “act feminine” because I get shut down. I’ve had people online straight-up tell me my experiences being ostracized by girls wholesale for just being unable to act the way a girl was supposed to DID NOT HAPPEN because girls wouldn’t do that. Because girls are all accepting and kind and love everyone for who they are and only those icky nasty men care about whether you wear makeup, apparently.
I didn’t have female friends for most of my life, and when I did, the experience ended up becoming very alienating. Every girl I knew, even the ones that didn’t care for femininity, was able to act feminine enough to be acceptable. I was not able to do this and this punished me. The girls themselves didn’t necessarily punish me. Sometimes they did! But trying to socialize with other girls hurt me. Repeatedly. I’m literally still working through self-esteem issues that came from being with my high-school friend group.
And even then. Girls aren’t angels that can never do any wrong. They’re human beings. Human. Beings. And they can be bullies. They can exclude and hurt. Stop. Just stop.
I’m angry, okay? I’m starting to think that a lot of “feminists” just did all the “right things” from the beginning and thus didn’t earn almost across-the-board bullying/sequestration/disconnect from women and girls. The exception is probably LGBT+ women, but that’s a whole other conversation that I’m not qualified to add to. The only way i can imagine a person thinking that performing femininity has no effect on whether women and girls include you and your ability to form relationships with girls in general and that you can just be best friends with any feminine woman regardless of how much you follow the Rules is that they’ve done enough™ to fit in their entire lives and have never stepped over the lines.
Kids KNOW when there’s something different about you and they will tear you to pieces. That is not a uniquely male phenomenon. Bullying is not something that only boys do. This means that girls can and do work to ostracize girls who don’t conform or can’t. Even girls who aren’t assholes and are accepting and good people uphold the standards and can unconsciously help reinforce them. The system, and crueler girls, don’t let them subvert. Yet accusations of “internalized misogyny” are always leveled at girls who don’t conform to their gender, not girls who conform but are actually intentionally cruel to other girls.
What could be more clearly misogynistic than ostracizing a girl for not being feminine? But how many feminists have I seen talking about how girls who are bullies to other girls have internalized misogyny? You wanna guess?
The takeaway is that criticizing stereotypical femininity in a girl is hating women, but criticizing the lack thereof in a girl is not hating women. I guess.
I mean. I think almost every girl was at some point bullied by another girl. But not being able to fit in with the standards of femininity as a whole leads to being largely disconnected from girls as a category. Femininity becomes the ultimate bully. For me, it WAS the ultimate bully.
I hate knowing that young girls, autistic girls especially, are going to grow up knowing it’s evil to criticize how they feel forced to perform femininity. I hate knowing their experiences being bullied are going to be erased by feminists because the perpetrators were girls. I hate knowing they’re going to feel wrong for not wanting to try (and try, and try, and try) “feminine” things like makeup. I hate knowing that they’ll have to navigate expressing their experiences of disconnect without stepping on the fucking land mine of appearing to be participating in “girl hate” or appearing to call themselves “not like other girls.” I hate that these girls will be accused of hating women when they find boys easier to get along with out of pure exhaustion. I hate that feminism is actively working to make the experience of being female more and more inaccessible for autistic girls.
What words are these girls going to have for their experiences failing to win the complicated, overwhelming game that is femininity? They can’t say that they’re not like other girls, because girls are all the same and sisters on the inside :)))))) and they can’t talk about the deep wounds left by the entire culture of girls because girls wouldn’t do that :))))
And you just have internalized misogyny :))))))))