i guess if i had to describe my gender when i was younger (prepubescent) it would be like,,, i didnāt feel like a girl, but more like some thing that would eventually grow up into a girl, if that makes sense. like i didnāt feel much like a āgirlā bc i didnāt live up to what i thought a girl was supposed to be, but i wanted to be a girl and i assumed that as i got older and reached puberty, i would just magically develop a stronger inclination towards femininity and become good at performing it. but obviously that didnāt happen..
idk there are a lot of things that i guess alienated me from āfeeling like a girlā growing up. one of the big things was being fat i think,, like i saw this one instagram post that was like fat girls are masculinized for not being dainty and petite like girls are supposed to be, while fat boys are feminized for having softer, rounder bodies. AND WOW. that was not a piece of insight i was expecting to find but it really put things into perspective for me. i think i need to start reading more thinkpieces about growing up fatā¦.. it would probably be really healingā¦ā¦.
but anyway i think itās also bc like,, i started growing leg and arm hair really young, like i feel like i have proportionally the same amount of leg and arm hair now that i did when i was 8, so i was really insecure back then bc none of my peers started growing body hair yet and it made me feel less feminine. iāve also basically been a feminist since i was old enough to be aware of myself, so even at 8 years old i had this inner conflict of wanting to learn how to shave out of insecurity and fear of being made fun of but also understanding that there is something fundamentally flawed with the concept of women having to shave at all,,, wow i was a really smart and woke kid even if i didnāt have the language or brain power to fully understand or articulate what i thought and that other people had been thinking that for forever tooā¦.
idk itās kind of strange. even now i donāt particularly feel like a boy, but again just some thing that wants to be a boy. and iām curious what changed bc somewhere along the way i went from wanting to be a girl to wanting to be a boy š¤š¤ like iām honestly saying definitively during my childhood i wanted to be a girl. i wanted to be cutesy and dainty and soft and girly and the protagonist of a shojo romance, and lowkey i still wanna be cutesy, but as a boy instead? how did i wanna go from being a cute girl to a cute boyā¦.. the world will never knowā¦ā¦
bye iām just gonna throw in this thing i wrote for instagram not sure if iām actually gonna post it but:
when i was a kid (like up until i started puberty) i felt less like a girl and more like some thing that would eventually grow up into a girl if that makes sense... like i did enjoy cutesy, girly things and such, but i assumed that after i started puberty, i would magically develop a stronger interest in/inclination towards femininity and naturally become good at performing it. but obviously that didn't happen cuz it doesnāt work that way....š§āāļøit also doesnāt help that i've always been wokemaxxing 1000% ever since i was able to consciously perceive the world and its injustices (i've always been a #lonewolf #freethinker), so even as an 8 year old who was deeply insecure about having arm and leg hair i was still like. why do i have to shave tho... that just logically doesn't make sense... and how is that fair....
now as an almost adult i have a lot of mixed feelings about (the performance of) femininity and gender and such... sometimes part of me wishes i wasn't so woke and i was ānaturally inclinedā towards the upkeep of femininity bc life seems so much simpler that way⦠especially cuz all my friends are girls, (iām allergic to men) i lowk get fomo sometimes listening to friends talk about stuff like buying dresses for hoco or doing each others makeup or whatever else is considered #girlhood... BUT THE GRASS IS ALWAYS GREENER ON THE OTHER SIDE and ik performing femininity requires more time and effort and i personally donāt feel like itās worth the trade off ykā¦. this is #authenticallyme and i think even if i tried to ācatch up" and perform femininity now, i would ultimately still feel like some thing pretending to be a āgirlā (as defined by society) and that's just not who i am⦠this isnāt meant to be an arrogant post cuz i don't really judge other ppl for stuff like this cuz everyone is different + we live in a society that violently enforces conformity, gender socialization is so heavily ingrained into everything, and your quality of life significantly decreases if you choose to defy such norms but. it just feels really alienating at times to actively reject them and be so separate/outside of it all yk.ā¦.. how should you define "normal" when normal is so arbitrary and oppressive? and what does the #illusionofchoice of conforming to gender norms say about your convictions and the overall nature vs nurture of gender? š¤ #foodforthought #choicefeminism #YouThinkYouJustFellOutOfACoconutTree? #YouExistInTheContextOfAllinWhichYouLiveAndWhatCameBeforeYou