I know a girl who loves wearing dresses. She loves manicures, and painting cute little strawberries on her nails. She loves romcoms, especially the old ones from the ’90s, and she’s romanticized the idea of reading books in the grass though, truthfully, she’d hate the bugs and getting dirt on her knees. That same girl used to gag at skirts, and roll her eyes when other girls wore makeup to school. She’d somehow convinced herself skinny ripped jeans were the only pants she’d wear for the rest of her life (thank god she grew out of that mindset). She’d allowed herself to believe that pink, pretty, girly was a bad thing. How did that happen?
Like almost everyone else my age, I joined the internet when I was very young. I was impressionable and insecure, and let my mind be molded by the toxicity reckless people spewed. Everyone loved offering their ‘10 Things Boys Find Attractive in Girls’ lists, and for some silly reason, I listened. It was the type of thing that made me hate almost everything about myself, and took years of self-affirmation before I was able to believe I deserved my own love. I’d call myself a feminist and criticize a woman in the same breath, until I eventually stopped calling myself a feminist too. Though I never truly believed the term meant crazy man-hater, the rest of the world seemed to think it did, and how was I, my tiny tween self, meant to know the masses could be wrong?
I wish this story began and ended with social media. Maybe then it would have been easier to reject these notions. Truth is, I was surrounded by people, ideas, things that dictated femininity to me and laid out exactly why it was bad.
The most popular stories on Wattpad, for example (and yes, I read Wattpad), featured main characters who also hated pink. And skirts. And other girly things. Even in published books, the protagonist would be an ass-kicking, combat-boot-wearing, physically strong woman who had no time for any man’s shit (except for that one boy with black hair and blue eyes and white skin with a British accent who pissed the girl off more than he made her laugh—so dreamy). Girls who were ‘prettier’ because they wore little to no makeup, more ‘desirable’ because they weren’t sexually liberated, and liked because they’d done exactly what everyone had told them to do their entire lives. This is not to say any of these attributes are inherently good or bad—clearly I’m quite against dictating people on who they should or shouldn’t be. I just wonder why this is an obsession that exists in our world. Why must there be such a strict definition for femininity, and why must it either be good or bad?
I read this great article a few weeks ago that perfectly summarized my frustration with the media industry. It talks about how the mainstream loves portraying women in one of two forms: helpless and sexualized, or strong and still sexualized—“Give me a man but in the body of a woman I still want to see naked”. Even when a woman is allowed agency in her roles, she’s still trapped by the confines of homosociality in a male-dominated industry, and the women who sexualize themselves are usually cast in a negative light. As bad as this all is, this is only the white woman’s experience—women of color are hardly ever offered these roles in the first place, let alone given the choice of picking which type of woman they get to play.
I’m lucky I’m no longer as impressionable as I once was, and thankful I can look at my past and the world around me with a critical eye. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out many women went through a similar experience as my own—I can only hope they, too, were able to find their own way out of the toxic rabbit hole. Beyond that, there's no real solution to the cycle of hatred women are forced to put themselves through. God knows what I’d give to put an end to it once and for all.
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