It is a common patriarchal tendency to cast shame upon things that women do for fun. (i.e. pop music, romance novels, the color pink, Snapchat, boy bands, makeup, etc., etc. for eternity) It’s such a prevalent thing that often young girls feel the need to differentiate themselves from “other girls” in order to feel important. Almost every girl goes through an I-don’t-like-pink phase. Some girls never leave it.
There is this pervasive idea that women are only strong and intelligent when they imitate strong men. It’s the reason some women are looked down upon for “wearing too much makeup”, “being too nice”, or “being too vain”.
Women and woman aligned folks who present feminine are so easily disregarded because white, mainstream feminism is stuck in the I-don’t-like-pink phase of its infancy.
All these white women pretending they’re woke and basically sending the message: ‘wear pants and don’t wear makeup to show men who the boss is!’
We’re not fighting for equality if we’re not fighting for all girls to be taken. The silly girls, the cheerleaders, the housewives, and trans girls are just as valid.
So, what does this mean?
It means that you have to demand respect as you are. Like what you like unabashedly, and stand up for the girls around you. Don’t uphold masculine white women above other women.
Don’t fall into the white feminism trap, you’re better than that.
Feminism means all women. Period. Bottom line: femininity is okay, masculinity is okay, wherever you fall on the spectrum between the two is great! Go you! However, it should go without saying that strength is not inherently masculine and weakness is not inherently feminine. Just as there is not a gender binary, there is not a power binary.
Let women post selfies, let women go without makeup, let women wear ties, let women wear lipstick.
But, more importantly, let people be people. We need to focus less on upholding the gender binary and more on upholding other humans as what they are and as what they choose to be. Policing gender and policing power gets us nowhere.
Let us be less defined by our chromosomes and more defined by our personalities, our talents, and our joys. Let us do all of the pointless things that make us human without judgement.
Pointless things make us human. Let people be human.
“Don't pointless things have a place, too, in this far-from-perfect world? Remove everything pointless from an imperfect life, and it'd lose even its imperfection.” -Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart
Image: Feminine flowers that deserve just as much power as masculine presenting plants.
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