Reclaiming Femininity

We live in this chaotic world of ever-changing gender roles, built upon one contradiction after another. I’m still trying to understand how gender can be nothing more than a social construct and yet also so important it’s someone’s very identity and they have the right to choose whatever gender they want. So, “no one should ever be defined by their gender” versus “my perceived gender is my entire identity and it is my civil right to make the whole world acknowledge me.” Usually I enjoy a good paradox, but this one just gives me a headache.  

There are many superficial markers of gender. Pink for girls and blue for boys, for example. Not long ago that was actually reversed, so we would dress our little boys in pink, pink being perceived as the juvenile form of scarlet and scarlet was the color of warriors and soldiers. Pink was a power color, vibrant, strong, masculine. In some museums you can still see the pink christening gowns we used to dress our boys in. Blue was the color of water, it was calm, serene, feminine. Also, unpredictable and stormy. Powerful however, as in the power of the ocean. Of course, outside of the Western world each culture has its own relationship between gender and color.

Pink is my favorite color, ever since I was a tiny girl. My grandmother had pink appliances and I used to love pink tights, pink dresses, pink roses. Pink was frowned upon however, it got dirty too easily, it was seen as a negative marker of girls. With the march of feminism, women and girls rebelled against the very idea of pink. I quickly learned to lie about my favorite color. Once somebody asked me what my favorite color was and I said orange. Orange? Orange is ugly! Well yes, but at least isn’t pink! I was judged acceptable at that point.

Pink-shame. It’s a rather silly thing but I hid my love of pink deep within me like a closely guarded family secret. We do this to little girls in our modern culture, we teach them to deny the nature of themselves, as if it is somehow shameful to think like a girl, throw like a girl, dream like a girl. Rather then teaching girls that there is also strength in gentleness, value in softness, glory in the color pink, we tend to promote this idea that all things perceived as masculine are far superior. We somehow manage to do this, not by elevating men and boys, but by shaming them too. They are allegedly hogging all the masculine things that women and girls are told we want.

Do we truly want them, however? We are never really asked nor do we ever really ask ourselves. We tend to march along with cultural expectation and norms, complying in a million different ways. So many little girls who want to have tea parties with bears and dream of white picket fences are steered away from those things in favor of the more socially acceptable, get an education, become a CEO, delay marriage, more girls in STEM, girls in constant competition with men as if we have something to prove, as if we must prove ourselves worthy. Anything you can do, I can do better.

Recently I read an article about men who are allegedly breaking the gender wall and disclosing their secret feminine side. It was full of praise for their bravery. I could not get over the first one on the list, “I like flowers.” Seriously, is that really a feminine thing?? Would you not simply be a rather miserable human being if you did not like flowers? We speak out a lot about the horrors of rigid gender roles, while at the same time assigning gender to every little thing. Naturally the men in the article were being called brave, strong, masculine, for having the courage to….embrace the precise opposite. Believe it or not, in the grand scheme of things, “liking flowers” is really not a significant act of bravery.

Somewhat amusing, but I imagine if those men had said something about enjoying and embracing all things perceived as masculine while rejecting things perceived as feminine, they would have learned a thing or two about bravery and the need to grow a thick skin, at least on the internet. Loving your own gender, living in your own skin, is somewhat frowned upon these days.

I love little boys, snips and snails and puppy dog tails, and I love men too, and the things they like, the way their brains work, how they perceive the world, but I do not really desire those things for myself and never have, because within me is an entirely different world that has a worth and value all of its own.