leighalanna:

thepeacockangel:

throughmotion:

pixiewithapurpose:

Girls who “reclaim their femininity” are just… so mysterious to me. Who exactly tried to take it from you? Who told you that being feminine wasn’t a-okay? idk I’ve never heard any social message that wasn’t urging me to wear makeup and tight clothes, to shave and to be girly. Sounds more like you internalized the message that you shouldn’t be like those “ugly, hairy, unladylike women” to the point where you’d do anything to distance yourselves from them. Including spewing the lie that they’re somehow more accepted than you are.

the answer is men. who has tried to take my femininity, my sexuality, my very personhood? men. I don’t know about straight women, but when femmes talk about reclaiming femininity, we’re talking about taking it back from men & their gaze—defiantly asserting that our femininity & our sexuality does not exist for their benefit or in relation to them at all. I am not distancing myself from butch women by naming myself femme.

Actually, I grew up in an enviornment where girly clothes, makeup and all the rest was for “stupid girls” and I recognize that this is not common, but I grew up in an area where the proliferation of second wave was very thorough.

My mother would never let me wear what I liked it was always “too frou frou”, makeup was for girls who didn’t think or care about the enviornment or whatever stupid bullshit, and basically the only acceptable thing was to be an utterly self sacrificing earth mother who spent all her time barefoot and making organic vegan food so the men could talk about how ethical and progressive they were.  It wasn’t about being butch, it was about not taking time for yourself.  The acceptable woman isn’t selfish, doesn’t deck herself in shiny things or spend hours painting her face because that is unacceptable vanity and immodesty (at least where I’m from) and the criticism of “vanity and immodesty” got turned into something “radical” by hippie dudes who just want you barefoot in the kitchen and not messing with your hair because it interferes with your schedule of serving their domestic needs.

Like butchness and femmeness are both unacceptable to men, butchness because it refuses to be sweetly feminine, and femmeness because it’s self focused and not focused on caring for the needs of men.

And let’s not lose sight of the fact that just because femininity is forced on and expected of women does not mean that it isn’t constantly denigrated and reviled. Like, far be it from me to come out in favor of weaponized femininity, but the idea that women have unchallenged ownership of their relationship to beauty is childish bollocks.
And this is in no way antithetical to the relationship of butch or masculine presenting women to *their* beauty.

Or general worth and goodness because beauty is a bollox word in my opinion.  Butch and femme both challenge the idea that femininity is performed as a service for men (and the societal idea that femininity is only acceptable to the degree that a man wants and accepts it, no more, no less)