There has been no shortage of articles willing to divide women into two camps lately; the girly-girls who revel in traditionally feminine activities like baking cupcakes and painting their nails and… everyone else. It is highly unfortunate that women who enjoy ruffly dresses and coin purses shaped like hamburgers seem to warrant their own category of scrutiny in today’s culture: the woman-child.
If you’re in need of a little background information, consider this a crash course. First there was a short declaration from Julie Klausner called Don’t Fear the Dowager: A Valentine to Maturity, which accused women of flaunting their ultra-feminine interests so as to not be threatening to men. Then there was Sparkly Nail Polish, Frozen Eggs and Katy Perry: Meet the Woman-Child, a lengthy tirade by Deborah Schoeneman against women whose love for Hello Kitty and Lisa Frank stickers represents emotional childhood, and is affecting their ability to get married by age 30, buy a house, have kids, and become a Responsible Adult. More recently, How Pinterest is Killing Feminism, bemoaned the presence of low-fat cauliflower pizza recipes as demeaning to women.
It seems as if we’re all terrified that there are women out there who enjoy doing traditionally feminine things, like wearing dresses and being in the kitchen — and not because men have told them to. This embracing of feminine culture is called ‘femmeness,’ and is a world away from femininity. Feminine is what society expects women to be: well-groomed, beautiful, and possessing the ability to cook and clean without complaining too much. Femmeness represents the purposeful desire to embrace these activities and act them out as a source of empowerment. Gender is performance after all, and every good production requires a wardrobe department. Whereas the authors of these articles think they are criticizing repressive femininity, in reality, they are equating intentional femmeness with the desire to regress and act childish.
The thing is, we cannot define people by their interests. Beyond the topical criticism of lollipops and nail art, these articles are problematic because they divide people into categories and reduce them to a subset of their interests. Woman-child is not a useful term of distinction for anything other than reducing a living, breathing human being to a set of predetermined characteristics. When you create different categories of people in your own mind, especially without their consent, the only thing it demonstrates is that you are an intolerant person.
People are multifaceted and have different experiences. Similar interests do not necessarily mean that people deserve to be cattle-herded into the same pen that serves to denigrate their interests. This is why intersectional feminism exists — to acknowledge that there are a myriad of factors (race, class, sexual orientation, gender identification etc.) that affect women’s life experience, and we cannot assume that women comprise a universal sisterhood simply because they are women. Women cannot be blamed for infantilizing themselves if they are embracing the elements of their existence that other people scorn as childish.
So, femmes are people too, but so are tomboys, butches and the plenty others who aren’t interested in being femme. We all need a safe space to be ourselves, even when we are not at our best. The internet is somewhere between an affirming community of like-minded people and a heinous sewer of racist swamp creatures. It is important to be kind and treat others with human decency, but there needs to be space to not like things, and for us crotchety old hags who don’t like nail art to be able to bond over negative things. Negativity has always been a part of who I am, and most days it is a struggle for me to find one single, positive thought cowering in the corner in the back of my brain. I’ve tried, and it is impossible for me to walk down the street without blindly hating at least 90% of humanity. So, I don’t really go outside anymore. Some of us need negativity — maybe not negativity for negativity’s sake, but negativity for bonding’s sake. Some of my best friends are the girls I can be truly snarky around. Call it negative girl bonding as radical practice.
We might sometimes face nastiness on the internet and perhaps as a part of our inner dialogue, but we can overcome it and try to be better people. While, every day is a struggle with the couched emptiness that calcifies my insides, all I ask is that we put down the weapons we use to defend the castle of our specific definition of womanhood. Womanhood doesn’t mean having babies. It doesn’t mean wearing power suits to an office job. It means living your life in a way that makes sense to you. Is that too broad? That is exactly the point. I may not be swayed my miniature donuts, but not everyone likes mom jeans either. Let us put down the pitchforks and allow each other to express ourselves in the way that suits us best, whether it be making friendship bracelets or ranting angrily about things that upset us. Is that cool?
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Isabel Slone is a Toronto-based fashion blogger and writer. Follow her on Twitter at @isabelslone.
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