My mother has always been a proud tomboy. She has always been a proponent of the "natural look", her friends growing up were boys, she had two brothers and a very strong father figure. She instilled a strong "protestant" work ethic in me (somehow my five brothers and sisters completely missed that), she taught me a lot about sacrifice, about denial of self.
When I started going through puberty, my mother didn't seem to have any frame of reference with which to empathize with my physical and emotional frustrations. My mother never experienced the negative monthly physical symptoms of being female. She never taught me how to be a "woman", but instead belittled and criticized my feeble independent attempts at growing up. And it is only recently that I've realized that I have repressed and illegitimized feelings, emotions and realities that I couldn't understand and that my parents did not help me to understand, issues that have become more and more evident and problematic. I've always been labeled "overly emotional", because I've never been taught how to express my feelings. My attempts were quickly shut-down, I was told that I was over-reacting, and that my emotions were inappropriate. I quickly learned to hide my feelings, my emotions, my desires, because a "good girl" does not make a fuss, but always sacrifices and focuses more on others' needs and feelings. (This is classic Jungian Psychology's Epoch II ego)
From all of this, I learned that femininity was looked down on, was inferior to my Mother's more masculine traits and ideals. Women who spent time and effort on their appearance were self-centered, vain and pathetic. And only today, in a moment of shear revelation, I was looking in the mirror, getting ready for work, applying eye shadow, and it hit me. Why is there a moral judgement to this act? Why am I afraid to own the fact that I wear makeup? I'll be honest, even now, writing these words is difficult for me, so ingrained in me is this socialized belief. I am so afraid of my own femininity because I have been taught to see those characteristics of the weak, of the pathetic. Which is absolutely ridiculous!!! The five minutes I spend applying product to my face does not make me a morally good or bad person.
Women are expected to look a certain way naturally, and when they don't measure up, they go to great lengths to disguise their "faults", lacking qualities and inability to measure up. For me this started for me with my eyebrows in the 6th grade. For many women this accelerates to plastic surgery, painful procedures and thousands of dollars. The millions of products created, the entire corporate industries built around the assumption that natural appearance is not enough to satisfy the demands of 'beauty". Why? Why do we allow ourselves to be put through this self-esteem killer?
And why has the masculine so overpowered our culture, to make every aspect of femininity be seen as pathetic and demeaning? The insults we use are feminine traits: "you're such a girl!", "grow a pair!", etc. Even women are taught to hate women, I know I was. There are definitely misogynist women as well as feminist men. I think this is also where the concept of a "mean girl" comes from. This is why women are seen as "catty" because everything they have been exposed to and socialized with screams that feminine traits (empathetic, dependent, submissive) are not to be desired, but masculine traits (independent, assertive, competitive) give the owner social, economic and personal success.
I'm speaking here in terms of feminine and masculine qualities, not biological gender. There is such variety in people, it is and should be impossible to strictly define people by their gender. Any sort of moral judgement because of masculine or feminine qualities is an embarrassment to the society which produced such a closed-minded and intolerant individual.
I also realized that some of my issues with my current job have been the result of my own personal intolerance for feminine traits and their place in society. I currently have a position where much of my time is spent sitting at a front desk greeting people. And for some reason this has frustrated me so much. I've felt stifled and angry because I've felt like I had contributions to make, but I was not being allowed to make them. While sitting at that desk today, I had a flash of a memory from a Mad Men episode. In this episode the "girl" who sits at the front desk is talking about how the management doesn't let her read books, because it gives customers the wrong impression (i.e. that she has a brain and could use it). Her job was to sit at that desk, answer the phone and look nice. And I've projected my anti-feminine socialization onto my job, which I feel is much like this 1950's secretary situation. Subconsciously I've equated my job with woman's work, and as a result viewed it as unimportant and pathetic. Which has caused psychological frustration and dissonance because I don't want to be unimportant and pathetic. The reality is that it's just a job, whomever it is done by and once again there is no moral judgement.
I know I'm not the first person to have this moment of revelation, but it was such an over powering moment to realize that my entire life has been colored by this perception. It was definitely a day in which:
Stay tuned for .....
Changes in Religious Law....
next time on Adventures in Time and Space!
