Gwen Sharp in Policing Mascuility in Slim Jim’s “Spice Loss” Ads (via biraciallyinsensitive)
Boom.
(via mehreenkasana)
TRUTH.
(via femme-swag)
Bam!
(via femme-swag)
“Femininity is depicted as weakness, the sapping of strength, yet masculinity is so fragile that apparently even the slightest brush with the feminine destroys it.” - Gwen Sharp
I’m not feeling articulate right now. But this needs to be addressed. Can some please offer a critique of the framing and biased nature of this news article?
(via projectqueer)
A beautiful counter-argument to “femme privilege” and “femme passing,” phrases so often used to make femmes ashamed or feel inadequate. I really like how Cyrée uses “femme erasure” rather than “femme invisibility.” It’s not that we are invisible, it’s that we are constantly misread through cissexism and prejudice in a way that erases us.
I’m feeling the femme love like crazy right now. :)
a forum post I read recently, trying to give a solid example of what ‘male objectification in gaming ’ would actually look like if it was anything equivalent to current female objectification in gaming. (via nothingbutsurrender)
I think I reblogged this before, but I’m just gonna reblog it again.
(via hobbitdragon)
So fantastically accurate.
(via psdo)
(via duckwhatduck)
There is a war against boys that is not spoken about.
- Manhood is socially constructed – it is constantly being played out, acted upon, reasserted and over time, redefined. It has the ability to be shifted and changed to encompass a much larger definition of manhood. It does not have to be rooted in insecurity, competition, and in opposition to anything that is not seen as the pinnacle of macho manliness.
- Masculinity is a homosocial enactment – a competition, a show – all built up in gendered action and language and exaggerated to hide signs of so called weakness that are defined as feminine in opposition. a twelve year old fears being called a fag, so he puts on a mask of masculinity and becomes butcher. He doesn’t ditch art class for girls but for other boys.
- Everything that is not viewed as a pure masculinity is placed lower on the hierarchical scale that has been put in place as a measurement of masculinity. This includes everything that is not male, white, heterosexual, middle/upper-class, physically and mentally abled.
- Homophobia is at the root of masculinity as a fear of being emasculated. This greatly informs racism, sexism, and is the cause for silence, insecurity, fear, shame, and isolation within and amongst men.
- Violence is used as a clear and very visible sign of masculinity
- Othered groups are always in contention with the definition of pure masculinity. Over history this has shifted.
- There has been an assumption that because men as a group hold power, individual men must feel powerful. This is a contradiction, because symmetry between the public and private or social and psychological reality rarely exists.
- The desire, or what seems like an insurmountable need to be viewed as masculine affects all areas of society. Escape and exclusion have often been used by men to keep or regain power, but in order to create change the silence must be broken to form allies with people regardless of gender, sexuality, race, class, ability etc.
Not sure if it’s just as hard, but that’s because I don’t think each struggle is truly quantifiable…it’s all very complicated and messy and unjust.
My femme identity is a purposeful reclamation of femininity from the white supremacist classist heteronormative cis-patriarchy. It is a way of saying there is no contradiction being a radical anti-white-supremacist feminist and supporting my local immigrant-woman-ran nail salon. There is no contradiction in being my own kind of pretty and getting work done.
In fact, it an act of resistance. Femme is a chosen, rather than assigned femininity.Femme is taking all the toxic representations of femininity that have scarred us our whole lifetimes, cutting out the rotting parts of shame, and finding a way to celebrate what we liked in the first place.
Femme is fat-positive, poor and working-class-positive, brown-positive, sex-positive, queer-positive femininity.
It does not buy into femme-infighting or girl-hatred; slut shaming or rape culture; diets, eating disorders, or skin bleaching; the fashion industry’s insistent constant redefinition of aesthetic acceptability; the belief that the point of being femme is to attract mates; femme does not buy into anything that harms any of us.
I wear a lot of fucking makeup. I don’t wear it everyday, but I wear it at least several times a week. When I wear makeup, it’s loud and it stands out. A typical makeup look for me is a champagne colored eyeshadow look, dramatically winged out black eyeliner and probably a dark wine colored lipstick. Im pretty awesome with makeup actually. I can do leopard print, rainbows, all sorts of wild things. While being a makeup artist isn’t my main aspiration life, I’ve considered working with makeup as an option that would help me pay for college. One may think that it’s weird that a feminist would be into something so often acossciated with harmful cultural beauty standards. Here’s something weirder- I feel brave right now. Why? I’ve always felt so ashamed of my love of makeup. I refrain from talking about it with friends or people I meet because I feel like talking about somehow diminishes my interests in other supposedly more intellectual things such as music or literature or social politics, especially feminism. This shame seems justified when people say things like:
- ”Why do you wear so much makeup?”
- “You wear too much makeup.”
- ”You look prettier with more natural makeup on”
- ”You look prettier without makeup” (which almost always really means the same thing as the one just above this)
- “It’s better if people see how beautiful you are, not how beautiful your makeup is”
People assume that my makeup is a crutch. They assume that I must be insecure and uncomfortable with my appearance because I wear it. This couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m completely cool with how I look naturally. I go without makeup a lot too, but people never notice that. I wear makeup because
- I’m a very creative person and makeup serves as another creative outlet for me
- It gives me a feeling of ownership over my idenity
- It makes me feel really happy
I do not wear makeup because
- I’m insecure and I feel ugly
- I want to fit with the prevailing patriarchial beauty standards
This leads me to another remark thats been thrown at me:
- “If you don’t shave, why do you wear makeup?”
- Or vice versa-“if you wear makeup, why don’t you shave?’
Well, shaving isn’t fun. I hate doing it. It doesn’t make me happy. It’s so simple. Yet many people don’t get it. They go right up to me and tell me how my face, my legs and my arm pits should look and they think it is an okay thing to do simply because I’m a girl. The idea that a woman should look like whatever the fuck she wants to look like is a radical notion to them. These people are often nice and well-meaning. They may even think they’re complimenting me. Honestly, I’d much rather be complimented on how pretty my makeup looks than how pretty I look. I’d rather be complimented on something that is a skill or an accomplishment rather than a physical trait I as born with and had no control over.
Yeah, you read that right. I just called being good at makeup a skill and an accomplishment. Makeup is seen as a frivolous, vapid and materialistic interest and like many hobbies, it indeed can be. However, makeup is seen as a frivolous, vapid and materialistic interest becauses it seens as a women’s interest. It’s a perception that is deeply rooted in misogyny. My shame about my interest in makeup stems from internalized misogyny. Furthermore, the idea of natural beauty thats so often pitched to me , the idea that women should wear makeup to look like don’t need makeup, is a reflection of how this patriarchial culture mainly values women for their physical beauty. I’m sick of being judged by my physical appearance and my stereotypically feminine interests. I want to accepted and valued for who I am. I want the decisions I make about my own appearance to be respected. Is that really too much to ask?
Thank you for articulating something I’ve been feeling for quite some time. I am definitely not an artist with makeup, but those few times a year I find the time to sit down with my sparkly Urban Decay palette, Almay eyeliner and lovely organic brushes, I alway have to push away these feelings of guilt, like I’m betraying my queerness. It’s feels so hard to defend. In fact, I take advantage of the holidays when I see my conservative relatives as a time to use makeup and not be questioned about it. I want to be complimented on how well I did my makeup, and how it enhances my beauty. I know its for more than fitting in because
