I bought myself nail polish for the first time ever the other day. It was blue and sparkly, and took me a long while to pick out. I got up bright and early the next morning and fished out my make up bag, which was hiding behind my laptop case. Taking up the nail polish, I applied it, without much skill, but with a lot of joy. Then I fished out various make up implements and used them to stick some make up on my face, including blue, green, and gold eyeshadow that someone had just given me for my birthday, which was odd as I’m categorically sure she’s never seen me in make up, but also very nice. I sat and stared at my nails and grinned.
I’m interested in the performance of femininity for political reasons. I am interested in femininity because of the many ways in which a singular narrative of womanhood fails us, because feminist discourse on choice is deeply lacking, because to give up the feminine is to deride something because it has been associated with women, and I’m not up for misogynist purging in the name of social justice. But I’m also interested in this performance for reasons that aren’t so political. Rather, they are political, but not in ways conventional feminism would have it, and today I’m not up for talking about my body and my gender performance along lines that don’t acknowledge the specificity of non-white and disabled womanhood.
Putting this much and this kind of effort into performing the feminine is significant for disability reasons. Some of those are personal, and putting on that nail polish came with a sense of wild happiness and triumph. Generally, disabled women are regularly disallowed from expressions of the feminine and full membership in their own gender. Putting something into that, expressing sexuality and personality and specificity, that’s powerful. It’s also significant to put thought into something for oneself, care about oneself, in a deliberate manner, where women are encouraged to perform particular modes of femininity without thought, and do little for themselves beyond that in our roles of holding up the world behind the scenes.
But, again, it goes beyond all that. Sometimes I want to make space for my body outside of the political, to have it be not subject to patriarchy, but also for it to not be deployed as a weapon of significances, misattributed and otherwise, in every feminist fight.
Consciously getting dressed is helping me to connect to the past and those around me. I’m fortunate enough to have a number of older friends and family members who give me clothing that hasn’t fit in thirty years; a beautiful pink suit, a black jacket from England, a red dress of a kind that is newly back in fashion, a cardigan that must have been worn by three or four generations of my family. Wearing these clothes is an exercise in connection as much as femininity. This is my history, these are my friends, these are the people who have watched over me for all my life.
I’ve often been the kind of person to pull on a t-shirt and a denim skirt for convenience, but I’m enjoying sometimes being deliberate in how I go about dressing. And I’m being deliberate in how I dress in ways that expand my gender expression, something I’ve been badly missing since I finished drama school. I’m now a kind of woman who might wear a full skirt with her great-grandmother’s crocheted shawl one day, and don chunky boots and a sports bra and tuck up her hair in a hat the next. A kind of woman who sometimes grows out her leg hair and dons a petticoat just for the fun of incongruency. A kind of politics that’s just for myself, that doesn’t make me feel desperately sad at the diametric pulls on my body, something that fills me from the inside with rightness.
Just now, loving myself means doing something I’ve wanted to do since I was a little girl, and looking at that chipped polish flying about on my fingers on the keyboard is sealing and healing up something inside of me. I want to hold on to all the ways of expressing my gender, personality, sexuality, and specificity that are available. These have been produced in wonderful and coercive ways both, and I refuse to give any of them up, because it is worth knowing that expressions of the self are worth cleaning off and saving, that healing comes from acknowledging everything of who we are, that history and love should always be taken up.
This is great! I am not disabled, but I do identify with the rest of what you are saying.
I don’t shave my legs, and I get a lot of people who, even if they aren’t hostile, will be like, “Is that supposed to be some sort of statement?”
Sometimes I feel it is, but mostly it is just my body and I wanna do what I want with it.
I hear you loud and clear. I wear earrings in much the same way you are dressing, and are taking to make-up. They can be simple, elegant and timeless or they can be completely out there. They are a reflection of the me of that day – or that moment.
Thanks for this. I also have a disability and I get very tired of people (sometimes including myself) using it to define me.
In the 7th grade I would be in PE class in my PE shorts with unshaved legs. I was the only girl to do it, and I’m certain everyone thought it was some sort of statement.
I’m since started shaving my legs. (I was such a badass back then; sometimes I wonder if I’d still be able to do it.) But the performance of femininity has sort of become something that has a lot of meaning for me. Kohl makes me feel like I’m participating in a cultural practice, the one of movie stars and historically famous Muslim feminists, even if neither culture is mine, it makes me feel like I belong somewhere. And I love red lipstick because it is pretty–who needs a reason?–and because it reminds me of my mother when she was so naive and hopeful and magnificent (though she is still fully the last thing, and still a little of the former two).
It always makes me cringe a little when feminists make the claim that performance of femininity is oppressive and the world would be a much better place if one day all women woke up and decided to just not wear makeup. That’s great if you’re a white woman, I guess, and you’re conventionally pretty and can still get by without it because the beauty standards were made for you. That’s great if you’re a white woman and your entire history is Normal and you actually have a place to be, where you belong.
Hi Chally (saying it in my head with a nice german ‘ch’ at the beginning – yes?),
Before I get onto the main comment part, I just wanted to say that I’ve been following your blog for a while now and I’m really enjoying it! It and feministe have become my new favourite places to read things. I’m still learning to tie my boots in this whole feminism thing, so forgive me is I am not as cluey as some of your regular commenters.
Anyway. This post was awesome to find because as I write I am also looking at my lovely purple toenails and grinning. I also bought some nail polish the other day for the first time. I also have a great deal of diversity in the way I dress – sometimes I feel like wearing nice clothes, pretty skirts and shirts I mainly get from op shops, dresses I’ve sewn myself, sometimes even a black lacy top and a tight mini skirt. Sometimes I wear shorts and the baggiest shirt in my closet. Sometimes I wear mascara, most of the time I forget. I shave my legs probably once every six months or something, for the sole reason of being bored in the shower but not wanting to get out. I hate the idea that I have to dress for someone other than myself – I’m not wearing a short skirt to get attention, wolf whistles or stares, I’m wearing it because I want to wear it that day. Full stop.
I love what you have to say about giving up the feminine: simultaneously seen as a marker of “feminism,” but also deriding the feminine as something undesirable. That’s always been problematic for me, because a few years ago I was purposefully not putting any effort into my appearance because I didn’t want to be a “shallow, appearance-focussed girl” that the media made me out to be. (Had a look at the SMH’s christmas gift guide reccommendations for teenage boys and girls yet? Worth a look.) Even today it scares me a bit to look anything that might be seen as “sexy” because I’m not interested in appearing so at all, and not interested in anything that it may be seen to signify.
Sorry this is so long. Maybe I should have posted a post on my own (woefully lacking, newbie) blog. Hope you don’t mind.
Hi Jo! (German pronunciation is close enough! :)) Please don’t be sorry about lengthy commenting, it’s a real pleasure to have someone put in the time to engage with what I say. I am glad you linked to your blog, so I can return the favour and begin to read yours in turn!
I shave my legs when bored, too! I’ll often put on a formal dress when I’m sitting at home – dressing up is indeed not simply or always a performance for other people. I’m glad to find someone else who likes that diversity.
We’re shamed for being feminine, we’re shamed for not being feminine. I guess the thing is that women and girls are now allowed to dress in masculine manners – at least in this context – but the reverse isn’t true, which is quite telling. Personally, I have huge problems with the idea that I might be asked to put my sexuality on display, or to perform it publicly in any way. I just see it as private. But it is hard to escape the whole “young women are there for the dudely sexyfuntimes,” yes?
Everyone else: I don’t have anything specific to say, but thank you for sharing and keep being you.
I’m so glad I’m not the only one who will put on formal dresses for the sake of it at home! Whee. The whole putting-sexuality-on-display thing is particularly annoying for me I guess because I was identifying as a lesbian for a while and used to get the “you don’t look like a lesbian” comment all the time. More recently I’ve been thinking about asexuality as something I might be and that doesn’t really help either… Like you said, sexuality is private (except when it’s political?) and my sexuality is for me only.
Oh, and I meant to say also that I adore your guinea pig posts! I used to have many many guinea pigs for many years as a kid. But I have to admit I didn’t treat them as well as you seem to treat yours. :)
Also, please excuse my blog, it’s still in the beginning stages. But I’m so happy to have someone else potentially reading it!
oh, I remember a post I had half-written a long time ago touching on a couple of the same things.
As it is, disabled people are seen as something less than human – that extends to gender. Disabled men cannot be “real” men – cannot be masculine. Disabled women are repulsive, antithetical to femininity. As you look at specific disabilities, then specific lives, certain nuances show up.
To me, with an “invisible” disability I feel sometimes as if the more feminine I look, the less likely I am to be believed – that is, I look closer to “normal” therefore I must be “normal.” At the same time, the less feminine I look, the more people assume things like lazy/slob/liar/etc. But since I am dealing with chronic pain, and therefore limited spoons, usually I end up looking more simple/less feminine by default. So being able to “do” femininity when I can is very important to me. I love keeping my nails painted. Pretty skirts and dresses make me so happy. What few times I can play with makeup – etc.
when I do these things, it is anything but unexamined. (and I’ll be damned if I accept it being somehow “capitulating to patriarchy.”) it is something many people are honestly not allowed to access, and if they attempt to, it can expose them to a range of abuses for transgressing boundaries. I am fortunate that the lines are not drawn so brightly in my specific case. But it is not a simple thing. And these kinds of cases – how gender interacts so differently with different identities – should prompt us to examine our concept of a simple, universal binary.
Jo: Oh dear. I personally am enjoying watching the looks on people’s faces as their perceptions of my sexuality shift as my changing presentation gives them conflicting information. (I get read quite firmly as straight a lot of the time, and at other times quite firmly as a lesbian, without a lot of room for any other ways of experiencing sexuality, and as though my insides are always and completely on display and available to be clearly read.) And, yeah, there’s extraordinarily little cultural space in these parts for asexuality, isn’t there? I look forward to see how ways of publicly coding asexuality might develop. (As for the piglets, thank you, I do try to take care of them, and I’m always worried that I’m not doing a good enough job. Cardamom laps up the attention, so I’ll have to have another photoshoot with them soon.)
amandaw: A pleasure to hear from you, as ever. I miss your blog very much. I also seem to remember reading something about an exception that proves the rule; how kinds of mental illness are figured as a feminine thing, something for white women with overpowering sexuality and girlish vulnerability.
Yes! Mean girls and others run games varying from denial of female identity, to disparaging good clothing hoping I’d sell or donate it. Feminism includes the right to define ourselves as feminine, to confront the old canard of “You’re (ugly, a freak, abnormal, etc) so you must be/should become lesbian”, a frank admission by society that we don’t even own our pussies and that they can assign ownership at will.
I work a dirty job by day, in t’s and sweats. By night, I am at home in satin, sequins, and yes, hot toenail polish, wrinkles, grey roots, port-wine birthmark and all that represents, legs hairy or shaved as I will.
Don’t let them make you give up the good stuff. Feminism means you don’t have to put up with anyone’s s**t, so have fun.
And very pretty nail polish it was too. :)
Getting dressed -consciously- is… something I have not been thinking about much lately, but it’s something I do at times. I appreciated the now-defunct academichic, and am still reading In Professorial Fashion for their discussions about conscious performativity of various roles (gender, professionalism, sexuality, and race all come up if you find the right corners of the fashion blogosphere).
I like that your clothes have stories to them. It’s been a long time since I was the right size for anyone to give me hand-me-downs, but I loved them when they did happen.
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I know this is an old post but I just have to say how much I LOVE it. I stumbled here because I’ve always been traditionally “feminine”, wearing makeup and dresses and the like, but have been worrying that I’m somehow reinforcing oppressive notions that women somehow have to do these things to be beautiful. But I love the way your describe it as reclaiming the feminine as powerful.
The thing is, I’ve only ever worn makeup, dresses for myself. Never to impress anyone else, certainly not the opposite sex – I wear those things because they’re fun, they make me feel good. What could be oppressive about that, really?I would never judge someone for NOT wearing makeup or dresses – and I would hope they would treat me with the same courtesy.