*Disclaimer*: I am aware that not everyone has the privilege of being born identifying with the gender they were assigned to, and many probably struggle far more than me with their gender expression. I am only speaking on my personal experience and I don’t want to offend or speak on behalf of anyone who identifies as transgender, non-binary or queer. I am a straight, white, cis-gendered female so that is all I know and the place I am speaking from.
Sometime during third wave feminism, ‘lipstick feminism’ and the 'Girl Power' movement emerged where women sought to reclaim stereotypically feminine things such as makeup, fashion, and their sexuality. After second wave feminism which rejected traditional femininity, women wanted to break the negative feminine stereotypes that had developed, and switch to empowering traditional femininity.
As I have talked about before, the ‘not like other girls’ trope threw a spanner in the works, setting us back to this mindset of looking down on girliness. And the internalised misogyny this implanted in us was real.
Unfortunately, I was a victim of this awful mindset growing up. I thought I was way cooler than all the other girls my age who loved One Direction, pink, and went to the teenage discos. I listened to punk rock, played guitar and liked twilight so that made me COOL, right?
I remember from the age of 12, I would watch my friends laughing and obsessing over Justin Bieber, while I would have my headphones in thinking about how stupid and girly they were. It makes me so sad looking back because why did I think I needed to put on this act? I said I hated pink, I hated anything girly, or anything that was popular with the girls in school, I thought I was way above that and that they were so shallow and basic. And really, I can’t be annoyed at myself for having this mindset, because I was a product of my environment. Alot of the media I consumed reiterated this idea that the girly girls were so boring and the girls who were interesting and cool, were the ones who rejected mainstream femininity. So that’s exactly what I did!
Of course if you genuinely aren’t a fan of traditional femininity and you don’t bash on those who are, you’re doing nothing wrong. But the issue lies with the girls like me, who pretended to hate girly things. Up until I was about 10 I was obsessed with dresses, watching my mam do her makeup, I had all of my dolls and my bedroom was pink. I was a classic girly girl! It was once I gained an awareness of the societal belief that hyperfemininity was something to be mocked and was portrayed on screen as shallow, I immediately rejected it. I didn’t want to be seen as just another annoying girly girl, I was different! Don’t get me wrong, most of my interests I was genuinely passionate about, it was just the ones I pretended to hate that were the issue.
I always loved punk and indie music, but I also was the Jonas Brothers number one fan in 2008. I did really love twilight and the popular teen TV series everyone watched, but I believed that the girly girls were the bad characters and the ones I wanted to be like were the boring ‘cool girls’ with little to no personality… but the boys liked them because they were, say it with me ladies, not like other girls!
In hindsight, I’m not annoyed or embarrassed for having this mindset growing up. Who can blame me when I was constantly being exposed to the negative associations with femininity? It’s no wonder I wanted to avoid traditional girliness. When you’re in your early teens you barely know who you are yet, so for me, I tried to act like the cool girls I saw on screen who seemed to be doing pretty well. It was only when I got older and started to question things about myself did I realise I had this awful misogynistic view of women. I wasn’t told that I could play electric guitar AND wear pink, The two weren’t actually mutually exclusive.
Now I embrace my femininity more than ever and I love doing my makeup, listening to the Jonas Brothers and bubble-gum pop from the early 2000s, wearing skirts, dresses, and embracing all the amazing things that come with being a woman! I also still love punk and indie music, and plenty of other traditionally masculine things. This is normal, because real life doesn’t have tropes. Women are constantly being told to fit into a box, but this is not how human beings function. And that is why I love pink and you should too!