Wearing “Feminine” Clothing: Week 2

For my second week of carrying out this body practice, I’ve continued to wear dresses and skirts with the addition of incorporating the color pink in my outfits. If it wasn’t for this body practice, I would not have made the discovery that I don’t own a single piece of pink clothing. When I was 5, pink used to be my favourite color. However, I started telling people that my favourite color was blue once I reached 13 — I was desperate not to be associated with “girlyness” and this act alone reflects the internalised misogyny in my younger self.

The bodily sensations and feelings I felt were not that different from the previous week. I was still uncomfortable with wearing dresses and would keep pulling the hem of my skirts down just in case. I was wearing a pink dress one day when my mom made a casual comment about my outfit, saying “wow, you finally look like a girl” to me. Although my intention for choosing this body practice was to deconstruct my internalised misogyny and embrace the femininity in me, my mom’s comments particularly bothered me. I felt somewhat invalidated since she was insinuating that in order to be a woman, I have to fit in this heteronormative way of dressing. I felt this desperate urge to let my mom know that I was wearing pink because I wanted to, not to “look like a girl” or anything else.

This brings me back to the concept of “markedness” we learned in class. Women are labelled by items of clothing including skirts and dresses, or even the color pink. These stereotypes create the heteronormative narrative that women and men have to present themselves in a certain way in order to be socially acceptable. Take the color pink for example, it has been labelled as a “feminine” or “girly” color and is also associated with softness. Due to this softness that is attached to the color, it is only acceptable for women to wear pink but not men — which is reflective of the double standards in society.