What defines femininity? As a woman, is it the clothes I wear? Is it the makeup I put on my face? I often hear feminist conversation discussing the objectification of women as defined by clothes we are told to wear or the makeup we are told to put on in a negative way. But what if I enjoy putting on makeup? Am I more of a woman if I have a traditional feminine look, or am I a victim of objectification if I willingly decide to abide by these gender roles? By juxtaposing the ideas of femininity between Alison Blechdel, the main character and writer of Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic and The New Louise by Sharon Pomerantz, I’ve realized that femininity—and masculinity, for that matter—are simply social concepts created in a time when both sexes were expected to be vastly different.
“Just last week, she’d looked at this particular ad and wondered, as she did so many times throughout her adolescence and adulthood, “what would it feel like to be ideal,” Pomerantz writes about the main character in her short story The New Louise in reference to the way mass-media portrays the ideal version of femininity. The story surrounds a woman who decides to abide by these portrayals in the media in an attempt to make herself feel more feminine, and makes a lot of subliminal points about how these ideals are virtually unattainable. While I agree that the fashion industry and mass-media portrays women in a way that only a small percentage can achieve, I feel that there is often a stigma against women who can fit into smaller sizes or enjoy dressing up and wearing makeup as if they’re succumbing to preconceived gender roles. Meanwhile, women who don’t do so are praised for going against the norm. The issue with this is that neither type of woman are being anything less than themselves, so why should we praise one but not the other?
Bechdel’s Fun Home is purposefully void of femininity to paint the picture that, from her early childhood, Bechdel lacked the typical traits associated with being a woman — but that it didn’t make her any less of one because she didn’t enjoy wearing a dress. She even includes a memory from her childhood in which she was forced to wear a dress, citing the one she chose as the “least feminine” in the entire store. Though the story was centered around her father, it was also a story about how she came to terms with her sexuality which was very much correlated to how she perceived herself growing up — including her lack of willingness to express traditional ideas of what defines femininity.
In both stories, the traditional expectations of what a woman should physically look like are challenged, both prompting the question “does the way I dress or present myself make me any more or less of a woman?” These days I often have to stop and ask myself the same question — whether it be about myself or someone else. In questioning this, I’ve realized that femininity is not something that can be placed as black and white. Gender roles were created during a time when there was a certain level of expectations surrounding how both men and women should act, but are fairly asinine in modern times when both sexes are, ideally, allowed equal opportunity. Without gender roles there is no gender, there is only creative output into one’s appearance, and no matter how one chooses to present themselves, it does not amplify or diminish their sex.
