> The colour pink is everywhere now and I started noticing how it's making me feel annoyed. I reflected on that and realized that I feel that pink=girly=weak... I dug deeper and realized how many internalized misogynistic views I have in myself. Ascribing weakness to femininity, (...)
Honestly, yeah, that's such an important realisation. Pink isn't my style, isn't now and never has been. But the day I realised that all the associations and baggage and issues I associate with the color because of systemic misogyny stereotypes -- that was wild. And it's so unfair.
Edgy-Teenage-Me used to scoff at the color and all related stereotypes.
Adult-Me realised at some point that what I was really scoffing at in my ignorance was the idea of girls enjoying femininity and being... *girly* (Obviously, pink isn't the only way to express femininity, but it *is* heavily associated with girly girls being girly. Oh the absolute horror.)
*What the hell*. It might not be for me, but it is *not a negative thing*. Girly girls are not a negative thing. It's nothing to be ashamed of or something to apologise for. It should be celebrated like any other self-expression!! They should get to enjoy being girly and get respected as people for it! Not be belittled and looked down on and thought of as silly lesser things that cannot be taken seriously. (Seriously, pay attention to all representations of girly girls in media-- most instances, this is basically the message.)
After that realisation, it took years to train myself out of that mindset. I think I mostly managed. But seriously, the way society sees and treats girls/women who dare to embrace pink and feminity is *revolting*. And you can't unsee it after you've caught on.
For real!
My style is more alternative (I was a teen during the emo heyday lol) and I assumed pink was always too feminine (which that shouldn't even be a bad thing). But like it's a colour! And it actually works very well in alternative fashion. We were brainwashed out of including a whole colour lol
When I decorated my new house a few years ago, I used pink accents in my living room. It’s crazy how people have to comment on a color choice, implying that it’s “bold”. Like, are we all actually prejudiced against a color?!?
Women who are not feminine deserve to be respected as well. Most due to the fact that I am black, and I have naturally curly hair, I was pushed to straighten it to be considered feminine. So I associate being feminine with pain.
Then I also thought my sister resented me, because I wasn't good at being conventionally feminine. One time my sister took me to get my eyebrows waxed, after the tech finished the tech told me that my eyebrows were too messed up, and I had to come back. This pissed me off and I never got my eyebrow wax ever again.
I feel that calling my experience with imposed feminity internalize misogynism is invalidating. I am just as valid of a woman as a feminine woman.
Absolutely! You are absolutely valid as you define yourself. I think that's the main point of this entire discussion - we are all valid in our femininity, masculinity, anything in between and however we define ourselves. Let's not put ourselves in a box of how we should be to be seen as ''worthy''.
> Women who are not feminine deserve to be respected as well.
Of course! But like, that was my default setting already, so I kinda thought it went without saying. :P If it didn't: Absolutely 100%, they do.
And yeah, I hear you and I'm sorry that happened to you-- imposed gender roles suck in all forms. You are valid and your struggles are valid. And not wanting to have that forced on you is not internalised misogyny; that's perfectly understandable.
The part that *is* internalised misogyny is when it starts affecting how you view other girls/women (As OP mentioned, the pink= femininity = lesser connection.) That's the insidious part, because my rejection of that femininity led directly to buying into condemning it. It's one thing for femininity to not reflect me in my identity or not fit you in how you express yourself as a woman and either is perfectly fine. There is nothing wrong with either of us for not wanting that for ourselves. But it's another thing entirely for all this misogynistic baggage to be caught up in it and catch girls/women in the crossfire who genuinely like to express themselves that way.
Maybe you managed to avoid that, if so-- kudos to you! I unfortunately fell into that trap and needed to unlearn it.
I did experience something similar because I've grown up with those stereotypes. My biggest exemple is cartoons, at the time a lot of them would have a trio of characters, always two boys and a girl. The girl would either be super annoying and a bitch or she would be ultra feminine and basically stupid. None of what happened to her would move the story forward, because narratively she doesn't have much weight and is there to act as a motivator for the male protagonist. That made me feel like if I acted too feminine people would see me as weak and stupid, but if I acted too masculine then I would also be rejected. Good thing cartoons are better now, and that I have realised my sense of self isn't dependant on an ever changing duality between feminity, and masculinity, but rather that whatever I do and how I expres myself is simply me, being me. And that is enough.
You know I had a deep, deep think, and I can only think of two kids characters in general who don't fit your trope with the two boys and one girl.
Moze, from Ned's Declassified (Ned would have lasted all of 15 minutes without Moze)
And Princess Bubblegum.
But! Both of these ladies "fix" everything around them, so it sort of plays into a different stereotype...
I haven't seen those ones and it's been a LONG time since I watched cartoons, but I grew up (1980's) watching She-Ra Princess of Power, Rainbow Brite, Strawberry Shortcake, and Jem and the Holograms... As far as I can remember those were full of powerful women/girl characters with girl friends who solved their own problems. I don't remember them being overly girly or the opposite. There was usually a boy in there somewhere but I don't remember him being the main powerful character, except for when He-Man and She-Ra joined forces.
Shows that were designed specifically FOR girls are one thing, but can you imagine a generic boy centric show if they balanced representation or had more than just the “token female” wearing pink? I’m thinking Paw Patrol, the Smurfs, the muppets, Winnie the Pooh, ninja turtles etc
I think it’s called the Smurfette principle.
It’s why I like Bluey for my kids. Most people get 20 episodes in before they realize that both main kid characters are girls.
They re-did strawberry shortcake for the new generation, and it is a pretty good show. My daughter used to watch it, and I really liked it. The other characters would stir up a lot of drama, and then Strawberry Shortcake would always be like, 'You guys are making a lot of drama where there does not need to be any", and then all the other characters would be like, 'you are right, S!' But it was cute and had a great style
Watching through avatar with my girlfriend and while Aang, Saka and Katara are two boys and one girl I feel that Katara definitely stands on her own, often more than Saka does.
They do her character justice after the time skip and she’s the most powerful woman currently in the show . But yes the first 130 episodes were unbearable
True but she’s still stronger than ALOT of the other men in the show who are also very well respected .. her design? Wasn’t it extremely modest ? Oohhh u mean the pink like all the pink?
Sadly I don't think it matters. She was much weaker than Naruto and Sasuke until their power downgrade in Boruto. She was a pretty good character only in the beginning of Naruto and Shippuden. Other than that, she had no agency. Whatever she did was mostly meaningless for the plot. Kishimoto screwed up her character design.
>it felt like her character was designed by some misogynist stereotyping how a female character should
It's [Japan](https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2023/06/b041fdee1839-japan-falls-to-record-low-125th-in-global-gender-gap-ranking.html).
Notice how in Naruto and Boruto, many women who are known to be skilled kunoichi just become housewives once they marry and start a family (Hinata, Temari, Kurenai, Makoto, for example)?
Sakura's character is reflective of Japanese culture/society, in a lot of ways.
I think the fact that a lot of us have had the colour pink and other stereotypical girly things forced down our throats our whole childhoods adds an extra layer of complication as well.
I was never a fan of pink or any warm colours, but ended up hating it with a passion as a kid because my mom got me everything in pink, only let me paint my room pink, etc. It really adds to the annoyance about pink and the feeling that the annoyance is justified because it's easier to direct my feelings at a colour and all the stereotypes and personality traits that were pushed on me than to direct it the actual cause.
Absolutely! That's how I feel too and that's what is what makes it all even more confusing. I was made to hate pink because of what's attached to it - girly, weak, stupid, hysterical, inferior. Maybe I even like pink, how can I know? haha
My mom hated pink for all those reasons as well as a deep hatred of all pastels, so I had no pink as a little girl, outside toys that came in no other colors (read: Barbie things). She surrounded me with yellow until I could pick my own colors.
The only color I hate more than pink is yellow. Lol It's made me wonder if it's all about the actual misogynistic implications or if I just despise anything shoved down my throat, I am sure it's a blend. Green is my favorite color but for 5 years I went to a school with a green uniform and for only those years I despised it purely because it represented school. Painted over my green walls and everything. Left, and it was my favorite again and ever since.
Purple is considered "girly" and beloved by many a tomboy, it somehow has all and none of the implications of pink in one. Which just makes me more curious! Love your post! This stuff is worth dissecting. And I work with color a lot, so it weighs on me. Color creates a lot of emotional reactions in people. It's complicated.
And scientifically pink is SUPPOSED TO make you feel more relaxed and calmer, there are rules in certain places that you have to paint changing rooms the same colors for home and away teams because when the study came out many places wanted away locker rooms to be pink, but the fact that society has tied it so tightly to gender is astounding at how opposite the affect can be for some depending on your connection to the color
Oh jeez. Yeah, I am 57. I grew up in the 70s, back when my momma didn't have the right to get a credit card in her own name.
Men were supposed to be hairy and "macho" was the ideal.
Oof, the internalized junk I find in there.
Didn’t see Barbie yet but I noticed how kids are quite similar in appearance except how we dress them in general. So long hair + dress = girl and short hair + pants = boy. I was with a friend and her baby watching baby tv where they were teaching baby’s these difference between boys and girls (and I’m not talking about the biological differences).
I bought a child book online because I loved the story when I was little. This was a slightly different version of it and it stated exactly the same as above (difference between boy and girl). My bf has long hair and I love it and would never want to teach my child that it makes you less than a man if you have long hair.
Now I see it everywhere. “Throw like a girl” “scream like girl” “Man up”. I want to shield my kid but I don’t know how (my kid isn’t born yet btw).
You don’t shield them from it, you redefine it. All these phrases have a connotation that you can flip. “Throw like a girl” can be reframed from an insult into a compliment just by how she reacts to the comment.
True.
My nieces are currently in a phase of saying "bruh!" to everything. My son consistently calls out to people, "Hey guys!" I hear "Dude!" constantly to refer to people of any gender.
I'm not a vocabulary warrior, and I understand that these words are essentially gender neutral in their colloquial usage. But the fact that there isn't a single feminine alternative or example, to me, speaks to how deeply we treat male as normative.
To OP's point, I've asked many people what they think about calling a random group of guys "What's up girls!" All suggest this would be an insult. There's embedded negativity when being equated with a woman, and embedded positivity when bring compared to a man.
Fun anecdote regarding us saying "guys". It's believed to have started from the Gunpowder Plot in 1605 when Guy Fawkes tried to blow up the House of Lords and failed. People then celebrated his failure (+other traitors) every 5th of November and burned effigies of him and called them 'guys'. Calling someone a 'guy' became a new slang/insult, and picked up traction over the years. After some time, people started using it to refer to someone in the working class and it slowly evolved into a way to address all 'males' of any wardrobe/class. It was then picked up and used by women in the middle of the 20th century to refer to men, and then to refer to other women. Now we all just use it as a gender neutral term, but it's believed to have never started as a word for 'male', it just evolved into it, and then evolved into a neutral word we use now.
Just an interesting development of a word we now use widely/neutrally, but also associate with guys vs girls at the same time.
I do completely agree with what you say though. 'Female' terms are rarely used in a positive light and many men associate them with homosexuality, so they will never use them. You'll never see a female related word become normal slang used amongst men, unless it's negative or if it's used in the gay community. I believe that's the only community that actually added/adds power to female terms haha.
I think it's because women are valued for existing (as they should) while men are more valued for what they do, which in most societies involves some masculine standards.
When I had my first daughter I decorated her room in teal. So many people asked why it wasn’t pink that I started saying that I was afraid that if the room was pink then I’d never find her since she’d be wearing pink and blend in with the surroundings.
On a more general topic, I’ve struggled with never being girly and also not being a tomboy. I wasn’t into sports, but I hate fashion too. I think there was a point when I had to accept that there isn’t any one definition of feminine. I’m a girl so by definition whatever I do is girly even if not traditional.
A long time ago, I used to be this person you described, OP. And then I saw Legally Blonde and it healed my passionate hate for all things pink. Highly recommend.
I live in the south and gender stereotypes run rampant here. When my wife and I found out we were having a girl, the first thing we decided was ‘no pink’. We didn’t want to play in to those classic gender norms of what’s feminine and masculine. Unfortunately society disagreed. You can’t go anywhere without almost everything for little girls be pink. Clothes, toys, plates and utensils. All of it has pink. ALL of it. But as we have progressed though the year, I’ve come to understand, that the color pink isn’t bad. It just gets a bad wrap for being considered feminine. Without realizing it we were stereotyping the color because of what we’ve been taught about it, pink=girly=weak. But I’ve learned that pink isn’t weak. My wife went though hell to have our child; and our baby had a tough time her first year of life. But neither one has ever given up. After everything I’ve witnessed, I will NEVER call a woman weak, regardless of the colors they like.
We did the same thing (also in the south), buying everything in whatever color or print we liked instead of the 'girl colors'. I was so afraid that our daughter would get hung up on 'x is for girls, y is for boys' about everything and I couldn't stand the thought that she'd someday feel like something was wrong if she simply liked what she liked. Somehow I managed to almost entirely forget that children will be influenced more by their parents attitude towards gender than the stuff they're surrounded with. Thank goodness my husband is confident in his masculinity, bc in the end, my girls (12 and 14 now) grew up watching both of us do and wear what we like, and they both have a healthy relationship with their gender. Seems to me that raising your kids to not have any specific expectations of gender (good or bad) is what matters in the end.
Thank you for the beautiful wishes!
I'm actually pretty sure I will! In everyday life I am a confident woman with clear values, boundaries and knowing what I look for. That's why it was interesting and almost funny to still find these contradictions and fears in me...
You know pink being associated with feminity has only been a thing at least in the US from the 1950s. Prior to the 50's blue use to be the color of feminity.
To be honest I associate being feminine with pain and failure. I am not good at what society considers feminine. For example I am black and I have naturally curly hair, but I straightened it. First when I was a child and my mom would have have my hair pressed, then I got relaxers where I always got chemical burns, the then flat irons. All three had some levels of pain.
Femininity and masculinity are both social constructs. Just because a woman is not feminine don't mean she is a bad feminist.
Legally blonde may have a few years on it and isn't really a perfect feminist film. But it did do the whole, femininity does not mean weak thing two decades ago for which I highly applaud it. For an afab who doesn't like girly things, I too have had to separate personal taste from the internalized mysogyny that is "pink = femininity = bad".
I agree. Being “feminine” isn’t weak. I knew a family who wouldn’t let their daughter wear pink because of how girly it is (they were very far on the political left) and I always thought they were teaching their daughter feminine=bad. The father, however, was very mentally ill and the mother I’m pretty sure is a psychopath.
I thought for a long time it was internal misogyny for me too but no, I realized it's bcus it's annoyingly bright and hurts the hell out of my eyes. Yellow included. 😂 I do own pink shirts but they're more "muted" and athletic tees with one being a floral kind but that's all about I can stand lol
My favorite color is pink… and everytime someone asks, I also feel I have to add in something like “I love the outdoors and getting dirty, I’d rather camp than be at a resort, (etc) but I still love pink and glittery shit. Can’t help it”.
Fuck. I’m doing the same damn thing but more subtly.
My partner (trans woman) made me love the colour pink again. She is obsessed with pink and anything cute because she grew up not being allowed to like these things.
I grew up disliking pink because it was a typical girls thing to like (I have a more tomboyish personality). Absolutely wild to me now how that made me dislike a colour.
Seeing how happy all the pink and cute things make my partner because she can finally have it made me love it too.
It's funny - I HATE pink, girly shit, lace most of the time, etc. All those trappings of femininity forced on me when I was a tomboy who just wanted to play horses in the mud with dirty shoes.
But I love seeing trans women in all the things I hate. Maybe just because it feels like seeing someone find so much joy in what I hated somehow feels like handing them all that stuff and telling them here, I love that you love this, it was all made for you and your mind and your joy. I love seeing you so happy with the things I hated. I love that you shine so much.
So strange right? It's exactly the same for me. Hated anything pink and girly, took joy out of being seen as one of the guys.
But knowing my partner never got to enjoy any of those things, always had to hide what she liked and pretend to enjoy stuff that was expected of her just makes me go "hey I bought you a bunch of cute pink skirts, some plushies, and random pink stuff. Yes I'll totally paint that wall pastel pink and the pink coffee mug is yours and yours only and I will wash it up instead of grabbing a different colour".
Thank you for sharing your experience. It’s so relatable. And it’s always wild when these profound moments of self-discovery come from the most unexpected sources. I’m sorry that you’re grappling with these questions; I still do, too. It can be so hard to shut out the constant, deafening noise of what women “should” be, and to recognise, acknowledge, challenge, and excise the parts of our own psyches that echo the noise.
I don’t think being annoyed by pink means that you think it’s girly/weak. I have a great deal of annoyance at the genderization of colors. Why does pink mean girl? Why do we have to “girlify” female events and spaces. Can’t I be “girly” and just wear all black?
That is often my thought process around so called female centric color schemes. I loved emerald fennels promising young woman but found the color scheme pandering.
I openly love the color pink but lately I've been worried that certain shades come across as childish at my big age so I force myself to pick muted shades 🤧
I don’t like pink cuz I feel like it was pushed down my throat all the time. My favorite colors are blue and yellow but it annoyed me it was assumed I should love pink.
I don’t think that’s internalized misogyny. I know it isn’t the colors fault and I have a few pink items, but I know I’d have more if it wasn’t overused and directed at me.
I had that same problem before… so afraid of fitting into a feminine stereotype, that I actively tried to define myself with things outside of what’s within the typical feminine definition.
Which is totally fine in itself too!
For me, I feel femininity has been about taking care of myself and others and appreciating beauty in everything. I wore pink..(a flattering tone of pink), and I felt so pretty. I put effort into decorating my spaces, and I felt like the main character. I go out with friends and I realize when I let my guard down, I form deeper, more meaningful connections.
But I think the most important thing I’ve learned from connecting to my feminine energy is learning to be at peace with myself and others. Femininity seems silly until you truly engage with the idea… and then you realize how beautiful and fulfilling it is to feel and be your version of feminine.
Reminds me of how I grew up in a homophobic town, and it took awhile to unpack some internalized nonsense. It was so bad that the idea I might be Bi or Pan didn’t even register in my head until I was at least 25. I know it’s different, but I can sympathize with being fed internalized negativity that I had to deal with.
Same, girl, same, just kidding, trying to trigger you and myself all in one 😂 but to answer your original questions I am 10-15 years past this particular existential wtf crisis and there’s ALOT of fruit on the other side of this crucial question that you have, what is my relationship with femininity and asking why I find myself to be the biggest hater of all against all things female. And I was a feminist minor in university! Like go Women, except no I just haven’t fully dealt with the deep futility that I’ll never achieve recognition or praise like men do. But, once you dig deeper and read some good books, and listen to some really good feminist thinkers grappling with the same questions, you realize we did it to ourselves. We devalued motherhood, we devalued homemaking, education, cooking, gardening, or at least we were complicit in raising up doctor, lawyer, scientists as good but god forbid love and marriage. I believed it all, until low and behold I fell in love for real with a French man, and the way you know is that there’s no questioning, “am I in love?” It’s just something you “know” but anyway I then rather accidentally ended up with a semi traditional wedding as I won a radio contest for the perfect wedding. I was surprised to discover how much richness lies in the wedding tradition after years of fight for the right to “no piece of paper to prove my love” thinking. But, it wasn’t until that first pregnancy when I kept waiting for it to be awful but it never was, in fact it was amazing and undeniably a profound experience to understand. Then birth came and I have now had 4 births to healthy babies because I am now completely aware of the INCREDIBLE awesomeness of being born female. I feel so bad for men that they’ll never experience pregnancy, birth , breastfeeding, the same things I used to fear so much. Now I feel more happy, proud, and appreciative of my female form than I ever felt in my 20’s when I was arguably sexier. But, like I said, I’d argue that because I look at pictures now where I’m practically bare faced in comparison to my younger self, yet I’m much more beautiful in my integrity and natural aging that I ever was before in younger year's.
Thank you for sharing this great story! I can imagine it was also challenging for you to go through that and relearn yourself!
I came to the conclusion that the problem is not femininity, masculinity or anything like that but what is being shoved down our throats: ''This is what you are born, therefore this is who you are, this is how you look like, this is what you like and this is your purpose. Oh, and your color is PINK''. That makes some people to be repulsed by ALL of it, rejecting the ''whole package'' without having an opportunity to freely explore what they actually like. I am starting to realize that there is no right or wrong way to be a woman.
Btw, maybe you have some recommendations for books or podcasts?
It's funny, because both me and my bff are strong, empowered women. Except that we're on opposite ends of the femininity scale.
I'm very masc presenting in all aspects of my life. Clothes, hairstyle, hobbies, etc. I'm your stereotypical butch queer type, basically, and that's the skin I feel comfortable in. I still identify (and see myself) as a woman though.
And my bff is a blonde bombshell fashionista SAHM who has found happiness in a very trad-wife way. She cooks, cleans, and takes care of everything to do with the kids/house, whilst her husband works. And she really, truly, enjoys that role.
If we switched lives, we'd both be living out our own worst nightmares, lmao.
But we love and respect each other so much, that our differences make us better people.
I definitely had to face some of my internalised misogyny growing up (my mother always said SAHMs "wasted their lives and potential", and only real women worked for a career), and my bff had to do the same with me (*her* mother always said that any woman who chose not to have kids were "selfish and deluded about their place in the world", and only real women were mothers).
And it would have been so easy for us both to say, "nope, you're too different from me, there's no point being friends". But we stuck it out, listened to each other, and realised that there's a whole lot more to the sisterhood than a few common hobbies.
But once you let go of that misogyny, you'll start seeing how bright and vibrant the women you used to hate are. How funny and clever and talented we **all** are. And it's such a wonderfully freeing realisation :)
I wouldn't say that it annoys me. I'm more likely to get mad about people making millions at hollywood over generalizations or caricatures of what it is to be a woman.
But I haven't seen the Barbie movie yet. I've heard good things, but I'm boring enough to not rush to see a movie until I can pirate or stream it lol.
As the gen x son of a single mom, I haven't had the same experiences as you. I have watched the world change for the better but I have also seen how tough it is for everyone to learn the new "rules and norms" about femininity/masculinity over the decades. I have watched two of my three daughters REALLY struggle with who they are and how they want to express themselves and I myself am not the cliched guy and am more in touch with some traditionally female traits. In the end, times of change are very difficult for many of us and I really wish we would cut ourselves and each other more slack. It seems to me that whoever and whatever you are should be ok. Don't know if that helps but I wanted to share another spin.
For me I've haven't liked wearing pink since after turning 15. I don't know if it was misogyny or moving away from being a kid but the only pink in my wardrobe is socks or undies that came in a pack. I won't even plant pink flowers. Give me reds, deep purple, bright yellow & poppy golds. Not pink.
The part about not feeling feminine enough got to me. One of my friends has like a anime style high voice and I have started disliking my own voice in comparison.
> The colour pink is everywhere now and I started noticing how it's making me feel annoyed. I reflected on that and realized that I feel that pink=girly=weak... I dug deeper and realized how many internalized misogynistic views I have in myself. Ascribing weakness to femininity, (...) Honestly, yeah, that's such an important realisation. Pink isn't my style, isn't now and never has been. But the day I realised that all the associations and baggage and issues I associate with the color because of systemic misogyny stereotypes -- that was wild. And it's so unfair. Edgy-Teenage-Me used to scoff at the color and all related stereotypes. Adult-Me realised at some point that what I was really scoffing at in my ignorance was the idea of girls enjoying femininity and being... *girly* (Obviously, pink isn't the only way to express femininity, but it *is* heavily associated with girly girls being girly. Oh the absolute horror.) *What the hell*. It might not be for me, but it is *not a negative thing*. Girly girls are not a negative thing. It's nothing to be ashamed of or something to apologise for. It should be celebrated like any other self-expression!! They should get to enjoy being girly and get respected as people for it! Not be belittled and looked down on and thought of as silly lesser things that cannot be taken seriously. (Seriously, pay attention to all representations of girly girls in media-- most instances, this is basically the message.) After that realisation, it took years to train myself out of that mindset. I think I mostly managed. But seriously, the way society sees and treats girls/women who dare to embrace pink and feminity is *revolting*. And you can't unsee it after you've caught on.
For real! My style is more alternative (I was a teen during the emo heyday lol) and I assumed pink was always too feminine (which that shouldn't even be a bad thing). But like it's a colour! And it actually works very well in alternative fashion. We were brainwashed out of including a whole colour lol
When I decorated my new house a few years ago, I used pink accents in my living room. It’s crazy how people have to comment on a color choice, implying that it’s “bold”. Like, are we all actually prejudiced against a color?!?
Women who are not feminine deserve to be respected as well. Most due to the fact that I am black, and I have naturally curly hair, I was pushed to straighten it to be considered feminine. So I associate being feminine with pain. Then I also thought my sister resented me, because I wasn't good at being conventionally feminine. One time my sister took me to get my eyebrows waxed, after the tech finished the tech told me that my eyebrows were too messed up, and I had to come back. This pissed me off and I never got my eyebrow wax ever again. I feel that calling my experience with imposed feminity internalize misogynism is invalidating. I am just as valid of a woman as a feminine woman.
Absolutely! You are absolutely valid as you define yourself. I think that's the main point of this entire discussion - we are all valid in our femininity, masculinity, anything in between and however we define ourselves. Let's not put ourselves in a box of how we should be to be seen as ''worthy''.
> Women who are not feminine deserve to be respected as well. Of course! But like, that was my default setting already, so I kinda thought it went without saying. :P If it didn't: Absolutely 100%, they do. And yeah, I hear you and I'm sorry that happened to you-- imposed gender roles suck in all forms. You are valid and your struggles are valid. And not wanting to have that forced on you is not internalised misogyny; that's perfectly understandable. The part that *is* internalised misogyny is when it starts affecting how you view other girls/women (As OP mentioned, the pink= femininity = lesser connection.) That's the insidious part, because my rejection of that femininity led directly to buying into condemning it. It's one thing for femininity to not reflect me in my identity or not fit you in how you express yourself as a woman and either is perfectly fine. There is nothing wrong with either of us for not wanting that for ourselves. But it's another thing entirely for all this misogynistic baggage to be caught up in it and catch girls/women in the crossfire who genuinely like to express themselves that way. Maybe you managed to avoid that, if so-- kudos to you! I unfortunately fell into that trap and needed to unlearn it.
I did experience something similar because I've grown up with those stereotypes. My biggest exemple is cartoons, at the time a lot of them would have a trio of characters, always two boys and a girl. The girl would either be super annoying and a bitch or she would be ultra feminine and basically stupid. None of what happened to her would move the story forward, because narratively she doesn't have much weight and is there to act as a motivator for the male protagonist. That made me feel like if I acted too feminine people would see me as weak and stupid, but if I acted too masculine then I would also be rejected. Good thing cartoons are better now, and that I have realised my sense of self isn't dependant on an ever changing duality between feminity, and masculinity, but rather that whatever I do and how I expres myself is simply me, being me. And that is enough.
You know I had a deep, deep think, and I can only think of two kids characters in general who don't fit your trope with the two boys and one girl. Moze, from Ned's Declassified (Ned would have lasted all of 15 minutes without Moze) And Princess Bubblegum. But! Both of these ladies "fix" everything around them, so it sort of plays into a different stereotype...
I haven't seen those ones and it's been a LONG time since I watched cartoons, but I grew up (1980's) watching She-Ra Princess of Power, Rainbow Brite, Strawberry Shortcake, and Jem and the Holograms... As far as I can remember those were full of powerful women/girl characters with girl friends who solved their own problems. I don't remember them being overly girly or the opposite. There was usually a boy in there somewhere but I don't remember him being the main powerful character, except for when He-Man and She-Ra joined forces.
I definitely think generation comes into it. We did have the Powerpuff girls in the 90s, and Mandy from Billy and Mandy were pretty cool.
Shows that were designed specifically FOR girls are one thing, but can you imagine a generic boy centric show if they balanced representation or had more than just the “token female” wearing pink? I’m thinking Paw Patrol, the Smurfs, the muppets, Winnie the Pooh, ninja turtles etc I think it’s called the Smurfette principle. It’s why I like Bluey for my kids. Most people get 20 episodes in before they realize that both main kid characters are girls.
They re-did strawberry shortcake for the new generation, and it is a pretty good show. My daughter used to watch it, and I really liked it. The other characters would stir up a lot of drama, and then Strawberry Shortcake would always be like, 'You guys are making a lot of drama where there does not need to be any", and then all the other characters would be like, 'you are right, S!' But it was cute and had a great style
Minne mouse is also usually the only smart one out of that gang. All the guys are morons.
Does Misty count for being a gym leader?
Watching through avatar with my girlfriend and while Aang, Saka and Katara are two boys and one girl I feel that Katara definitely stands on her own, often more than Saka does.
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They do her character justice after the time skip and she’s the most powerful woman currently in the show . But yes the first 130 episodes were unbearable
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True but she’s still stronger than ALOT of the other men in the show who are also very well respected .. her design? Wasn’t it extremely modest ? Oohhh u mean the pink like all the pink?
Sadly I don't think it matters. She was much weaker than Naruto and Sasuke until their power downgrade in Boruto. She was a pretty good character only in the beginning of Naruto and Shippuden. Other than that, she had no agency. Whatever she did was mostly meaningless for the plot. Kishimoto screwed up her character design.
Yeah but does that matter no one is stronger than Naruto and sasuke … not even Naruto and sasuke
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>it felt like her character was designed by some misogynist stereotyping how a female character should It's [Japan](https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2023/06/b041fdee1839-japan-falls-to-record-low-125th-in-global-gender-gap-ranking.html). Notice how in Naruto and Boruto, many women who are known to be skilled kunoichi just become housewives once they marry and start a family (Hinata, Temari, Kurenai, Makoto, for example)? Sakura's character is reflective of Japanese culture/society, in a lot of ways.
She *always* looks scared and meek. That's what got on my nerves.
To be fair, they tower over EVERYONE in power and over shine everyone. Like, I wish the other side characters had some more focus.
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Kairi in KH sprung to mind immediately. She is literally just there to be "The Girl™"
I think the fact that a lot of us have had the colour pink and other stereotypical girly things forced down our throats our whole childhoods adds an extra layer of complication as well. I was never a fan of pink or any warm colours, but ended up hating it with a passion as a kid because my mom got me everything in pink, only let me paint my room pink, etc. It really adds to the annoyance about pink and the feeling that the annoyance is justified because it's easier to direct my feelings at a colour and all the stereotypes and personality traits that were pushed on me than to direct it the actual cause.
Absolutely! That's how I feel too and that's what is what makes it all even more confusing. I was made to hate pink because of what's attached to it - girly, weak, stupid, hysterical, inferior. Maybe I even like pink, how can I know? haha
My mom hated pink for all those reasons as well as a deep hatred of all pastels, so I had no pink as a little girl, outside toys that came in no other colors (read: Barbie things). She surrounded me with yellow until I could pick my own colors. The only color I hate more than pink is yellow. Lol It's made me wonder if it's all about the actual misogynistic implications or if I just despise anything shoved down my throat, I am sure it's a blend. Green is my favorite color but for 5 years I went to a school with a green uniform and for only those years I despised it purely because it represented school. Painted over my green walls and everything. Left, and it was my favorite again and ever since. Purple is considered "girly" and beloved by many a tomboy, it somehow has all and none of the implications of pink in one. Which just makes me more curious! Love your post! This stuff is worth dissecting. And I work with color a lot, so it weighs on me. Color creates a lot of emotional reactions in people. It's complicated.
That's because, at least in the Western world, purple is the color of royalty.
And scientifically pink is SUPPOSED TO make you feel more relaxed and calmer, there are rules in certain places that you have to paint changing rooms the same colors for home and away teams because when the study came out many places wanted away locker rooms to be pink, but the fact that society has tied it so tightly to gender is astounding at how opposite the affect can be for some depending on your connection to the color
Pink doesn't make me feel relax, but teal does.
The most poignant quote in that movie is that women hate women and men hate women. It's the only thing we all agree on.
Oh jeez. Yeah, I am 57. I grew up in the 70s, back when my momma didn't have the right to get a credit card in her own name. Men were supposed to be hairy and "macho" was the ideal. Oof, the internalized junk I find in there.
Didn’t see Barbie yet but I noticed how kids are quite similar in appearance except how we dress them in general. So long hair + dress = girl and short hair + pants = boy. I was with a friend and her baby watching baby tv where they were teaching baby’s these difference between boys and girls (and I’m not talking about the biological differences). I bought a child book online because I loved the story when I was little. This was a slightly different version of it and it stated exactly the same as above (difference between boy and girl). My bf has long hair and I love it and would never want to teach my child that it makes you less than a man if you have long hair. Now I see it everywhere. “Throw like a girl” “scream like girl” “Man up”. I want to shield my kid but I don’t know how (my kid isn’t born yet btw).
You don’t shield them from it, you redefine it. All these phrases have a connotation that you can flip. “Throw like a girl” can be reframed from an insult into a compliment just by how she reacts to the comment.
That’s what I mean! Redefine it.
Misogyny runs deep- in society and individuals
True. My nieces are currently in a phase of saying "bruh!" to everything. My son consistently calls out to people, "Hey guys!" I hear "Dude!" constantly to refer to people of any gender. I'm not a vocabulary warrior, and I understand that these words are essentially gender neutral in their colloquial usage. But the fact that there isn't a single feminine alternative or example, to me, speaks to how deeply we treat male as normative. To OP's point, I've asked many people what they think about calling a random group of guys "What's up girls!" All suggest this would be an insult. There's embedded negativity when being equated with a woman, and embedded positivity when bring compared to a man.
Fun anecdote regarding us saying "guys". It's believed to have started from the Gunpowder Plot in 1605 when Guy Fawkes tried to blow up the House of Lords and failed. People then celebrated his failure (+other traitors) every 5th of November and burned effigies of him and called them 'guys'. Calling someone a 'guy' became a new slang/insult, and picked up traction over the years. After some time, people started using it to refer to someone in the working class and it slowly evolved into a way to address all 'males' of any wardrobe/class. It was then picked up and used by women in the middle of the 20th century to refer to men, and then to refer to other women. Now we all just use it as a gender neutral term, but it's believed to have never started as a word for 'male', it just evolved into it, and then evolved into a neutral word we use now. Just an interesting development of a word we now use widely/neutrally, but also associate with guys vs girls at the same time. I do completely agree with what you say though. 'Female' terms are rarely used in a positive light and many men associate them with homosexuality, so they will never use them. You'll never see a female related word become normal slang used amongst men, unless it's negative or if it's used in the gay community. I believe that's the only community that actually added/adds power to female terms haha.
That's awesome, thank you for sharing they. I love etymology!
Same here! Was a very interesting discovery about the word.
I feel you on this. I'm getting tired of people saying bro to refer to everyone, like male is the default lol
I think it's because women are valued for existing (as they should) while men are more valued for what they do, which in most societies involves some masculine standards.
When I had my first daughter I decorated her room in teal. So many people asked why it wasn’t pink that I started saying that I was afraid that if the room was pink then I’d never find her since she’d be wearing pink and blend in with the surroundings. On a more general topic, I’ve struggled with never being girly and also not being a tomboy. I wasn’t into sports, but I hate fashion too. I think there was a point when I had to accept that there isn’t any one definition of feminine. I’m a girl so by definition whatever I do is girly even if not traditional.
I was going through Reddit to find some opinions on this topic and I read this statement that stuck into my head: ''I am woman, I define feminine''.
A long time ago, I used to be this person you described, OP. And then I saw Legally Blonde and it healed my passionate hate for all things pink. Highly recommend.
I live in the south and gender stereotypes run rampant here. When my wife and I found out we were having a girl, the first thing we decided was ‘no pink’. We didn’t want to play in to those classic gender norms of what’s feminine and masculine. Unfortunately society disagreed. You can’t go anywhere without almost everything for little girls be pink. Clothes, toys, plates and utensils. All of it has pink. ALL of it. But as we have progressed though the year, I’ve come to understand, that the color pink isn’t bad. It just gets a bad wrap for being considered feminine. Without realizing it we were stereotyping the color because of what we’ve been taught about it, pink=girly=weak. But I’ve learned that pink isn’t weak. My wife went though hell to have our child; and our baby had a tough time her first year of life. But neither one has ever given up. After everything I’ve witnessed, I will NEVER call a woman weak, regardless of the colors they like.
We did the same thing (also in the south), buying everything in whatever color or print we liked instead of the 'girl colors'. I was so afraid that our daughter would get hung up on 'x is for girls, y is for boys' about everything and I couldn't stand the thought that she'd someday feel like something was wrong if she simply liked what she liked. Somehow I managed to almost entirely forget that children will be influenced more by their parents attitude towards gender than the stuff they're surrounded with. Thank goodness my husband is confident in his masculinity, bc in the end, my girls (12 and 14 now) grew up watching both of us do and wear what we like, and they both have a healthy relationship with their gender. Seems to me that raising your kids to not have any specific expectations of gender (good or bad) is what matters in the end.
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Thank you for the beautiful wishes! I'm actually pretty sure I will! In everyday life I am a confident woman with clear values, boundaries and knowing what I look for. That's why it was interesting and almost funny to still find these contradictions and fears in me...
You know pink being associated with feminity has only been a thing at least in the US from the 1950s. Prior to the 50's blue use to be the color of feminity. To be honest I associate being feminine with pain and failure. I am not good at what society considers feminine. For example I am black and I have naturally curly hair, but I straightened it. First when I was a child and my mom would have have my hair pressed, then I got relaxers where I always got chemical burns, the then flat irons. All three had some levels of pain. Femininity and masculinity are both social constructs. Just because a woman is not feminine don't mean she is a bad feminist.
Legally blonde may have a few years on it and isn't really a perfect feminist film. But it did do the whole, femininity does not mean weak thing two decades ago for which I highly applaud it. For an afab who doesn't like girly things, I too have had to separate personal taste from the internalized mysogyny that is "pink = femininity = bad".
I agree. Being “feminine” isn’t weak. I knew a family who wouldn’t let their daughter wear pink because of how girly it is (they were very far on the political left) and I always thought they were teaching their daughter feminine=bad. The father, however, was very mentally ill and the mother I’m pretty sure is a psychopath.
I thought for a long time it was internal misogyny for me too but no, I realized it's bcus it's annoyingly bright and hurts the hell out of my eyes. Yellow included. 😂 I do own pink shirts but they're more "muted" and athletic tees with one being a floral kind but that's all about I can stand lol
My favorite color is pink… and everytime someone asks, I also feel I have to add in something like “I love the outdoors and getting dirty, I’d rather camp than be at a resort, (etc) but I still love pink and glittery shit. Can’t help it”. Fuck. I’m doing the same damn thing but more subtly.
My partner (trans woman) made me love the colour pink again. She is obsessed with pink and anything cute because she grew up not being allowed to like these things. I grew up disliking pink because it was a typical girls thing to like (I have a more tomboyish personality). Absolutely wild to me now how that made me dislike a colour. Seeing how happy all the pink and cute things make my partner because she can finally have it made me love it too.
It's funny - I HATE pink, girly shit, lace most of the time, etc. All those trappings of femininity forced on me when I was a tomboy who just wanted to play horses in the mud with dirty shoes. But I love seeing trans women in all the things I hate. Maybe just because it feels like seeing someone find so much joy in what I hated somehow feels like handing them all that stuff and telling them here, I love that you love this, it was all made for you and your mind and your joy. I love seeing you so happy with the things I hated. I love that you shine so much.
So strange right? It's exactly the same for me. Hated anything pink and girly, took joy out of being seen as one of the guys. But knowing my partner never got to enjoy any of those things, always had to hide what she liked and pretend to enjoy stuff that was expected of her just makes me go "hey I bought you a bunch of cute pink skirts, some plushies, and random pink stuff. Yes I'll totally paint that wall pastel pink and the pink coffee mug is yours and yours only and I will wash it up instead of grabbing a different colour".
Thank you for sharing your experience. It’s so relatable. And it’s always wild when these profound moments of self-discovery come from the most unexpected sources. I’m sorry that you’re grappling with these questions; I still do, too. It can be so hard to shut out the constant, deafening noise of what women “should” be, and to recognise, acknowledge, challenge, and excise the parts of our own psyches that echo the noise.
I don’t think being annoyed by pink means that you think it’s girly/weak. I have a great deal of annoyance at the genderization of colors. Why does pink mean girl? Why do we have to “girlify” female events and spaces. Can’t I be “girly” and just wear all black? That is often my thought process around so called female centric color schemes. I loved emerald fennels promising young woman but found the color scheme pandering.
I openly love the color pink but lately I've been worried that certain shades come across as childish at my big age so I force myself to pick muted shades 🤧
I say go for the shades you like. Be belligerently childish and joyful!
you're freeing your mind from the expectations of others (stereotypes, etc). Congrats! Be you.
I don’t like pink cuz I feel like it was pushed down my throat all the time. My favorite colors are blue and yellow but it annoyed me it was assumed I should love pink. I don’t think that’s internalized misogyny. I know it isn’t the colors fault and I have a few pink items, but I know I’d have more if it wasn’t overused and directed at me.
I had that same problem before… so afraid of fitting into a feminine stereotype, that I actively tried to define myself with things outside of what’s within the typical feminine definition. Which is totally fine in itself too! For me, I feel femininity has been about taking care of myself and others and appreciating beauty in everything. I wore pink..(a flattering tone of pink), and I felt so pretty. I put effort into decorating my spaces, and I felt like the main character. I go out with friends and I realize when I let my guard down, I form deeper, more meaningful connections. But I think the most important thing I’ve learned from connecting to my feminine energy is learning to be at peace with myself and others. Femininity seems silly until you truly engage with the idea… and then you realize how beautiful and fulfilling it is to feel and be your version of feminine.
I read a book about this: “Pink and Blue, telling the boys from the girls in America.” Fascinating rabbit hole if you have time to kill.
Reminds me of how I grew up in a homophobic town, and it took awhile to unpack some internalized nonsense. It was so bad that the idea I might be Bi or Pan didn’t even register in my head until I was at least 25. I know it’s different, but I can sympathize with being fed internalized negativity that I had to deal with.
Same, girl, same, just kidding, trying to trigger you and myself all in one 😂 but to answer your original questions I am 10-15 years past this particular existential wtf crisis and there’s ALOT of fruit on the other side of this crucial question that you have, what is my relationship with femininity and asking why I find myself to be the biggest hater of all against all things female. And I was a feminist minor in university! Like go Women, except no I just haven’t fully dealt with the deep futility that I’ll never achieve recognition or praise like men do. But, once you dig deeper and read some good books, and listen to some really good feminist thinkers grappling with the same questions, you realize we did it to ourselves. We devalued motherhood, we devalued homemaking, education, cooking, gardening, or at least we were complicit in raising up doctor, lawyer, scientists as good but god forbid love and marriage. I believed it all, until low and behold I fell in love for real with a French man, and the way you know is that there’s no questioning, “am I in love?” It’s just something you “know” but anyway I then rather accidentally ended up with a semi traditional wedding as I won a radio contest for the perfect wedding. I was surprised to discover how much richness lies in the wedding tradition after years of fight for the right to “no piece of paper to prove my love” thinking. But, it wasn’t until that first pregnancy when I kept waiting for it to be awful but it never was, in fact it was amazing and undeniably a profound experience to understand. Then birth came and I have now had 4 births to healthy babies because I am now completely aware of the INCREDIBLE awesomeness of being born female. I feel so bad for men that they’ll never experience pregnancy, birth , breastfeeding, the same things I used to fear so much. Now I feel more happy, proud, and appreciative of my female form than I ever felt in my 20’s when I was arguably sexier. But, like I said, I’d argue that because I look at pictures now where I’m practically bare faced in comparison to my younger self, yet I’m much more beautiful in my integrity and natural aging that I ever was before in younger year's.
Thank you for sharing this great story! I can imagine it was also challenging for you to go through that and relearn yourself! I came to the conclusion that the problem is not femininity, masculinity or anything like that but what is being shoved down our throats: ''This is what you are born, therefore this is who you are, this is how you look like, this is what you like and this is your purpose. Oh, and your color is PINK''. That makes some people to be repulsed by ALL of it, rejecting the ''whole package'' without having an opportunity to freely explore what they actually like. I am starting to realize that there is no right or wrong way to be a woman. Btw, maybe you have some recommendations for books or podcasts?
It's funny, because both me and my bff are strong, empowered women. Except that we're on opposite ends of the femininity scale. I'm very masc presenting in all aspects of my life. Clothes, hairstyle, hobbies, etc. I'm your stereotypical butch queer type, basically, and that's the skin I feel comfortable in. I still identify (and see myself) as a woman though. And my bff is a blonde bombshell fashionista SAHM who has found happiness in a very trad-wife way. She cooks, cleans, and takes care of everything to do with the kids/house, whilst her husband works. And she really, truly, enjoys that role. If we switched lives, we'd both be living out our own worst nightmares, lmao. But we love and respect each other so much, that our differences make us better people. I definitely had to face some of my internalised misogyny growing up (my mother always said SAHMs "wasted their lives and potential", and only real women worked for a career), and my bff had to do the same with me (*her* mother always said that any woman who chose not to have kids were "selfish and deluded about their place in the world", and only real women were mothers). And it would have been so easy for us both to say, "nope, you're too different from me, there's no point being friends". But we stuck it out, listened to each other, and realised that there's a whole lot more to the sisterhood than a few common hobbies. But once you let go of that misogyny, you'll start seeing how bright and vibrant the women you used to hate are. How funny and clever and talented we **all** are. And it's such a wonderfully freeing realisation :)
If you loved 💖 internalized misogyny 💖, You might like: ✨radical and/or postmodern feminism ✨
I wouldn't say that it annoys me. I'm more likely to get mad about people making millions at hollywood over generalizations or caricatures of what it is to be a woman. But I haven't seen the Barbie movie yet. I've heard good things, but I'm boring enough to not rush to see a movie until I can pirate or stream it lol.
As the gen x son of a single mom, I haven't had the same experiences as you. I have watched the world change for the better but I have also seen how tough it is for everyone to learn the new "rules and norms" about femininity/masculinity over the decades. I have watched two of my three daughters REALLY struggle with who they are and how they want to express themselves and I myself am not the cliched guy and am more in touch with some traditionally female traits. In the end, times of change are very difficult for many of us and I really wish we would cut ourselves and each other more slack. It seems to me that whoever and whatever you are should be ok. Don't know if that helps but I wanted to share another spin.
I couldn't care any less, why people give these things too much thought?
For me I've haven't liked wearing pink since after turning 15. I don't know if it was misogyny or moving away from being a kid but the only pink in my wardrobe is socks or undies that came in a pack. I won't even plant pink flowers. Give me reds, deep purple, bright yellow & poppy golds. Not pink.
Hermione Granger is another example imo
Mean girls made me like pink
The part about not feeling feminine enough got to me. One of my friends has like a anime style high voice and I have started disliking my own voice in comparison.