On Make-up (From Tumblr post)
Sep. 13th, 2013 06:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reymonkeyFrom Tumblr post here
I genuinely do not wear make-up except for special occasions (I am allergic to some of it), and I don’t feel like I’m beautiful or hideous, just average, so I guess I’m lucky there. What I remember among the many enriching comments my mother has made over the years, though, are how she told me a few times I ‘could be so pretty, if I’d just wear a little make-up’.
I had the presence of mind, even as a teenager, to ask her if she was telling me I was ugly without it. She just got flustered and apologetic, but in light of this her comment makes more sense now. Not that I agree with it.
I think maybe stuff like this is could go on the list of what makes me shy away from femininity so often. I’m still trying to work out if I’m ‘gender-fluid’ or what, with my ‘guy brain’ and my lack of comprehension of so much of what it’s supposed to mean to be a woman. It’s always bugged me right from an incredibly early age that so much of how women are expected to act is a big bag of lying. Women are expected to be deceitful. We’re supposed to wear a false face, use sexual attractiveness or false emotions to manipulate, to lie to make everyone around us feel better about themselves. It’s early and I haven’t had coffee yet so I may not be phrasing this well, but from the age of ten or so I cued in to these ideas, and I feel like it created a wedge that’s driven me toward being ‘one of the guys’ ever since. Every lesson my mother taught me in what it means to be a woman made me want to be one less and less. And that’s worth paying attention to.
I genuinely do not wear make-up except for special occasions (I am allergic to some of it), and I don’t feel like I’m beautiful or hideous, just average, so I guess I’m lucky there. What I remember among the many enriching comments my mother has made over the years, though, are how she told me a few times I ‘could be so pretty, if I’d just wear a little make-up’.
I had the presence of mind, even as a teenager, to ask her if she was telling me I was ugly without it. She just got flustered and apologetic, but in light of this her comment makes more sense now. Not that I agree with it.
I think maybe stuff like this is could go on the list of what makes me shy away from femininity so often. I’m still trying to work out if I’m ‘gender-fluid’ or what, with my ‘guy brain’ and my lack of comprehension of so much of what it’s supposed to mean to be a woman. It’s always bugged me right from an incredibly early age that so much of how women are expected to act is a big bag of lying. Women are expected to be deceitful. We’re supposed to wear a false face, use sexual attractiveness or false emotions to manipulate, to lie to make everyone around us feel better about themselves. It’s early and I haven’t had coffee yet so I may not be phrasing this well, but from the age of ten or so I cued in to these ideas, and I feel like it created a wedge that’s driven me toward being ‘one of the guys’ ever since. Every lesson my mother taught me in what it means to be a woman made me want to be one less and less. And that’s worth paying attention to.
