Read the original books and the examples are worse. There was a great blog entry quite a while back on the James Bond series by Ian Fleming, but I can’t find it at the moment.
I think a lot of people who completely lack appreciation for clothing, even at a functional level, wouldn’t be able to handle constructing it. I have an interest in sewing, and learned how to do it (along with other traditional girly skills) when I was little. It gave me a great appreciation for style, but also gave me a better sense of what would and wouldn’t work for me. I can pick out a well-made piece of clothing from an okay piece and know which one is the better value, regardless of price or manufacturer. Some places consistently make shitty clothes, while some places are consistently good, and others are hit and miss. Some forms of clothing are more works of engineering than just a visual design, and some are quite architectural in nature; it doesn’t make them more or less important, but more difficult to make well.
I’d call it threadshitting for the sake of threadshitting. One can be an atypical girl without having to have an inherent dislike of girly things and people who like girly things. Why all the resentment for people who fit the cultural norm and aren’t forcing you to do so as well?
Appearance has always mattered to human beings. I can’t imagine a time when this will change, unless we all morph into brains-in-jars at some point in the future. Whether I have a mohawk or not has no bearing on my teaching abilities, true, but that doesn’t change the fact that having a mohawk will severely limit my chances of getting hired for a teaching job.
I do think NinjaChick was trying to be provocative and dramatic, but I don’t think it was threadshitting, given that the title of the OP specifically asks whether/why you feel contempt for girly things. NC answered the question that was asked.
Are we talking about other people’s standards or yours? Pretty big difference, since I’m not saying nobody cares.
Two anecdotes about people whose appearance has nothing to do with their abilities, and an example of a person in charge who didn’t give a shit about a candidate’s “unprofessional” appearance. I like where you’re headed with this.
Ah, OK, good! So we’re all sq-
Wait, huh? Do you care or not? Are you judging people or not? Where in your post is the argument for what the state of my nails has to do with my professionalism (and I am a professional, as it happens)? You said that other people are going to look down on somebody for having a unibrow etc., which is obvious, because that’s what we’re talking about right now, but you didn’t give any reason why that’s defensible.
Anyway, in case I wasn’t clear enough, what I’m also telling you is: nobody cares about my nails. Nobody cares about my hair. If I had a giant bushy unibrow I’m sure they’d make fun of me but it’s not like I’d lose my job. And my job is one that actually has real standards of acceptable dress. So this already doesn’t apply equally, since I can get away with it and a woman apparently cannot, which raises another question: what’s the difference between defining “modicum of professionalism” as neat nails, waxed eyebrows, nice makeup, and defining it as, say, showing a little cleavage? Or having enough cleavage to show? What if I said that matters (practically speaking, it does, after all), and that you can’t expect to be taken seriously if you aren’t willing to dress the part?
In other words, to keep this within the scope of the thread, can you tell me what’s wrong with a woman deciding for herself whether or not her particular eyebrow grooming is appropriate, and then just doing her job, as opposed to a woman doing the same thing with her skirt length, or whether or not she wears revealing tops to work, or whether or not she wears the boss’s favorite fire engine red lipstick every day? “Appearance matters” will only take you so far as long as you’re willing to concede that at some point it has fuckall to do with the job and so isn’t the employer’s business.
Right. I don’t think it would take much of a cultural shift for it to seem gender-neutral or masculine to do so even semi-regularly. Everybody has to deal with nails somehow; it’s not like getting a haircut is a girlie thing to do.
Sure. I’m not arguing that it doesn’t matter in our society. I just think “that’s just how it is” is a terrible reason to keep it that way.
Back to the broader point of the thread, I realized after posting earlier that when I was a depressed, anti-social teenager I did have contempt for traditional girlie interests. I think it did have a lot to do with my low self-esteem and feeling like I’d never fit in with the girlie-girls. It turned into me rejecting them so I wouldn’t be rejected first. I still feel uncomfortable or intimidated around very feminine women sometimes, but I don’t think any less of them. If anything I feel… inadequate, like I SHOULD be more girlie, but I’m falling short of some imaginary standard.
That’s changed as I’ve gotten older and I do feel more comfortable being feminine, and I’m getting more comfortable around girlie-girls. I think the more comfortable you are with yourself, the less you care about what other people do in their spare time.
This is true for a lot of people, I think. I remember teaching a college gender class - one of my brightest students was this girl who was very vocal about the fact that she was bisexual and a strong feminist, which for her meant she didn’t wear makeup or shave under her arms. (I had a hard time not dissolving into a fit of giggles when she announced this - the college was in a pretty boring whitewashed suburb and the younger guys in the class were absolutely horrified.) I saw myself in her - or at least myself when I was her age. Like many women in this thread I went through a phase where I wore flannel shirts and no makeup, because I thought that looking pretty would demean me in some way.
I am much more comfortable in my own skin now, and I enjoy wearing makeup and pretty clothes without feeling guilty about it.
I would like to request that RNATB and Jimmy Chitwood have professional manicures done, and then report back to us. I’m curious about what your reactions would be, and whether you would decide that you would want to invest in having a manicure done regularly.
For the guys, it will probably be cheaper than for females. They’re not that expensive, even the basic manicure/pedicure combo, especially if you don’t go to a high-end place. And they’re not going to use nail polish, at most maybe a layer of those “nail-strenghtening” things.
I think last time I had mani/pedi, I payed about $40, including tip. I would get them more often, but in my current job, nail polishes are a no-no. And I’d rather spend the $40 in something else. Still, they’re AWESOME.
And if you get them with massage… Oooh, nice… I mean, guys, you like massages, right? What could be best than, after a hard hard day, you put your feet in warm, relaxing water, and someone massages them and eases the stress away?
You find it mind boggling and sad? Or do you just find it plain dumb. Keep it real, Necros.
That someone could honestly have no clue that something doesn’t have to ‘do’ anything to be valuable is just dumb. People live and die for art. Geezus Kerist. Even if one doesn’t accept fashion as art (I do) they still sound dumb discounting something specifically because it doesn’t do something. Dammit.
I didn’t like The Devil Wears Prada, and though I adore Streep, I found her performance in that film shallow and pedantic. It insists upon itself. Haa! No, seriously, I found her performance in that film annoying. But I loved this scene with everything in me.
Also, one doesn’t go around dividing one’s interests into pink and blue columns. If you really like sports, as a female, you don’t have to make a point of the fact that you like sports, you hate shopping. Just shut up and enjoy the sports. Lots of us have varied interests. No need to column them up and get all judgey and hold things ‘in contempt’.
And Ninjachick, I’m not calling you dumb at all. I love to read your posts. I can’t bite my tongue though, that I think it is a dumb idea that something has to ‘do’ something in order to be useful. All it has to do is please or excite the senses or emotions and it has already validated itself
I also agree with your assessment of Devil Wears Prada, and that scene in particular–I think I mentioned it earlier in the thread because it definitely is a good reflection of what we’re talking about.
I have no wish to sidetrack this thread either so I’ll just say that I read the blog, the author has the same complaints with SATC that everyone else does and I vehemently disagree with those complaints. Also, she took a swiple at Mad Magazine. Anyone who slags on William Gaines’s has no credibility in my eyes.
To clarify, I was just teasing Necros…trying to nudge her over to admitting that the whole ‘it doesn’t do anything’ was flat out dumb…not just mindboggling. I had no problem with Necros’ post at all.
And FS, I meant to point out that I also love that scene. I did notice you mentioned it, and I wanted to find the link and add it.
I actually knew girls in college who asked me to teach them about football so they could talk to guys about it. Seriously. They were doing it as a front. But not all girls do that. I liked football from as young as I could remember. I loved football. I never learned it to please some guy.
One could say the same thing about cooking. Yeah, you could eat Ramen and Mac & Cheese all day every day, or you could take the time and create a fancy meal. You don’t need to add spices and flavors to get nutrition (which is the point of eating). So I would assume your spice cupboard is bare, right? No garlic, no chili pepper, no cinnamon… It’s creating; it’s art. It isn’t necessary to survive, but it’s beautiful and takes care of our basic needs in a pleasing way (much like wearing pretty clothes takes care of our basic need to not be naked in an aesthetically pleasing way). So anyone who spends more than a few minutes preparing a meal is shallow and frivolous, right?
I guess I’m going to have to tell my husband, the chef, that his career and life passion is frivolous and pointless.
I must be parsing this incorrectly because Ian Fleming died in 1964 (ie., some time before the invention of the blog).
I will be happy to do so. Again, I doubt I’ll make it a regular thing (although KG’s post indicates it’s cheaper than I thought) purely based on cost, but you never know.
I’m not sure I have enough money to get anyone to massage my feet. I have creepy monkey toes and I wear flip flops all the time.
The question is whether these things are gendered because of some essential difference biologically inherent in being male or female (which cannot change over time, or at least, over any reasonable time-frame) or whether they are based on our culture (which is mutable).
I think that the cultural component is by far the stronger. Obviously, there are biological differences between the sexes, but I think that in matters such as fashion and the like these differences play only a small part in pre-determining human reactions. In our time, women pay more attention to such matters as hair and shoes, but it was not always so - look at the court of Louis XIV. The Sun King and his male courtiers payed plenty of attention to matters of fashion …
In short, what it means to be ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ have changed over time and there is nothing stopping such changes from occurring in the future. The hope is that humanity adopts the best parts of both, for both; the fear is that humanity will adopt the worst. The reality is probably going to be a mixture …
I don’t mean to speak for you…but with my sloppy attempt at slang and humor…and with your quoting her and building on her point, maybe we should point out again that we are agreeing with Necros.
Yay, people agree with me!
OK, maybe not mindboggling, but definitely sad. Appreciating and creating beauty is one of those things that makes us fundamentally human, and to ignore that is missing out on a lot of life, even if it doesn’t “do anything” more than make us happy. That’s pretty important.
Wow. It has actually never occurred to me that people might look down on me for being a bit of a girly girl, or that men might think me “cooler” if I was more blokey. I love fashion and beauty, rom-coms, jewellery, well-written “chick lit” (it does exist), all that stuff. I have literally no interest in sport, limited interest in technology, and my hobbies tend towards the feminine - acting, singing, cooking…
Yet I have a large group of male friends, and a husband, and they all seem to find me interesting, enjoy my company and treat me with respect. Maybe in part because I’m secure enough in myself to like the things I like without feeling I have to justify them in some way, and because I have respect for the things that interest other people, even if I don’t understand them?
I guess it’s true that this board isn’t like real life though. I have noticed the whole “more cerebral than thou” pissing contests that a lot of people seem to engage in, and I suspect that the anti-girly agenda is just part of that.
I kind of went through this when I was an undergrad – that to be accepted by my peers, I had to suppress all femininity. And there is still an undercurrent, especially amongst some of the grad students here, that to actually care about looking good, wear dresses etc to work, and be a girly girl earns you less respect from staff and profs.
Personally, I embrace the girly-girl geek that breaks all the stereotypes.
