Stereotypically "girlie" interests: do you feel contempt for them, and if so, why?

In My Humble Opinion
101

My relationship with girly things is kind of weird, though it does have things in common with several other previous posters.

First of all, yeah, don’t assume. I hate it when people assume that because I’m female, I like babies, cooking, fashion, shopping, celebrity gossip, jewelry, and chick flicks. I don’t like any of those things. (Well, okay, sometimes I like shopping.) Almost all of my interests go toward the “guy” end of the spectrum, or are gender-neutral. I get along better with guys and geeky women than with “normal” women.

But that’s not to say I have contempt for these things (well, maybe celebrity gossip–it completely escapes me why anyone cares) nor for the people who enjoy them. Everybody’s different. If you want to spend the majority of your time talking about babies or fashion, fine. I’ll be bored stiff. But I’d be just as bored hanging around guys who wanted to talk about nothing but baseball. And you’d be just as bored if I wanted to go on about WoW or video game hardware.

I guess the bottom line for me (this is really kind of a cornerstone of my personality, because I so rarely get to experience it) is that I want people to hold off their assumptions about me before they get to know me. As one poster mentioned upthread, do NOT make a sly comment to my spouse about having to buy me some glittery nothing in order to make up for the technology purchase he makes. Damn it, I’M the one who’s more likely to make the technology purchase, if you’d just get past your blinders long enough to see that female doesn’t necessarily mean “access this set of assumptions and cue this set of responses.” It’s rude, insulting, and just plain bad business. You can treat everybody with neutral courtesy and cheerfulness without making any assumptions about their personality. That’s really all I ask.

Everybody’s different. Some people (women and men both) enjoy fashion, family, sports, auto repairs, flower arranging, and fruity drinks with umbrellas in them. So what? There’s nothing inherently bad, wrong, or inferior about anyone’s favorite pastimes, just because they’re stereotypically feminine or masculine.

The only “girly” pastimes I genuinely do have contempt for are (as I mentioned above), the frothier of the celebrity gossip (things like “OMG! Starlet X was seen in a bikini last week and she has cellulite!”) and outright ditziness (especially if it’s affected to attract men). I value intelligence highly in both genders. Stupid combined with girly turns me right off (just like stupid combined with macho does–although I don’t like smart macho/male chauvinist guys either, so that’s kind of a wash).

102

If you’re actually interested in the reasons behind the hate, I recommend this blog post. I’m not going to enumerate my reasons because this is an interesting thread and I don’t want to derail it.

103

I’m suggesting that this might has something to do with it, yes. Stereotypically male attributes and behaviors carry greater esteem in our society. I don’t think it’s merely coincidental that lesbians are regarded as less deviant than gay men. And I don’t think feminism has much to do with it, either.

I think feminism helped a lot with helping women break past gender stereotypes, but it doesn’t account for every gender disparity that comes down in “favor” of women. All one has to do is read Leviticus to infer that male homosexuality has been regarded differently than female for a long time.

104

Bolding mine. I don’t mean to pick on this post specifically, because others have described a similar sentiment in this thread and other threads. Although I’ve quoted this post, anyone should feel free to chime in. I definitely understand that it’s a very poor sales technique to verbalize assumptions about people - even if the assumption happens to be correct, it’s still rude and a faux pas to presume to know what a stranger would like. But it does seem that making an assumption that a woman would like a man to buy her jewelry is a particular trigger that makes some women very angry. Personally, I would think the salesperson was a total loser because I can and do buy a lot of my own jewelry, thankyouverymuch. But is there also something offensive about the idea that a woman would like jewelry, if she in fact does not care for it? (e.g., it’s symbolic of materialism or vanity or foolishness?)

105

My mind, it is blown.

Oh well, to each their own.

106

Not per se, but let’s swap the genders. Instead of the gadget counter, we’re standing next to the jewelry counter. Wife has just bought herself a piece of expensive jewelry, with Husband standing there next to her. Would the salesman likely make a sly comment to Wife about how now she needs to let Husband go buy that new power tool he’s had his eye on? Or perhaps even worse, a sly comment implying that Husband should be “rewarded” (wink wink nudge nudge) for letting Wife buy expensive jewelry (never mind that it might be her own money)? If the salesman did that, I think Husband has every right to be offended at assumptions every bit as much as Wife would in the other situation.

Basically, I don’t like assumptions. A proper salesman in this case might (or might not) compliment the woman on how nice the jewelry looks on her, complete the transaction, and be done with it. Just like in the other scenario, comments about what the wife might or might not be getting to justify the husband’s gadget purchase are out of place and patronizing. They might be a little less so if the woman was obviously decked out in upscale fashion and jewelry, but would certainly be inappropriate if directed at a wife dressed in T-shirt, jeans, athletic shoes, and no makeup or jewelry–even if she loved these things and was just “dressing down” for the day. The salesman has no way to know this, so he should stick with the situation as it is.

107

Julia Serano goes on at length about this in her book Whipping Girl, basically saying that although most people would agree that women are men’s equals, few would agree that femininity is masculinity’s equal, and that this discrepancy is simply misogyny repackaged in a new and more acceptable format.

108

I have nothing but contempt for the stereotypically girly things. They don’t accomplish anything. Gaming and music and sports are actual things that people do; fashion doesn’t do anything. It just clothes, it’s just metal and rocks, it’s just makeup. I don’t have much patience for anyone who has very limited interests to begin with, but I’m more likely to take someone seriously if they’re obsessed with, say, rock climbing or cars than I am someone who’s obsessed with Sex in the City or fashion. The only possible purpose that expensive designer clothing serves is to attract a guy, and I guess I hold the radical belief that there’s more to life then chasing after men.

Every time a woman giggles about shoe shopping or something, she perpetuates a stereotype that all women are primarily concerned with shoe shopping (or whatever). That leaves those of us who really don’t care about it and prefer practical shoes in some weird no man’s land: I’m apparently not feminine, because I don’t own any high heels and have never watched an entire episode of Sex in the City and would much rather watch an action movie than a romantic comedy - but I’m still obviously biologically female, and therefore couldn’t possibly be truly interested in other things. I’m getting some of that from this thread, even: oh, she’s just saying she’s also into hockey as well as romance novels to save face, we all know that since she’s a woman she must prefer the latter.

Also, part of my objection to female-oriented media, whether it’s TV or books or movies, is that it’s just awful writing. If preferring a well-written book to Nora Roberts or some other crap written solely to make money off fat housewives makes me sexist, so be it.

109

The jewelry doesn’t matter, being treated as an accessory instead of a customer is demeaning and insulting. I’ve run into the same thing when shopping with my SO, where saleswomen treat me like a walking wallet. I know that they do it because many men play that part, but that doesn’t make it less annoying.

In other words, exactly what winterhawk11 said.

110

Yeah. No woman would ever buy nice or expensive clothing because she thinks it’s pretty or that fashion is interesting and fascinating. Besides, isn’t the stereotype that guys don’t even notice clothing labels?

111

“The only possible purpose that expensive designer clothing serves is to attract a guy”

If this is true, then why do married women and women with boyfriends wear those clothes?

112

Why are gaming and music “actual things” while fashion and its corollaries are not?

113

“Clothes are something you have to wear every day of your life. Gaming and music and sports are just people running up and down and making noise.”

I don’t think fashion is any more or less frivolous than any of the other non-productive ways in which people spend their time, energy, or money because it pleases them.

People say this about gay men, too, and I don’t get it. Why would my interests reflect on someone else, purely on the basis of their gender or their sexual orientation? Surely if someone extrapolates from one woman and assumes her interests are those of all womankind, the problem is with the extrapolator, not with the woman’s interests?

This I can definitely get behind, however.

114

It’s pretty common to characterize “feminine” things or characteristics as unreal, artificial, frivolous, affected or fake and corresponding “masculine” things of no more or less actual utility as real, natural, serious, artless, or important. Witness sports casts being treated as though they are actual news.

115

The whole “Fashion is for morons” kind of reminds me of that scene in Devil Wears Prada where Miranda Priestly chews out Andie for her eye rolly attitude. Miranda was a bitch, but she had a point. In its own way, on its highest levels, it is art. And what we wear is a choice. It’s not something everyone feels they have to obsess over, but why put it down? It really does reek to me of insecurity when I see people falling over themselves to say how much they hate fashion. It’s almost as if they have to project that air to keep people from judging what they’re afraid will be perceived as an ugly outfit or bad makeup.

116

I am a guy and I have no idea when a woman is wearing expensive clothes or jewelery. I just know what looks good but I have no idea if it costs $500 or $50. (except in rare cases)

117

Gaming “doesn’t do anything” either. Fashion and makeup in one sense are much more real–they allow one to actively portray an image of oneself that is at odds with walking around naked, and you can change that at will.

I might as well go around slagging on gamers–video games, after all, don’t do anything, they’re fake games in a computer! Only silly, shallow, frivolous people care that much about fake people shooting fake guns at fake villains with computer-animated graphics. Fake, fake, fake, boring, stupid, silly. Time-waters, pointless, useless.

So it goes both ways.

And for those who are not familiar with the film, the quote Freudian Slit is referring to is as follows:

118

Fashion is a very big business in the US but many of the clothes are now made overseas. I can see why a $20 shirt is made in China but I don’t know why $300 shirts are made there too. Guess they want to squeeze as much profit out as they can.

119

I know that female homosexuality is not condemned in Leviticus, but I know that fact mostly because it appears counter-intuitive – in that the fundy types who these days hate homosexuality based on the Biblical injunctions tend to ‘blast’ both male and female homosexuality without acknowledging this difference. It’s a great way of taunting them (“are you saying God thinks Lesbians are okay?”)

That being noted, whatever cultural pressures led to the odd state of affairs in Leviticus are those peculiar to iron-age Judea and have only limited relevance to modern concerns over the treatment of ‘girly’ topics on Internet Boards. :wink:

Perhaps we are both right, in this sense: that in the past, more “high ranking” activities were reserved for men only, and thus got associated with being “manly”. Feminist liberation is thus seen in the context of seizing these activities for oneself as a woman. It is now normalized to such an extent that even those who do not consider themselves “feminists” simply take it for granted that they ought to do these things, too.

120

Thanks for your honesty. There can be a tendency in IMHO for the threads to be so one-sided at times, which is annoying. Maybe I misunderstand your comment (bolding mine), but I don’t see anyone who is presuming that deep down inside, women truly like only girly things, but they say they like hockey just to save face? :dubious: