This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/twoxchromosomes by /u/BearCavalryCorpral on 2023-07-28 23:33:24.
I was never into Barbie when I was a kid. I didn’t even like dolls - why would I want some ugly human when I could have adorable stuffed animals instead? I was a tomboy - I ran with the boys, played in the mud, collected pokemon and Yugioh cards. I hated the color pink - pink was girly, and girly was bad. I understood that from so much of the media I’d seen. Feminine women were weak, and I didn’t want to be weak. Girly girls didn’t have adventures. At best, they were the love interest, at worst, they were the annoying meddlers who got in the way of the (always male) main character having fun and adventures. Boys got to go on cool adventures. Occasionally, there was a tomboy character who also got the cool adventures, but that just reinforced the idea that being a girly girl, that being feminine was bad. Tomboys were also rare. Most female characters were feminine - characters and stories that I couldn’t relate to in the slightest and thus had no interest in watching.
It didn’t help that I knew I was expected to “act like a girl”. By the age of 6 I knew that I was expected to like dolls and dresses and to be pretty and nurturing. My parents even now tell me that they never forced anything like that on me, but they weren’t the only influence on my life. Media, relatives, friends of my parents - I saw this expectation everywhere. I tried to follow it at one point - I asked for a doll. I lost interest quickly. The kind of behavior and interests that was expected from me as a little girl wasn’t who I actually was, and it was frustrating hearing from all sides that what I was wasn’t what I should be.
And thus, girls = bad, boring, spoilsports, boys = good, adventure, fun.
Back then, the idea of watching a movie about pink, girly Barbie would have made me scoff and roll my eyes. Who but some weakling girly girl would want to watch that?
I kept this mindset into my early teens. I was the “not like other girls” girl, because other girls (or, what society told me other girls were) were feminine and vain, and thus weak , and annoying and stupid. I wasn’t like them. I was a tomboy. I was strong. I wasn’t afraid of getting dirty or physical. I played video games instead of doing makeup. I took martial arts instead of ballet. I was cool, and not an annoying weakling love interest.
I was an outcast - now, part of that was due to me being an introvert with undiagnosed social anxiety, but I also couldn’t relate to most of my peers. I didn’t think I had anything in common with the girls, and the bro culture that was developing among the boys wasn’t welcoming to me, no matter how not like other girls I was. I was still a girl to them.
I grew up. I got tired of expectations that were foisted upon me just because of what my birth certificate said. I learned to stop giving a fuck. I guess it started with my teen rebelliousness phase. I stopped caring that others wanted me to be pretty when I just wanted to be comfortable. I started learning to argue back when people insisted to my face that I need to be more feminine. I stopped giving a fuck about gender expectations.
I started embracing my “weirdness”. I embraced that I was “not like other girls”. I embraced that I didn’t care about dating (turns out, I was aroace). I held those differences as a sign of myself being superior to those sheep who just followed societal expectations.
In truth, my mindset didn’t really change at that point - I still saw myself above others - above other girls specifically, because they were weak sheep, and I was different, strong, independent. I scoffed at girly things, because having girly interests was bad. They were for weak, vain damsels in distress who shrieked at the sight of spiders and cried when they broke a nail.
In truth, I was still following gender expectations - male ones, because being a girl was bad. It was weak. It was stupid - that’s what society told me.
But then I grew older still, and the older I grew, the less fucks I gave, and the fewer fucks I gave, the happier I became. Little by little, I stopped giving a fuck about gender expectations - for real this time. I remembered some things I used to do with my mom. I picked up cross stich again - embroidery, a traditionally feminine activity, and I found that I enjoyed it. I allowed myself to appreciate pretty clothes - I still didn’t want to wear them due to comfort reasons, but I no longer found it shameful to admit to myself, and eventually, to others, that I found them visually appealing. Eventually, I stopped giving a fuck about gender as a concept - it felt too much like shoving things into artificial boxes - boxes that humans created and then demanded that everyone fit into them. I stopped giving a fuck about that demand. I no longer cared about gender expectations - both for the gender I was assigned at birth, and for what I saw as the polar opposite of that. It was a long, painful journey to this , and I still get pushback from elements of society that tell me that I should be doing this or liking that because it sees me as a girl/woman, but I’ve learned to stop giving a fuck about that.
Today, I went to see Barbie. Pink, girly, feminine Barbie, the toy of doll loving girls all over the country for over half a century. 15 years ago, this would have been unimaginable. 15 years ago, I would have rolled my eyes and scoffed at the idea of someone wanting to see something so pink and girly. 15 days ago, I was excited for it. Today, I bought the ticket with my own money, and watched it. For the first time in my life, I saw a movie that was written and directed by a woman, for women, about women, and I could relate to it. It was a movie about a doll, and a movie about women. Real women (and girls), not some stereotype propagated by male dominated media. It flipped the usual script on its head. It satirized the usual “men are characters, women are decorations and flat stereotypes” mindset that is so prevalent in media.
15 years ago, I would have scoffed and rolled my eyes. Today, I’m happy. I’m happy about all the women and girls going to see that movie, being able to see themselves on the screen. I’m happy that so many boys and men went to see it too. I’m happy that this mindset - that women and girls are people - is becoming more visible in media - so much that they made an entire movie about it. I’m happy that in the future, more little girls will be able to see female characters that they can relate to - to know that they can be badass and feminine and not feminine and soft and rough and determined and capable, and in need of some help, and any mix of the above, and that none of that determines their worth. None of that makes them any less girls, any worse than boys. I’m glad that they, and the little boys and little enby kids alongside them will get to see that there is nothing wrong or weak or stupid about being a girl, that girls and femmes can also be the badass main character. I hope that this will also lead to all of those kids seeing that masculine does not mean better, that there is nothing wrong with boys being soft and gentle and in need of help. I hope that they can see that gender norms are just a bunch of boxes we humans created arbitrarily, and that they are free to mix and match things however they want, no matter how “masculine” or “feminine” society might claim them to be, and that doing those things does not make them any better or worse, any more and any less a boy, a girl, or just someone who doesn’t care for those labels. When we learn to accept people for what they are, and not for the boxes society tries to shove them in, the world will be a happier place.