Most people here seem to be saying some variation of “I do what I feel like, and if people can’t handle it, that’s tough.” Which I guess also translates to “people should do what they feel like, and that’s fine by me.” The implicit statement seems to be that being antifeminist or trapped in femininity means doing what other people want you to do, not what you authentically want. Whether that is make-up or plastic surgery isn’t really relevant.

Lots of critiques have been launched at the idea of “authentic wanting,” dating from old Sigmund, but what I experience is not doing what I want because people want me to do it. If we lived in the Feminist Utopia, I would probably dress/comport myself much more femininely than I usually do, but the fact is that I cannot bear how it changes how people relate to me, and how those relations change the way I relate to myself. The cost is just too high. Much higher than any social sanction that being less feminine (but still legibly female and feminine) would mean.

Am I the only one who feels this way?

i remember (or at least i think i do) awhile back when lauren posted some lucille clifton poems (but i could have been hallucinating. anyway, i thought these somehow apropos to all of the nominat

Pepper:
I absolutely hate it when I see women on plastic-surgery shows saying that they are “doing it for themselves” or ” doing it because it makes ME happy.” Then, three scenes and a commercial break later, they are swollen and bruised on a hospital bed, crying in pain from an elective surgery. I wonder if any of them regret it, but they don’t think they can say it on camera.

Just because it (temporarily) hurts doesn’t mean they’ve changed their minds. I both lift weights, bike, and do krav maga; just because at at fourtyfour minutes and fiftynine seconds on the bike I’m ready to say the whole thing sucks and I’m never going to do it again doesn’t mean that I’m not overall happy with exercise; I just happen to temporarily feel like shit.

:-)

Actually, if a man doesn’t shave, sometimes people assume he’s a writer, an environmentalist, a communist, or a UNIX geek.

i can’t make any kind of statement with leg shaving. my leg hair is too pale. if i decide that i want to let it grow, no one even notices.

i bet when/if they do say they regret it, it get edited out. since those shows are just big ads for plastic surgery, anyway…