In the past year I’ve finally become comfortable with being more feminine as far as my appearance goes. When I was younger and even as I grew older I was constantly bombarded by my parents, my teachers, the media, and everything else to believe that being a woman was being inferior in some manner or another especially a feminine woman. I spent most of my later teen years presenting as butch or you know generally masculine in appearance because I grew tired of the double standards of being told I had to be one way and that the only possible way for me as a woman to be happy and productive was to find a suitable husband, have kids, and be a stay at home mom. This was only made worse by the fact I have epilepsy and was told by various elders that I couldn’t live a full life on my own. Being butch was more comfortable in some ways and a great deal less comfortable in others. If you look at my blog you can see I’m a big fan of all things frills, bright colors, and generally girly things. Not the sort of things you think of when you think feminists let alone butch women.

While I was treated as more of an equal by most men I didn’t feel I was being true to myself or that I was helping the fact that so many feminine women are treated with such disrespect and disregard about the only thing I liked was I attracted feminine women and often times got compared to Shane from the L Word. (Not the most shining example of a butch woman, but still rather flattering to me.)

I was also uncomfortable with being more feminine because when I was barely even a preteen I was molested not once or twice, but for two years, countless times. I was afraid of being found attractive or wearing anything that may of been considered even mildly suggestive because like so many other girls I was brought up to think that that was more or less ‘asking for it.’ Which isn’t the case at all, but when your young and have no strong female rolemodels in your life you believe whatever it is the people you look up to believe until proven otherwise. The last thing I wanted was to go through the pain I had in those two years all over again.

It took seeing a therapist and reading various things that showed me that it wasn’t being a woman in society that was wrong it was society itself and that I had absolutely nothing to be ashamed of, yet despite that I still find at work and in other situations that the fact I am an attractive young woman brings people to question any skills or abilities I may have and seems to make men who come into my store think it’s okay to cat call me or to refer to me as “baby” or other ‘pet’ names that I think are degrading. I wouldn’t even want someone I was seeing romantically referring to me as a baby the only people I don’t mind referring to me as their baby are my parents for obvious reasons. Nor do I agree with the fact that when men compliment me they act as though I owe them something more then a polite thank you. And I think we all know what that something more is.

Yes I like makeup, kawaii things, shopping, and stereotypical girly things. That doesn’t mean I’m not a feminist and even if I wasn’t a feminist it doesn’t mean you have the right to degrade me or treat me as though I’m less of a person then my male counter parts. Also despite popular belief one can be beautiful, confident, and intelligent and though it may make me sound slightly vain I consider myself all of those things, yet the only thing people notice when they see me are my looks.  I’m also independent I don’t require anyone’s validation, but I do ask that if I treat you with respect you do the same for me.

This and many other reasons are why I get so pissed off when people say sexism doesn’t still exist and that women are treated as equals to men and I mean I haven’t even touched on society’s crazy ideas when it comes to how the media makes women feel about their bodies and the odd you should be super sexy, but if you are then you’re a slut or that if you aren’t super sexual you’re some sort of prude. Just so many various things pissing me off right now about how I and sadly most other women are being treated even in today’s society.