~Feminine self presentation in a patriarchal society~

I read this thing a couple of hours ago, which someone reblogged as "monstrous femininity", which I thought was a really good way of describing it.  It made me think about how I present myself, how I used to present myself, what my motivations for doing those things are, etc.

Let's track my self-presentation over the years:

• birth - age 11: cute gender-neutral tomboy girl
• jr high - high school: cute soft-punx harlot girl, cute scenester kawaii girl, cute indie girl, cute street urchin stoner girl
• high school +1: cute standard Forever 21 church girl (idk)
• lately: chapstick lesbian dyke who don't give a shit

Let's see what my motivations (which I'm aware of) over these weird changes were:

• mom who liked the idea of raising me gender-neutral(ish)
• being stripped of my identity as an American, which was a really integral part of who I was as a kid, after I moved back to the U.S. (after having been an expat in Korea) bc I looked Korean n therefore was Korean to everyone concerned
• blind clinging to "counterculture" (read: countercultures originated by disaffected young white people, henceforth to be referred to simply as "counterculture") bc it was abt *embracing weird* n building identity off of being different n marginalized etc at a stage where my identity was in shambles
• being uncomfortable w how different I was fm all the South O.C. girls at my cult/church
• ???? WHY DO I CONTINUE TO DRESS/LOOK LIKE A DYKE?????

Like I said that blog post made me really examine everything and idk

I think the more I got into feminism and social justice, the more I really saw how shitty everything was, esp. men (sorry men).  This is rly Angry Grrls 101, but really, fucking every portrayal of girl in the media (including non-mainstream media) is prep for pleasing boys.  Including "indie" shit - manic pixie dream girls, nudey punx grrrls, etc etc all of the stuff that claims to be subversive but isn't at fucking all.  Idk it's supposed to be abt taking reclaiming yrself fm the hegemonic idea of what an attractive young person is supposed to be, what successful looks like, what cool is, etc etc, but just bc yr ideal of beauty is slightly divergent fm what u see on mainstream media doesn't mean it's not still fucking problematic.  There's this propensity for "ostracized" (but actually rly privileged) young ppl to ascribe some kind of moral superiority to their particular brands of subculture, some kind of heightened political social awareness bullshit, like "I'm a better person than u bc my friends both IRL and URL think it's cool to read philosophy n wear glasses," but rly that's such fucking bullshit idk.  (There's a lot of really cool queer punk stuff that's awesome and inclusive n stuff but I didn't discover that until really recently, so)

Anyway it's all the same it's all patriarchal it's all shit.

And I think the reason I started presenting in a way that displeased my mom displeased everyone displeased myself really is that I didn't want to present myself in ANY WAY that catered to the male gaze, I didn't want to be attractive to those awful cishet art school boys, I didn't want to be Asian arm candy for some pretentious manarchist asshole, I didn't want to be fodder for some tortured "marginalized" boy's reeking-of-privilege short story

I don't want a nice Korean boy to look at me and think there's someone I could bring home

I don't want to be socially acceptable dating material

I don't think I want boys looking at me at all

Idk it's all weird, it's all v weird I guess

The point is, I used to feel guilty for not caring about my appearance as much as I used to?  I used to beat myself up and call myself lazy or tell myself I was "falling for the lesbian trap" (whatever the fuck that means idk).  But I understand why how I look and how I dress changed so much.  I didn't stop caring abt how I look, I just started wanting to come off as a completely diff person than how I used to.  It's not bc I'm lazy or even a lil bit gay* or smth, it was just a rxn to all this godawful male gaze shit

And this is all very sad bc even if I'm trying to rebel against the patriarchy n what they tell me a woman has to be** and how that's even prevalent in the subcultures I used to put on a 10ft pedestal, I'm still v much a part of it, I'm still reacting to it, I still have to live in it and interact w ppl in it and goddamn.

* I'm way more than a lil bit gay, tbh, but w/e poetic license
** And of course there is nothing wrong with being feminine or wanting to be attractive to men, this is all just me