On Feminity and Effort

No Seriously, What About Teh Menz raises an excellent point about fashion:

Fun fact: while femininity in general is more work than masculinity, not all feminine things are more work than masculine things. For instance, sundresses are often cheaper than blue jeans, just as comfortable (or even more comfortable when it’s hot out) and even less work (you don’t even have to bother with a top!). I suggest that chill girls who are one of the guys and don’t give a crap about their appearances consider working some sundresses into their wardrobe. (Of course, if you have considered it and your answer is ‘I don’t want to,’ no worries. Wear the things you like. All I’m asking is that you consider whether you’d like more things than you currently know you like.) Unfortunately, for the time being, dudes wearing a sundress will be taken as making some kind of Grand Statement about Gender Roles or what-the-fuck-ever. But if you’re in a social situation that means you won’t be criticized for it, try it! The goal here is that feminine things will have an equal place in the I Don’t Give A Fuck About What I Look Like place.

I have two anecdotes and am on strong enough medication I don't feel the need to create a strong narrative flow, so here it goes.

One is a conversation with my friend Andrew. Andrew is a straight, cis, male, who once spent *many* minutes complaining about all the comfortable clothes he couldn't wear without it Becoming A Thing. The ultimate prize was wearing sundresses when it was hot out. Up until that point I only wore skirts or dresses as an excuse to wear bright shiny tights, but he raised some really good points about comfort level, and I upped my sundress ownage significantly over the summer. Bonus: because there are fewer dimensions to worry about, it is significantly easier to find skirts that work with my body shape, relative to shorts. A side effect of this is that I looked a lot more feminine, but it was not the goal.

I had another friend, Sandy. Sandy is a very butch lesbian. If you looked at her hair, you would think "my is that butch." I have very traditionally feminine hair- long, straight, silky. Due to some excellent genes, it takes no work for me to get it this way. Sandy spends orders of magnitude more time and money getting her hair to look butch than I do getting my hair to look feminine.

Okay, third node. Watching Say Yes to the Dress and the Avon Lady in Pink Ribbon Inc, I was struck not only by a certain female archetype. These women are older- 40s and 50s- and wear a lot of makeup. It does not look good, because it looks completely unnatural. What's conveyed is not "I'm pretty" but "I worked very hard." It's a statement about how important she thinks looks are. It also seems to indicate a desire to be or appear to be in control , especially when combined with Lady Politician Helmet Hair.

Not with a bang, not with a whimper, but with a thwack.

It looks like the great Ally McBeal experiment is going to end not because the show is terrible (the original prediction) but because of what I like to call "The Scrubs Problem." A show has The Scrubs Problem when it's drama enough for the characters to have real emotions that I care about, but sitcom enough to never let the characters grow. I can't stand watching people I empathize hurt themselves with the same stupid decisions over and over again. I so want to hang on at least until Portia De Rossi shows up, because she is the whole reason I wanted to watch it in the first place, but it is so depressing seeing Ally run into that same wall, dust herself off, and try again.