Cattiness

Not that I'm above making catty comments about people, but screw it. I'll hit on the subject anyway. I love talking crap about people but there are a few topics I won't touch and Astarte hits on my two big ones here. It's silly to bust on some woman for wearing something she's comfortable in or grouse because other women aren't living up to some feminine standard, because then you're just helping the oppressors and all that. And the other side of that is it's really not cool to pick on women who like to wear a little lipstick and pull themselves together and look nice. It's not cool because, well, the Mouse wears lipstick and she still votes pro-choice so there.

No, I've talked about this before, so I won't get back into the fashion debates. Suffice it to say, if it's cool for men to look feminine and women to look masculine nowadays, it's fine for me to look girly if I want to. It makes me feel comfortable, and I have just as much a right to feel comfortable as anyone else. But it does raise an interesting issue, since Astarte talks about women who try to force clothes on you that you don't like because that's what's "feminine". Is it somehow more acceptable to try to shame women who wear clothes that you deem to be too frou-frou?

(I feel weird even getting into this, because I'm not even close to over-the-top. I'm still pretty laid-back and couldn't be talked into really dressing up to go out downtown, if for no other reason than the places I go to are pretty downscale. I wear jeans, but maybe with like a red top and casual heels and some lipstick, which is still girling it up beyond what some of my friends do, which is why this occurs to me.)

My girl friends nowadays are all pretty feminist, mature, and cherish their female frienships. I can't imagine picking on a friend for wearing what she likes, and my friends seem to feel the same. That being said, I'll ask one certain girlfriend if what I'm wearing is just too girly for the evening sometimes and she'll tell me her honest opinion, and vice versa if we're going to a cocktail party, I'll help her pick out shoes or whatever. No harm no foul--we're both more than aware that clothes are both about the image you want to put forward and adaptable to the situation you're in.

But I remember being younger and having girl friends make mean comments about me whenever I dare wear a skirt or "too much" make-up (again, that means like mascara and lipstick instead of just one or the other). One day about six years ago I put on what I thought was a pretty ordinary outfit--a white t-shirt and a black skirt, with either sneakers or sandals. But it was a skirt instead of shorts and I walked out into the kitchen where my roommate was and knowing that I was going out with some male friends she snapped, "Don't you think you always look so cute?" (Yes. But at the time, no. And it hurt my feelings.)

That's what Holly, one of the commenters at Utopian Hell, gets at. Cattiness can often tell us more about women and how we feel about conforming to sexual images that are crafted to appeal to men even more than any particular outfit can. The women who jump all over Astarte resent her because she is not conforming to a look they feel they have to. But jumping all over a woman for what you see as conforming too much comes from the same place--resentment at the standard now focused not on the woman perceived as not trying but now on the woman who seems to be succeeding all too well.

Like I pointed out below in picking on Lithwick's worrying on the issue of working moms vs stay-at-home moms, it's time to step out and see that women are being falsely pitted against each other for some platonic ideal of male approval in order to disempower us. The ideal male approval is a lie, the idea that some look is ideally feminine or feminist is a lie, it's all bullshit.