I am a fat, gray haired, 52 year old women and when I gained all my weight suddenly (about 15 years ago from a sudden sudden temporary thyroid shutdown) it was horrifying for me. I had spent years trying to pass as the right kind of female despite broad shoulders, no hips etc. Now I was fat too?!
I started studying the people in my life who were fat and beautiful and noticed that they are not objectively more or less attractive than their fat counterparts who did not seem to track as beautiful. I started to delve deeper into the French concept of jolie-laide (beautiful-ugly) and I realize that really the key to crossing that line from laide to jolie-laide was confidence. Wearing things that made you feel confident and taking that confidence into the world. And I worked on that instead of working on impossible tasks like losing 30% of my body weight or changing my fundamental shape or reversing the outward effects of birthing 4 children. Wildly I have received more spontaneous complements on my looks, hair color etc in the past 5 years than in the 47 before. My friends coming into middle age despite fighting against it so hard seem to look to me for inspiration on how to cope.
For me the most freeing (and apparently attractive) thing was letting go of trying to pass and learning to just be me confidently in the world. Ironically while I was figuring this out I lost one of my daughters to gender ideology. Maybe it is something that can only come with age and time, but I have been reading your stuff for a while now Eliza and this is one of the most insightful things you have written. I want to blast it from the rooftops
YESS the concept of jolie-laide!! 🙌 or what I like to call “the realistic, human beauty standards that men already get to live by”!
I have been embracing it too- as I get to accept my average or unattractive features as part of a greater, overall-attractive whole. I think the concept of “gestalt” is key- in fact, the problem with people suffering from clinically diagnosable “body dysmorphia” is that they fail to see their bodies in gestalt. They objectify all their features and see them as discrete and out of context. Teaching oneself to see one’s face or body in gestalt is key to overcoming BDD.
I have been undergoing a similar healing process with my body dysmorphia (I always thought I was hideously ugly), where I’ve been instead focusing on the overall package I want to convey- and it’s working! Confidence, openness and warmth can truly turn your whole life around and bring people into it who admire you, respect you, and are attracted to you. I’m beginning to experience that now.
I had a life changing trip to Greece a few years ago that helped change how I view my looks as well (I’m Italian and Greek American). I realized “oh I actually look super Greek!” Everyone had my nose, there. I saw my face in the art around me. A good looking guy even asked me out (?!) and told me my face “looks like it’s from another time” (?!?!) and showed me a photo of a 19th century drawing of Greek women from the local museum on his phone (!!!). (He also told me “you don’t dress like you’re American” which is possibly the best compliment I’ve ever received 😆. Boy was trying HARD!) I told him I am ethnically Greek and he was SO excited! That trip changed how I viewed myself. Everyone there knew I was Greek and was excited to hear me confirm it. It felt like coming home.
I might not be as beautiful as I would like- that guy didn’t tell me I was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen- and I wouldn’t have believed him if he did!- but a “face from another time??” Yeah, I can live with that. At times when I think I look ugly, I now hear that compliment- Is my face ugly? Or just cool in an archaic and slightly exotic way?- and I put my appearance in the context of Greece/Rome/Byzantium/the Ancient Mediterranean and I get lost in the electrifying history of my ancestors.
So back to jolie-laide: French and European Latins in general are so much more sophisticated and sexy than Americans when it comes to beauty, probably bc they have an ancientness that America lacks- and a history of extreme beauty in the Classical period through to the renaissance, whereas everything in America is about shiny, new, and immediate value. Being able to go to Europe and walk around in a beautiful dress, (and maybe even a pretty hat without anyone judging you?) through crumbling, imperfect, but beautiful ancient ruins… They’re just working on a whole nother level.
This applies in some cases, I think, to young men as well. A young trans-identified male I know is very short and slight (as is his whole family), artistic and creative, and clearly does not feel he meets with society's expectations for masculinity. I feel so sad that he seems to feel he can only express himself by denying reality. I'm also sad that all our work in the past in opening up horizons for women and men has slammed shut again in the prison of gender.
Agree! Growing up in the 80s, I had a sense that this whole gendered fashion thing was going away. Maybe more so for women, but still, guys were getting their ears pierced, wearing nail polish and make up. Short hair on women was very common (even hip and edgy) and my college friends rarely wore makeup to the extent that the high school girls did(I see you blue eye shadow). The new gender standards feel very regressive and the young people are leaning into stereotypes again. The FtM girls are performing their version of masculinity so hard, it’s cringe to watch. Thanks as always, Eliza for your writing.
Eliza - not to overstate things - but……THIS could be the subject of a dissertation and potentially an entire field of study. What you’ve zeroed in on here feels like the cornerstone of this entire phenomena. I’ve been a follower of your work and other thinkers in this arena - but too chickenshit to put pen to paper on my own. Though this example fleshes out something I think we’ve all known for sometime, this framing is helpful for illustrating the prison of gender from the beginning. I hate to spend too much time thinking about ways to encourage the lost to come back to reality - but if the concept of passing as “cis” becomes commonplace in their parlance - maybe this house of cards could fall.
I think a lot of the issue is accepting our own unique human bodies. The other day I read something about the fashion industry that made sense to me. It was saying a lot of top designers in the fashion industry were men attracted to boys. Therefore more and more models looked like young boys- think Twiggy. More and more young girls thought they needed to look like the models to be "beautiful". We need to start valuing character, integrity, and morals instead of outward appearances.
This observation that femininity is a performance is what launched Judith Butler to fame and notoriety with "Gender Trouble" in 1990. She was mostly though restating in opaque academic jargon what the psychoanalyst Joan Riviere had expressed more clearly in 1929 in a still-luminous article called "Womanliness as Masquerade."
In short: yes! Trying to be successfully feminine in our culture, or for that matter most any culture I've ever heard of, is enough to make anyone think it would be so much easier and less awful if one could just be a boy. I'm so glad that when I was brooding about all this at 12 no one was encouraging me to think I could do just that.
I would think most women and girls can relate to this wanting to "pass" in the most general sense of feeling like we are accepted as we are in society, that we don't need to work diligently to change who we are to move happily in the world. I remember having a strange satisfaction with cataloguing my entire body in 7th grade and determining that my eyelashes and wrists were the only acceptable parts of my body. I was "doing the work" in a way! Defining the problem space, which was a long list of flaws to try to correct. Longing for "congruence" can map onto us all, before and during genderqueer overlays which only add dangerous irreversible choices to the cultural landscape. It's depressing honestly. Can there ever be a human culture where women and girls do not have such anxiety and insecurity?
My belief as a historian who has published on related topics is that the period since the 1970s is probably the worst there has ever been for girls and women’s suffering from anxiety and insecurity about their bodies and selves.
I don’t believe this is a consequence of 1970s women’s liberation feminism which was trying to create a more equal society and rejected beauty standards. Rather aggressive capitalist competition intensified by the rightward turn of the 1980s and image-reproduction-technologies has put girls in the position of being expected to compete and succeed in every part of life and throughout their lives. Corporate feminism- lean in - assumes women should share conventional/capitalist aspirations and the unending rat race this imposes (routine for men but they didn’t do childcare &housework).
In the early 20th century women had left the need to be pretty behind when they married- mothers weren’t expected to look like young single girls. They might want to be pretty and regret the loss of their beauty but they weren’t expected to perform in that arena. Ditto working women. The tiny % of elite women who we see dressed up in paintings and early photos were exceptional also in their they didn’t have to do childcare or housework.
I also wonder about the level of bullying- why is this treated as normal /acceptable behaviour? And why is it so devastating? I think that also has become more intensely worrying because there’s huge pressure to care about having friends and what friends think. Competition and ranking becomes routine in every part of a girl’s life.
I found that description of passing fascinating also. It links to performativity which was an innovative and helpful concept until Butler started pretending that gender could replace biological sex. Her ghastly prose was always trying to give the impression it was more complex than it was. But it did solve the theoretical problem of how sex roles changed and how to integrate individual agency.
Thanks for sharing your knowledge and insights Hera! It makes sense to me. Your analysis puts me in the first wave of girls affected by this, as I turned 12 in 1970. I knew about the women's liberation movement through the women I babysat for, who were 10-15 years older than me. I was ready for it! I had experienced and resented the sexism in my own family, and I probably absorbed reports in the media about the feminism of that time. It was in the air, at least in some parts of the country. I read every Ms. magazine at the homes of my babysitting clients (as well as some questionably appropriate content tucked under magazines beside the bed such as The Joy of Sex.) When I went to college in 1976, every paper I wrote had a title like "Women in the time of Dickens," or "Women in Ancient China." While I do not agree with people who blame feminism for all the ills of this disastrous moment with gender ideology, I do think it's clear that academic feminism played a part. And I do think there were some frames I embraced that did not help my life, and in some ways hurt it. I find the work of Louise Perry and Mary Harrington compelling in some ways. However, on this subject, I also know that my growing knowledge and embrace of feminism in the 70s actually mitigated this insecurity and self-hatred to some degree.
I appreciate your points about earlier generations of women, and I think you put it just right. Losing youth (and any degree of conventional beauty, for those who had it) is inevitably sad in a universal and human sense. While I can see insecurity and struggle to feel worthy in both my mother and grandmother, it is different than what I experienced, more a result of limited options and sexism. But other roles took their place, and as you say, they were no longer expected to "perform" in that way, unlike women ever since. It seems ironic that these two trends happened at the same time, leaving so many girls feeling as disempowered as ever.
Well said! I also think "pretty" is what trans identified males are actually aiming for as well, which is why activists often feel entitled to tear down natal women about looking like men when they actually mean ,"aren't pretty enough". If your conception of "what is a woman" is "that which I am attracted to", then you see why there is such a wish-fulfillment push to trans boys young.
I am, as always, glad that I grew up in the 70s and 80s. While I often joked that maybe I wasn’t supposed to have been female because I was terrible at being a woman, and my guy friends always told me I was an “honorary dude,” it never would have occurred to me to try to transition and identify as male. I just laughed about my inability to remember birthdays and apply eyeliner, and enjoyed being a weird woman. After all, weren’t all those gender stereotypes a thing of past anyway? Apparently not…I find the whole gender thing to be incredibly sexist and regressive.
It absolutely is sexist and regressive along with misogynistic and homophobic. The worst part is this affecting young women the most. I as well grew up in the 70's/80's and hated makeup, played basketball or any sport CYO would allow me to and stopped wearing dresses around the age of 10. But i sure as hell never felt like a boy let alone wanted to be one. The only thing I envy about boy's/men is being able to pee anywhere. That would have been super convenient in my drinking beer in the park days.
A very thoughtful piece. As the omnipresent gender borg flings the gates wide open for any and all men to claim womanhood regardless of how they look or act, it trains heterosexual women and lesbians alike to gate keep themselves from femaleness if they don’t conform to the most regressive feminine sex stereotypes. The latest episode (March 2024) of the wonderful podcast Stone Butch Disco talks about how today in the age of gender ideology there is diminishing conceptual space for young butch lesbians to claim and embrace their female embodiment. They face tremendous pressure to identify as queer, non-binary or trans. Claiming “woman” and “female”, however, is viewed as suspect and likely rooted in “internalized transphobia.” The more I study the dynamics of gender ideology, the more evidence I uncover that female embodiment itself is gender ideology’s kryptonite. The ideology construes the mere empirical fact of femaleness as maliciously exclusionary. It’s the reality that can’t be spoken, hence, its severance from the word “woman” in our language (pregnant people, uterus havers, chest feeding, lactating families, birth parent, bodies with vaginas). Over and over again, gender ideology promotes the expansion of male optionality by demanding that females give things up. It is the most profoundly woman-hating force I’ve witnessed in my 62 years of living.
The same is true of lots of roles in society. I’m a lawyer. Looking like a lawyer as a woman means dressing conservatively, wearing light makeup and having a tidy hairstyle. When I started practicing law 35 years ago you had to wear a skirt suit and heels. Thankfully the dress code has relaxed a bit, but not much.
I still will never have the gravitas a man does in court. I’ve learned to rely on my verbal, social and organizational skills to make up for what women lack in presence and power. I worry a false promise is being sold to young women that they will have all of the privileges of men as trans-men. They won’t.
I realize this is your own opinion and experience, but I just wanted to share that I strongly disagree that a woman can’t have the same gravitas a man does on a stage or in court or in a chamber, and that women do not lack the presence and power of men. I find that, ironically, a big way to reclaim power is to dress in feminine clothes that emphasize the female body, not menswear.
This is so true. Back in the 80's when I was working for a large stock brokerage firm (I was not a trader) my female boss flat out told me (in so many words) that I needed to start wearing suits. I was floored that someone was telling me how I should dress considering I was dressed appropriately every day. I never bought in to that B.S. and ended up quitting.
Good for you! I think it okay that female power dressing looks different from male power dressing. We have many examples of women in power- like queens and goddesses and cool Disney villains- and none of them wear pants! Dress like a man and you look like a little, soft man. Dress like a woman and you look like a queen.
Well, I do not see that happening in my world. And I live in a very liberal state and city. More power to you if you can make femininity work as a source of power.
I understand! I come from a different field but maybe similar when it comes to formal dress and behavior- classical music. Everything’s about men in black tuxedos performing and being gravitas-y. I have found that trying to wear menswear so I look “professional” makes me look like a shrimpier, dumpier man, so I gave up completely (plus I hate wearing pants and shoulder pads are terrible and they’re meant to emphasize secondary sexual characteristics I don’t even have) and now aim for “Evil Queen/Disney villain” and I think it works a lot better! :D
Yes! The two who medicalized are white. The “they” girl is Asian, but is not medicalizing. Brilliant girl who was class valedictorian. The Asian girls ran the school and I’m very grateful my white daughter was part of that group.
I totally agree about transmen - they also anger some gay men. I was told a funny/sad story about a teen girl who was a trans man’s discovery they didn’t like male culture-too sexist/sexual/brash/crass.
I’m assuming you are American? My experience (supported later by some demographic differences) was that the USA was way more committed to rigid sex roles in very complicated ways than NZ where I come from. I envied the Southern USA women I lived with some aspects of their femininity and I also knew some impressively intellectual USA women.
But OZ women have the most astounding presence & power of the 4 Anglo cultures I’ve lived in.
I live in the Bay Area, California. I became interested in this topic a couple of years ago when my 25-year-old daughter’s friends started adopting “they” pronouns and their younger sisters identifying as transgender. Two have now fully transitioned (mastectomy and hormones).
Thankfully, we seem to have escaped this phenomenon in our own family.
The Bay Area has always seen itself as progressive of matters of sex. My younger sister is a lesbian. Gay men have a huge presence. So I don’t think we have much in common with the Southern culture to which you refer—although I do agree some Southern women know how to harness their femininity in powerful ways.
My comment was about how much of life is a performance in different ways. We shape ourselves to fit the expectations of our various audiences. As a lawyer, I need to persuade judges and juries, so I need to meet their expectations of how I should look, sound, and carry myself. No one is “authentic” all of the time.
Two of these girls now calling themselves trans men are both short, baby-faced and interested in female things—dance snd fashion. Another in a “they” and now in medical school. Her boyfriend is also a “they.” (Scratching head) My point was all of them are eventually going to be faced with the reality of having to market themselves to get jobs, clients, relationships. They don’t look like men and won’t be treated as men. It’s hard to see how they’re going to succeed.
In the end, I don't think they really want to be men. "They" just want to be different and more than likely some are same sex attracted, IMO. This is even more true if they are white and come from wealth. I think anti-whiteness has hit this generation of young people hard. My friend who lives in Menlo Park, very affluent area as most probably know, had a list in her head of all the families she knew who had trans kids. I then asked, how many of those kids are/were girls? So, the answer was most of them and all white. Social contagion.
I think that it’s not just that the definition of “acceptable” woman has narrowed - it’s that there isn’t one at all anymore. The expectations and stereotypes that are projected on teenage girls today are so contradictory that there’s no way to meet them. They are expected to have perfect fashion, hair, and makeup - but then they are shallow. Expected to be sexually active - but then are sluts. Expected to be responsible and hardworking in school - but then are goody-goodies. Expected to conform - but then are basic and boring. Expected to be thin, but not be preoccupied with weight. Expected to be athletic, but mocked if they aren’t the best, or if their sport is less socially acceptable. I think my daughter would have been willing to conform if she could, but she couldn’t handle the contradictions and the fact that no matter what a teenage girl does, she will be mocked and ridiculed. But it’s not cool to ridicule trans people. That provided her with protection.
Too many contradictions. I wrote a piece about this a long time ago that was like not a prude but not a slut but not a show-off but not a bore but not a snowflake but not basic
Yes - to be "trans" is to opt out of whatever you think you will not be able to succeed at as your sex.
You don't want to have to dress up or you think you will never be beautiful or "hot" enough as a woman, or you will be perceived as somehow lesser if people know you're a woman and yet you don't do some typically female thing, or you only do it sometimes, or your don't do that thing well enough. (The same things apply to males, who think they aren't masculine enough or won't quite be able to be themselves and be successful, attractive men.)
Becoming "non-binary" is an opt out. It's saying I don't have to conform to anything the other females (or males) have to conform to because I'm not one of them. However, it's also exceptionalizing and "othering" yourself. I'm not a woman, I'm special, I'm non-binary, so the rules don't apply to me!
Becoming a "trans-man" says, judge me as if I am a man, not a woman. I think you will like me better as a man, society.
The obvious solution is simply for society to be more accepting of, and open to, all sorts of ways of being male or being female, and putting less emphasis on specific features and on appearance altogether. In other words, change the rules. Get rid of the rules altogether, and just let people act how they feel comfortable - as long as they are still kind and hard-working.
If a woman feels she can still be a woman AND:
- opt out of make-up, dressing up, and trying to be the "hot" one (or just dress up sometimes if she wants to)
- still be attractive to others, even if she doesn't have "model good looks";
- do what feels comfortable, and just be herself, not having to "act" a certain way that she thinks others expect of her simply because she is a woman;
- (and the key) not be penalized in any way for being atypical or not being the "model" woman (there should be no "model" woman).
then maybe she won't feel compelled to pretend she is a man, and chemically and surgically assault her body!
It's up to society to: (1) accept all types of people and broaden what we deem to be attractive and successful, or (2) keep sending wrong messages about what it takes to be a successful woman (or man) in society, and then encouraging those who don't think they will be successful as one sex to "opt out" by denying and rejecting their own sex, and either pretending that they are no sex or that they are the opposite sex.
“ The obvious solution is simply for society to be more accepting of, and open to, all sorts of ways of being male or being female, and putting less emphasis on specific features and on appearance altogether.”. THIS!
''Here we find the language of “passing” applied not just to passing as the opposite sex but passing as an “acceptable” member of your own sex'' i've had this for most of my life. i used to wonder what a real woman is supposed to be. i don't think it's been unusual for the las 100 years or so.
Put simply… looks really do matter as does ‘the look’ you like and therefore attempt to achieve and wish to have. It’s either based in reality or it’s a fantasy . As every good Grandparent said to their grandchild, you are what you are .. wear the clothes that suit you and never wear clothes that are wearing you! There is nothing wrong with anyone’s shape and looks what’s wrong is if you pretend you look like something else! It’s no good trying to look like Naomi Campbell if you are white.. but you can mimic the hair the clothes the style If it’s a hooked nose it’s hooked nose make a feature out of you beautiful eyes or long legs or shapely hands NO one is perfect! And if you were born with hairy hobbit feet then so be it.. we just need people to grow up with reasonable expectations.. ugly ducklings usually turn into swans and if you don’t quite make it into the swan of your dreams it doesn’t mean you’re a lesbian ok? You can find a male who isn’t quite Mr Universe.. cmon grannies step up here and help the mums drum this level of self confidence into their children and there is nothing wrong with a bit of teasing in the playground it’s not bullying it’s teaching resilience and possibly reality and the ability to tease back find some wit and discover it’s not the end of the world and that you can cope in the rough and tumble of real life!
I mean: it's kind of unfortunate that you imply being a lesbian is the worst of all possible fates and only happens to ugly women who can't attract men.
That's an unpleasant and inaccurate cliche from the 1950s.
“This was pre-social media, pre-filters, pre-fillers. And there was no escape via trans identification. So the pressure has gone up and a valve has opened to vent that pressure. Girls who struggle with the impossible and often contradictory expectations girls and women face—and the peer pressure and bullying that comes down on girls who cannot or will not conform to these expectations—can opt out now.” I think this is the absolute heart of this issue, and one of the best sentences of yours I’ve ever read.
Going through puberty for girls is a self-denying transition anyways- one where you will end up a sub-class of human at the end- if you’re successful or unsuccessful- so why not go through a transition that will end with you part of the dominant class, frees you of the impossible standards of appearance and behavior, and earns you basic decency and respect from society? I can definitely see the appeal.
The problem, of course, is that you can’t change your sex- you are simply sickening yourself as a woman with the wrong hormones. AND you are capitulating to misogyny by bolstering the notion that humanless sex ornament = woman.
I’ve been finding real empowerment in body-realistic Instagram pages like Bree Lenehan and anti-plastic surgery/filter pages like celebface.
Going to the country of my ancestors and feeling beautiful there among the depictions of women in the art who have my features (and getting flirted at by local guys who see my looks as normal or even beautiful!) has also helped immensely.
But ultimately, what really has to change is for men to stop mistreating women. It’s not “innate” for girls to feel so anxious and insecure about their bodies at puberty. It’s bc boys really start enforcing social control upon girls at that age. I remember so viscerally the mimed vomiting of the boys at the girls’ natural body hair. You’d think mothers and fathers would step in to say “you’re healthy and normal. Those boys are mean.” And the boys would be reprimanded by their families. Instead, you’re told as a girl that you should probably start shaving, waxing and plucking now. The transition begins.
I think only old style progressive parents told girls they didn’t have to be pretty - and boys they didn’t have to be tough. Such a huge gift to children and the adults they become. There was some 70s research showing that such girls were more capable of resisting abuse and more confident in their bodies.
I imagine it's very common for girls to feel they don't "pass" as a member of their own sex. I certainly felt like that as a girl and young woman because I didn't enjoy dolls or feel comfortable dressing up, wearing make-up, heels, etc.
When I was in college I was shocked when someone described me as "feminine." My voice and body type are unmistakably female but I had never "identified" as "feminine" because my interests did not align with those stereotypes. It felt like a slur, although the speaker meant it kindly. Why was I so resistant to accepting my femaleness?
Only much later in life was I able to accept that my voice and body are prototypically feminine, and that it is not a bad thing. What does it mean that even someone like me, who looked "feminine" despite my lack of effort, wanted to reject it when young?
I’m GenX and look very feminine and pretty but I completely relate to not being able to “do femininity”. I’ve always had more male interests and found it easier to hang with guys in some ways (I didn’t like being pretty because it made it hard to hang out with guys). A lot of women treated me like I was an alien from another planet. To this day, I don’t like to wear makeup—besides having sensitive skin I am just sure I would smear something and go all day looking like a fool.
I am a fat, gray haired, 52 year old women and when I gained all my weight suddenly (about 15 years ago from a sudden sudden temporary thyroid shutdown) it was horrifying for me. I had spent years trying to pass as the right kind of female despite broad shoulders, no hips etc. Now I was fat too?!
I started studying the people in my life who were fat and beautiful and noticed that they are not objectively more or less attractive than their fat counterparts who did not seem to track as beautiful. I started to delve deeper into the French concept of jolie-laide (beautiful-ugly) and I realize that really the key to crossing that line from laide to jolie-laide was confidence. Wearing things that made you feel confident and taking that confidence into the world. And I worked on that instead of working on impossible tasks like losing 30% of my body weight or changing my fundamental shape or reversing the outward effects of birthing 4 children. Wildly I have received more spontaneous complements on my looks, hair color etc in the past 5 years than in the 47 before. My friends coming into middle age despite fighting against it so hard seem to look to me for inspiration on how to cope.
For me the most freeing (and apparently attractive) thing was letting go of trying to pass and learning to just be me confidently in the world. Ironically while I was figuring this out I lost one of my daughters to gender ideology. Maybe it is something that can only come with age and time, but I have been reading your stuff for a while now Eliza and this is one of the most insightful things you have written. I want to blast it from the rooftops
YESS the concept of jolie-laide!! 🙌 or what I like to call “the realistic, human beauty standards that men already get to live by”!
I have been embracing it too- as I get to accept my average or unattractive features as part of a greater, overall-attractive whole. I think the concept of “gestalt” is key- in fact, the problem with people suffering from clinically diagnosable “body dysmorphia” is that they fail to see their bodies in gestalt. They objectify all their features and see them as discrete and out of context. Teaching oneself to see one’s face or body in gestalt is key to overcoming BDD.
I have been undergoing a similar healing process with my body dysmorphia (I always thought I was hideously ugly), where I’ve been instead focusing on the overall package I want to convey- and it’s working! Confidence, openness and warmth can truly turn your whole life around and bring people into it who admire you, respect you, and are attracted to you. I’m beginning to experience that now.
I had a life changing trip to Greece a few years ago that helped change how I view my looks as well (I’m Italian and Greek American). I realized “oh I actually look super Greek!” Everyone had my nose, there. I saw my face in the art around me. A good looking guy even asked me out (?!) and told me my face “looks like it’s from another time” (?!?!) and showed me a photo of a 19th century drawing of Greek women from the local museum on his phone (!!!). (He also told me “you don’t dress like you’re American” which is possibly the best compliment I’ve ever received 😆. Boy was trying HARD!) I told him I am ethnically Greek and he was SO excited! That trip changed how I viewed myself. Everyone there knew I was Greek and was excited to hear me confirm it. It felt like coming home.
I might not be as beautiful as I would like- that guy didn’t tell me I was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen- and I wouldn’t have believed him if he did!- but a “face from another time??” Yeah, I can live with that. At times when I think I look ugly, I now hear that compliment- Is my face ugly? Or just cool in an archaic and slightly exotic way?- and I put my appearance in the context of Greece/Rome/Byzantium/the Ancient Mediterranean and I get lost in the electrifying history of my ancestors.
So back to jolie-laide: French and European Latins in general are so much more sophisticated and sexy than Americans when it comes to beauty, probably bc they have an ancientness that America lacks- and a history of extreme beauty in the Classical period through to the renaissance, whereas everything in America is about shiny, new, and immediate value. Being able to go to Europe and walk around in a beautiful dress, (and maybe even a pretty hat without anyone judging you?) through crumbling, imperfect, but beautiful ancient ruins… They’re just working on a whole nother level.
Thanks for sharing your story and inspiring me! 💕
This applies in some cases, I think, to young men as well. A young trans-identified male I know is very short and slight (as is his whole family), artistic and creative, and clearly does not feel he meets with society's expectations for masculinity. I feel so sad that he seems to feel he can only express himself by denying reality. I'm also sad that all our work in the past in opening up horizons for women and men has slammed shut again in the prison of gender.
Agree! Growing up in the 80s, I had a sense that this whole gendered fashion thing was going away. Maybe more so for women, but still, guys were getting their ears pierced, wearing nail polish and make up. Short hair on women was very common (even hip and edgy) and my college friends rarely wore makeup to the extent that the high school girls did(I see you blue eye shadow). The new gender standards feel very regressive and the young people are leaning into stereotypes again. The FtM girls are performing their version of masculinity so hard, it’s cringe to watch. Thanks as always, Eliza for your writing.
Eliza - not to overstate things - but……THIS could be the subject of a dissertation and potentially an entire field of study. What you’ve zeroed in on here feels like the cornerstone of this entire phenomena. I’ve been a follower of your work and other thinkers in this arena - but too chickenshit to put pen to paper on my own. Though this example fleshes out something I think we’ve all known for sometime, this framing is helpful for illustrating the prison of gender from the beginning. I hate to spend too much time thinking about ways to encourage the lost to come back to reality - but if the concept of passing as “cis” becomes commonplace in their parlance - maybe this house of cards could fall.
I think a lot of the issue is accepting our own unique human bodies. The other day I read something about the fashion industry that made sense to me. It was saying a lot of top designers in the fashion industry were men attracted to boys. Therefore more and more models looked like young boys- think Twiggy. More and more young girls thought they needed to look like the models to be "beautiful". We need to start valuing character, integrity, and morals instead of outward appearances.
This observation that femininity is a performance is what launched Judith Butler to fame and notoriety with "Gender Trouble" in 1990. She was mostly though restating in opaque academic jargon what the psychoanalyst Joan Riviere had expressed more clearly in 1929 in a still-luminous article called "Womanliness as Masquerade."
In short: yes! Trying to be successfully feminine in our culture, or for that matter most any culture I've ever heard of, is enough to make anyone think it would be so much easier and less awful if one could just be a boy. I'm so glad that when I was brooding about all this at 12 no one was encouraging me to think I could do just that.
I would think most women and girls can relate to this wanting to "pass" in the most general sense of feeling like we are accepted as we are in society, that we don't need to work diligently to change who we are to move happily in the world. I remember having a strange satisfaction with cataloguing my entire body in 7th grade and determining that my eyelashes and wrists were the only acceptable parts of my body. I was "doing the work" in a way! Defining the problem space, which was a long list of flaws to try to correct. Longing for "congruence" can map onto us all, before and during genderqueer overlays which only add dangerous irreversible choices to the cultural landscape. It's depressing honestly. Can there ever be a human culture where women and girls do not have such anxiety and insecurity?
My belief as a historian who has published on related topics is that the period since the 1970s is probably the worst there has ever been for girls and women’s suffering from anxiety and insecurity about their bodies and selves.
I don’t believe this is a consequence of 1970s women’s liberation feminism which was trying to create a more equal society and rejected beauty standards. Rather aggressive capitalist competition intensified by the rightward turn of the 1980s and image-reproduction-technologies has put girls in the position of being expected to compete and succeed in every part of life and throughout their lives. Corporate feminism- lean in - assumes women should share conventional/capitalist aspirations and the unending rat race this imposes (routine for men but they didn’t do childcare &housework).
In the early 20th century women had left the need to be pretty behind when they married- mothers weren’t expected to look like young single girls. They might want to be pretty and regret the loss of their beauty but they weren’t expected to perform in that arena. Ditto working women. The tiny % of elite women who we see dressed up in paintings and early photos were exceptional also in their they didn’t have to do childcare or housework.
I also wonder about the level of bullying- why is this treated as normal /acceptable behaviour? And why is it so devastating? I think that also has become more intensely worrying because there’s huge pressure to care about having friends and what friends think. Competition and ranking becomes routine in every part of a girl’s life.
I found that description of passing fascinating also. It links to performativity which was an innovative and helpful concept until Butler started pretending that gender could replace biological sex. Her ghastly prose was always trying to give the impression it was more complex than it was. But it did solve the theoretical problem of how sex roles changed and how to integrate individual agency.
Thanks for sharing your knowledge and insights Hera! It makes sense to me. Your analysis puts me in the first wave of girls affected by this, as I turned 12 in 1970. I knew about the women's liberation movement through the women I babysat for, who were 10-15 years older than me. I was ready for it! I had experienced and resented the sexism in my own family, and I probably absorbed reports in the media about the feminism of that time. It was in the air, at least in some parts of the country. I read every Ms. magazine at the homes of my babysitting clients (as well as some questionably appropriate content tucked under magazines beside the bed such as The Joy of Sex.) When I went to college in 1976, every paper I wrote had a title like "Women in the time of Dickens," or "Women in Ancient China." While I do not agree with people who blame feminism for all the ills of this disastrous moment with gender ideology, I do think it's clear that academic feminism played a part. And I do think there were some frames I embraced that did not help my life, and in some ways hurt it. I find the work of Louise Perry and Mary Harrington compelling in some ways. However, on this subject, I also know that my growing knowledge and embrace of feminism in the 70s actually mitigated this insecurity and self-hatred to some degree.
I appreciate your points about earlier generations of women, and I think you put it just right. Losing youth (and any degree of conventional beauty, for those who had it) is inevitably sad in a universal and human sense. While I can see insecurity and struggle to feel worthy in both my mother and grandmother, it is different than what I experienced, more a result of limited options and sexism. But other roles took their place, and as you say, they were no longer expected to "perform" in that way, unlike women ever since. It seems ironic that these two trends happened at the same time, leaving so many girls feeling as disempowered as ever.
Well said! I also think "pretty" is what trans identified males are actually aiming for as well, which is why activists often feel entitled to tear down natal women about looking like men when they actually mean ,"aren't pretty enough". If your conception of "what is a woman" is "that which I am attracted to", then you see why there is such a wish-fulfillment push to trans boys young.
I am, as always, glad that I grew up in the 70s and 80s. While I often joked that maybe I wasn’t supposed to have been female because I was terrible at being a woman, and my guy friends always told me I was an “honorary dude,” it never would have occurred to me to try to transition and identify as male. I just laughed about my inability to remember birthdays and apply eyeliner, and enjoyed being a weird woman. After all, weren’t all those gender stereotypes a thing of past anyway? Apparently not…I find the whole gender thing to be incredibly sexist and regressive.
It absolutely is sexist and regressive along with misogynistic and homophobic. The worst part is this affecting young women the most. I as well grew up in the 70's/80's and hated makeup, played basketball or any sport CYO would allow me to and stopped wearing dresses around the age of 10. But i sure as hell never felt like a boy let alone wanted to be one. The only thing I envy about boy's/men is being able to pee anywhere. That would have been super convenient in my drinking beer in the park days.
A very thoughtful piece. As the omnipresent gender borg flings the gates wide open for any and all men to claim womanhood regardless of how they look or act, it trains heterosexual women and lesbians alike to gate keep themselves from femaleness if they don’t conform to the most regressive feminine sex stereotypes. The latest episode (March 2024) of the wonderful podcast Stone Butch Disco talks about how today in the age of gender ideology there is diminishing conceptual space for young butch lesbians to claim and embrace their female embodiment. They face tremendous pressure to identify as queer, non-binary or trans. Claiming “woman” and “female”, however, is viewed as suspect and likely rooted in “internalized transphobia.” The more I study the dynamics of gender ideology, the more evidence I uncover that female embodiment itself is gender ideology’s kryptonite. The ideology construes the mere empirical fact of femaleness as maliciously exclusionary. It’s the reality that can’t be spoken, hence, its severance from the word “woman” in our language (pregnant people, uterus havers, chest feeding, lactating families, birth parent, bodies with vaginas). Over and over again, gender ideology promotes the expansion of male optionality by demanding that females give things up. It is the most profoundly woman-hating force I’ve witnessed in my 62 years of living.
Wow, well said!!! I couldn't agree more
The same is true of lots of roles in society. I’m a lawyer. Looking like a lawyer as a woman means dressing conservatively, wearing light makeup and having a tidy hairstyle. When I started practicing law 35 years ago you had to wear a skirt suit and heels. Thankfully the dress code has relaxed a bit, but not much.
I still will never have the gravitas a man does in court. I’ve learned to rely on my verbal, social and organizational skills to make up for what women lack in presence and power. I worry a false promise is being sold to young women that they will have all of the privileges of men as trans-men. They won’t.
I realize this is your own opinion and experience, but I just wanted to share that I strongly disagree that a woman can’t have the same gravitas a man does on a stage or in court or in a chamber, and that women do not lack the presence and power of men. I find that, ironically, a big way to reclaim power is to dress in feminine clothes that emphasize the female body, not menswear.
This is so true. Back in the 80's when I was working for a large stock brokerage firm (I was not a trader) my female boss flat out told me (in so many words) that I needed to start wearing suits. I was floored that someone was telling me how I should dress considering I was dressed appropriately every day. I never bought in to that B.S. and ended up quitting.
Good for you! I think it okay that female power dressing looks different from male power dressing. We have many examples of women in power- like queens and goddesses and cool Disney villains- and none of them wear pants! Dress like a man and you look like a little, soft man. Dress like a woman and you look like a queen.
Well, I do not see that happening in my world. And I live in a very liberal state and city. More power to you if you can make femininity work as a source of power.
I understand! I come from a different field but maybe similar when it comes to formal dress and behavior- classical music. Everything’s about men in black tuxedos performing and being gravitas-y. I have found that trying to wear menswear so I look “professional” makes me look like a shrimpier, dumpier man, so I gave up completely (plus I hate wearing pants and shoulder pads are terrible and they’re meant to emphasize secondary sexual characteristics I don’t even have) and now aim for “Evil Queen/Disney villain” and I think it works a lot better! :D
Yes! The two who medicalized are white. The “they” girl is Asian, but is not medicalizing. Brilliant girl who was class valedictorian. The Asian girls ran the school and I’m very grateful my white daughter was part of that group.
I totally agree about transmen - they also anger some gay men. I was told a funny/sad story about a teen girl who was a trans man’s discovery they didn’t like male culture-too sexist/sexual/brash/crass.
I’m assuming you are American? My experience (supported later by some demographic differences) was that the USA was way more committed to rigid sex roles in very complicated ways than NZ where I come from. I envied the Southern USA women I lived with some aspects of their femininity and I also knew some impressively intellectual USA women.
But OZ women have the most astounding presence & power of the 4 Anglo cultures I’ve lived in.
I live in the Bay Area, California. I became interested in this topic a couple of years ago when my 25-year-old daughter’s friends started adopting “they” pronouns and their younger sisters identifying as transgender. Two have now fully transitioned (mastectomy and hormones).
Thankfully, we seem to have escaped this phenomenon in our own family.
The Bay Area has always seen itself as progressive of matters of sex. My younger sister is a lesbian. Gay men have a huge presence. So I don’t think we have much in common with the Southern culture to which you refer—although I do agree some Southern women know how to harness their femininity in powerful ways.
My comment was about how much of life is a performance in different ways. We shape ourselves to fit the expectations of our various audiences. As a lawyer, I need to persuade judges and juries, so I need to meet their expectations of how I should look, sound, and carry myself. No one is “authentic” all of the time.
Two of these girls now calling themselves trans men are both short, baby-faced and interested in female things—dance snd fashion. Another in a “they” and now in medical school. Her boyfriend is also a “they.” (Scratching head) My point was all of them are eventually going to be faced with the reality of having to market themselves to get jobs, clients, relationships. They don’t look like men and won’t be treated as men. It’s hard to see how they’re going to succeed.
In the end, I don't think they really want to be men. "They" just want to be different and more than likely some are same sex attracted, IMO. This is even more true if they are white and come from wealth. I think anti-whiteness has hit this generation of young people hard. My friend who lives in Menlo Park, very affluent area as most probably know, had a list in her head of all the families she knew who had trans kids. I then asked, how many of those kids are/were girls? So, the answer was most of them and all white. Social contagion.
As a lawyer, too, I appreciate and relate to this experience! These skills in place of assumed authority are a must have.
I think that it’s not just that the definition of “acceptable” woman has narrowed - it’s that there isn’t one at all anymore. The expectations and stereotypes that are projected on teenage girls today are so contradictory that there’s no way to meet them. They are expected to have perfect fashion, hair, and makeup - but then they are shallow. Expected to be sexually active - but then are sluts. Expected to be responsible and hardworking in school - but then are goody-goodies. Expected to conform - but then are basic and boring. Expected to be thin, but not be preoccupied with weight. Expected to be athletic, but mocked if they aren’t the best, or if their sport is less socially acceptable. I think my daughter would have been willing to conform if she could, but she couldn’t handle the contradictions and the fact that no matter what a teenage girl does, she will be mocked and ridiculed. But it’s not cool to ridicule trans people. That provided her with protection.
Too many contradictions. I wrote a piece about this a long time ago that was like not a prude but not a slut but not a show-off but not a bore but not a snowflake but not basic
Yes - to be "trans" is to opt out of whatever you think you will not be able to succeed at as your sex.
You don't want to have to dress up or you think you will never be beautiful or "hot" enough as a woman, or you will be perceived as somehow lesser if people know you're a woman and yet you don't do some typically female thing, or you only do it sometimes, or your don't do that thing well enough. (The same things apply to males, who think they aren't masculine enough or won't quite be able to be themselves and be successful, attractive men.)
Becoming "non-binary" is an opt out. It's saying I don't have to conform to anything the other females (or males) have to conform to because I'm not one of them. However, it's also exceptionalizing and "othering" yourself. I'm not a woman, I'm special, I'm non-binary, so the rules don't apply to me!
Becoming a "trans-man" says, judge me as if I am a man, not a woman. I think you will like me better as a man, society.
The obvious solution is simply for society to be more accepting of, and open to, all sorts of ways of being male or being female, and putting less emphasis on specific features and on appearance altogether. In other words, change the rules. Get rid of the rules altogether, and just let people act how they feel comfortable - as long as they are still kind and hard-working.
If a woman feels she can still be a woman AND:
- opt out of make-up, dressing up, and trying to be the "hot" one (or just dress up sometimes if she wants to)
- still be attractive to others, even if she doesn't have "model good looks";
- do what feels comfortable, and just be herself, not having to "act" a certain way that she thinks others expect of her simply because she is a woman;
- (and the key) not be penalized in any way for being atypical or not being the "model" woman (there should be no "model" woman).
then maybe she won't feel compelled to pretend she is a man, and chemically and surgically assault her body!
It's up to society to: (1) accept all types of people and broaden what we deem to be attractive and successful, or (2) keep sending wrong messages about what it takes to be a successful woman (or man) in society, and then encouraging those who don't think they will be successful as one sex to "opt out" by denying and rejecting their own sex, and either pretending that they are no sex or that they are the opposite sex.
I say let's do the first thing!!
“ The obvious solution is simply for society to be more accepting of, and open to, all sorts of ways of being male or being female, and putting less emphasis on specific features and on appearance altogether.”. THIS!
''Here we find the language of “passing” applied not just to passing as the opposite sex but passing as an “acceptable” member of your own sex'' i've had this for most of my life. i used to wonder what a real woman is supposed to be. i don't think it's been unusual for the las 100 years or so.
Put simply… looks really do matter as does ‘the look’ you like and therefore attempt to achieve and wish to have. It’s either based in reality or it’s a fantasy . As every good Grandparent said to their grandchild, you are what you are .. wear the clothes that suit you and never wear clothes that are wearing you! There is nothing wrong with anyone’s shape and looks what’s wrong is if you pretend you look like something else! It’s no good trying to look like Naomi Campbell if you are white.. but you can mimic the hair the clothes the style If it’s a hooked nose it’s hooked nose make a feature out of you beautiful eyes or long legs or shapely hands NO one is perfect! And if you were born with hairy hobbit feet then so be it.. we just need people to grow up with reasonable expectations.. ugly ducklings usually turn into swans and if you don’t quite make it into the swan of your dreams it doesn’t mean you’re a lesbian ok? You can find a male who isn’t quite Mr Universe.. cmon grannies step up here and help the mums drum this level of self confidence into their children and there is nothing wrong with a bit of teasing in the playground it’s not bullying it’s teaching resilience and possibly reality and the ability to tease back find some wit and discover it’s not the end of the world and that you can cope in the rough and tumble of real life!
"ugly ducklings usually turn into swans and if you don’t quite make it into the swan of your dreams it doesn’t mean you’re a lesbian ok?"
Beg pardon?
I mean: it's kind of unfortunate that you imply being a lesbian is the worst of all possible fates and only happens to ugly women who can't attract men.
That's an unpleasant and inaccurate cliche from the 1950s.
“This was pre-social media, pre-filters, pre-fillers. And there was no escape via trans identification. So the pressure has gone up and a valve has opened to vent that pressure. Girls who struggle with the impossible and often contradictory expectations girls and women face—and the peer pressure and bullying that comes down on girls who cannot or will not conform to these expectations—can opt out now.” I think this is the absolute heart of this issue, and one of the best sentences of yours I’ve ever read.
Going through puberty for girls is a self-denying transition anyways- one where you will end up a sub-class of human at the end- if you’re successful or unsuccessful- so why not go through a transition that will end with you part of the dominant class, frees you of the impossible standards of appearance and behavior, and earns you basic decency and respect from society? I can definitely see the appeal.
The problem, of course, is that you can’t change your sex- you are simply sickening yourself as a woman with the wrong hormones. AND you are capitulating to misogyny by bolstering the notion that humanless sex ornament = woman.
I’ve been finding real empowerment in body-realistic Instagram pages like Bree Lenehan and anti-plastic surgery/filter pages like celebface.
Going to the country of my ancestors and feeling beautiful there among the depictions of women in the art who have my features (and getting flirted at by local guys who see my looks as normal or even beautiful!) has also helped immensely.
But ultimately, what really has to change is for men to stop mistreating women. It’s not “innate” for girls to feel so anxious and insecure about their bodies at puberty. It’s bc boys really start enforcing social control upon girls at that age. I remember so viscerally the mimed vomiting of the boys at the girls’ natural body hair. You’d think mothers and fathers would step in to say “you’re healthy and normal. Those boys are mean.” And the boys would be reprimanded by their families. Instead, you’re told as a girl that you should probably start shaving, waxing and plucking now. The transition begins.
I think only old style progressive parents told girls they didn’t have to be pretty - and boys they didn’t have to be tough. Such a huge gift to children and the adults they become. There was some 70s research showing that such girls were more capable of resisting abuse and more confident in their bodies.
I imagine it's very common for girls to feel they don't "pass" as a member of their own sex. I certainly felt like that as a girl and young woman because I didn't enjoy dolls or feel comfortable dressing up, wearing make-up, heels, etc.
When I was in college I was shocked when someone described me as "feminine." My voice and body type are unmistakably female but I had never "identified" as "feminine" because my interests did not align with those stereotypes. It felt like a slur, although the speaker meant it kindly. Why was I so resistant to accepting my femaleness?
Only much later in life was I able to accept that my voice and body are prototypically feminine, and that it is not a bad thing. What does it mean that even someone like me, who looked "feminine" despite my lack of effort, wanted to reject it when young?
I’m GenX and look very feminine and pretty but I completely relate to not being able to “do femininity”. I’ve always had more male interests and found it easier to hang with guys in some ways (I didn’t like being pretty because it made it hard to hang out with guys). A lot of women treated me like I was an alien from another planet. To this day, I don’t like to wear makeup—besides having sensitive skin I am just sure I would smear something and go all day looking like a fool.