I made a mood board! Now I’m going to figure out why this is my mood. Read on, lovers.
It’s been a couple years of woman. It’s been Barbie, it’s been Beyoncé, it’s been girlies and girly pops and girlhood. Some say that we’re infantilizing ourselves with ballet and bows and coquette and coastal granddaughter, but I say we’re healing. And we should be allowed to.
I don’t know about you, but what I took away from the media messages of the previous twenty years was that I needed to be skinny, with a thigh gap, and to pick my archetype of supporting female character. Your choices were: cheerleader, manic pixie dream girl, and good girl wifey. The cheerleader helped a man explore his sexuality. The manic pixie dream girl helped a shy man become bold. And the good girl wifey turned a bad boy into a loyal one. And after that, they were done! That was it. You could safely assume that by twenty five, they were dead.
I think that if, in the good year of our Lord 2024, we want to put ourselves into a little girly pop boxes and pretend we don’t know how the stock market works, so be it. At least we drew the boundaries this time. At least we’re making enough to pay for our own hair bows and overpriced designer drinks. And we’re not actually clueless, it’s just fun to pretend we are, because so many men assume we don’t know anything, no matter how educated, well-dressed, or articulate we are.
I’m kind of happy for us. You may ask, Is this not still us, adhering to the male gaze? If we’re aligning to aesthetics, are we not still engaging in the core of what it means to be a woman: performance? Sure, if you want to be academic about it. But like, also…maybe it’s okay to have fun. I’m sure there’s some problematic edge case here, but I don’t know about it.
So anyway, what does this have to do with femme fatales and fruit? Lately I’ve been appreciating womanhood a lot more, and I think it’s because of the trending girly pop stuff. I’m twenty eight years old and I should be dead by now, but I’m not. In many ways, I’ve never been better.
I love having my own money and the freedom that comes with it. I love having lived just long enough to have a point of view that doesn’t feel like something I’ll discard after thirty days. I love having written enough to be able to write what I want to write. I love seeing older women be relevant in their fields, and I love it when they talk to me about having kids and how you should be prepared to skip foundation in your thirties because it accentuates your fine lines. I love watching women start businesses so they can take their time and their power back.
Womanhood is both freedom and connectedness. It is this impossible balance. It is being deeply present in our bodies. It is Eve’s fruit, it is pleasure, it is life. It is being connected to each other, to the sky, and to the earth in profound ways. With all this, what else do we require? And if we require nothing, is that not the definition of what makes something dangerous?