This occurred during a conversation that I had with a friend (we will call her W). W was telling me that her friend (we will call him N) keeps saying things along the lines of "You're such a dude," "There's no way you could be sexy," "You're so manly," etc. My friend grew up on a farm and is extremely proud of the fact that she is not a helpless petite size zero, but rather a strong independent woman who can do manual labor. W was explaining that she is upset that N keeps implying that she is not feminine. W and I then went on to discuss of how N's views of what "feminine" and "sexy" and "womanly" are is so narrow that he cannot go outside of his comfort zone to see that strong and independent does not have to mean "butch" or "manly." W went as far as calling him a "misogynistic bastard," but this interaction definitely got me thinking about how narrow society's definition of what it means to be a woman is.
No comments:
Post a Comment