Theresa Dinito writes about the dread of feeling masculine:
Masculine? Masculine. Ah, there’s the rub. The real double bind: feeling masculine.
The feelings I have when I feel masculine do not fit in with the definition of masculine. I do not feel like a man or a boy. What I feel when I’m feeling masculine is unfeminine, in the artificial sense of the word. The meanings and associations that have come to form around the word, feminine, have nothing at all to do with the actual living, human female being who does indeed grow hair, bleed and heaven help us, now and then doth posses and odor less than floral in bouquet.
The artificial female-the one that is held up for women in our society to emulate, smells flowery (always), is very thin, polite, dainty, delicate, pure, clean and hair free in all the required hair free places. Any deviation from one or more of the above requirements tips the scale over into the realm of unfeminine. Many deviations lead us down that dreaded road toward, masculinity…
It is a scale. Have you ever noticed that very petite women can be “firecrackers.” It’s like, they are petite enough that they can also be loud and opinionated and be seen as “feisty” instead of “bitchy” and still be a “feminine” “firecracker” rather than “emasculating.” (The qualities that men label “emasculating” say a lot about what men’s inner masculinity/femininity scales are like and what qualities they need to compare themselves to to feel masculine.)
I am tall, strong, hairy, and don’t wear make-up. I also have an hour glass shape which, combined with my long hair, tipped my scale safely towards feminine. Then my feet started hurting, so I started wearing clunky supportive shoes. Then I cut my hair.
The shoes and the short hair seem to have tipped my inner scale and it is teetering towards “masculine.” I don’t like this, in case you were wondering.
The teetering scale is probably why the size and gender of the people I’m around can tip it one way or the other. This is lame. I need, to totally mix my metaphors, to re-set my feminine set point so that it includes more of who I am, or to just not care. I want to feel comfortable in my skin again no matter who I’m around.
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