isozyme:

My relationship with femininity as a kid was filled with self-imposed limits and self-hatred disguised as brutally honest self image.  That’s because I was a kid I believed deeply in my heart of hearts that I was ugly.

I had bushy brown hair and pink cheeks and the kind of chubbily athletic body you get from eating a lot of good hearty food and spending all summer catching soft-shelled crayfish in the creek down the street.

I was smart and abrasive and honestly very average-looking.  The point is that I thought I wasn’t pretty.

This did not weigh on my self-worth in any particular way except one: I excused myself from any activity that might require prettiness.  I avoided makeup and fashion and chasing boys.

As a child I saw being beautiful as a prerequisite for femininity.  I was certain that if people saw me trying to do things that pretty people did they would laugh at me.  They would think I thought I was pretty even though I really wasn’t.  So comical – the little ugly girl thinks she’s one of us.  Watch her put on lip gloss and heels like it will help!  Like she’s allowed.

To my young self, applying femininity to myself was like putting an expensive candy-red paint job on an old smashed-up car.  The paint wouldn’t help; it would just amplify all the flaws.  Couldn’t the owners see how the paint bubbled and fizzed over the rusted frame, couldn’t they see that now their car looked ridiculous and ugly instead of just ugly?

Better to accept being ugly and avoid femininity entirely.

I retreated into books and getting very good grades.  I felt uncomfortable in skirts was distant around girls who were more feminine than me.  In feminist discourse we often attribute this sort of avoidance to internalized misogyny, but I don’t think that’s the whole story.

Not everyone chooses not to wear makeup and dresses because they think makeup and dresses are bad.  Some women choose to avoid those things because they’ve been made to feel unworthy of them.

It is appalling that women are taught that our bodies can disqualify us from being feminine!  It’s appalling and it’s frustrating that we don’t talk about this facet of womanhood when we argue about weaponized femininity or if makeup is inherently patriarchal.

Gender presentation isn’t a simple choice and it’s not all about whether I secretly hate women or openly hate the patriarchy.  Some of it is about hating myself.

My struggle with being feminine has put me in some uncomfortable binds.  Sometimes femininity is mandatory.  Going to interviews with no makeup on hurt my chances of success.  Not owning makeup or knowing how to put it on meant going bare-faced anyway.  I resent that the patriarchy put this requirement on me.  I resent the complicated policing of who deserves femininity that made me incapable of meeting this requirement.

I am learning to put on makeup.  It required a massive struggle with my own self-worth for me to even try.  The stakes feel high – I’m not 13 anymore, and ludicrous smudgy blue eyeliner is going to look even more ludicrous now than it would have in junior high.    Every time I (slowly, painstakingly) put on eyeliner, it’s a big deal.  "Is my face okay?“ I ask my girlfriend.  "Does it look dumb on me?”

It doesn’t look dumb.  My face is great!

Being deemed beautiful isn’t a prerequisite for femininity.  There’s no reason it should be.  There’s no sign above any gender presentation that says “must have facial features at least __% symmetrical to enter.”  We can be fat and we can be ugly and we can wear lipstick.

Of course we can.  But it’s hard, and I want more of the countless articles about “should women wear makeup” to acknowledge: the choice is always hard.  It’s hard in different ways for different women, and this is the way that it’s hard for me.