feminism – okay andie

It’s interesting to look at these photos and see how feminine I look and how, quite often, I don’t feel that feminine. If we are generalizing femininity, outwardly I am quite a feminine person – long hair, makeup, painted nails, dress. And it’s interesting how this type of look will lead people to draw conclusions about your personality, even if it may be very far from who you actually are. I remember after Ryan and I started dating, he had told me when we first met, he thought he was going to have to do a lot to impress me. Essentially, that based on the way I looked, I would probably be a high-maintenance, sort of elitist person (I’m speculating here, those may not be the words he would choose). I’m not pointing the finger at him, because most, if not all people jump to conclusions about who a person must be based on the way they dress/look (I do, you do…) But still, I was almost shocked that he thought this about me, because I have always thought of myself as a very low to medium maintenance girl, and truthfully – if we are again generalizing femininity – I don’t act much like a textbook version of a girl (or the 1950s version of a woman) – I think poop jokes are funny, farts make me laugh, I swear a lot more than I care to admit, if I’m at home I sit in the least lady-like positions as possible…you get the idea. The most feminine thing about me is the way I look. I can be incredibly emotional, which a lot of people regard as a female trait, but I feel it has nothing to do with being a girl and more to do with being a Cancer (or a human being). I like wearing dresses and skirts, but that’s because they are just categorically better than pants (you can argue me on that). But what’s even more interesting to me is that almost inherently, we have learned to categorize almost every type of person out there solely on how they choose to dress. Maybe movies did this to us – made us assign a personality type to every style there is, so there is no need to actually get to know a person. Heck, there are probably times when people actually assume they would not get along with someone just based on the way they dress/look. How sad is that?! That we may prevent ourselves from getting to know someone who may actually be awesome. The world is a strange place. I often wonder if the conclusions we jump to is a nature vs. nurture thing. Most likely nurture, but maybe it has been so much about nurture and engraved into our brains that it has actually become nature over time. Anyways, food for thought.

I hope you all had a great weekend. Mine was busy and didn’t feel like much of a weekend, but that’s life sometimes.

Dress: vintage
Bow Headband: vintage via Victory Mills
Lipstick: So Chaud by MAC
Nail polish: 5th Avenue by Essie

To be totally honest, I was very hesitant to post this. I often find myself struggling between whether this space should just be light-hearted, or a space that I can share my thoughts and feelings. My final conclusion is that it can be both. In writing about former insecurities, I became insecure about sharing them, hence the hesitation in posting. But constantly being insecure is self-defeating, and I have never really felt more confident in my life than this time right now. So no better time than to reflect on things that I think a lot of women (and maybe some men) can relate to.

I try to remind myself often how lucky I am in this life. I expect a lot from myself, constantly. When it came to school I was never a person who did very well, I was far too angsty, living in a dream world, that I just didn’t care for the mundane (screw you high school, man!). But everything else in life I wanted to be perfect at. I always wanted to be the perfect dancer, I wanted to be the most original/creative when it came to the way I dressed, I wanted to be the prettiest, I wanted boys to notice me most, I wanted to be funnier, smarter and blahblahblah, the list goes on. It felt like there was always someone one step ahead, in each of these categories. I think it’s hard to be a girl, growing up. I think we are taught to compare ourselves, rather than to love one another. Instead of really looking at yourself, and seeing how beautiful you are, for being the only you, you try to fix what is not even broken. There is probably papers upon papers written regarding this school of thought. I spent many years, probably from ages 12 to 18 trying to fix all the things that I really, could not fix. And then one day, kind of like the flick of a switch (it most likely spanned a few years actually), I started to really accept myself. I let my hair be the colour it is mean’t to be. I stopped wearing pounds of makeup so I could transform myself into this weird doll-looking girl. I accepted that I don’t have huge breasts, that I get zits, and that just being yourself is far more interesting than trying to be this unattainable version of a girl. I look to my dearest and best friend Kristen for a lot of this acceptance. When she came into my life, she taught me about this whole other type of woman. She is a woman who taught me that wit wins to beauty, and that maybe one only exists with the other. Now, I’m not saying that I was some sort of shallow human before I met her, but I wasn’t embracing who I really was. I didn’t see that my quirks (we shall thank my father for my weirdness), was the thing that made me beautiful, and the thing that kept me happiest.

We live in a beautiful time now. There are so many strong women, with a voice, coming together, loving eachother and reaching out to the rest of us (especially young girls). These things didn’t exist, or I didn’t know about them when I was growing up. Maybe life would have felt easier. Maybe it would have been the same. Maybe it’s a rite of passage, to feel sort of mediocre in all aspects of your life when you’re a teen. I’m not certain on any of these things. But it’s so heart-warming to see women loving, instead of hating and comparing themselves to one another. There are so many wonderful women in this world that can make you feel whole, but it is impossible to see if your eyes are not even open, and your heart is not genuine.