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Original poster

Your experiences of/discomfort with the idea of growing up to be a woman?

30 replies

RobinsAreTerritorialFuckers · 27/07/2016 12:13

When you realised you would grow up to be a woman, what did you feel? What did you think it meant?

Did you ever dress, behave, or try to act, more like a 'boy' - and when?

Do you see the same behaviours in your children, or do you think it's easier now for them?

Did you ever think your body would change - or did you try to change it?

Lots of questions, but what I'm interested in is how we see gender as children, and how that affects us. For example, I was a tomboy growing up. I wanted to be taken for a boy, and always wanted to beat my older brother at everything. In my teens, though, I was both very keen on 'girly' things, and terrified about my body. I used to wrap fabric around my developing breasts and I was quite excited when I heard that if I ate little enough, my periods would stop.

My DP, OTOH, confused her mum no end by putting up masses of pictures of sexy, muscly men on her bedroom walls - she is not remotely straight, but she assumed that, at some stage, she would end up with a body like that.

I wonder if talking about these experiences and feelings - which I suspect aren't unusual - would be interesting in terms of thinking about gender roles?

OP posts:
almondpudding · 27/07/2016 18:04

I grew up in a pretty gender neutral family.

My sister always claims we were ill prepared for how awful the world is. It did take a bit of coming to terms with.

My teens have had a similar upbringing, so perhaps they're similarly ill prepared.

I'm glad the feminist theory section is being used a bit more, as everyone uses feminist chat more, so thanks OP.

JacquettaWoodville · 27/07/2016 14:32

It's not something I was uncomfortable with but I am interested in the thread.

Original poster
RobinsAreTerritorialFuckers · 27/07/2016 13:13

Not an essay - exactly the sort of thing I was asking about!

OP posts:
HemlockSolanum · 27/07/2016 12:41

Oh god that was an essay! Looks like I needed to get that off my chest Blush

HemlockSolanum · 27/07/2016 12:41

I grew up completely frustrated by "boy"/"girl" stuff.

I was a geeky child, I loathed the colour pink, would scream if my parents put a dress on me, hated sports and physical activities, preferring books and art. I had hair so long I could sit on it because I wouldn't let anyone trim it. People, luckily never my family, seemed to find me frustrating.

I didn't fit properly into the girl box, or the boy box, and I outright rejected the tomboy box.

I remember being about 11 years old and being aware of men's stares and comments. I used to threaten to write "my face is up here ^" on vest tops. At the age of 11 I was already aware of and uncomfortable with how girls are sexualised. I also started puberty that year, and while my early years of periods weren't so tainted by pain, it was definitely a source of frustration that us girls were now treated differently again because of it. I hated the way the focus was on our bodies so much.

Once I started secondary school I chopped all my hair off, and in combination with a fairly flat chest, I easily passed as a boy by wearing baggier clothes. It wasn't a concious choice, I just felt more comfortable not being so obviously female. I wore unisex clothes, jeans and tshirts. And I was constantly referred to by strangers as a boy.

I was neither comfortable or uncomfortable with that misconception, but I was very annoyed that I was spoken to differently when they thought I was a boy.

In addition to this I was just starting to be aware of the way I was steered towards or away from certain interests, and I would get annoyed. It did cross my mind many a time that I'd have more options if I were a boy.

I felt like areas of the world were closed off to me. And the areas that had opened up as a result of my developing body were a dismay at best.

For a long long time I thought I was unusual, all those other girls seemed to embrace their bodies and their "sexuality".

As I grew older though I started to edge more and more towards an almost caricatured femininity. As a mid to late teen I often wished I had been born a boy so that I could dress in drag. Looking back I think what I was really longing for was the fun of dressing up without the negative consequences of a female body and all that entailed.

I think at that stage I'd have given anything to swap my genitals in order to access that seperate boys world.

Now I'm quite a lot older, and while I still feel no love for my, often dysfunctional female body (PCOS) I am now comforted by women who felt the same as me. Knowing that my experience and feelings weren't remotely unusual. And knowing that I wasn't a freak and wrong, but that society is what's wrong.

Now I'm able to accept my female body for what it is, and for what it has given me (children and sisterhood). And instead of fighting myself I'd rather fight society to try and make a better world for my daughter and my daughter's daughters. So that they never feel like I did.