Does anyone feel less inclined these days to wear makeup and skirts or dresses due to the focus on femininity as what defines woman?

It would have been helpful if you had explained the background and that you were interviewing trans women.

However even with that information I'm unclear what point you're making; at its most simplistic it seems to be that women shouldn't wear dresses because doing so validates trans women.

Yes, but I work in a school and so mis-titling happens on a daily (hourly?) basis.

I don't usually respond to it. I think most of the time its a genuine mistake (in speech, not misperception), but on occasion it might have been a deliberate try to see what I do.

I don't get "sir" from normal grown ups, though as with the weird caution about a year ago some may have avoided gendered terms with me for a while. It's hard to know if that's really happening though?

Maybe if I was 15 years younger when I did look a bit teenage-boy sometimes 🤷‍♀️ I look pretty middle-aged-woman now!

Nor me.

I love wearing typically feminine clothes and if anything this has made me keener to embrace them, instead of covering up my female body. For me that is about wearing maybe a waisted dress and quite "classic?!" clothes. Hard to explain. You'll never ever find me in a body con dress haha. I've never been a make up, nails or hair person and definitely look very natural, but find these days I want to embrace and proudly show off my shape instead of covering it up. Or maybe I just got older, braver and more confident 😂 Proud to be female whatever it is.

I never shave my legs pits or bits. I cba and no one sees them but DP.

I don't remember the last time I wore a skirt or dress. And I never wear uncomfortable shoes.

But. I love make up. I love the art of it - changing my face shape, emphasising lips today, eyes tomorrow, using contour to draw the eye where I want it to be. Thick thick mascara and false lashes because my eyes are steel grey and they look striking with decent lashes and eye make up.

Well plucked eyebrows, the better for raising.

I'm GC and have raised 2 dds to be as well.

No idea what that makes me.

Rejecting femininity because you're not interested seems fair enough. But rejecting it because some men would like to pass as women is, in my opinion, giving them far too much headspace.

I think that may be what's causing the confusion

Dress
It's on this website

PocketSand’s post makes a lot more sense if you know what the Beaumont Society is. Interesting post and not surprising to me.

Sorry but I don't understand your post. Who said this men or women?

Well my own experience in a corporate environment wasn't that women universally or even a majority dressed the way you suggest.

The research sounds wild, people said they felt more inclined to dress feminine to appear like women in the 90s? Fashion up until that point had been super feminine? And yes experience is more recently than the 90s it's not unusual, special or enlightened to not wear make up.

Jigslaw- this was about specific research not about your experience.

You may know specific women who did not wear make up at some unspecified time but the research was designed to capture the beliefs of a particular group at a particular time in a particular place. It is not surprising that the research findings did not match your beliefs as respondents were reluctant to participate.

Wtf is this. Women dressed uber feminine as we recognise it in years gone by, I wouldn't say post 90s this has accelerated, if anything no one is arsed anymore. Plenty of my female peers through school, uni and now work didn't wear make up, wore what they liked and no one has ever made a big deal of it.

As a sociology undergraduate at Manchester university in the 90's I did a participant observation with informal open ended interview at the Beaumont society. I was wearing white t shirt, 501's and probably DMs.

The discussion centred around why my respondents could not dress the same because they couldn't pass as female if they did.

Therefore it was somehow incumbent on women to adopt so called feminine dress, the more extreme the better, so that men could better pass as women.

I'm not saying these men were misogynist but their world view just didn't see women in a neutral let alone positive light.

I was ridiculed because I didn't wear make up because I was still a woman.

Women should make up. Women should wear high heels and dresses.

Not doing so makes it harder for men to pass.

I think it is still a feminist issue.

Don't be sad for me, I am perfectly happy being a hairy legged swamp witch. When I started not conforming to feminine stereotypes all those years ago it was a fuck you to the patriarchy, which I thoroughly enjoyed, but now I look how I look because that's how I am comfortable. So its a fuck you to everybody to be honest.

I’m actually wearing more stuff like that lately. I’m autistic and recently realised that a big way of masking for me is dressing in really dull generic clothes so that nobody will ever look at me. The combination of sensory difficulties and being ashamed of my body (weight mainly) meant I just hid in jeans etc.

But now I’ve started wearing what I actually want to wear, and bought a couple of dresses, and stuff like hair things/jewellery that I like and find comfortable (again those things can be tricky with sensory issues).

Don’t get me wrong I’m still often (like now) in a geeky t-shirt and comfy trousers but I am arguably dressing more feminine now. Not for anyone else, but because I want to wear stuff I like and not give a shit whether it’s fashionable or whether anyone thinks I look ok in it or not. As someone with huge self esteem issues it’s been so liberating to go into a shop or browse online and think “I like that, so I’ll wear it” rather than “I’d look stupid in that, not like other prettier women”.

No 'whiff' of superiority detected (or indeed intended) from my POV - I was simply responding to the OP's original post and outlining that my style hadn't really changed over the years and had simply been further endorsed by living with all males in the family!

Re the 1980s office style, there was definitely an anti-feminine vibe amongst our female senior managers. I can still remember the stir it caused when someone wore a Laura Ashley dress to the office! Today nobody would bat an eyelid.

Aye, I wholly agree.

Girls/women are judged on their appearance from absolute dot. We are taught that we have to compete with each other. That we'll be graded and ranked, and that our worth depends on how well we do in this mythical competition.

This pressure leads women to feel that they must be wary of each other, judge each other, compete, and defend our place in the hierarchy. That can lead to remarks like 'letting oneself go' suggsting that there is a hierarchy of looking good and one will slide down it if one doesn't perform certain key tasks. (I appreciate pp may not have meant it like that, it's just all of these words and ideas are heavily coded with baggage!)

We aren't always taking part in the competition of course, dressing to look what we think of as beautiful can be done for other reasons. But it can be interpreted as acting competitively and that can be heard as an assertion of intent to compete against others.

I don't dress in a feminine way, my only concession is my long blond hair but that's natural. I wear minimal makeup and comfortable clothing, usually tracksuits for comfort and I don't shave my legs or wear high heels. I'm pretty sure not wanting to look like a drag queen is something to do with it.

I find they tend to dress cosplay-style in mini skirts, low cut tops and will be wearing hot pink somewhere about their person.

I tend to dress more feminine now (was a tom boy most of my life) but I like flowy, loose, longer dresses, and just a touch of make up. I do it for me, not because of this current Men's Rights movement of womanface.

I've never worn make-up; never quite understood what it's for. My hobbies are gardening, swimming and horse riding so no point in giving a shit about fingernails. Plus biting nails is one of life's free pleasures.

I have found myself drawn to vintage style clothes in middle age, esp 1940s so I probably own more dresses now than I ever did. I got my original 90s DMs (when they were still made in Northampton) resoled and OMG they are so comfy. Floaty dress and clumpy boots- do they cancel each other out and make me non-binary I wonder?

I'm an A cup and used to fret that this was unwomanly and I might be mistaken for a man. This never happened of course.

I told you to delete that video of me! You know the cats hate seeing me with the pigeons!

Egdeh! 😁

“Doogy rev!

there would be equal derision for men who choose to wear very 'masculine' clothing

There isn't though is there, its largely celebrated or at the least mostly without comment. I've never heard men be criticised for being 'too manly' or whatever else.

I don't really know how to articulate what I mean, but a woman wearing pink for example will be judged by some even if its just she likes wearing pink. If though the same woman was wearing trousers they wouldn't be by the same people. I just think the whole argument that a woman is a woman regardless should cut all ways, and not be but you should stay within x rules- which is just another form of pressure. There's nought wrong with women choosing to wear typically feminine clothing, just as there's nought wrong with a woman not; people who don't aren't more liberated, they don't have their eyes opened more widely and they aren't fighting the good fight anymore than anyone else.

I'm just tired of typically 'girly' things always being viewed as inferior and typically masculine things as the default like we should be celebrating women for wearing trousers more than if they wear pink- what a heap of shit that is. We should be celebrating women regardless of what they wear. Not directly related but my niece does ballet- she has the choice of other sports, she has done trials and terms of rugby tots, football, gymnastics etc but genuinely enjoys ballet more. My DSis is constantly getting comments about how it's a shame and that she should be doing x sport instead, but the boys who do ballet are applauded and told how wonderful they are.