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

[Quietlyhere]

This is something I've noticed in myself. Never wore a lot of makeup but now, in an age of celebrating drag queens everywhere and defining women as those who are feminine, I am much more likely to be found in comfy trousers and t-shirts/jumpers, and no makeup. Still very much a woman.

Of course I'm not saying women should change, everyone should wear what they like as long as certain body parts are sufficiently covered up. Just an observation of my own choices shifting in this climate.

My style hasn't changed throughout my life really - I've always been fairly disinterested in hair, makeup and nails and floaty feminine dresses and skirts.

Nothing has ever happened to me to create this, but I've always seen dresses and skirts as kind of exposing and dangerous in the 'lifting up'/ upskirting/hand up them sort of way. Weird, I know, but it's how I feel - kind of as if they're designed to give men easy access?

When I was working in corporate life in the 80s/90s I always wore a trouser suit and had short hair. It was an era of needing to emulate men if you wanted to be taken seriously.

Having sons thenmade me even less feminine. No point wearing uncomfortable heels to rugby pitches or for yomping up and down hills on family holidays. All my clothes are practical and (strangely!) therefore quite 'masculine'. Ha!

Extremely considering we are all busy being adult females just some of us enjoy to look more feminine. Im secure enough in how I look not to patronise people who choose to look different to me.

@Jigslaw yes, very well put. I’ve had that a lot, and feminine as lesser does make sense. It’s sad.

As others have said, I dress and look how I like to, for me. Makeup and frock even in lockdown. I don’t think it makes me more or less a woman, it’s just me

Hm, perhaps the implication may be more that people are bowing to societal pressure, and there would be equal derision for men who choose to wear very 'masculine' clothing - The patronising bit is maybe in considering oneself above gender stereotypes whereas other less liberated people still play to them/use them/conform to them.

IDK, I don't on the whole gaf what other people wear. We all live with the pressures of our sex and expectations on us because of them, societal pressure/expectation/mores are there, however we respond to them.

Yes indeed. Femininity does not make you a woman for sure. But equally, sneering at femininity should not make you a feminist.

Well, having been in corporate environments in the 1990s onwards I certainly don't recall all the successful women looking the way you describe.

There must be a limit to how much time one can spend standing at a rugby pitch (although when I attended my son's rugby matches as I wasn't playing what I wore on my feet was irrelevant) and on family holidays. You like a certain style of clothes - great , your choice but there's a whiff of your choice being superior to other women's

Yup, me too. Hair done, make up, heels - it’s just how I like to dress. And I give no fucks, lol.

No. Of course not. Why should I let other's dictate what I wear.
Love dressing up to the nines and doing my hair and makeup.
If anything it's defiance, I can dress up or not dress up and it had no effect on whether I'm a woman.

I'm very sorry for any woman who feels she can no longer do this

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.

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

Egdeh! 😁

“Doogy rev!

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 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 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.

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.

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.

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”.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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