This one not going to make an attempt in defining what being feminine actually means.
It is about situations in which I notice that I am on the feminine end of a spectrum and have to take the consequences.
But let me start at the beginning.
Come with me back to one of the first warm days this spring, and into a class room.
Yes, that‘s where I am again at the moment, but not as a teacher for the little children anymore. I am a student again. In this class room, I was a student giving a presentation. One that I had been working on for several days. It was a seminar on historical movies and I had picked the movie „Girl with a pearl earring“ since it is one of my favourite books and movies, as I have already written about here.
Of course I was not talking about how much I like that movie and book. In preparation for that particular appointment, all of us had been reading papers on gender in historical movies, the difficulty in depicting women, and about biopics in general.
The movie/book I was talking about was an interesting case considering all of these categories. With the main character not existing in the historical record, it was not really a biopic, although the rest fit. With the story of a maid getting caught up between two men and just so escaping rape and losing everything, we see a woman struggling but also being victimized.
I was discussing all of this, based on days of reading and rewatching the film …
When suddenly another student raised a hand and said that this all had nothing to do with history. „Nothing is historical about this.“
Okay, well.
I had been going through this problem based on the obligatory readings for the class in detail already, but let‘s try it again.
We have art history, contact between Catholics and Protestants after the big religious wars, the plague in Delft in the 1660s, the life of the real painter Vermeer is the center, narrated through a fictional character, which is interesting under the following theory of narratives …
No, no. He interrupts me. „I am saying I have read it to and it is bad. It is not history, it is 50 shades of gray.“
I could just ignore this comment, I know. He was not arguing on an intellectual level, so why even bother.
But I need to take a closer look at this, because it kept bothering me for quite a while.
When I was younger, probably only 2 years would be enough, I would have tried to save the situation with saying something like: “Oh, well, I’m sorry it’s not your taste.”
But I am done with being so careful and polite.
These last words made it sexist.
He was accusing me of bringing a dirty romance into a discussion about history and he was minimizing the struggle of a 17th century woman by comparing it to a weird kink novel.
This is sexist. It is not a critic based on anything.
Especially because we were talking about gender representation and the challenges and had all done extensive reading on this.
Before I could gather myself enough to respond to that sexist remark, the professor actually shut him up. He suggested to read the papers for today‘s seminar again and with more attention and thanked me for bringing up such an interesting case.
All in all I watched a sexist mansplainer embarrass himself, and it annoyed me.
After preparing for several days and putting a lot of work into a presentation, the most it did was giving this young man the opportunity to proof his bias and stupidity.
That, by now, is the most feminine experience to me.
I could have of course avoided this.
I could have not chosen a movie that fit the gender issue, but any other topic of the seminar. I could have not presented it wearing a blue dress and having my always red finger nails (there is no dress code in German universities and everyone is super casual).
I could have worn pants and no make up and talked about „Oppenheimer“, or „Schinlder‘s List“ (all covered by other people of the seminar) to be taken seriously, but I am done doing that. I am done pretending to be someone I am not. I have to face the world as me, and me is regularly getting herself into the exact situation I had just been describing. This version of me, that follows her own personal interests and does not hide her classical femininity is going to run head first into this same wall forever.
By the way, I do not see any romance within that novel. You can read about that in my review I already linked at the beginning of this post.
I see the novel and the movie as a partly fictional and partly historical narration from my favourite century to read about, depicting a female struggle in the early modern world.
And if me talking about that wearing a summer dress and having red nails forces you to make an idiot of yourself … well, I am getting used to it.
Mistress witch writes 