Women's perspectives on their experiences of femininity

Abstract

This qualitative research focuses on young women’s self-reported experiences of femininity in contemporary Western culture. Inevitably, it is the intersectionality of their gender, race, ethnicity, and social class that explains the variations in how they experience femininity as well as varying social contexts. Findings indicate that while the women do not feel overly oppressed by their gender, they do identify significant sources of frustration over features of it including: that femininity is enforced by parents’ comments about lady-like behaviors and appropriate dress, that teachers enforce rules about dress codes for girls and boy versus girl activities and that peers often police gender by conflating it with sexual orientation, i.e. a girl who dresses like a boy must be a lesbian. While the women admitted to using their attractiveness on occasion to get free drinks from males or to avoid getting a speeding ticket, they voiced mostly negative views about how the media perpetuates the notion that women must conform to narrow standards of female beauty. Other complaints include women’s responsibility for keeping the domestic sphere clean and attractive and the sexual double standard, i.e. men are expected to have multiple sexual partners but a woman who does so is looked down upon. Apart from these complaints, the women mostly emphasize their agency in the ability to accept and reject aspects of femininity and female gender roles, depending on their own choosing. Most significantly, they clearly view gender from an essentialist perspective rather than as a socially constructed standard of being.