Light or dark? Except it’s not your coffee!Let’s talk femininity&the down fall of modern feminisim

I was scrolling on Tiktok the other day when I found a video that says “10 steps skincare routine! Sleep on your back so your face is symmetrical, dry skin? Oily skin? Combination skin? Acne prone skin? Sensitive skin? Here’s a new 50dollars skincare product for a problem you didn’t even know you had!! Buy this 45dollars sunscreen and reapply it every 2 hours, fix hyperpigmentation! Say bye to acne with this new serum!! Ew you have skin texture, buy my product to fix it!! Try these anti-aging products!! Shave your face for baby soft skin. Gua sha for sharp features! Fix your acne scars! Try retinol! Try Accutane!” With a back sound labelled as “the female rage”.

This whole long quote I have inserted up there was just to give people who do not have a Tiktok account, an idea of overwhelming it could be in that app and how unbearable trends can become.

And although I have reached a point where I could say that I have become a Tiktok addict, I still like to think of myself as if I am mainly using it for inspiration purposes, especially for my blogs, as a search engine, as if I am only there to study some sort of social science or on a mission to complete an anthropology homework that is due.

One of the subjects that have struck my attention for a while and that I have been tempted to write about but delayed because of my exams season was the emergence of endless talks about femininity, the stay at home wife trend and the contrasting differences those subjects and their implications can lead to in the real world and from a, let’s say, equilibrated feminist view versus a modern feminism reality.

We shall start decomposing the subject by first and foremost defining some key words to this essay in case you were not familiar to them.

When femininity is branded as light or “light feminine energy”, it is in reference to women who would be described as angelic, warm, delicate, sensitive, sensual, poetic and kind. If you are synesthetic person you would most likely associate women who identify to this category of description with a soft baby pink colour because those women are indeed a manifestation and expression of what it is to be a soft person, with a mothering instinct and an intuitive mind, a submissive character, always forgiving and altruistic with a beautiful serene aura around them.

Whereas dark femininity in contrast, or dark feminine energy is a term that describes a woman you would mainly think of as mysterious, enigmatic, charismatic, unapologetic, who does not have to explain herself nor her choices or preferences, does what pleases her without having to think so much about her surroundings, she is a fierce and challenging woman who is very confident and always says what is on her mind without having to sugar coat it.

Now what I find annoying about those two concepts is that it goes back to what I was talking about in a previous blog “A woman, too much yet too less of a person” where I discuss society’s obsession about having a dual perspective viewing women “aggressive vs soft, assertive vs overly shy, the whore vs the wife, The fucker vs the baker, The hooker vs the hugger, sex vs virtue, beauty vs brain, the other woman vs the woman”

And what intrigues me most prominently is how far we are willing to go to please the male gaze and get the male validation, so far as to creating a new persona that could or not match out truest selves and all the rules it comes with such us not texting your partner first, not admitting how you really feel about things, repressing negative emotions to stay unproblematic and attractive etc.

So the question is why are we like this? Why are we as women putting all this weight on us? And why haven’t I ever seen a man give other men advices that would evolve to please women for the simple pleasure of it, for the mere intention of it and without having a hidden determination behind it or without it serving his own agenda? Why am I not seeing men all over Tiktok having those endless talks about how to keep their women, how to stay attractive in their eyes, how to be a good partner?

Why is the weight of relationships always falling on women, why is it them who have to sacrifice, to settle down for less, to compromise, to lower their standards, to negotiate for better terms for their existences in the shadows of fully untouched never questioned existences and preferences of their male partners?

Why is the weight of the wellbeing as well as the downfall of relationships is always falling down on women?  I would say the main two aspects of this issue is how we urge women to forgive their cheating unfaithful partners for the continuity of the family and the perpetual conflict engraved in us with biology and nature so that us, women do not have to look any less appealing. For instance, why was I at age of 20 already thinking of Botox to look forever young and “hot” for my partner? Why are we talking about preventive Botox recently? Why are we obsessed with anti-aging products? Isn’t getting old the evident most obvious certainty everyone is going to have to live? Why are we lovingly obsessed with looking young forever, for men we know will fancy younger women, disrespectfully? Why am I stumbling upon articles that say that women prefer “dad bod”? Whereas bodies of women, who were literally pregnant and gave birth are found to be less appealing and beautiful? Why are we giving it so easy for men? Why are we clapping for a man for having a dad bod, a body that is the result of nothing basically and shaming women who do not bounce back quickly after birth when they did the whole work? Here I admire model and actress Julia Fox for saying “F*** it. I want to be ugly at this point. Would that be the ultimate rebellion, for a woman not to be pleasant on the eye?”  And also love women like model Emily Ratajkawski, who uses the male gaze in her favor by benefiting from it, as she gains money from being a model on instagram and by posting bikini pictures and so naturally, her followers are mainly men.

And I ask those questions with no full blame to men but to conscious mature grown up women who share that type of degrading content forgetting that not only men are watching them and having their ego fed but also forgetting that a young generation of women is watching this, a young future generation that still cannot and does not know any better, is being targeted and fed this content that is denying them every ounce of emotional and mental autonomy.

With the word autonomy I move on to the other main topic I have been meaning to talk about in this blog.

Is denying women their autonomy nowadays a trend?

Romanticizing the stay at home wife or girlfriend life, is it a new shade of the brainwashing patriarchy or a social evolvement from women who chose to give up the never ending labor life that does not take in consideration their biological differences that distinguish them from men, the never resolved pay gap problem that is still a polemic in countries from third world countries such as Bangladesh or even the so called country of equality and human rights, first world country; the united states of America.

Knowing that I support women to have an education (obviously) and at least any type of experience in the field they chose to study in terms of a solid internship or a one year of work or two for example, and knowing well that I stand with women making their own choices when it comes to decisions such us choosing to work or stay at home, I will try to decompose the stay at home wife/ girlfriend as a TREND in the most possible neutral of ways, starting again with what I find annoying and a subject of endless questions to me, because of how beyond double standard it is and frankly, extremely disrespectful and rude to me; when women from countries that did not belong to the West repeatedly confessed and admitted that they chose the stay at home life, especially Gulf countries, the West found it very triggering and started to believe as they always do that those women needed help to get out of our misery, oppression and abuse. Never has it crossed their minds that may be those women are indeed making choices that align with the lifestyle they envision having for themselves.  But for it now to become a trend and a symbol of what it is to be living a comfortable easy enviable desired life? This is where it gets infuriating and extremely bothersome to me, especially that for a moment I went from wanting to be an intensive care doctor or a surgeon with a full schedule and having my (future) work life as a priority to thinking that an easy life is what I want, a not challenging life where I ideally only work 3 days a week maximum, driving a Porsche, with two kids I don’t even have to care about much and only decided to have to match what is called “a Birkin mom” aesthetic, with pilate classes in the morning, twice a week hair appointment, once a month nail and body hair laser appointments and to bake as a hobby.

Now I don’t judge women who have this sort of life and I would never dare to judge people who choose to have an easy life, especially women, because as I solemnly believe, as I once read “A woman should know how to change a tire, but she shouldn’t have to change it”. Just because a woman can do something, it doesn’t necessarily put her in the obligation to have to do it.  

What I am judging is myself because I don’t know if I am having different priorities as I grow older or am I a victim the adaptive preferences plot.

“Martha Nussbaum argues that preferentism or “subjective welfarism”, the doctrine that a person’s good consist in the satisfaction of her informed preferences, fails to explain our intuitions in cases of “adaptive preferences”, where the preferences of individuals in deprived circumstances are deformed by poverty, adverse social conditions and political oppression. Nussbaum argues that the satisfaction of such “deformed” preferences does not contribute to well-being, and hence the preference utilitarian’s account of well-being is false. Furthermore, she claims it undermines the motivation for projects intended to improve the material, social and political life circumstances of individuals who are badly off; since the preferentist account suggests that these conditions are best for them if they are what such individuals prefer, it would seem that there is no reason to work for change.” –Social theory and practice, Volume 33, No 1 (January 2007) Published by Florida State University, Department of Philosophy.

In lights of this idea, whether women’s preferences, including me, are personal convictions or a result of a long process that aimed to deform them to make them fit the patriarchy’s standards and serve a particular agenda that profits men, I ask you and myself if this implies that we are witnessing the end of modern day feminism? Has it failed us or have we outgrown it as a society?

Whenever I ask my friends or colleagues about if the forth wave of feminism has done more harm than good, the answer is usually a yes, although this mention gives no credibility to this essay  and is not a strong statement that would give this blog more character and reliability, I would argue that “yes” is  plausibly the right answer, because, expect the “me too” movement and the girlboss era that inspired countless women to start their own businesses and work hard for their careers, what has the modern day feminism given us except misandry, inclusive language culture and lack of information about what real feminism is really, especially that those last 3 axes are what everyone is talking about all the time more than the essence of what the movement was initially created for.

In return, I would argue about what has the “me too” movement really accomplished since women are facing defamation cases whenever they speak up about abuse, such as Amber Heard. In parallel, what has the girlboss era really accomplished for women since the working conditions are still far from decent, men are more likely to get promotions unless a woman is ready to sacrifice her personal life all that among endless paradoxes they face daily?

At the other end of the spectrum, if believing that women nowadays are choosing the stay at home life out of adaptive preferences and unconscious reasoning, wouldn’t it be only fair to think that women’s tendency of dreaming of labor is also an adaptive preference pushed and fed to us by a much bigger and larger system than the patriarchy, that is the capitalism? Believing that aligning with the patriarchy, even when it aligns with our purposes is a form of internalized misogyny and is not a truest choice but a result of higher forces that guide us? 

Isn’t accepting that the patriarchy is sometimes beneficial to women a threat to the capitalism that feeds of women willing to go the extra mile to surpass men, but somehow still end up behind them and paid less than them? A threat to a system that is enriched by consumerism and people's obsession about having and making money to end up spending even more than what they earn?

It is only fair to conclude by saying that women are facing a double battle, one against the patriarchy and one is against capitalism and so having the choice between the two, is not liberating, even when we are making a choice. But I would say that the stay at home life I see all over Tiktok is very tempting to me, however, I have to constantly remind myself that I would get bored to death because I just don’t have it in me to choose easy as someone who loves challenge but I wouldn’t lie and say that, in another life, I don’t wish for the easy life to choose me and live blissfully even ignorantly.