𝐀𝐓𝐋𝐀𝐒, WRITING TIPS

* . ʷʳⁱᵗⁱⁿᵍ ˢᵗʳᵒⁿᵍ ᶠᵉᵐᵃˡᵉ ᶜʰᵃʳᵃᶜᵗᵉʳˢ.

being beautiful, feminine, domestic, and enjoying typically "girlish" things does not make you or any woman less strong. we do not need to reject womanhood or femininity to be powerful. woman are fucking powerful, whether we wear dresses, like the colour pink, enjoy fashion, baking or cleaning, wear makeup or paint our nails. those things will never make us less strong. i like having long hair, wearing makeup and dolling myself up, dressing in pretty dresses and visiting flower meadows, i think the colour pink is lovely and i love watching cheesy romance movies — and i do this not because "society" taught me to (in fact, society and 2000s "not-like-other-girls" mentality taught me not to), but because i want to.

also, totally unrelated, but i think barbie and 2000s barbie movies in general were a large contributor to me being into women like,,, nori from fairytopia mermadia just GOT me. all barbie movies are inherently sapphic and that's just a fact. let's go lesbians.

i, a sapphic, LOVE masculine-presenting, strong women. i will take ellie from the last of us, brienne of tarth or arya stark from game of thrones, buff, short-haired, violent, "masculine"-dressing women ANY DAY. i literally want them to step on me and lift me off my feet with their buff arms (gay). and they're valid, they're 100% a valid character trope because, guess what, not every woman needs to be feminine, they can present and enjoy whatever they want. but it's the idea that only non-feminine women can be strong is what's damaging. and that's what i wanted to get out of the way with internal misogyny.

"NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS".   →      *   .    &

i want to make the point that i feel like a lot of this does stem from the idea of being "not like other girls". i know it's made a meme now, but when i was growing up, this was a serious problem. i was this girl. i used to think because i was an avid reader, because i didn't wear makeup or enjoy wearing dresses, because i rejected the colour pink and was in a way "anti-feminine", i was somehow better than girls who did adhere to those typical feminine roles. i literally, unironically liked those "i'm not like other girls" posts when they floated around instagram in 2013, because back then, me and other 12-year-olds took it seriously. i thought that was my way of being feminist and empowered.

long story short, it wasn't.

it's called INTERNALISED MISOGYNY. it's a real problem, putting down other girls because they enjoy feminine things. i literally made myself dislike the colour pink, dresses, make-up and high heels because i was told by "real feminists" that those things made me weak and adhering to patriarchal roles. maybe, in a way, it is. sure, historically, we were forced to like those things because they were the only acceptable factor of womanhood. but that doesn't mean we can't let women now enjoy them. that, in itself, is opposing feminism. let women be who and enjoy what they want. i'm not any less of a feminist or strong woman just because i wear dresses and enjoy collecting flowers.