April 2018

As women, we have a lot of expectations to uphold. One is the expectation of being "feminine." Google defines femininity as "the quality of being female; womanliness." 

That... doesn't tell me much. Based on that, every woman would be "feminine." But we know that's not true. There are requirements to being feminine. 

There are a only a few things I can think of that I absolutely hate: possums, green beans, waiting on someone who is late, and people I don’t know seeing me without makeup.

This last one is beyond superficial, I realize that, but I have been wearing makeup for close to a decade. It’s become so ingrained in my everyday routine that I almost feel like I’m missing a part of myself without it.

It happened again, after my friend and I had finished watching the latest Star Trek movie. I was complaining because the first Star Trek show aired in the ‘60s, and it feels as if the way women are portrayed on screen hasn’t come very far in that time. After all, in the first two remade Star Trek movies from 2009 and 2013, all but one of the named female characters show up on screen in their underwear, and the other woman dies in the first thirty minutes of the movie.

Ah, love. A four-letter word to describe what may be the most complex thing that humans are fortunate enough to experience.