Femininity

As I've established my final film will be based on femininity presented in a documentary style video with real women, I thought it would be a good research point to look at femininity. I looked at books, articles and poems which helped me to see different viewpoints and opinions on femininity. This made me realise how broad the subject is and how everyone has different views on what femininity actually is. Some views I researched included:

• The idea of femininity being an 'out of date myth'

• Scrapping the idea of our dismissive attitude toward female attributes and traits

• Gender stereotypes actually make us less confident

• Femininity is a male constructed fantasy, we can embrace it by ditching it

Image taken from - https://www.thegreatcoursesdaily.com/femininity-masculinity-and-gender-roles-in-herland/

I began with the book 'Representing Women' (1995) written by Myra Macdonald in which I got out of the library. This book goes into depths about how women are discussed and portrayed in the media and the influences and impacts of this. She discusses women in advertisement, magazine, mainstream film, TV and general media reviewing this in psychological and social aspects. Here are some quotes I took from the book that I thought were quite powerful:

“Why do out of date myths of femininity still continue to exert a magnetic pull over us.”

“The media play on an important part in setting stereotypes & promoting a limited number of role models.”

"The media regularly serve a menu of female stereotypes that stimulates misogynistic taste buds."

This book was definitely focused more on feminism and stereotyping which as much as I love reading and researching about I didn't think it was too relevant to my film aspirations. Instead of focusing on female representation, I want to look at empowering female differences and individuality. In a sense this idea of constructed femininity and traditional femininity has stemmed from a long history of stereotyping from the media and tracing back to women's roles in society. I simply want to portray that femininity isn't just defined by beauty, the qualities and attributes of being a woman comes from all different forms of expression, self love and passions.

I read a very interesting article online published by Ms Magazine, where writer Julia Serano talks about learning to empower femininity instead of having a dismissive attitude towards 'anything considered feminine'. I quote I loved from this article was 'recognize that feminine traits are human traits' as Serano discusses how society portrays female likes and hobbies in a negative way compared to masculine traits. "I would argue that there is nothing inherently wrong with feminine traits—like all human traits, they are often useful and play important roles. However, in our male- and masculine-centric culture, there are several forces that conspire to undermine feminine traits and the people who express them." I thought the article was an interesting view on embracing femininity and made me realise that although I want my film to show the broad characteristics of femininity and female individuality, it doesn't have to be done in a way where traditional female stereotypes are bashed. I can successfully show a woman playing football and how that still makes her feel in touch with her femininity without bringing down a woman who prides in her femininity through using clothes and makeup.

Another online article I read which bought up some interesting views and ideas of gender stereotypes was one titled 'How Gender Stereotypes Kill a Woman’s Self-Confidence' written by Dina Gerdeman. She used researchers results (Katherine Coffman) to express that stereotypes hold women back in the workplace, so much so that they question their own abilities. She discusses how as a result of these constraints...

• Women are less confident in certain subjects such as maths

• Women discount positive feedback

• Women hold back on discussion on 'male topics'

"New research identifies one reason women might be shying away from certain professions: They lack confidence in their ability to compete in fields that men are stereotypically believed to perform more strongly in, such as science, math, and technology."

This article is an eye opening insight when looking at ideas of femininity and individuality, visualising and showing women liking things outside of their stereotypes is so important for girls to see as they grow up, to minimise this lack of confidence we have. Femininity doesn't have to just be 'girly' things and empowering femininity doesn't have to be suddenly be playing rugby and getting dirty, it's about embracing all the in-betweens and the wide spectrum. Being creative, self aware, self driven, intelligent, expressive and confident comes from embracing who you are and for women we can do this through embracing our femininity.

I saw a beautiful free-verse poem on twitter written by Honor Logan titled 'The Impossibility of Femininity'. There is a bitter sweet in her writing here, she almost rejects the whole concept of femininity as its power is held within a males view, arguing how could we ever even define our femininity if we aren't born with it and it's essentially at the currency of men. She says 'throw it away' talking of femininity, meaning we can embrace our femininity entirely just by ignoring it and being who we are. The final line was what made me love this poem - "Femininity is merely a word but you, you are a woman". Honor summarises her words by stating that femininity isn't real, it's not something that defines us. Instead just embracing being a woman is enough to get that self satisfaction.

Sources:

Gerdeman, D. (2019). How Gender Stereotypes Kill a Woman’s Self-Confidence. [Online]. Available from: https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/how-gender-stereotypes-less-than-br-greater-than-kill-a-woman-s-less-than-br-greater-than-self-confidence [Accessed 6/11/21].

Logan, H. (2018). The Impossibility of Feminity. Twitter. [Online]. 4 October. Available from: https://twitter.com/honorlogan3/status/1047850500484419584 [Accessed 5/11/21]

Macdonald, M. (1995). Representing Women. London. Hodder Headline Group.

Serano, J. (2014). Empowering Femininity. [Online]. Available from: https://msmagazine.com/2014/07/28/empowering-femininity/ [Accessed 5/11/21].