When I heard the report on NPR, Imagining the Exterior of the Ideal Man, describing cultural differences between the definition of masculinity and expectations for men’s bodies in Taiwan and the United States, I felt strangely reassured. Not that I am happy to hear how American men struggle with perceived body image or become obsessed by amounts of muscle mass. But as a woman, I have always felt I fit a bit outside the definitions of femininity in our culture.
At the moment, I am experiencing this again but in a new way, as the mother of a ballet dancer preparing for a performance. According to the written instructions I have received, I must put my daughter’s hair in a neat bun by utilizing various hair products. I am also supposed to apply cosmetics such as powder, blush and lipstick to her face. With embarrassment in my voice, I asked Abigail’s teacher for advice, confessing that I am not familiar with cosmetics. In the store I stared at the racks of colored tubes and compacts, scrutinizing labels as if I were learning a new language, overwhelmed and undereducated. Although I know in my mind that makeup doesn’t make up a woman, I feel I must be less than feminine, especially at my age and as a mother, not to know how to put hair in a bun or powder on a face. I feel I must have missed my female instruction manual.
From my earliest memories I was not a stereotypical girl. I didn’t like dolls. I hugged imaginary and stuffed animals instead. I never had a Barbie. I didn’t look like Barbie. Or have her voice. One time I answered the phone and was told I sounded like a boy. Little words but big impact in my memory. I didn’t like pink. Or lace. I couldn’t twirl on bars or dance on balance beams. I lacked grace. When I looked in the mirror and when I looked inside myself, I feared I was a failure in my own gender. I feared I wasn’t the way a woman was supposed to be.
Now I’m raising three girls. We spend most of the days together, my daughters and I, side by side. What it means to be a woman is a crucial question, one that I am answering, sometimes in words but all the time in actions, in the way I live each day, an example before their eyes. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve found freedom in femininity. I’m more comfortable with myself, whether or not I look like a model in a magazine or fit what various marriage books say a wife should be. There’s a range, not rules, and a spectrum of possibilities, despite what may be publicized or glorified in society.
Yet it is in moments of mothering my own daughters I can feel insecure about my femininity again. I want an instruction manual so I will feel I will fit the expected standards accorded my chromosomes. But rather than being afraid or embarrassed, it is these times I should seize as examples, opportunities to demonstrate to my daughters what matters most. Maybe they’ll see that their mom needs help with combs and cosmetics. And maybe my daughters will also discover that what it means to be a woman is more than what eyes can see.
