I personally apologize for not posting for so long. I’ve taken a two-month break from writing because I genuinely had no motivation to create. Recently, though, after having a conversation with my boyfriend over a phone call (and after spending quite some time by myself), I’ve come to a better understanding of a revelation I previously had. People always want to categorize themselves. Placing themselves into groups, hoping that they’ll gain more insight into who they are. Being in a group also produces the feeling of community—as if a group of people now welcomes you because you fit their looks. That’s exactly what aesthetics are. The modern term ‘aesthetic’ was meant to be another word to pair with subcultures, but the meaning of aesthetics has completely shifted away from the reason subcultures exist. We are now trying to look the part to feel wanted, rather than embodying who we are and finding the community we want to be in based on our preferences. Just like many of the YouTube video essays suggest, hypocritically, everyone is becoming performative. I say hypocritically because even the videos we see day to day, calling out the performative nature of the internet, are just mimicking another person. It’s all an attempt to fit in, gain status, and make money. I recently watched a video by Lani’s Lens titled, “Y’all Are Weird About Femininity” (I’ll link to her video; I really recommend watching it). She basically talked about how women are enhancing the split between femininity and masculinity to be seen by men. As I was watching the video, I began to realize that many women are feeding into the “personalities” that were created by men in hopes of finding one themselves. I also realized that I’ve fallen into this misogynistic trap myself. Though I find myself venturing out of that realm due to my mind maturing, I have on different occasions bought things that aligned with the aesthetic of ‘femininity’. Rather than embodying who you are, these groups were made in order to create social constructs that restrained women and uplifted men. Due to modernism and the political injustices that have been fought against, women have been able to live lives without the need of a man present. In more recent times, men have grown to feel little due to their need no longer being in place. Women can now do things without a man, so in relationships, it is no longer about what they can provide but rather about whether they are at the same level as the woman in question. With women, in my opinion, exceeding men in the current day, such as women having a higher percentage of attending and graduating college compared to men, the need for men has shrunk. Now, some women can see men as only a source of companionship and a way to obtain children. If you weren’t thinking of it, let me remind you that the mindset I just threw at you is very similar to the mindset the majority of men had at a particular time in history. It’s coming back full circle, and many men hate it. So, with that in mind, it’s interesting to see this “feminine aesthetic” mantra being pushed all across social media. Of course, the aesthetic is being promoted by women so that it’s easier to digest as an individual in the audience. The idea of being “traditional” again is yearned for by many men because that was the era in which they were most powerful. In traditional families, the men are owners of everything, leaving the women absolutely nothing and forcing them to obey their male counterparts to keep themselves alive. Without the man, women would be subjected to absolute poverty of the lowest basket. Why would we want to go back to those times? Social hierarchy—which is why gender stereotypes are being mass-produced into podcasts and short-form videos. This aesthetic is an attempt to reverse all that has been done. Though that sounds dramatic, when looking into the depth of this pink, Pilates, straight hair, submissive, nurturing aesthetic—that’s what it’s aiming towards. In Lanilens’s video, she also mentioned Black women joining the trend that was NEVER made for them in the first place.  I wrote about this in a previous article, how the aesthetic of femininity is solely white. When you search up femininity, white is all you see. You’d have to place keywords like “Black” to see femininity from the “black perspective”. Even then, it still isn’t Black—it’s a white aesthetic placed upon a Black model. The idea that to be feminine is to be traditional is ludicrous. You would think that to be feminine is to be, simply, a female—the biological gender you were born as. If femininity is simply an aesthetic, as it is being deemed and marketed as, to be a traditional housewife that wears pink, acts submissive, drinks matcha, does Pilates, has long hair, and wears “light makeup”, then femininity can be placed upon anybody. Yet, this aesthetic of being that was made to force women into a group below men doesn’t allow anyone else but women, even though it’s an aesthetic. Maybe, and this is just a thought that just came to me, it’s because men don’t want to see other men in the same category as women (aesthetically). After all, they refuse to see their own race as anything lower than what masculinity is deemed to be. That’s just a thought, I feel there is no set answer as to why homophobia exists (other than the collective response of: people don’t like things that are different from their views). No one is born masculine or feminine—if it is taught, then it is not inherent. We need to stray away from the ideals of daintiness being feminine and roughness being masculine. Why are we reverting to the mindset we had before, the mindset that kept women and men segregated from one another and left women with nothing in their hands?

Link to Lani’s Lens video: