A reflection on women, and the feminine embraced and resisted.
By Kellyanne Fitzgerald
“A man’s presence is dependent upon the promise of power which he embodies. If the promise is large and credible his presence is striking. If it is small or incredible, he is found to have little presence. The promised power may be moral, physical, temperamental, economic, social, sexual – but its object is always exterior to the man. A man’s presence suggests what he is capable of doing to you or for you.” - John Berger and Michael Dibb, Ways of Seeing (1)
Peculiar misery of moving furniture in public, of learning a new machine, taking a new physical class in which my control of how I am perceived loosens. Being seen while flopping around, graceless or struggling, behind on the steps.
Studying abroad in France was a long performance. How long could I keep the charade going- charade of not speaking English, charade of not being American, charade of belonging, and brusqueness, and moving quickly through transactions trying to avoid the telltale stumble of not knowing exactly what response to give next. At every coffee shop I gave the name Delphine to keep up the pretense of not being myself - in Italy I went by Carina. I considered it good practice for life as a woman.
The phrase “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels,” lodged itself into my tiny 12 year old mind, gentle as a pumpkin seed into soil. Unneeded, until later. Quiet as a mouse.
Certain movements and physicalities of the body that make me feel powerful: the splits, a messy bun, uncapping a mascara bottle, a slow, immaculate sweep of polish across a nail. All feminine, to my disgust. High heels click clacking on concrete, like the corner beams of buildings. Stairway runs in my tights, earrings snagging in masks like the hot glimmer of light through a giant window on the 80th floor.
“Would you ever take my name?” I ask my boyfriend.
“No,” he says. “I like my name.”
“I like mine too,” I say, feeling mulish, trapped maybe, given an impossible choice.
My siblings theorize the hyphenated things we could stick at the end of our children’s names, and they all sound like punchlines.
“The unmarked forms of most English words also convey "male." Being male is the unmarked case. Endings like ess and ette mark words as "female." Unfortunately, they also tend to mark them for frivolousness. Would you feel safe entrusting your life to a doctorette?” - Deborah Tannen- “There is No Unmarked Woman” (2)
Swimming butterfly, a backwards somersault, a grand jete, a scream. The hesitation on the entrance of an elevator like it might unmoor and freefall-timeline skimming to the bottom of instagram and the beginning of my awareness of body, to deeper floors with no windows, just filing cabinets full of sunshine days in swimsuits, chlorine and swim meets.
“By contrast, a woman’s presence expresses her own attitude to herself, and defines what can and cannot be done to her. Her presence is manifest in her gestures, voice, opinions, expressions, clothes, chosen surroundings, taste – indeed there is nothing she can do which does not contribute to her presence. Presence for a woman is so intrinsic to her person that men tend to think of it as an almost physical emanation, a kind of heat or smell or aura.” (1)
I question the instinct in myself to want to appear feminine. That enjoys the sound of heels falling staccato on hard ground, and the cotton candy scent of perfume spray. I consider getting into a very masculine hobby, just to round myself off more- I like embroidering too much for a feminist.
Why can’t I like embroidering? No reason, but it would be a better look if I also enjoyed mudding. Why is stabbing needles bearing a stain of their passage through the tiniest of holes, a feminine activity? You must admit it is a little phallic. I wonder what percentage of the clothes I am wearing were made by women. I wonder what they were paid- if they have access to birth control and child care, and if they have an option when they grow older beyond hoping their children return the favor.
Can I hold two different wrong things in my hands, and see them both? Separate colors, glowing green and glowing pink.
The competition of weight between myself and my two sisters, balanced between our varying heights and relative propensities for different sports. I like ballet (the most ridiculously feminine activity possible). My second sister did volleyball. My third sister does basketball. She keeps promising me she’ll teach me how to lift weights, once the pandemic is over. We trade scale numbers sometimes, always fraught. There is no good answer, no weight that is ever small enough.
Corporations post about international women’s day, pretty and bland and useless. Meanwhile the gendered pay gap, meanwhile in people out of work due to the pandemic, women outnumber men two to one- and of those women, two-thirds are Black. (3) I try to think of something I can do or say that will solve anything. I watch my peers go out to eat and drink, and look in vain through the comments for something about the pandemic. I think, vainly, about how long it’s been since I was able to get my hair done.
“There is no woman's hair style that can be called standard, that says nothing about her. The range of women's hair styles is staggering, but a woman whose hair has no particular style is perceived as not caring about how she looks, which can disqualify her for many positions, and will subtly diminish her as a person in the eyes of some.” (2)
If I had built myself, I would have done a better job on my hairline.
All the variations of myself who I left lurking in the minds of strangers, acquaintances. Even you. A spectre of myself hides in your window, not the true me- just glaze on glass. you almost certainly picture me with the wrong hair color. I am frozen in South Africa with bright pink braids, in Rome as a redhead.
After work I see girls filming tiktoks on the sidewalk, puffs of hair and laughter and fogged breath. I go home, and film my February tiktoks. In the comments, I commiserate with strangers about the agony of posting to Instagram. My theory is that my generation is wildly aware of our image, and of attempts to image craft. Instagram is nothing but image crafting- and whether you succeed or fail, it’s horrible to be perceived wanting to appear as something- anything. I keep getting likes on the comment, and every time, it feels like being back in the classroom, back where something interesting happens and I get the chance to say something that will make me look intelligent, cultured.
Someone once called me a “renaissance woman”, and to my immense distaste, I have spent much of my life attempting to prove them right.
We watched Fiddler on the Roof growing up, and my dad loved the line: “I have five daughters!” He substituted his correction (three) and squeezed our arms. I am the eldest, and I liked middle daughter Chava, and Jo from Little Women, and the wild girls who ran away. My second sister like Tzeitl, and Meg, and the good girls who did their duty. My youngest sister didn’t like Fiddler on the Roof- and liked Amy- the artist who, after all, married for money.
Crinkle of plastic wrap, green tree stamps and the roof burning vodka cranberry, warmth of night and yellow light, and the infinity of saturdays with snowy wind and wide open doors onto traffic streets. Today I read a poem about three daughters who hanged themselves, so as to not have to force their father to marry them off, to save him the labor of their existence. (4)
“If a woman takes her husband's name, she announces to the world that she is married and has traditional values. To some it will indicate that she is less herself, more identified by her husband's identity. If she does not take her husband's name, this too is marked, seen as worthy of comment: she has done something; she has "kept her own name." A man is never said to have "kept his own name" because it never occurs to anyone that he might have given it up. For him using his own name is unmarked.” (2)
If I was a building, I would have no windows, only eyes, and the only eyes would be mine. To perceive me, you would have to find a space where I am not watching you watching me, where I am unaware of how I appear.
“We ain’t ever getting older” said that guy, in that song that everyone sang sophomore year of college, and I was nineteen, and half believed it. I am twenty-four, and my boyfriend and I are moving to Chicago.
“You should make sure there are good schools in the neighborhood,” says my second sister.
“Why would I care about the schools?” I ask her.
“Aren’t you going to have kids sometime soon?” she says.
“I’m never going to have kids, I want to be a C.E.O,” says my third sister, changing the subject.
I am irritated that my first instinct is to say “I’m not even married to him yet”, irritated that at twenty-four, my next step is assumed to be kids, irritated at the whole chain of assumptions and presuppositions that have misfired within my mind that now have me defending women my age who have children, that my mind is still not safe from the constraints of society. Is this who I appear to be? What image of me lurks in my sister’s eyes? Where has my control gone?
My boyfriend gets my third sister a sign for her desk that says “girl boss”.
“The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object – and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.” (1)
Bird song, of course, because the winter does end with bird song, grating with how effective it is as an antidepressant. Branches like wallpaper against smoggy skies, black and demon grey buildings. I listen to a playlist for international women’s day, and half the songs are about sex.
“I asked myself what style we women could have adopted that would have been unmarked, like the men's. The answer was none. There is no unmarked woman.” (2)
My boyfriend's name is Mark, funnily enough.
I flip through the list of things to tell oneself when one is concerned about achievement and progress, and of Sylvia’s dilemma of missing most of the plums on the tree. (5) (It’s actually figs, but I remember them as plums always- purpley gorgeous, and so quick to go off.) How to find enough hunger to continue to want all the things that need wanting to sustain them? I am stuck with Esther in the crook of the branch looking up in agony. To take a plum is to eat a plum and to eat a plum is to not have an appetite for the rest.
I think of sneaking dried apricots into my room because I wasn’t being fed enough at my homestay, of one meal a day at a summer job in Italy, of a body that became an object of unwanted attention before I was fifteen.
If nothing else, I think I could have an appetite for the rest.
Kellyanne Fitzgerald is a writer and artist based in Madison, Wisconsin. In her free time she enjoys language learning, fiber arts, and folk art illustration.
Notes:
Berger, John, and Michael Dibb. Ways of Seeing. London: BBC Enterprises, 1972.
Tannen, Deborah. "There Is No Unmarked Woman". Academics.Otc.Edu, 1993, https://academics.otc.edu/media/uploads/sites/2/2015/10/There-is-No-Unmarked-Women.pdf.
"Women And The COVID-19 Pandemic: Five Charts And A Table Tracking The 2020 Shecession By Race And Gender". Iwpr.Org, 2021, https://iwpr.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/QF-Women-Jobs-and-the-COVID-19-Feb-to-Dec-2020.pdf.
Alexander, Meena. "from Raw Meditations on Money, 1. She Speaks: A School Teacher from South India" from Quickly Changing River. Copyright © 2008 by Meena Alexander.
Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar. New York: Harper & Row, 1971.