This is my first post in a couple years so bare with me 🙂
I (23F) have been told numerous times that I am a masculine woman. This has been said to me as a compliment, in no way has it been with any malicious intention. But lately I have been noticing that I feel a bit uncomfortable when people say that I have a masculine energy.
To put it into perspective, I am 5’8 and like to wear a lot of neutrals. I don’t own a lot of feminine type clothing, and it is often difficult to find any cute clothing in stores. I also drive an old truck and prefer to drive me and my friends around (I am the one who has had a license the longest)
One of the first things that I am told is that I have a great masculine energy and sometimes my friends refer to me as “mommy.” At first I didn’t mind it, but now that feels like it doesn’t align with who I am.
People are shocked to hear that I’m a big Taylor Swift fan and my favorite color is pink. While yes those two things should not be inherently feminine, I feel like they connect me to the girlhood I missed out on.
I would appreciate any advice or stories about if you have felt a similar way. Thank you!!
Comments
You don’t have to accept the box people try to stuff you in. Nothing you described sounds particularly masculine to me. You sound like a normal woman. The people around you are the problem.Â
Just be yourself and keep surprising people. In my experience, trying to be someone else raises more uncomfortable feelings in me than being vulnerably myself.
I (35f) have always been a tom boyish woman. I have processed a lot of internal misogyny recently and realized that was contributing to the limiting ideas I have around gender and around how I am “supposed” to show up in the world.
I’m not saying that is what you’re dealing with, but the discomfort that is arising in you is where you might want to start looking.
I’m butch and like Taylor Swift and enjoy wearing pink and get into fights with other butch lesbians about how that’s okay to do and still be masculine. It’s very okay.
I’m 39 (almost) but drive trucks from 16-32. When I was a kid I was called a “tomboy”, I played softball, didn’t like baby dolls, but LOVED my American girl doll because HISTORY. In college my roommate would jokingly call me her boyfriend. I literally blew people’s minds when I wore a dress to a school dance.
Now? I wear what I want. Yesterday was docs, baggy jeans, and a hoodie. Today was a maxi dress and push up bra. I literally don’t care if people don’t understand, or confused by my gender presentation. It’s not theirs. It’s mine. I dress depending on what feels good in the moment. Tbh, I dress more like the men in my office than the women, and no one cares. My “liked” songs on Google music would make your head spin, lol.
So yeah. Be you. Everyone else can sit in their confusion if need be.
Also 5’8”. My boyfriend is shorter than me. I drive a Subaru and woodwork and wear a lot of hoodies. I also wear dresses and do nail art on occasion. It’s really not either/or. I embrace all my traits regardless of whether they’re societally perceived as masculine/feminine. I’m just me and I love me!
I’m pretty much the opposite. I have fun breaking people’s expectations.
I’m girly. I almost always wear a dress or a skirt because I like them better. I have long hair and people tell me I do it in girly styles. I have a soft voice at a higher register because I am small. In college, people would guess that I was majoring in Early Childhood Education, and that I liked to sew and cook. Actually, I was a computer science major, and I like to build robots. I even learned how to do arc welding. I like programming better; now I’m a software engineer.
And that’s not all. I have a few cross necklaces, and people make all kinds of completely wrong assumptions about me from that. They usually guess right that I’m a Christian and I go to church, and then they guess wrong that I hate gay people and trans people and vote Republican because I want to tell everybody else what to do all the time. I’m the complete opposite of that: I think God loves everybody exactly the way he made them and my job is to love everybody exactly the way they are, even the people who seem to go out of their way to be unlovable. I’m about as woke as it is possible to be, because sleeping while others are in need doesn’t seem proper to me.