Sex, Gender and The Princess Syndrome

I was just reading an old blog post on Femagination, which I've just discovered tonight. I like this blog and find it really interesting, but something in this particular post bothered me. It was about women making themselves up to be pretty, especially on wedding days (The Princess Syndrome), and the writer's struggle as a feminist to take a stand on this. This is the part that irked me:

"But I think there’s something else at work when a woman does all the womanly things to make herself look attractive. It has to do with a woman’s sense of identity. Wanting to be attractive is part of being female; it is probably hard-wired into us because of biology."

She writes this in an offhand manner, as if it's something that is just accepted. But it's not! "Wanting to be attractive" is not at all hard-wired into women biologically; it is hard-wired into women socially. We are socialized from the time that we are born to learn our gender roles and play the parts well. Women and girls are taught, both subtly and not, that their best asset is their looks. Women are judged, often harshly, if they are not constantly working their hardest to look attractive at all times. There was a court case in 1982, Ann Hopkins vs. Price Waterhouse, which dealt with this issue; Hopkins had the best record of 88 candidates (all others were male) but was not given the promotion because she was not feminine enough. A woman who doesn't follow the social rules of making herself attractive and devoting herself to femininity is seen as a threat to the system, as abnormal, deviant, or even dangerous. Society is putting women into a horribly confined, lose-lose position.

It is absolutely crucial to understand that nothing about gender is biological; gender and behaviors associated with it are socially created, regulated and enforced. Most people find that they do not fit evenly into a 'feminine' or 'masculine' category (and many do not even fit cleanly into male or female). It is important, as feminists, to understand this difference because the assumption that sex defines personality traits, behaviors, or a person's abilities is the assumption that has made female oppression in this country (and the world) possible. Women were considered too weak to go to work because their fragile, female minds and/or bodies couldn't take it. Women were not allowed to vote because they (supposedly) lacked the mental capacity to make political decisions. As long as we continue to believe in sex defining what a person is capable of (or even what a person is like), we continue to oppress all people by confining them to a set of characteristics that they are expected to have. We know that men have emotions, and that they cry (or can cry), but society still tells them that these are wrong, because emotions and tears are feminine. We cannot continue teach people to be half-human, choosing either the 'feminine' or 'masculine' characteristics; we are limiting everyone. 

I have a very different opinion than the Femagination author on today's weddings and Princess Syndrome; I simply don't understand the point in spending all that money on the wedding instead of investing that money (as well as time and energy) into the marriage. Still, I do respect the right of any woman to look how she pleases, whether that look involves make-up and heels or not. However, I think all women should ask themselves why they want (or need) to make themselves pretty, and for whom they are actually doing it.