The Art of Being Feminine

I've stumbled across a blog called The Art of Being Feminine. In case you can't tell by the title, it's really kind of disgusting. It's very pink (yes, I'm aware that my blog is pink too and I'm being completely hypocritical, but this pink is disturbing because of everything that comes with it; plus it's lighter, like baby pink, while I think of my blog color as coral) and covered with old famous paintings of half-naked, creamy-skinned women. The home page provides a link to the author's new blog (apparently she has several) which is a how-to for being feminine. The description of the blog says "How to Have a Great Love Affair With a Man, and Captivate and Mesmerize him for LIFE!" Really? As we are so often told, the goal for being a real woman is to learn how to get and keep a man. There's also a goal of becoming "an Advanced Femme- a woman who's superior to all other women;" you know, because all other women are the enemy. There is advice for "Arousing a Man's Worship" as well. Here, you can learn how to re-imagine yourself, "evoking a man's adoration." Translation: 1) You should want a man to worship you instead of love you in a partnership and 2) You are not yet, as you are, worthy of adoration, so you should learn how to change yourself to make it possible. Even though the author occasionally points out that a woman needs to love herself and not worry about her appearance, that message is lost among all the posts about learning to catch a man, how to perform a proper seductive gaze, and so on. She talks about a woman loving herself, but always in the context of "you can't find love until you love yourself." So loving yourself is just a means to get to, what else, a relationship with a man.

The most disturbing post I've found is How Feminine Women are Happiest. First of all, she seems to be defining a feminine woman as a "traditional wife, reigning as a queen in her family." This woman is compared to "her feminist and independent sisters" (note that 'independent' here seems to be derogatory) who may be successful in careers but are surely lacking complete fulfillment. How are there people who still think like this out there? I wonder what this author would think of men who are stay-at-home dads. She would probably say they are going against their nature, since, according to this post, men are naturally "suited for hard work and adventure" (as well as "conquest and war," can't leave that out!). Actually, I think that staying home with children could definitely qualify as hard work and adventure; I'm not sure if this author would agree with me.

The author writes that "Feminism makes the woman a rival, rather than the companion and supporter of a man."The flaw in this argument: the assumption that men, and masculine characteristics, are naturally superior. If a woman is considered inferior, then having independence and ambition means she is stepping outside of her station, of her place in the natural order; this makes her threatening to the man and his position. The author tries to reconcile herself with the times, saying that a woman can still have a Master's degree, and sure, she can have a job if her family economically needs it (which most do these days but that's beside the point), but ultimately, she concludes that the woman with a job is selfishly putting her own needs ahead of her husband's and family's. Seriously?

You'll have to look more closely at the blog to understand how ridiculous it is. I just find it amazing that there are people who still believe that women and men are genetically, not just different, but opposite. And where would she put homosexual, bisexual and transgender people? Most likely, she would not even consider them as valid humans (which is a huge problem of this binary way of looking at gender). I'm just disgusted that there is someone like this selling advice to women who will, and do, truly believe that the way to a happy life is to constantly consider themselves second-class citizens.