This week of The Farmers Market and The Library will have double headers because I didn’t share a “What I Know” or “What I Ate” last week. I got a little thrown off my game last week.
1. It was the start of the kids school last Tuesday. Starting on a Tuesday and then having a big wedding to attend out of town on Friday made the week short and jumbled. Not to mention, I got in my feelings a little with Savannah off to Kindergarten. Easing us all into school became my number one priority.
2. I had a different post planned for “What I Know” last week, but I couldn’t wrestle my thoughts down on it. I kept contradicting myself and I now I have myself rethinking even if it is something I believe in.
And 3. I got sucked into #rushtok. Again.
I have followed Alabama’s sorority recruitment since it became a phenomenon in 2021. That year, I was influenced and bought not one, but two, athletic skirts from Lululemon. Last year, I was sucked right in again with the preppy, colorful outfits and bubbly girls again. But also because, last year, the buzz and the conversation around it all leveled up. It was reported on in major news outlets and there were thought provoking pieces like this that asked “Does rush ever end?” and is Alabama Rush so “camp” (the exaggeration of gender— think drag) that it’s actually art? Both were really thought provoking and interesting to me because it drove home an idea of “performing femininity.”
I have seen this so much in motherhood spaces or through conversations about influencers— the performance of an idealized woman based on socially constructed standard on social media.The idea that a mom should look like and act like “this.” Or, a woman in corporate America should look or act a certain way.
Or, in the case of #rushtok, a young woman should, too.
(Side bar: this is not just a female thing. More to come some other day on “Ken’s.”)
But, what pulled me in this year, is that it felt like the internet’s interest turned into surveillance and the conversation was less smart and more snark. A little “yucking of someone else’s yum” as my sister in law wisely has taught her kids– and mine. And, I didn’t like it.
Look. I get it. There are a lot of problems— historically and currently— about Greek Life. But, there also is a lot of merit to Greek Life. I was a member and had a corporate career supporting Greek Life, and I still volunteer with my local chapter. I can speak on this with tons of knowledge, nuance, experience, and expertise.
I would also be remiss to not mention my struggle with young women dancing, while showing off their bodies in the name of empowerment, at schools in states where their bodily and human rights are being actively denied.
In a word? For me? It’s tough.
However, I found myself sticking up for them a lot last week finally combating comments of “Why are they taking this so seriously?” and “This is ridiculous/dumb” and “I don’t get it” with “Because maybe it’s fun.”
This summer has been one of the more “fun” summers that I have had in a very long time. Our kids are five and seven making them able to play and participate in so much. We moved to a neighborhood with a park, a pool, and so much ground to cover on bikes. The ice cream truck comes to the end of the driveway. The kids went to camp, digging up old camp songs, tie dye skills, and friendship bracelet knots from the deepest parts of my brain. We fished a lot and played in the sand at the creek making drippy Christmas trees. We danced at the Eras concert and in the kitchen. We snuggled up on rainy days watching my old favorites like The Parent Trap, Momma Mia, and The Lizzie McGuire Movie. And we even went to the movie theater more times this summer than I have in the last ten years.
This summer I felt so connected to a younger me and it was just fun.
Years ago on Pinterest I saw a quote that read, “I love pretty things and clever words.” It’s attributed to no one and it’s not massively profound. It didn’t give me chills, like some quotes can do. And yet, it has stuck with me. I even made it my “cover pin” for my “Favorite Quotes” board years ago.
I do love little pretty things. Little nick-nac’s at Anthropologie or a gift store. Flowers from my garden or a pretty dress. I do love smart, clever words. The banter in a self aware sitcom like The OC or a really sharp song lyric. I like op-eds and well researched think pieces. And, I love a good chill inducing quote. Especially if it’s styled up in a pretty font on Pinterest. Clearly.
There are so many more important things to love or even just like; but, pretty things and clever words hit me with a jolt of “Same. I really do.”
I have shared how there have been times that I have worried my interests are too unimportant, too girly, too superficial or even made me “dumb.” I have even hidden or numbed my own love for things in order to feel and be perceived as more serious.
In light of #rushtok, I have had great conversations this week about femininity and I think it’s a great conversation to close out what has arguably been one of the more feminine summers thanks to Taylor Swift Eras’ Tour, The Summer I Turned Pretty and the Barbie Movie. I love the light that is shining on femininity right now, showing its strength and also that feminine does not also mean not feminist. And also not anti-man. It’s a special posture of love in showing up in a way that is great for us all.
This is why the snark at the young woman on #rushtok maybe made me get fired up and want to protect them a bit.
The stats are out there: A girls confidence plummets at age ten. Some studies are even showing as early as 8. It’s because this is when a girl starts to notice how the world perceives her. It’s a realization that maybe others are not interested in her for what she likes and does, but she is being surveilled for what she likes and does. Are they culturally and socially “appropriate?”
A question I ask often in so many different ways is: Is this my inherent nature? Or, is this the way I have been socialized?
Do I like to work out? Or, do I do it because I know I should?
Do I enjoy The New York Times? Or, do I read it because I feel like I should?
Do I like putting together an outfit and wearing makeup? Is it fun for me? Or, is it because I feel like I should? And, here’s the flip side: Should I not care about this because caring is vain, superficial, maintaining toxic beauty standards?
Like America Ferrera shared in her monologue, it’s all a bunch of mental gymnastics and I don’t know a lot of the time. I don’t know what the “ideal” woman is, but I am trying hard to always keep finding the “ideal” me.
And, that’s not some “optimized” me or “best” me; but rather, it’s a me that is “so me,” just like the quote “I like pretty things and clever words” felt “so me.” A me that doesn’t feel that surveilled or as Barbie says, “I feel conscious. Of myself.” It doesn’t feel ashamed for liking something that may be seen as unserious. (… and also doesn’t snark on others for liking whatever it is they like, too.)
Because, I do know that I am a girl who set down my Barbie one day and never picked her back up in favor for eyeshadow, a Nokia cell phone, and YM magazine. Who then saved all her life guarding dollars for a suit at Anne Taylor and asked for a plain black purse and a plain gray coat for “work” for Christmas. Who hid her pregnancy under tunics and her motherhood as she pumped in closets at the workplace.
A girl completely missed the release of the Reputation Album, because who has time for a pop star’s feud when there are babies to feed and businesses to build, only to listen to “Lover” front to back on a whim as it made buzz just after it’s release. That day in 2019, I rolled the window down, basking in the late summer sun and warm breeze, as I turned the pop songs up. On the way home, I ran into the grocery store for a tub of hummus and bottle of rose (my girl dinner of my early 20s), and remembered who I was before all of them and all of it.
I do know now I am a girl who writes in a moody dark room, with a pink disco ball hanging in the corner next to a wall of frames of all the things I love: my people, my kids art, Lake Michigan, The March House at Christmas, peonies, pink, hearts, quotes about love, poems about death, and lyrics about creativity in swooping calligraphy and bold letter prints.
I am a girl who will fight for girlhood, fangirls of all kids, femininity, and advocate always that the seemingly superficial is actually so much more.
Or, maybe it’s not.
Maybe it’s just fun.
I am a girl who loves pretty things and clever words.
Here’s a very small collection of Pinterest Quotes and Poems I love and have collected on this:
“Promote what you love, don’t bash what you hate.”
“Growing up, I hated the color pink.
I thought that girly was
synonymous with fragility,
and loving things that were pretty
meant I lacked strength.
So I spent my girlhood running wild
with bare feet and scraped knees,
surpassing the softness
that lives inside of me,
I avoided lip gloss and glitter,
and anything that shimmered
because to be a woman is to be
condemned by anything feminine.
and I still don’t like the color pink,
but I am learning that
embracing my femininity
does not make me weak.
- Kalliope Kay
“The human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.” John Keating… and also Robin Williams as John Keating in The Dead Poet’s Society. This has been in my Facebook Profile “Favorite Quotes” section (this used to be kind of a thing) since… 2006?
And, if all else fails: Ms. Swift on the subject—
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