I don’t wanna feel Blue anymore...
"One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. No biological, psychological or economic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in society; it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature … which is described as feminine." Simone de Beauvoir
Cross-dressing is nothing new but somehow watching the recent SCP made me think about a lot of things. For one, it I really felt that femininity is mostly a social construct. Both Koyama and Shige were taught to enter a female frame of mind but in the end that’s just an image of a female frame of mind.
In the case of Shige, he tried to become onnagata which is a traditional role in Kabuki theatre. Since women were forbidden to act in theatre, onnagata were men who consistently played female roles. It wasn’t about just looking pretty, it was about bringing out the feminine aura, in gestures and language. It was about becoming “more feminine than a woman”. Which is actually kind of absurd if you think about it. An apple can be fresh or rotten, red or green but it can’t be more or less of an apple.
I think femininity is a set of features that men find desirable in a woman. No girl naturally smells like flowers, no girl is born with good manners or elegant language, these things are taught to us. Of course, some are naturally closer to the ideal, more beautiful or graceful, but in the end nobody is born a lady, just like nobody is born a gentleman. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed the segment and I’m glad everyone had fun. It’s just that… when you think about it, it was two men teaching another two men how to be women and that’s pretty damn odd.
Masculinity always celebrated more universal human virtues - strength, courage, decisiveness, self-control. Men could have personalities, women were mostly expected to be pretty dolls.
The problem is not in the virtues itself though, but in the fact that those virtues are divided into two pools and you must have one corresponding to your gender. And even if a man, for instance, has all the right virtues of a man but also some of a woman he might be punished and mocked for those extra virtues. For years my sister was making fun of my Japanese and Korean artists saying she couldn't take them seriously because of their looks and manners and it always made me angry. I mean you don't have to find everyone personally attractive, in a way it's similar to men who mock unattractive women becasue they find no other value in them. The worst part though is that someone like Jaejoong is more of a man you could ever hope to see. Leaving home at the age of 14, working odd jobs and enduring a million hardships to pursue his dream and help support his family. Is there anything more manly than that? And yet all people noted was his face and his manners and motherly warmth.
You are taught to believe that masculine and feminine are opposites like light and dark, Sun and Moon, Ying and Yang, but now I realize those are just illusions. Light and Dark are not opposites - dark is just the absence of light. Sun and Moon are not opposites - Sun is a star and Moon is just a satellite. Masculinity and femininity are not mutually exclusive. It's something Japanese men made me realize. You could be both strong and gentle and you can be neither.
I'm not saying we should abolish gender altogether, but we certainly should relax its boundaries. I just wish the virtues were common for everyone and we celebrated a woman's strength as much as her beauty and a man's nurturing nature as much as his courage.