#radfemthoughts

It’s so easy to judge women for getting fillers, Botox, surgery, for wearing makeup or spending time and money on their appearance. But most women, especially in certain cultures, grow up thinking that beauty is their responsibility. It’s not about choice. It’s about survival. You’re raised with the idea that being beautiful makes you valuable, respectable, desirable, hireable. That your face is your currency. And then you’re mocked or belittled for wanting to improve it.

We are constantly told to look young but act mature, be attractive but not attention-seeking, glow naturally but never show effort. And then we’re supposed to pretend this obsession with beauty is our fault, as if it wasn’t drilled into us from the beginning.

People say “but men don’t do that.” Now they don’t, but that wasn’t always true. Men used to wear makeup, wigs, perfume, and elaborate embroidery. Look at Versailles. Nobles powdered their faces, rouged their cheeks, curled their hair, and wore heels. In 17th and 18th century France, status and power were displayed through appearance. Similar practices existed in Persia, in imperial China, in Georgian England. They used beauty as a tool for class performance, not to mimic femininity.

The point wasn’t to be like women. In fact, they worked hard to make it clear that what they were doing was not womanly. Being adorned didn’t threaten their manhood. They weren’t feminised by it, because beauty wasn’t seen as something that belonged to women alone. It was about class, not sex.

So what changed? Why now is beauty a prison for women and a joke for men? Why is being feminine mocked and punished while women are still expected to perform it?

That’s what patriarchy does. It strips something of its power and then uses it to oppress the group associated with it. Femininity becomes both mandatory and ridiculed. You’re punished if you don’t play the game and punished if you play it too well.

It often feels like it’s not really celebrating women at all but more like performing a version of us that’s based on stereotypes usually the kind people tend to mock or look down on. The over-the-top femininity, the drama, the sass it feels more like a parody than anything respectful or real

And I find it strange how femininity is seen as powerful and cool when a man performs it, but when women are actually feminine in real life we get criticised, judged, called shallow or fake. Why is it suddenly acceptable when it’s a performance but not when it’s who we are?

I’m not saying it’s dangerous or that everyone who does drag has bad intentions. It’s just… I can’t help but feel like it’s rooted in something very patriarchal. Like womanhood is something that can be played with, exaggerated, and then taken off whenever it stops being fun