Can we stop doing this already?
Not the outfit, that's cool as hell. I mean the trope of the Girl So Badass She Beats The Boys At War/Sports. And she always falls in love with a male protagonist whose patheticness is a major plot point. Also, the author is male.
As an adult, I can roll my eyes. As a kid though? This trope really set me on the wrong path. I actually thought that "beating the boys at sports" was the beauty standard we were supposed to achieve - let me tell you, there was NOTHING else on TV back then. So like a million other girls in the early oughts, I called myself a "tomboy" and rejected pink and ruffles and told boldfaced lies about how much makeup I was wearing.
To make matters worse, I existed in the ultra-Christian homeschool world, and it was peak Duggar era, and I hated it. Girls were expected to conform to a very particular aesthetic: something like Inviting But Not Slutty, or Organic Madonna. The ideal look was totally, 100% Soft Natural! (And white, of course. With curly hair.) So, like any reasonable teen, I had to reject it - along with all of the outfits that would have looked good on me, alas.
Being Goth was the obvious solution, for a while. Let me tell you, it did nothing for my Soft Autumn coloring. I also tried really hard to make Gamine work. (My spunky, rebellious big sister was a Gamine.) When I still wasn't scary enough, I tried to become tall and imposing by wearing Flamboyant Natural clothing...which overwhelmed me, and made me look smaller.
I wish someone had told me, We do not have to live like this. Why are we letting these loser men design our characters? Even by rebelling against their aesthetic, we are living in their paradigm.
It's time for us all to become unabashedly ourselves. I'm writing this to the reluctantly Yin, but it applies to the Yang as well: I've noticed that whenever a woman enjoys and embraces her true self, she's held up as the standard, the best type, the Quintessential Woman That All Women Should Imitate - no matter what type she is!
That could be any one of us! That could and should be all of us!
What if, this summer, we all did one thing we never allowed ourselves to do before? I've come along way, but I still shy away from dresses. No more. I'm going to start wearing them for no reason, just grocery shopping or whatever.
Here's to a Yin summer, my Yin friends.
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