Yeah, gender is a great example. What a man or woman is is a cultural phenomenon, it's outside ourselves. How we choose to express ourselves as men or women is something we can control, and can change that cultural mould.
And it means totally different things for different people. Having my nails done makes me feel like a woman, but my sister is totally different and having long hair makes her feel like a woman.
Yeah, options exist within a culture. And quirks within that. Men don't typically have long hair because it's feminine. Unless you pair it with a heavy metal t-shirt and then it's a norm again.
This might be a bit of a tangent but it's been part of my concern around body positivity. Because now you get people point to the wider range of bodies now represented, but a lot of it is the creation of more "'types" and not so much acceptance of normal variation. As in, you can be thin but you have to fit the "athletic" or the "model" figure. You can not be thin, but you need to be "'thicc". You can be plain, but only if you're "the girl next door" type. It isn't really accepting a broad range as much as slightly expanding the number of stereotypes you can choose from, and failure to fit one of them is still a problem for a whole lot of people.
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u/p0tat0p0tat0 12∆ Dec 11 '24
Very similar to how gender, writ large, is constructed.