I almost don't even see this as a different side of that coin. The poster you quoted wants to dress up 'femme' because she enjoys it; something about it appeals positively to her self-image. The fact that she sees male attention as a negative seems to me no more odd than similar hyper-focus in others... those who take being thin or having large breasts beyond the point of attractiveness as become absorbed in a self-image.
The comparative mildness of wishing to dress up effeminately is of course an important difference, but the underlying issue seems basically the same. Effeminate clothing was created to be -- by definition -- sexually distinctive and therefore sexually attractive. This is equally as true of a mini-skirt, a hostesses's neck-cut housedress, and a burka; in each case the point isn't what's shown but what's elaborately concealed. The point on the scale at which wanting to wear a skirt (or whatever) falls is exponentially less than developing an eating disorder, but the interesting underlying psychological question is the same: this desire for beauty (well, positive self-image, but beauty is a convenient shorthand term) both absorbed from and then diverged from the mainstream. When, and why?
(It's also true for clothing that sexually distinguishes men; this area has been blurred in the last century, but there's still a fetishization of typically male-role clothing like business suits or firemen's slickers.)
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dancing_serpent
(no subject)
Date: 2009-11-22 06:58 pm (UTC)The comparative mildness of wishing to dress up effeminately is of course an important difference, but the underlying issue seems basically the same. Effeminate clothing was created to be -- by definition -- sexually distinctive and therefore sexually attractive. This is equally as true of a mini-skirt, a hostesses's neck-cut housedress, and a burka; in each case the point isn't what's shown but what's elaborately concealed. The point on the scale at which wanting to wear a skirt (or whatever) falls is exponentially less than developing an eating disorder, but the interesting underlying psychological question is the same: this desire for beauty (well, positive self-image, but beauty is a convenient shorthand term) both absorbed from and then diverged from the mainstream. When, and why?
(It's also true for clothing that sexually distinguishes men; this area has been blurred in the last century, but there's still a fetishization of typically male-role clothing like business suits or firemen's slickers.)