The Alanna books, which I love to death, portray presenting as femme to be pretty straightforward. You just buy yourself a dress and some eye kohl and you're good, right? Okay, but why doesn’t she have to practice putting on makeup without looking like a clown? She's been hanging out exclusively with boys, but she doesn't have to practice moving like a girl? What about acting or talking in a contextually-appropriately feminine manner? There is a lot more that goes into gender presentation than the clothes, folks. Frankly, the first time she dresses up, she really ought to come off as a boy in drag, because training-wise, that's exactly what she is.

Some women may go to the trouble of presenting as femme purely for the joy of it, but the truth is, that's not the big reason to do so. In our culture, women are expected to display a certain minimum of femininity in order to look professional; in some cases wearing makeup may actually be in the work dress code. In the past, being beautiful literally added to your monetary value, and unfortunately, that's still pretty close to true; there's research indicating that women who wear a moderate amount of makeup in the workplace are treated as being more competent than those who don't. We see variations on these standards of beauty and the effort it takes to achieve them across cultures and through time. What they look like tells us a lot about the world.

There's also social pressure outside of the workplace to look femme; frankly, in most areas, women who don't do femme to some extent are seen as weird, or perhaps as not having very good grooming. You also get different kinds of harassment depending on how femme you present, or how well-groomed you appear. There's calculus that goes into that, too. (I'm much less comfortable being out at night alone when I'm femmed up than when I'm in my standard jeans-and-tshirt daily uniform.)

So, writers, consider your characters’ gender presentations, and what the costs and benefits are. You don't have to make your story all about it, but I guarantee that thinking about that context will make your world more realistic. Obviously, your world doesn’t have to mirror our current society, but you can learn a lot about how societies treat gender presentation by looking at ours.

I want to mention Seanan McGuire as an author who gets this right; in particular, Verity Price does several different levels of femininity very intentionally, and although the work is not always shown, it is acknowledged. When she has an asshole boss who requires them to dress in Lolita cheerleader outfits, it's called out as being a distasteful requirement of the job, and she shows some of the ways that customers react to it, ranging from higher tips to harassment. When she dresses in ballroom dancing costumes, she discusses how many weapons she can hide under them and how she's learned to fight in heels. But when she's going out with the expectation of a fight? She wears her functional fighting clothes.

I’m certainly not saying that all genre books should be talking about gender presentation all the time; far from it. But when it’s relevant to the work, I really appreciate someone who has taken the time to show some of the work that goes into gender presentation, partially because it helps the work feel more real to me, and partly because I believe it’s really helpful for gender equality to expose the work that women are expected to do just as the price of being female.

Here's another installment of Gender in Genre! The first post is here.



It's not that I wish to complain that femmes are, on the whole, a put upon or oppressed group. We get our fair share of sexism, certainly, but there's a lot of privilege that goes along with being femme.

Perhaps it's because of that privilege, and the fact that as nerds we've self-defined as different from the 'pretty people', that we have a femme problem in genre. As kids, a lot of us got picked on people who were prettier than us, and therefore, being pretty was the problem, right? And that would be one thing if it was equally distributed in genre - we have our share of the vain, smug men, admittedly, but the truth is, there are a lot more vain, insipid women. When you see this trope disproportionately applied to women, it becomes clear that this is not really about looking down on being vain, it's about hating on things that are traditionally feminine.

The message you get, reading a lot of genre literature, is very straightforward: if you are doing women's work, and if you are making an effort to present as feminine, you are a waste of time; you are boring; you are useless. You are baggage. (And that's the charitable version; think about all the beautiful-but-deadly female villains out there, from Snow White on down. There's an even  better message: being pretty makes you evil.) Conversely, if you are a girl and you would like to be considered interesting, you must set yourself apart from all those other girls. You must be interested in boy things instead, because boy things are the only useful things.

I understand the urge to say "girls don't need to be restricted to girl things!" This is a wonderful thing to say. But it's possible to go too far, to say that only girls who eschew their gender are interesting. Which is what we're saying in genre, every time another author takes cheap shots at a traditionally feminine character.

Now, guess what that means to geek girls? You have to choose between being femme and being a protagonist. You need to apologize for liking feminine things. If someone says that you're girly you need to figure out what you did wrong and backpedal.

It means that if you're beautiful, it negates your interest as a person. Are you pretty? Congratulations, you're an object. A fake geek girl. An outsider. Go away.

You want to know why women tend to be underrepresented in fandom historically? Maybe it's partially because we told them that the very thing their value was being judged on in real life - their appearance - made them unwelcome in fandom. Shockingly, this ties right in with our standard cultural narratives about the objectification of women. Women must be pretty to be taken seriously, but if they're too pretty, they are trying to hard, probably not competent, just eye candy. (Or they are using their Feminine Wiles against you.)

Oh, and when pretty women are just objects in fandom? Suddenly harassment culture at cons makes a great deal more sense. I'm not saying that genre's disdain for femmes is singlehandedly responsible for harassment culture, but if we make anyone who presents as feminine into plot furniture in our work, are we really surprised when people objectify women in fandom?

And, on a personal level: we talk a lot about wanting to see 'people like us' in the media we consume. I'd really like to see people in the books I read who are allowed to be femme without being vapid and useless. I'd like to see girls be interesting, compelling characters without having to be Different From The Other Girls.

On behalf of the other girls, screw that.