#YEAR12PROBLEMS

Intelligence and femininity

There is a certain level of assumption around being feminine and intelligent – a large majority of it coming from girls themselves.

For far too long, girls were assumed to be incapable of acquiring knowledge, thinking rationally and being simply clever. Today, a clever girl is labelled a ‘swot’, ‘nerd’ or any other term intended to harm their feelings because they’re more intelligent than the person throwing about (supposedly) derogatory terms.

Then there’s femininity. I hate that term. What does it mean to be feminine? Is femininity simply how a girl appears? If they have soft hair and bright blue eyes matched with pale pink blusher? If we take femininity to be the concept of womanliness and feeling like a female (define that also, please) then there’s an assumption that girls cannot be both intelligent and feminine.

So, the record goes that a girl who’s good at maths or who can give a damn good analysis of Shakespeare’s Hamlet cannot be beautiful or have any woman-like qualities at all. I imagine that this record comes from pre-written history; after all, girls weren’t allowed to be educated; they couldn’t work; their sole purpose was to further the family line. Nowadays, in Britain, things are different. Girls are educated, they are in the workplace and pregnancy is not the majority’s number one priority. Nowadays, women have opportunities.

There was a time when I felt like just because I could achieve high grades I could not be ‘feminine’ or be womanly, if you can see what I mean. I felt like female wasn’t a quality I possessed. And there are many more who think this way now – I know it.

That’s why we have to set the record straight. Girls can be clever and womanly because part of being a woman is thinking for yourself, acquiring knowledge and learning whatever you want without any boundaries. Perhaps the reason clever girls feel so left out of the femininity loop is because femininity needs updating.

See you next week.