By my adorable pleather block-heeled bootstraps

Is a woman who embraces her femininity harmful to feminism? I’m of the position that my shit-kicking boots can match my outfit. If I fight for my belief that I have the right to be treated equal, if I reject the male gaze and challenge patriarchy, it doesn’t make a difference if I do it in jeans or polka dots. When we’re battling a rape culture that tries to tell us that women who wear short skirts deserve to be sexually assaulted, it is really, REALLY counterproductive to talk about whether the dress I’m wearing is too archetypically feminine for my ideas to be valid.

On the flip side, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie pointed out “men's grooming is never suspect in the way women's grooming is—a well-dressed man does not worry that, because he is dressed well, certain assumptions might be made about his intelligence, his ability, or his seriousness. A woman, on the other hand, is always aware of how a bright lipstick or a carefully-put-together outfit might very well make others assume her to be frivolous.” And that “feminism and femininity are not mutually exclusive. It is misogynistic to suggest that they are.”