The "womanface" farce
The more that feminists complain about “womanface,” the more I think they deserve Dylan Mulvaney.
If you don’t know Dylan, he’s the obnoxious narcissistic young gay man making a fortune pretending to be a “girl” and is currently ruining the brand prospects of products he’s repping such as Bud Light.
The complaint from feminists:
”He’s wearing WOMANface!”
We are supposed to feel the same emotional jolt at that phrase as the one we get when hearing “blackface.” I have two complaints with this. I wonder which one my readers will find more problematic?
1. Women are not born with thick black eyeliner, false lashes, overdrawn lips, “countouring” makeup, lace-front wigs, pre-installed high heels, or falsies.
These are not features of womanhood that are comparable to the actual, physical, black skin being aped by those who wear blackface.
Feminists have long complained about “the patriarchy” “imposing” these sartorial requirements on them. Now they want to claim that’s actually what women’s faces look like?
Also: It’s women who impose these standards on each other to compete with other females. Heterosexual men think the thick-paint look is trashy and ridiculous because it is.
Here’s the real motivation: brand competition. The feminists are angry that makeup men are displacing them on their high rung of the cultural totem pole. They, feminists, need to be seen as constant victims.
This has nothing to do with genuine outrage about genuinely awful aspects of transgender ideology (and those are legion). It’s petty competition and damsel-in-distressing.
2. Blackface has been emotionally super-saturated and inflated into something far worse that it actually is. For the same narcissistic/brand-competition, I’m-the-opressed-est reasons that feminists bellyache about drag.
No black American has lost a movie role at MGM to a white guy in lamp-black for more than 70 years. There haven’t been traveling minstrel shows for even longer.
”Blackface” is, at worst, rude or insensitive.
Stop jumping in emotionally sympathetic horror at these two fake “oppressions.”
Or, at least, stop expecting other people to perform outrage along with you.
There are serious, real-world consequences of actual bigotry, abuse, and boundary-breaking.
These are not it. But they are excellent revealers of the shallow narcissistic motivation behind what pass in 2023 as “liberation” movements.
As a woman... yes, I am starting my sentence this way... I am annoyed by Dylan. I find it infuriating that he is gaining so much attention and money with his stupid act of “girlhood”. I find the political and corporate set ups that allow for him to be successful this way appalling and dangerous for our kids. We need to be outraged where it is important: when kids are hurt and laws are changed for the worst.
This is where my outrage with this gay man ends: Dylan = annoying. He does not impact how I present and he does not speak for me as a woman. At best it is an stupid skid that went way outside the boundaries of SNL and will eventually end. A bubble yo burst when he or others will get bored with it.
Dylan is a symptom not the cause. He is not even the offense, but just a looking glass to where our society is at.
Hi Josh. I always enjoy hearing your take on things! I'm a therapist and I think you nail Cluster B and it's takeover of our culture.
I don't really know what to say about Dylan Mulvaney. I find him grotesque and annoying, sort-of an obscene characature of womanhood. Although, there are biological women who chose to present themselves in a similiarly foolish histrionic manner and quite frankly they piss me off too!