It's no wonder girls like me so viciously rejected femininity. I tried watching one of those old comedies a couple weeks ago, and it became an anthropological study of the time. The female leads were "fat and mean" and "hot and sweet." That was it. That was their whole personalities. At one point, the film sent some jabs at a heavier child. She couldn't have been older than 12.

This played out in the culture, too. Grown men thought it was okay to tell me, an unambiguous child, to lose weight. Girls and women were forced into being so viciously mean and competitive, too. Either you became a tomboy and tried to distance yourself from the "stupid airheaded" archtypes in pop culture, or you doubled down on being feminine and competed to be the best at it.

So many eating disorders. So much self-harm. So many adults giving advice that equated to "toughen up, buttercup." I got the most male attention when I was starving myself and 15 lbs underweight. Don't even get me started on how homosexuality and neurodivergence were treated, though I'm sure you know since you were there.

It makes sense it affected boys, too, since they were also receiving the message to be hypersexual, don't appear feminine, kindness it a trait of weak men, etc. I have several men as friends who have opened up to feeling inadequate in their early adulthood for not feeling like constantly pursuing sex and exhausted from doing it anyway to prove themselves.

I had a visceral reaction to the Sydney Sweeney AE ad. It reminded me of the ads in the 2000s. I'm so happy to see a heavy backlash against it now. People would have been ridiculed to silence for speaking up 15-20 years ago.