A brief spoiler for the television series The Magicians.
I wasn’t expecting Take On Me to become a song I associated with grief. The a-ha recording I knew was bright and restless, with that synth part carrying a feeling of anticipation even when the words sounded uncertain. Then I heard it in The Magicians, a television series in which a group of friends gather around a fire to remember someone they’ve lost. They sing a quieter, slower version together, and suddenly a song I’d heard as reaching toward someone becomes a goodbye. The person they’re singing for can’t come back to them. I’m hearing the same familiar words with that knowledge, and something I’d listened to quite happily becomes fucking devastating.
The arrangement changes what I notice. Without the original recording’s momentum, I hear hesitation where I’d heard excitement, and the pauses leave me sitting with words the faster version had carried me past. That doesn’t make the bright version dishonest or the sad one more perceptive. I like both, and I don’t need to decide which one has uncovered the song’s real meaning. They make different things possible for me as a listener. A plea can sound hopeful in one voice and exhausted in another, even when neither singer has changed what they’re asking for.
I’ve started thinking about femininity as something with that much room for interpretation. The versions I recognize most easily aren’t necessarily the ones I’d enjoy living in, and admiring somebody’s femininity doesn’t mean I want to reproduce it. I might love something about their confidence, their elegance, or the way they seem completely at ease without wanting their clothes or their mannerisms. The song appeals to me, but I want to find out what happens when I arrange it around the person I am. That involves more than choosing which familiar details to keep. It can change what femininity feels like to me, and what I get to express through it.
The comparison only goes so far, because femininity doesn’t have an original recording we’re all supposed to have heard. Cis women aren’t the original artists while the rest of us attempt a convincing cover. I’m already a woman, whether or not I feel particularly feminine on a given day, and I don’t expect everyone who enjoys femininity to be a woman. I’m interested in the room an arrangement gives you to make something your own, not in finding a supposedly correct version from which everyone else has departed.
Take something as ordinary as red lipstick. I can imagine wearing it because I want to feel romantic, because I want a look with some aggression in it, or because I just like that particular red. On someone else it might feel elegant or familiar, something they’ve been doing for so long that it barely needs a thought. Looking at the colour wouldn’t tell me which of those things it means to them. I could choose the same lipstick and experience it differently, without either of us misunderstanding what it’s for. The pleasure could be in feeling softer, more conspicuous, more put together, or simply pleased with what we’ve chosen.
I find that more useful than trying to decide whether I like femininity as a whole. There are versions that appeal to me and versions that don’t, and sometimes the part I dislike is an expectation attached to the appearance rather than the appearance itself. I can enjoy looking lovely without wanting to become more agreeable. A pretty detail doesn’t have to mean I’m asking to be treated as delicate, although I might want gentleness too. I don’t want to give up the detail because somebody has bundled it with a temperament I don’t have. I’d rather discover what it means when I’m the one wearing it.
I’ve had to relearn parts of playing guitar because I like having pretty nails. Cutting them would make some things easier, but I’d lose something I enjoy, so I’ve been working out how to accommodate them instead. It’s frustrating when my hands can’t quite do what they’re used to, and liking the result doesn’t make every adjustment fun. Still, I want the nails and I want to play, and I’m willing to let the way I do one change a little to make room for the other. They’re on the hands doing the playing, not waiting for me to finish before I go back to being feminine.
In that setting, pretty nails don’t feel like a delicate alternative to the music. They’re part of how I enjoy playing it. Somebody else might want the same manicure for an entirely different reason, and I wouldn’t know what it gives them unless they told me. To me, there’s pleasure in having something I find beautiful involved in an activity I already love. I don’t need the contrast to be amusing to anyone watching. It doesn’t feel contradictory from inside the experience, even when there are practical details to work through.
Working those details out also makes me less suspicious of effort. I know what it is to practise something until my hands stop needing quite so much instruction, and the fact that I had to learn doesn’t make the enjoyment false. I want to allow myself that patience with other things I haven’t tried much. An unfamiliar way of dressing or carrying myself might feel awkward because it doesn’t suit me, but it might also feel awkward because it’s unfamiliar. I don’t always know which straight away. I’d like a chance to find out before I take that discomfort as a reason to stop.
There’s a difference between borrowing an idea and trying to become the person I borrowed it from. A singer might change a key because it suits their voice, and I wouldn’t hear that as an admission that they shouldn’t be singing. I want to be able to make that sort of adjustment for myself. I might admire a look and change part of it, or decide the thing I loved was how comfortable someone else seemed rather than anything I could put on. I can learn from that without treating their version as a set of instructions. Sometimes I’ll end up wanting something quite unlike what first caught my attention.
I’m also not interested in turning my taste for heavy music into another restriction. I like force and noise, but I don’t need every expression of femininity to be confrontational before I’m willing to enjoy it. Sometimes I want something gentle without adding an abrasive detail to reassure myself that I’m still me. A woman who prefers a softer style isn’t necessarily making fewer choices, and I wouldn’t want to congratulate myself for being authentic while deciding she was just doing what she was told. Her arrangement might be very familiar to me and still feel deeply personal to her.
That leaves me room to have feelings I might otherwise be embarrassed to admit. I can be blunt and still want someone to speak gently to me. Having strong opinions doesn’t mean I’m always comfortable, or that I never want reassurance. I don’t want femininity to require me to be pleasant when I’m angry, but I don’t want being the loud one to require me to hide when I’m hurt either. The quieter cover gets to me without abandoning the song, and I like that reminder when I catch myself imagining that softness would undermine the rest of my personality. I can need it without losing the parts of myself that are less gentle.
None of this makes other people’s reactions painless. I care about being recognized, and it’s upsetting when something that feels good to me gets read in a way I didn’t intend. It would be easy to write that I don’t give a fuck, but that wouldn’t be honest. I can want my choices to communicate something and feel disappointed when they don’t, especially when the response is about my womanhood rather than somebody’s taste. Sometimes I’ll change what I’m doing because I’d like a different response. Other times I won’t want to surrender something I enjoy. I don’t think either decision needs to become a rule for how I handle every encounter afterward.
I also want the freedom to change the arrangement without explaining what happened to the previous one. Enjoying something elaborate doesn’t commit me to that amount of effort every day. Wanting a quieter version sometimes doesn’t mean I’ve become embarrassed by the louder one. I might be tired, interested in something else, or just in a different mood, and none of that has to amount to a correction. It would be exhausting to discover all these ways of expressing myself and then treat whichever one I tried first as another thing I have to maintain for everyone else’s benefit.
There will be women who don’t want much of this at all. I don’t need to insist that they’re feminine in some less obvious way to make sense of them, any more than I need somebody who isn’t a woman to explain why they enjoy it. The metaphor helps me think about something I’m drawn to; it doesn’t oblige everybody to be drawn to it. Even among those of us who are, there’s no reason to expect the same choices to give us the same pleasure. I can tell someone what I’ve enjoyed without assuming they’ll discover the same thing if they try hard enough.
I still enjoy the bright version of Take On Me. Hearing it as a goodbye hasn’t taken that away, and I don’t need to choose the more painful interpretation to prove I understood it. I’m trying to approach femininity with that same willingness to be surprised. I might find comfort in something I thought would feel artificial, or discover that something I admired isn’t much fun to live in. I’d like to be able to adjust it, keep what I enjoy, and see how it feels without making every change into a verdict on myself. Some of what I choose will be recognizably feminine to other people, and some will leave them wondering what the hell I’m doing. I hope I get to spend more time enjoying it than explaining why the combination works for me.
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