I know there are some people in here who are better at feminist theory than I am.

[leahbobet]

This is a thought only partially brought on by this video, which is beautiful and strange and still sitting on the edge of a really toxic meme that has been bugging and bugging me more lately. I don't say this to slam said video. I say this because it made me think of the rest and I'm going to lift its symbolic architecture in a flagrant and shocking way to get my point across without a big, ranty, oversharing kind of explanation that you don't actually care about.

I wish there wasn't still this...expected dichotomy between dresses and horses.

I want both the dress and the horse.

I like them both. Simultaneously, even! And more seriously? One of those things alone won't be enough to close the little cartoon hole in me. It isn't enough. It's a choice between kinds of incompleteness, and that's a stupid kind of choice to give someone, and I don't personally want to make it because there's no reason to accept half-rations just because that's what's on offer.

---

So. There a theoretical home for that line of thought?

Comments

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

I always thought it was girls that were supposed to be obsessed with horses anyway - something about how learning to lovingly control a creature physically larger than themselves was supposed to prepare them for boys (and to be dominatrices, apparently).

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I always thought it was about how in the time a lot of the canonical horse-and-kid books were written, horses were basically the animate equivalent of a car. Having a horse meant an ability to get places, an independence that you would never have had before, as well as a kind of adult responsibility. You weren't so reliant on other people anymore.

But y'know. I'm coming at this from the outside. I never really had the horse thing.

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

Girls who are into horses as preteens/early teens and then get out of horses are into horses because they can be symbols and metaphors.

Girls who are into horses and either stay in horses for life or get out for a while and then come back? Those girls get the metaphor(s), yeah, but primarily we're into horses because they're horses.

I have a lot of sympathy for that want-my-cake-and-eat-it-too position, Leah, and I totally share that utter lack of desire to choose. And possibly I'm too close to the subject matter--I can see that reading of it, but I can't unknow what I know about the horse world. Which includes the above, and also includes the knowledge that there's nothing in that world that precludes having the cakes and dresses, too. That is, the causality only runs in one direction. Giving up horses is very, very often directly related to the other stuff, but giving up the other stuff rarely-if-ever (I honestly can't think of a single clear case) has anything to do with the horse.

And honestly, I think the video itself resists the reading. I think the video is, actually, arguing for exactly the same thing that you are. At the end, after all, she hasn't had to choose between the things she loves and wants. She's still wearing that dress and standing in that house as she gives the horse a hug.

[inaurolillium.livejournal.com]

I second this. Especially the last paragraph.

I was into horses in my mid and late teens. I hope to have horses again someday, and still ride on the rare occasions I get the chance. They're wonderful symbols, but they're also warm, living things, with their own lives and feelings and personalities. And when you're riding, and really moving together correctly, that feeling is incredible on all kinds of levels.

And, dammit, you can ride in skirts.

I guess I kind of cheated. la_marquise_de_ mentions below the freedoms we're supposed to give up when we grow up, but I refused to give up the ones that meant the most to me. I'm not married, and I live alone with my dog and cats. I work a job that I chose, not one I was forced into. I carry six packs of bubbles in my car, because sometimes you just need bubbles -- and some extra for friends. Sometimes I buy myself awful sugary cereals -- the kind I was never allowed as a kid -- just because I can (and then end up trashing them, because they're too sweet). I still play dress-up and make faces at people and giggle and jump around. I never gave up the things I loved about my childhood, I just added new things.

Which is not to say that I never feel a bit empty. But it's usually from things I haven't found yet instead of things I left behind. (Well, and the bipolar disorder.)

I found the trying-to-fill-the-empty-with-cake bit to be pretty interesting. Commentary on emotional eating and eating disorders?