Thinking Out Loud

I am

I think I always resisted enjoying Marvel, and admitting to liking it (even to myself) because I got so tired, as a child and teen, of being told I'm a tomboy, or liking things that are "made for boys", and all this other gendered BS.

I felt like I wasn't girly enough to be like my ultra femme friends and family. But I wasn't a boy, to be enjoying Pokemon and Dragon ball Z, or liking to play Tiberian Sun, or Mortal Kombat, or Need For Speed.

These things shaped most of my childhood and adolescent years because I grew up with a family of, like 10 boys, three of which are my brothers.

I never saw these things as a thing "for boys". I just saw it as a thing which I really loved with all my heart.

Then, I got into Twilight and Taylor Swift, only to be told it's stupid and lame and anyone who likes those things, are dumb. So I started hating those things, because I knew I wasn't dumb and I felt this need to prove to people that I'm smart - and "not like other girls"; so I resisted dressing like them, too. Because to be feminine meant to be shallow, and full of yourself, and to be dumb.

But after slowly deconstructing this patriarchal fucking bullshit, I've slowly started to embrace dressing more feminine and trying to reconnect with my feminine self; unabashedly enjoying Taylor Swift; and not shutting up about my opinions - especially when it comes to things I love and enjoy.

Why should I be ashamed to love these things?

And I think I'm able to say yeah I enjoy Marvel, too. I've had to find this balance between the things I like. Because for so long, society has told me that, as a girl, I should be like this or I should be like that, and these are the things I should enjoy in order to be considered a girl. I hated being called a tomboy because that's not how I felt on the inside; but I also felt I wasn't girly enough to fit in.

So most of my problems of feeling like I never belonged somewhere, or not fitting in, wasn't because I didn't fit in - I did.

I felt isolated because of this fucked up ideology we've grown up with.

I can be many things at once.  I can like everything. Being a girl or being feminine doesn't mean fitting into a box and meeting the patriarchy's fucked up requirements of what it means to be a girl; or them classifying things by gender.

There need not be a reason. I am, because I simply am.

--- Ink and Wander