Girl dinner.

a reclamation of sorts

I’m zoned out staring into my fully stocked fridge, closing and reopening it each time it passive aggressively beeps in judgment of how indecisive I am. Two types of squash stare back at me. I splurged on them at the farmers market this week - a bright red one and a blueish one that looks kind of like a pumpkin. Both have fancy names I can’t remember, and I have no idea what to use them for. I resentfully ignore the five avocados I also picked up on sale. They’re being quite rude, pressuring me to eat them before they turn to brown mush…and I have no plan or desire for them either.

My vegetable drawer is brimming with the un-chopped and un-roasted ingredients for the makings of a highly involved, definitely pretentious “Mother Earth Buddah Bowl”. I found it on a food blog Sunday night while I was in my weekly surge of setting good intentions. Past me clearly did not anticipate the needs or energy of future me…an ongoing point of contention in our relationship.

With a sigh (I have no energy to fight myself on this), I let my hand find the jar of peanut butter and begin pulling apart my pantry in search of the half-eaten sleeve of probably-stale crackers lost somewhere in the back - remnants of my last “Girl Dinner”.

I’m standing in my underwear, leaning against the counter and unceremoniously dunking cracker shards directly into the goopy peanut butter, meeting them mid-transit with the side tilt of a refined taco eater, oily dribbles evading my mouth and landing on my chin. Undeniably, feeding myself like a toddler feels like an act of self care in this moment. There’s something about it that feels unfussy and kinda rebellious that makes the whole experience somehow luxy. But somewhere between cracker number five and the shame spiral percolating inside of me, I start to wonder when my standard for self care dropped so low.

Why does this make me feel the good kind of bad…where did the label “girl dinner” come from, and who decided that scavenging for scraps is a “girl” thing to do?

Also, why the fuck do I feel rebellious right now? What or who am I rebelling against, exactly? 

In truth, I’ve celebrated other women for behaving in similar ways…I’ve offered an enthusiastic “good for you!” when I witness a defiant reclamation of choice without consideration of expectations or judgements. But have we ever stopped to consider what it is we’re all high-fiving each other for? And does it really serve us to laugh away a very real (and perhaps the most honest) part of ourselves when she finds the strength to show up? 

In my own way I think “girl dinner” is one tiny act of resistance against the narrative that I should be more domestic…that I probably shouldn’t eat 17 tablespoons of peanut butter because It’ll counteract the yoga session I did earlier in the day (ugh, whatever)…and that I should have my stereotypically feminine shit more together, but heaven forbid in doing so I challenge the gender norms we’re all infused with.

Patriarchy is in our bones. We don’t have to speak it out loud to feel that we’re supposed to be disciplined but not dominating, beautiful but not promiscuous, confident but not “too much”, charismatic but not threatening to other women, one of the girls but also one of the boys, rested but never resting…

…we’re supposed to be soft but meekness is annoying…sensitive but never show the emotions that make others uncomfortable…and opinionated but only when we simultaneously agree with the dominant discourse. 

What…the fuck.

I know it might sound like I'm taking a holier than thou, anti-men, fuck the patriarchy stance around…well, around peanut butter…

…but in truth the idealized man is also an impossible standard to reach, and I actually think that men have just as hard of a time breaking out of their expected roles as we do. The pressure to conform is so great that many men self-stigmatize and hide parts of their identity as a means of self-preservation…patriarchy isn’t a club that all men are given wristbands for. It’s a set of systems built into our culture that’s used to control the flow of power, even for men.

There just happens to be a blueprint for men that makes that power a little easier to access if they play by the rules. But for some, that means hiding who they really are in exchange. In contrast, when we hide who we really are, we give away power. We make ourselves smaller to fit into our traditional role of ‘dependent’ and our voice shrinks away with us. 

So, my point is, there are socially constructed norms that a lot of the time go totally unnoticed and unchallenged by all of us in vastly different ways. Pre-approved gender roles are assigned to us before we’re even born that inform where we will fit in the world, and what will be expected of us. Roles that define how we relate to ourselves before we even know who we want to be.

And at the same time…we have all found little ways that we consciously (and unconsciously) resist those norms and the power structures underpinning them. Things we do that give us just a little bit of that power back. 

Like “girl dinner”. Go us, I guess.

That being said, when we describe ourselves, our experiences and, in this case, our little acts of resistance with words dripping with self-deprecation, we’re bleaching the meaning right out. We’re reinforcing for ourselves that who we’re being in that moment is only okay because we acknowledge the hilarity of it.

Someone, somewhere - perhaps a man, but probably a clever woman in a spiral (and who can blame her) - decided to permit herself a moment of guilt free exhaustion and gave us language for us to do the same. I can see her assembling a counter buffet of deli meat, Oreo’s, and Babybel’s, deciding to soften her shame by calling it a “girl dinner”. And just like that, what could have felt empowering for her, instead placed her firmly back in her comfortable patriarchal place. 

To put it simply, we’re basically always trying to make what we’re doing socially okay.

We’re applying a skim coat on top of the cracks in our foundation so no one is the wiser - including ourselves. We use language that softens our “bad” side into something endearing and comfortable to come into contact with.

And we do this all the time.

We call ourselves lazy when we’re really just taking a fucking break.

“She has such a pretty face” is fat-phobic-code used for socially approved body shaming

Girl drunk means we were messy, “too much”, or couldn’t “keep up”.

If we’re a MILF, we’re the equivalent of a centerfold, a sexualized thing to be fantasized about.

Opting out of our fake smiles and ego-stroking reactions makes our resting face “bitchy”, apparently.

We’re automatically in a “rut” when our life is void of blissful movie wonder.

And if we know what we like, what we want, and what we won’t settle for…we willingly label ourselves high-maintenance as a warning for what you’re getting into.

We minimize ourselves.

We push our inner truth deep underground, and when she steals a moment in the light we pat her on the head and tell her how cute she is…we feel confused by her and what she’s really trying to say…so we dismiss her with a slight.

But what if little-you was really standing there next to you saying the same things you’re shaming in yourself?

I can’t help but wonder…what if gender roles didn’t exist? 

In the hypothetical absence of the pejorative stereotypes and expectations cast upon us by the culture each of us is currently enmeshed with…how would we all move differently in our lives?

In other words, if I didn’t come with an internal blueprint for what being a “good girl” looks like…what would I be?

What aspects of myself would I place more or less value on?

When I walk into a room, what would determine how comfortable I felt?

How much easier would it be to rest?

To move my body gently and without weaponizing it?

To eat scraps for dinner if I want without an inner rebel snickering inside of me?

How would my relationships with other females, those who identify as female, the feminine found in every man, and my own feminine energy shift?

I think ultimately I’d just like to notice moments when (a) how I feel and (b) what I say to make sense of how I feel, feels incongruent…if you know what I mean. 

I’d like to stay really intentional about how I make sense of others' experiences too, careful not to steal away a moment of power with an accidental pre-programmed slip.

And I’d like to challenge my own inner narratives that have unconsciously silenced parts of myself within a role I never asked for…I’d like to normalize choosing for myself even if what I choose is inconvenient or feels threatening to others ideas of how I should act or who I should be. 

So you know, just small things ;) 

Also, I feel deeply compelled to acknowledge the privilege I have in feeling safe to do this work. To openly speak about these perspectives and offer my honest opinion without fearing for my life.

I know our world doesn’t feel safe for everyone to challenge the social structures that confine them.

We all have a lot of work to do to move towards a more complete understanding of the intersection between gender, sexuality and the many cultural layers that define our unique experiences.

I think for me, starting with myself in unearthing and challenging the systems and structures that work to both benefit and minimize me feels like a necessary foundation to lay. 

I have far more questions than I have answers, but just speaking into this feels like a small act of resistance in its own right. 

If you feel called to comment, please remember to be gentle with each other. These conversations are big, and hard, and everyone is coming from their own lived experience.

x Laura