Un-femininity: women and skulls

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Skulls are so unfeminine. There is something about death and about the macabre dark nature of skinless face bones that apparently does not go with femininity. Because women can't possibly think about death, or be in dark moods, or have anything to do with the human skeleton.

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I know that traditional femininity generally does not include "gross" or deathly or internally bodily things altogether. Women are not associated with things like worms or boogers or shotguns. But there is also something particular about the image of a skull, and the meanings that it evokes, that people won't put together with their idea of a woman. I guess I am sensitive about skulls and images of skulls because, well, a) I collected human skull figures in high schools, but people then wrote it off as "teenage angst", so my identity as an adolescent overrode my identity as a women. But also, 2) I have a tattoo of a skull on my wrist. And aside from the gasps I get for being a woman with tattoos (more on this later!), I especially get weird looks, even from tattooed folks, about it being a human skull. It's not a cartoon skull, and it doesn't have a feminizing bow on it. It is realistic and human and it's there to remind me of just that: that death is imminent and life is fleeting, as is the external, and we are here to make things work for each other.

So skulls can be versatile, skulls can be quite spiritual, skulls can be philosophical, skulls can be just anatomy, but skulls are part of our experience. I wish women were allowed to be full human beings who may be fascinated by all parts of our existence.