Sometimes, when I am in the company of more glamorous women, I wonder if I – a white, Western, middle-class, heterosexual, cis-gender woman – am a ‘proper girl’ at all. Just like that, ‘Am I a proper girl?’ I look from myself to the women around me and I feel that I do not measure up. And then that’s when I know that I am a girl, that I am proper. Because, of course, this paranoia, that I am not feminine enough, not desirable enough, not good enough, is the ultimate performance of femininity. This paranoia is a crucial part of how women are policed. And of how we police ourselves.
