Thank you for this insightful and thought-provoking comment. There are so many thoughts that come up for me in response… the first of which relates back to lack, and the phallus as a signifier of lack. If men are those who aspire toward usefulness, then it follows that a lack of usefulness (i.e., a “feeling of uselessness”) motivates this striving, and if women are those who aspire toward beauty, then there is a lack of beauty (i.e., a “feeling of ugliness”) that motivates this striving. The insight here is that both men and women are relating to lack in different ways, which reflects what Lacan says about how men are those who “believe” that they “have” the phallus, and women are those who “pretend” to “be” the phallus. No one actually has or is the phallus — which is what makes gender akin to a masquerade — but nevertheless we center our subjectivities around lack and attempt to compensate for it in our behaviors.

I can see how this encounter reflects this dichotomy, as the insertive man was performing his usefulness by presuming it was “useful” to share his narrative with strangers, while use femme people were conversing in a group wearing makeup and thus performing our relationship to beauty.

It seems to me that the most important aspect of what you’re saying is that it is the striving that centers both of these gender embodiments, and that we can locate gender performatively in this striving. I am interested to understand more about what you mean by your claim that men are striving to be useful while women are striving to be powerful when prior to this you are situating the dichotomy in terms of usefulness-vs-beauty. How did we go from women striving to be beautiful to women striving to be powerful? I was with you until this part of your response.

Also, who gets to decide what is useful, and what makes something useful? I think the presumption of usefulness is what can lead to oppressive masculine behaviors. I think misuses of objectivity (e.g., mistaking opinions for facts) is one such way this oppressive behavior manifests, but this is a complicated issue that I will write about in an article of its own. From my perspective, in social situations it is “useful” to share a story if it relates to the topic at hand, and it is not “useful” to share a story that is irrelevant, because this thwarts the discussion and centers it upon a single speaker (one who might indeed be presuming that they are being “useful” by sharing their narrative). The narrative I shared here is an example of what I think is a “useless” story being shared with people who did not want to hear it, since he interrupted our conversation to talk about himself. I think the problem here (i.e., the “toxification” of masculinitity) is when someone believes they are always useful no matter what.

One last point I want to address is that I admittedly have not done as much work regarding toxic femininity, but know it also exists, and will be thinking more about how beauty-striving might be implicated in this toxicity. I think gender in general is a scam, though, and that all normatively gendered behaviors are less productive than our socialization leads us to believe.

Thanks again for your thoughtful response!