im still super fuckin salty that 2 of my instructors for my psych degree specifically mentioned not wearing makeup and feminine clothes as a sign of “deteriorating mental health.” specifically, that if a woman walks into your practice, and you’ve never seen her before, and she’s not wearing makeup or dressing up or shaving, then she’s going to be a “difficult case” and when she starts to do these things it’s a sign that therapy is progressing well.
especially since when i was at Rock Fucking Bottom ™ i was over-performing femininity as a) a way to dissociate from myself, my trauma, and the dysphoria i was experiencing and b) a last-ditch effort to get Approval, Validation, and Attention when i felt like i was unattractive and worthless. don’t let anyone tell you that “psychology used to have a misogyny problem and issues with pathologizing gender nonconformity, but it’s solved now because more women than men are earning psych degrees!!” because the problems are still very much there, they just change forms every couple of decades.
This is so common that when my late ex was inpatient, not only did he have to deal with being put in the women’s unit, but he was under strong pressure to go to the “self-care group.”
Which was where everybody had to sit in a circle and be “taught” about shit like how to take a shower, that they should be using deodorant and shaving their legs regularly, and i think stuff about cosmetics too.
It was extremely patronizing, showed a real lack of any basic understanding of mental health on the part of the hospital, and everyone in the ward was under a lot of pressure to go to it. They were given to understand that it was a big way to show that they were “doing better” if they wanted to get released.
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