I'm almost finished with "Alternative Femininities" (started
here) and while I enjoyed the book and found it interesting, it wasn't the "rah rah for growing old while staying weird!" that I had (sorta) hoped it would be.
Most of the women interviewed, while disdaining mainstream "fluffy" feminine trappings still spent a lot of time on their appearance. My own experiences as a teenage goth/punk/indie kid bear this out - extreme makeup and hair take a lot of time, and finding/making unique clothing possibly more so. "Performing female" seems to take inordinate amounts of time no matter what kind of woman you want to be.
Also many felt the need to "tone it down" past around age 35, even if that only meant dyeing their hair one bright color at a time instead of three. At least none wanted to take out piercings or have laser tattoo removal, but I wish they'd been more vocal about wanting to be the old lady in purple :P
As it is, I've been "toning it down" in some ways since hitting my thirties, and part of it is the fear that I'm just too old for some looks, but some of it is hard-won self-assurance. Being past the age of conventional feminine beauty ideals, I don't feel the pressure to try and be pretty-pretty unless I feel like it. That, and I know I'm a geek/freak on the inside so much as I love to play with clothes I don't feel a terror of being caught without Cleopatra eyeliner the way I did as a kid, when my extreme appearance served as a kind of armor against the world.
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