"Masculine" and "Feminine": Descriptive or lazy?

What’s in a word?

Some time ago, a home decor blogger asked her readers

Should we use the terms “feminine” and “masculine” to describe decorating styles?

That got me thinking about what those words really mean. "Masculine" and "feminine" are imperfect descriptors. They don't actually tell you anything about how something looks, but are based on narrow stereotypes of men and women. Even worse, they are always changing, which raises the question of how accurate they are to begin with.

As my research on the history of pink symbolism revealed, pink is only "feminine" in a specific cultural context, limited to certain countries and times.The same is true of nearly all of the design details we think of as "girly".

“Baby Brother” button-on suit 1929

This is one of dozens of similar outfits for artist Queen Holden’s 1929 “Baby Brother” paper dolls. To describe it as "feminine" is wrong; to the contemporary viewer, it was babyish, not girlish. The same is true for “masculine”; nearly all the clothing once considered exclusive to men can now be worn by women without anyone batting an eye.

So my advice to style writers: don't be lazy. Use active, visually useful adjectives! Instead of "masculine", try tailored, functional. or understated. If by "feminine", you mean delicate, ruffled, or pastel, just say so! I realize that some readers might think my take is political. It is and it isn’t. Good writing should not be a political issue. But I do care deeply about avoiding stereotypical assumptions, when they are limiting or harmful. If your son is reading two years above grade level, would you want to see him placed in a special boys' reading group because "boys don't read as well as girls"? Hell, no! Should your daughter automatically get the princess toothbrush at the dentist instead of the one with the rocket ship because "most girls like princesses"? Again, no. Does your son's artistic ability make him feminine? Is your daughter's love of rugby "mannish"? No, no, no, NO! Is Caster Semenya's body "masculine"? Don't even go there.

Humans are different in myriad ways, inside and out.There is too much we don’t know about sex and gender to reduce that complexity to rigid - and ever-changing - stereotypes. Words have power.

I welcome respectful discussion.