Femininity, Mo'ne Davis Style

Everyone misses being a kid. We smell a certain scent or hear a certain sound and we shudder with nostalgia; it feels good and bad all at once. We think of a distant time when we were fully unaware, of our surroundings, of each other, of our bodies. We did things without thinking of repercussions because those didn't exist yet. My mother always tells me this story of when I was 3 years old and she walked into the backyard of my grandmother's farmhouse in the Dominican Republic and found me cooped up on the grass with three massive Rottweiler hunting dogs, my hand inside one of their mouths. No concept of danger, no fear, no shame. There were no limits that I could conceive of. I wasn't molded yet.

Celia Bullwinkel took to film to explain the life of a female and the never ending plight against her own body. What struck me the hardest out of the progressing storyline of the short animation "sidewalk" is how she explains what happens to a girl around her preteen years. Around the 25 second mark of the video, her character walks past a billboard that reads "Big Girl" along with pictures of two girls who looked older and were dressed in the way we modernly picture teenage girls to dress. After walking past that image, she changes the way that she walks. She lifts up her chest, straightens her back, and sucks in her stomach. She looks a little older too, suggesting it's been a year or two.

This is something that many females can relate to. I began hesitating when I was 12. I realized that I was now not only a female, but also sexualized. I began to focus on being pretty, in everything that I did. I didn't take any more chances and fear took its roots. For the rest of my life up until this point, I've approached physical things with what Iris Young would call an "inhibited intentionality," a phrase derived from her piece titled "Throwing Like a Girl". That is the only thing that separates me or any other girl from being like Mo'ne Davis. 

There is nothing inhibited in the way Mo'ne plays, or the way she presents herself. She is not thinking about how to present herself, she's just doing what she loves, so clearly and naturally being who she is, being a human being. Young writes, "'To understand is to experience the harmony between what we aim at and what is given, between the intention and the performance...' Feminine motion often severs this mutually conditioning relation between aim and enactment. In those motions which when properly performed require the coordination and directedness of the whole body upon some definite end, women frequently move in a contradictory way"(146).  I don't buy the idea that her ability to do this is derived from her race, I believe our perception of her is derived from our own ideas about her race. 

Mo'ne is not the first girl to ignore the "must be feminine" memo, which has little or nothing to do with her race. After all, many white girls also ignore the memo. She's not trying to be masculine either, but we see it as so just because she lacks femininity, that is, our fixed notion of femininity. Her existence does not poke holes in Young's argument that "'femininity' is... a set of structures and conditions that delimit the typical situation of being a woman in a particular society, as well as the typical way in which this situation is lived by the women themselves. Defined as such, it is not necessary that any women be "feminine"---that is, it is not necessary that there be distinctive structures and behavior typical of the situation of women... some women escape or transcend the typical situation and definition of women in various degrees and respects." Mo'ne is transcending and her blackness is not what's giving her that ability, it's her incredible talent. Her blackness is only a factor in the way that she is being received.

Mo'ne's talent comes from her uninhibitedness. She understands the game, she understand the field/court, she feels the grip of the ball in her hand, the material, it's weight, and she knows how hard she has to throw, the length in which she needs to extend her arm. She understands the goal of her aim and how she is going to use her body to get there. She doesn't hesitate or second guess, because after all, she plays because she enjoys it, not for the glory of winning. It's not masculinity that's making her such a good player, she is doing that herself. She is still as much of a girl as I was when I was her age, she is just as feminine, it is just her own kind of feminine. It is a transcendent femininity, one which is not defined as limiting. This is apparent in the way she says "I throw at a speed of 70 miles per hour and I throw like a girl." She is changing what it means to throw like a girl, to be feminine, and she is also an exception. She is an exception in that many young girls her age are learning how to be inhibited, they're being told to "be careful." Mo'ne is just doing what she loves, no fear, only pleasure.