Autonomous self-awareness structurally blocks feminine submission and spontaneous charm.

Evidence

Once acquired, the seemingly immanent virtues of fame and fortune can enhance the woman’s sexual attraction; but being an autonomous activity contradicts her femininity: she knows this. The independent woman—and especially the intellectual who thinks through her situation—will suffer from an inferiority complex as a female; she does not have as much free time for beauty care as a flirt, whose only preoccupation is to seduce; while she might follow all the experts’ advice, she will never be more than an amateur in the elegance department; feminine charm demands that transcendence deteriorating into immanence no longer be anything more than a subtle carnal throb; she must be a spontaneously offered prey: the intellectual woman knows she is offering herself, she knows she is a consciousness, a subject; one cannot willfully kill one’s gaze and change one’s eyes into empty pools; a body that reaches out to the world cannot be thwarted and metamorphosed into a statue animated by hidden vibrations. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1922

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines femininity’s demand as spontaneity of prey-like offering, which reflexivity per se destroys.
• XREF: Connects to Sartre’s bad faith and the look/gaze; the woman must abolish her own subjectivity. — connects to: Women’s exclusion from authority stems from learned passivity, not innate inferiority — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 673; Kleptomania simultaneously asserts the girl’s autonomy and surrender to being object — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 899; Voluntary effort destroys the trance female desire requires — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 958 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Exploiting femininity to the extreme can paradoxically grant women near-masculine independence #complicates (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1684
• Self-awareness lifts the I above itself while it remains itself #expands (0.72) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 814