Girls must mimic men to gain acceptance or face solitude

Evidence

The feminine friendships she is able to keep or make are precious for a woman; they are very different from relations men have; men relate to each other as individuals through their ideas, their own personal projects; women, confined within the generality of their destiny as women, are united by a kind of immanent complicity. And what they seek first of all from each other is the affirmation of their common universe. They do not discuss opinions: they exchange confidences and recipes; they join together to create a kind of counter-universe whose values outweigh male values; when they meet, they find the strength to shake off their chains; they negate male sexual domination by confiding their frigidity to each other and cynically deriding the appetites or the clumsiness of their males; they also contest with irony the moral and intellectual superiority of their husbands and men in general. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1591 (#complicates, via linked claim)

The more the male becomes individualized and claims his individuality, the more he will recognize an individual and a freedom in his companion. The Oriental man who is unconcerned with his own destiny is satisfied with a female who is his pleasure object; but Western man’s dream, once elevated to consciousness of the singularity of his being, is to be recognized by a foreign and docile freedom. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 367 (#contradicts, via linked claim)

In this way, woman succeeds in acquiring a certain independence. Giving herself to many men, she belongs to none definitively; the money she accumulates, the name she “launches” as one launches a product, ensure her economic autonomy. The freest women in ancient Greece were neither matrons nor common prostitutes but hetaeras. Renaissance courtesans and Japanese geishas enjoy an infinitely greater freedom than their contemporaries. In France, the woman who seems to be the most virile and independent is perhaps Ninon de Lenclos. Paradoxically, those women who exploit their femininity to the extreme create a situation for themselves nearly equal to that of a man; moving from this sex that delivers them to men as objects, they become subjects. They not only earn their living like men but also live in nearly exclusively masculine company; free in their mores and speech, they can rise to the rarest intellectual freedom—like Ninon de Lenclos. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1684 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Female friendship functions as a counter-universe that negates male domination — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1591; Exploiting femininity to the extreme can paradoxically grant women near-masculine independence — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1684; Individualized men recognize women as free individuals they desire recognition from — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 367 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Female friendship functions as a counter-universe that negates male domination #complicates (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1591
• Exploiting femininity to the extreme can paradoxically grant women near-masculine independence #qualifies (0.72) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1684
• Individualized men recognize women as free individuals they desire recognition from #contradicts (0.72) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 367
• Gendered adolescence routes girls toward inward distress and boys toward outward aggression #expands (0.70) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 672