Gender expression in manga
(Prepared for a long essay)
A manga called "In the clear moonlight dusk" is somewhat a diversion from typical gender expression you can see on media. Yoi, a high school girl, looks extremely androgynous. To the point that if it weren't for binary division of gendered school dress codes, she would be completely mistaken for a guy and no will question it. A part that I like from this manga is that, Yoi is confident with her gender expression. For starters, she wears her hair short, she's taller than the average girl, and her voice is more lower than usual. Masculine traits that she inherited from both parents, her wardrobe consists of huge t-shirts and pants, and coupled to the fact that she can fight against wrongdoings. This is something that you wouldn't typically think of as traditional feminity. However, she desires to be seen as a normal woman attending highschool rather than a handsome, "princely" man. She disliked being called a "prince" and wants to be seen as a woman with no desire to change her appearance just to adhere to the standards of feminity and girlhood. She likes the way she dresses and looks, but not the way society views her because of this. She doesn't fit the societal standards of what girls should look like and so, they mock her for looking more like a man than a woman. She doesn't think badly of feminity either, in fact she acts like a typical high school girl, with the only difference is that she's extremely androgynous. This is a breath of fresh air for me from a character like Yoi.
A problem though is that, the manga's art style is recently leaning towards a more feminine look on Yoi. Which defeats the whole purpose of her character at all. She doesn't need to be feminine to be seen as a woman because of societal standards and yet, the vibe I got from the recent chapters is that she's becoming more feminine because of a male love interest and she's in love. Which is...kinda disappointing but expected. I stopped reading it because of that and I felt like I'm the only one who notices such a thing. Which seems pretty sad that you need to be conforming to the societal standards of gender identity to be seen as a normal person.
