This Is What It Really Means To Be Feminine

Those voices are easy to recognize, the ones that say women shouldn’t drink red wine or black coffee. “They’ll stain your teeth!” they cry. They’re the same voices that tell us to stay out of the sun to avoid wrinkles, to cross our legs and act like a lady, to wear dresses and stay out of the dirt.

Those voices tell us to pump Botox into our faces and cut our breasts open to fill them full with the expectations of a society that can’t find value in a woman’s natural, powerful beauty.

They shout at girls at an early age that women are to be admired for the size of their waists, not the size of their hearts.

They keep a woman focused on her body out of fear of what she could accomplish if she realized the pettiness of such things like the gap between her thighs. Those voices whisper that the smaller a woman is, the more important she is, but I’ve never met as powerful a woman as the one who takes up space.

These are the voices that fit femininity in a box and wrap it with white paper and a pink bow, as if women are gifts to be given and unwrapped.

They believe femininity is in what a woman wears — high heels, make up and a dry-cleaned dress — and not who a woman naturally is, beneath the cosmetics and disposable clothes.

Femininity is in the passion that shakes a woman’s bones when she dances under the moon. Femininity is in the naturally curvy shape of a woman’s nude body.

Femininity is in the freedom of a woman’s soul, in the way she stands empowered in her own love, the way she courageously chases her dreams, the way she unapologetically defends her value, in the way she cries and in the way she laughs.

Femininity is most evident in the pure happiness of a woman’s smile. Wouldn’t you rather laugh with stained teeth and wrinkles at the edges of your eyes than live a life half felt?

My dear, femininity is not created, built, or bought. Femininity is the natural, powerful force that you have as a woman.

To your core, you are fierce and full. You yourself give life and nurture the world. Earth herself is a woman; do you not see that you hold the power of the world in the palm of your hands?

You won’t find femininity at the edge of what society expects of you and what you desire. To find it, you must dive headfirst into full-blooded passion where life can be felt in its entirety.

Femininity is the opposite of what you’ve been told: it’s intense, raw, and powerful.