Femininity

Femininity.

What IS femininity?

The very word emits visions of coy smiles, flowing tresses, billowing skirts and fluttering eyelashes. This is a word that I have been wholy unfamiliar with. Not that I haven't, on rare occasion and failed miserably, attempted to assume that very image.

Oh, how I wish that I could snap my fingers and be transformed into the stunning princess who causes the rise or fall of princes, paupers, villians, or kings.

Women have used their femininity for both good and evil throughout history.

Biblically and historically speaking, women have used their femininity through the ages to cause nations to fall or help save entire peoples from extinction. They have used it to cause the death of great men, and weaken the strong. To stand ready in battle, or risk their own lives to help save others.

Yet, this still does not answer the question, What IS femininity?

Is it a super secret power? A special tool? An invisible force?
Femininity can be seen. It can be felt.
So yes, it IS a power. It IS a tool. And it IS a force.

I grew up a tomboy. I played in trees and shot BB guns. I ran around in orchards and caught grasshoppers.
I wore toughskin jeans and sweatshirts. My hair was always short, My face was always red and sweaty and dirty.

And I know grown women who could pull off every single one of these things...and never lose touch with their femininity.

I am coming to find that femininity is not a how or a who. It is a what.

I said earlier that I had attempted to assume the image of femininity. I now realize that I have been approaching this incorrectly. Femininity is not an image. I have taken the qualities that I have attributed to femininity and superimposed them onto a frame. I have cut and pasted them into a picture of a woman. I am, and have always been, wrong.

Femininity is an attitude.

It is from the deepest recesses of the heart. It seeps through the pores and scents the air with a fragrance of all things woman. It is strength, weakness, power, humility, discipline, love. It is happiness, sadness, anger and joy.
It is hope and peace and assurance.

I have, at last, caught a glimpse of myself all-together feminine, and I like what I saw.