But what is femininity? Am I not a real woman because I hate pink, dresses, I never wear make up, hate cooking and baking, I'm not maternal, don't have or ever want children, I like cars, dinosaurs, and I'm always wearing pants/trousers. Baggy t shirts and hate with a passion clothes that feature glitter, hearts, birds and butterflies, and my pet hate is glitter. I don't want to be a wife and mother I want a career and to travel, that's it.
But I'm born female, I have the parts that make me female but am I less of a woman because I don't subscribe to traditional femininity?
I think because we live in a consumer society and people base their identity on products they use and their interests, it’s true that femininity isn’t found in any of those. Regardless I think there is an abstract essence of both femininity and masculinity, I think most people find It in moments without effort. Yes femininity isn’t defined as make up or glitter. Yet masculine and feminine qualities can be found everywhere, sun and moon, river and sea. Abstract truths are defined in poetry, I remembered as I was writing this that Victor Hugo did this perfectly. Have a read.
Man and woman
Man is the most elevated of creatures,
Woman the most sublime of ideals.
God made for man a throne; for woman an altar.
The throne exalts, the altar sanctifies.
Man is the brain,
Woman, the heart.
The brain creates light, the heart, love.
Light engenders, love resurrects.
Because of reason, Man is strong,
Because of tears, Woman is invincible.
Reason is convincing, tears, moving.
Man is capable of all heroism,
Woman of all martyrdom.
Heroism ennobles, martyrdom sublimates.
Man has supremacy,
Woman, preference.
Supremacy is strength, preference is the right.
Man is a genius,
Woman, an angel.
Genius is immeasurable, the angel indefinable. The aspiration of man is supreme glory. The aspiration of woman is extreme virtue.
Glory creates all that is great; virtue, all that is divine.
Man is a code,
Woman a gospel.
A code corrects; the gospel perfects.
Man thinks,
Woman dreams.
To think is to have a worm in the brain, to dream is to have a halo on the brow.
Man is an ocean,
Woman a lake.
The ocean has the adorning pearl, the lake, dazzling poetry.
Man is the flying eagle,
Woman, the singing nightingale.<
To fly is to conquer space. To sing is to conquer the
soul.
Man is a temple,
Woman a shrine.
Before the temple we discover ourselves, before the shrine we kneel.
In short, man is found where earth finishes,
Woman where heaven begins.