When Did You Realize You Were A Woman?

Yesterday, I felt compelled to put up a post for International Women’s Day. Something poignant that would honor all the many women who I admire and love and who have influenced the woman I have become. I mean, everyone else was doing it, right? And what a wonderful thing to celebrate womanhood and womanness!

And yet, each time I tried to post something on Instagram, I was stuck.

Who do I post a picture of? Mom? Grandma? Mom and Grandma? But then what about my stepmother, who I’ve known basically all of my life and who has certainly imprinted upon me? Ok, I’ll do all three of them. …But then what about all of the friends and mentors I’ve met along the way who helped me to develop in ways that my maternal figures did not? How do I honor them too? And then there are SO MANY women who I’ve never met whose legacies have shaped who I am and who I intend to become. Surely, I would be remiss if I weren’t to include them? I guess I could just post a picture of me in my bright red jacket and try to say something profound about womanhood in general…but what do I say that can possibly sum up everything I feel and everyone that is so important?!

In any case, I wound up posting nothing and spent time furiously sifting through and liking others’ posts. I love days on social media when virtually everyone is honoring people in their lives. It’s such a welcome reprieve from all of the negativity that’s usually flying around there. Reading about the many women who shaped these people’s lives allowed me to reflect on the influence of “the feminine” in my life.

It was not so long ago that I ignored that power in my life. As I spoke about before, my identity as a woman was just a fact of my existence that I never focused on. It didn’t seem to matter as much as my being Black did because I was living with so much internalized misogyny. Once I opened up my world to intersectionality and honoring womanness, everything changed.

I realize now that it wasn’t just my preoccupation with blackness that clouded my ability to tap into this side of myself. Looking back on my life, I realize that I was fearful of my femininity. For one, I had a very narrow (read: patriarchal) understanding of what it meant to be feminine, and I was aware pretty early on in life that I did not naturally meet those standards. I liked dresses and skirts fine, but I gravitated towards sneakers and hats. Swearing is one of my greatest joys and makes me feel like myself. I thrived on competition and needed to have the last word in debates. All of these things, I was given to understand, were inherently masculine. It didn’t help that the development of these characteristics, although deeply encouraged by my father, were presented to me, by him, as things that would set me apart from other women; I would have a sort of cheat code in life because I was privy to these “masculine” secrets.

The second part of my fear, and likely the bigger one as it is, a) causing some anxiety to write about and b) not clearly worked out in my head yet, is that being feminine meant inviting the male gaze.

A few years ago, I attended an all-women’s writing workshop. I was asked to respond to the prompt that was more or less: When did you first recognize you were a girl/woman? It’s a heavy question and I remembering wanting to have a really cool answer to it, but as soon as she asked there was one experience that smacked me in the face and wouldn’t go away. I wound up writing about a time when I was around five or six years old. I was visiting my mom at work and she was taking me around to various co-workers to say hello. At one point, she introduced me to two of her male co-workers, who seemed nice enough. However, in the middle of our visit, she realized she had to run over and do something and thought it would be best for me to stay with them for a few minutes until she got back. To this day, I cannot tell you what happened because I don’t recall them even saying much, but I remember being acutely aware of the fact that I was a little girl and they were grown men and that was somehow sexually dangerous in a way that I had never been before. I cried the entire time my mother was gone.

This event being the spark of my awareness of womanhood, I’m sure, has implications on how I’ve moved through the world. I remember when I moved back to New York City and was confronted with having to take the subway and walk home as opposed to the comfort of the school bus. It was the first time I’d ever been exposed to street harassment, and I was not prepared.  Whenever I would see that I would need to pass by males anywhere between the ages of 13 and 30, terror snaked its way through my being. I would walk blocks out of my way to avoid them. I learned to walk quickly, with my head down, in the hopes of avoiding anyone’s attention.

And yet…

I wanted the attention too. I wanted to be validated by the male gaze. Despite my fear of being holla’ed at, I was incredibly eager to hear the passing “Ayo, shorty!” I needed to know that I could be the recipient of desire because the boys I encountered on a day to day basis in school seemed to have no interest in me. Because even if I didn’t know what to do with the attention, it was necessary for my ego. Because there is a lusty side to the feminine that I hadn’t allowed myself to explore that needed some form of escape. And I was scared of that too because I had learned that owning your sexuality, which I found to be so enticing and powerful, was also discouraged. I didn’t know how to reconcile my understanding of femininity and wanting to meet that ideal with the latent parts of my character that did not fit that box.

The point is, I spent a long time hiding from femininity, or at least from what I believed it to be. And if it weren’t for feminism, I wouldn’t have found the liberation that I have now. For all my passion about race or education or anything else, it’s been my passion for feminism that has brought me the most growth. Feminism has guided my path to authenticity and spirituality and imbued me with a power and confidence that I’ve never known. More importantly, I would have never found this sense of self if it weren’t for some incredible women and feminists in my life who have taught me that I define my own womanhood. Understand that when I say women I mean any and everyone who identifies as such and I include the word feminists here, specifically because there have been some male and gender-non-conforming feminists who have played a pivotal role in the development of my femininity.

So today, when one of the women who played an essential role in developing my deep dive into defining femininity (without even knowing it) sent me a message and told me I have “developed into such a feminine force,” I felt compelled to write. This acknowledgement is like the culmination of so many emotional and spiritual trials and I’m just so grateful to the women who have gotten me here.

All of this to say, womanhood is a journey. Womanhood is a commitment. Womanhood is a privilege, despite the external barriers we are presented with in today’s society. The divine feminine is a communal knowing. Honoring women means honoring multiplicity. I love women and the many ways we exist. Whether or not something is good for me does not prevent me from celebrating that you’ve found that it’s good for you.

If you are reading this and you are a woman that I personally know: Thank you. Whether or not you know it, you’ve imprinted on me in some way. Obviously there are those who have had greater influence than others, but each and every single one of you have helped to define me. Thank you for being yourselves, which has helped me to find myself along the way.

And to all women: Be fearless. Be boundless. Know that you get to define what womanhood looks like for you. NOTHING is off limits. Be whoever makes you feel like you! Happy (belated) International Women’s Day!!