Femininity in Alphabet Superset

In the year 2023, what even is “femininity”?

I have always identified as female, but I couldn’t tell you why exactly that is. As in, is it because I was born in the 70s and that decade was very binary in terms of what a baby “was”? And then did I just grow up that way? And had I been born in a different decade, or into a different family, would I have identified differently?

I’m not sure that’s the full story, honestly. Even as a young kid I was absolutely, stereotypically feminine. All the girlish trappings were either mine or what I desperately wanted. Pink was my favourite colour, Barbie was my favourite toy. I wanted to grow up to be a ballet dancer, or, failing that, an ice dancer. My favourite show was a VHS tape my grandfather made for me called, according to the crusty, self-adhered strip, “dance, then Kirov ballet”, where bless his old Scottish heart, he had faithfully taped any bit of dance that floated across his television, for his small granddaughter all the way across the world in Pakistan. As a kid, I loved being a girl and I never thought of being otherwise.

It probably helped that I was an adorably pretty young ‘un. I had big blue eyes and blonde hair, preferred dresses to shorts, and the most devastating thing that happened in my young life was when, some time around the age of six or seven, my mother CUT OFF MY HAIR, and when it grew back it was BROWN not BLONDE, and I cried because I was suddenly “ugly”.

Funny, thinking back on it. Was that when all my problems with being a girl originated? Maybe. At least my recollection of my youth is that there was a clear demarcation from when I was “happy and petty” to when I was “sad and ugly” and at some definitive point that was the switch that was made. Looking back, of course, it was never so simple and the before/after likely had more to do with moving (fourth international move by age seven) from Pakistan to the UK. But reflecting, I do think it’s curious that my first thoughts about femaleness - or femininity at any rate (is there a difference? I think there might be) centred on my physical appearance. As in: how I looked, rather than who I was or how I behaved.

Because, for me back then, I don’t think femininity manifested particularly anywhere else. I was as loud as the boys, as argumentative, as boisterous. I didn’t think of myself as a lesser being, and I was well aware that I was a smart kid. Very clever. Annoyingly clever. And I was funny (or I liked to think I was). Now, I don’t know if any of that makes me more or less” feminine” in the tropey sense of the word. But it seems to me that femininity is often associated with gentleness, delicacy, meekness, shyness maybe, or being retiring. That was never me, but it didn’t matter because I was so pretty and cute and pink and blonde. Being a girl was about looking girlish.

That’s not that strange though, perhaps. To my (albeit very uninformed) understanding, gay and lesbian communities still disaggregate somewhat into the “butch” and the “femme” stereotypes, and that seems to go along with appearance. I’m occasionally mistaken for a lesbian. Hilariously so, sometimes. Like those who have mis-categorized me have done so with absolute confidence. Without hesitation. And they tend to be aghast when they learn I am straight, like maybe I tricked them?

So, I wonder what it is that leads them to draw such a conclusion. My brusqueness, maybe? My apparent confidence (assuredly all baloney)? Or is it that I travel solo quite happily? I’m independent and used to figuring shit out for myself (but so are a lot of women! More so than men I would hazard!). And I do also wonder if it’s an attitude thing, or an appearance thing? Because, although I do still love stereotypically feminine things like clothes and shoes and needlework and celebrity gossip: that’s by far and away not my only interests. And those who have done the mis-characterization have more often than not been strangers or very recent acquaintances. Which leads me to think it’s more likely that I appear…less feminine? Or less stereotypically, hetero normatively feminine?

I mean, I ‘m tall and big. Big hands, big limbs, hefty calves and arms and hips. But I also have a pretty classically womanly shape: “like a cello” - as described by a man I dated briefly. I don’t think I’m manly, exactly, although I am not delicate in any way. Would I like to be though? Yes, in some ways I would. I’d like, for example, for my hands to be smaller so that I could actually wear women’s gloves that fit my fingers. It would be nice to have slightly smaller feet, too, since size 10 seems to sell out very quickly (but at least I don’t have to contend with the challenges of being bigger than a 10 - sizes for which shoes are not made unless they are hideously ugly). I would definitely like to have slimmer upper arms, so shirts and tops fit more comfortably. And holy hell I would like to have less annoying hair in places where hair is “not to meant to grow on a woman” (chinhair, anyone?). But I’d like these things, only not at the expense of my strong shoulders and juicy boobs and high arches. So it’s all a bit of this and a bit of that, and who knows what actually constitutes “being feminine”.

It’s such a double…triple…quadruple…edged sword. The very idea of being feminine is at once, for me, incredibly alluring and utterly repulsive. No doubt there’s deep psychological reasons for that, but there’s also the simplicity of not wanting to be fucking categorized, thank you very much. Why can’t I just be exactly what I am? Etc. Etc. Which is a very 2023 thing to say, I’m aware. But I also still belong to that older time where categorizing people was what we did, what we felt we naturally had to do in order to make sense of our world and our surroundings. So - yes - I define myself as female and I am happy enough to be a woman. But what being a woman means, in 2023, is less clear to me. And also, as I get older, it seems as though it becomes somewhat less relevant? Or maybe it’s that as I get older, and get more responsibility in my working life and find harmony in my personal life, the need to belong to a certain category seems less important.

These days I think I’m more “Cate”. Cate the Wife. Cate the Aunt. Cate the Boss. Cate the Friend. Cate the Public Servant. Cate the Sage. Cate the Football-Watching-Banter-Flipping-Buddy. Cate the Gymrat. Cate the So Tired So Old So Crumpled Up In A Heap With No Bandwidth Left But To Scroll Wanly Through Instagram Tapping A Heart On Every Non-ad Contribution.

By which I mean that I’m a whole lot of other disparate identities other than “female”, and I obviously always have been. And it seems that different identities come forward and retreat at different times in my life for a whole host of different reasons. These days my femininity is more important to me in the ways it feeds my empathy and relationship with other women in the ways that we are women and what that means for ourselves and our bodies. And for my relationship, too, certainly, but really only because we have ascribed our genders as we have and not because we necessarily need each other to perform Male or Female to each other. But then I also very, very much enjoyed Friday when I took myself to the mall and spent some of my hard earned allowance on new (pretty!) clothes and skin care and makeup.

It’s still an unequal world, and one in which women are still subjugated and oppressed in ways we as a humanity should have grown beyond. But that’s a much deeper topic and perhaps quite separate to “femininity”. So what is it? And like everything when we get to the point, femininity is whatever you think it is.