I love the small acts of femininity. To romanticise the act of braiding my hair softly in the mirror. The way my grandmother once did and her mother before her. I do my skincare to classical music, and tie ribbons in my hair to not leave the house. If it is a costume rather than continuity it is one that has connvived across generations.

At night, I scroll on Pinterest scrapbooking digitally, bouncy blown out hair, figure hugging dresses embellished with sequins and crystals. Perfect açai bowls, silver glittering eyeshadow smeared on a greasy lid, the interior of a handbag containing lint, tictacs and a nub of a red lipstick. That is when I see this:

“Performing femininity is only empowering if the power you seek is the male gaze.”

But in which sense? But to what plea? Must every bow in the hair be a signal to a man? Must every soft colour be a invite to sexualisation? To paint my nails as I watch read Pride and Prejudice is not to invite a man’s gaze. Additionally, I hardly expect that to be a man’s fantasy. I rather desire to enfold myself into a ritual of care. Hot soapy baths until I prune and golden face masks that claim to be 24 carat.

I watched The Virgin Suicides recently, shipping Lux and Trip Fontaine. The mythical love I’ve only experienced in movies, and the acidic recoil after she gives her virginity to him. I curated a narrative of undying love. not because I believed in him but because I recognised the ache of longing, the unending trauma of girlhood, the hope we build despite knowing we deserve better. The bitter tang of a man’s recoiled affection after you have surrendered yourself to him, and his callous cruelty that follows.

Whilst these acts of femininity are in private, being public doesn’t necessarily make it “performative”. You can be excessively feminine for your own desire. Or is it for a man you whore. My motivations alone are for my inner child inside. That bobbed blonde 5-year old who shuffled around in my mother’s heels and spread lipstick across her face in a clowns leer. I am girly for my own self pleasure. So is it performative to dress in silk chiffon, with threaded silver jewellery embroidered across my skin? Or is it a statement of self, a quiet rebellion against the idea that softness equals submission?

True liberation allows women to embrace traditional femininity: ribbons, pearls, satin, devotion. If they desire it. To reject this is as oppressive is as draconian as mandating it.

Certain distain now exists for overt tenderness. Women must be iron-willed, lean in, harden our edges. Pink is unserious and bows are infantile. A soft voice is an invitation to be talked over. Yet others can take these same aesthetics, wear them proudly, and be praised as bold or subversive. Women doing the same are derided as backwards. We cannot seem to allow softness without suspicion.

I see femininity rather than a prop for masculinity as an altar to the self. I am allowed to care about beauty, to tend to it, to make it part of my life without inspiring to conform for men. For anyone questioning this statement ask women why they wore makeup in lockdown?

Men are permitted to be caricatures of masculinity, if not encouraged. Gruff, stoic, emotionally absent, and are rarely mocked for “performing” masculinity. Ryan Gosling’s character in Drivebecomes every teenage boy’s fantasy of cool, yet Margot Robbie in Wolf of Wall Street is reduced to the “Dumb Blonde” for her extreme performance of femininity. Arguably a woman who has recognised the vulnerability of male sexuality and weaponised it to get what she wants is not a ditz rather a strategist. Power founded in understanding the cultural script well enough to bend it to her advantage.

When Gosling’s character is “performing” stoicism to manipulate sympathy; we call it mystique. But when Robbie uses her looks and her body to secure leverage over a man who thinks himself untouchable, we sneer and call her calculating, vapid, or gold-digging. What is calculation in a man is strategy; in a woman it is duplicity. What is charisma in a man is manipulation in a woman. And yet Robbie’s performance hints at a deeper truth: femininity can be both costume and continuity, both armour and weapon. It can be an aesthetic of power precisely because it is so underestimated. Her character shows that softness and sexual glamour are not only masks but tools, a negotiation tactic in a world built for male appetites. To play the “Dumb Blonde” is not to be dumb but to exploit the assumptions attached to blondness.

This is what I mean when I say femininity can be power. Not because it seduces men per se, but because it exposes the fragility of their myth of control. It reveals how much of masculinity’s authority depends on women playing along. And when a woman plays along knowingly, she is no longer a prop; she’s running the show.

It seems like a culture rape to women, when our hesitation is treated not as a boundary but as a challenge. When we retreat or grow distant, we are not allowed to simply be uninterested; instead our silence is interpreted as the opening notes of a seduction. Consent, when it is freely given, is rendered unsexy. Desire must be wrestled out of us like a secret. We are taught that his thrill is not in our yes, but in bending our no. We are asked to curate ourselves for an audience we did not invite. This is the paradox of being a woman in public: to live inside a body that is always seen, even when it longs to be simply lived in.

Why truly why is femininity so often read as fetish rather than freedom? Why should a woman be punished for choosing the soft and the delicate, while a man who clings to the gruff and the absent is praised for authenticity? Why is a ribbon a provocation but a clenched jaw a virtue?

Femininity is not a trap to fall into, it is a possibility. Why can’t woman can paint her nails pale pink, tie her hair in silk, write in a notebook edged with flowers, and be taken as seriously as someone in a pressed suit. Seriously consider why aside from all the programming that it is unserious?

To reclaim femininity is therefore not a retreat but a rebellion. To insist that a soft bow is not a plea, that a painted nail is not a confession, that a delicate colour is not a coded invitation. To say: my softness is mine. My consent is mine. My performance is mine. You cannot conjure a “no” into a “yes” and call it romance; you cannot conjure a ribbon into a seduction and call it femininity. Instead I desire to look at a braid, a bow, a gentle smile and see not an opening to be exploited but a self to be respected.

I am no longer an apology but a declaration. I am the unbowing wind. The quiet refusal to let tenderness be stripped from us. The insistence that softness can be chosen and sharpened into its own kind of edge.

I am no longer a whisper, I am the whole storm.