In pursuit of the High Priestess
A descent into mess and madness to determine what femininity means to me
The first feminist gesture is to say: “OK, they’re looking at me. But I’m looking at them.” The act of deciding to look, of deciding that the world is not defined by how people see me, but how I see them.
— Agnès Varda
I’m still learning to read tarot cards, so when I drew the high priestess this morning I spent a good ten minutes pouring over different interpretations of the card, and I learned that I need to work on finding balance between my subconscious and conscious. I learned that maybe I need to mix up my journaling prompts. And I learned that I need to focus on connecting with my divine femininity.
My affirmations playlist is constantly reminding me of my feminine power and telling me to embrace the divine. I got on the bus to work and Spotify started playing What was I made for?
I can take a cosmic hint.
But when I get into the nitty-gritty of it all, I don’t know what femininity means to me. I have ideas, vague notions about false eyelashes, and the intuition that it involves not farting in front of other people, but for the most part my understanding of femininity is inherited from the women who’ve come before me and from the relentlessly misogynistic marketing strategies of consumerism. And while there are things that I can draw on (at times reluctantly) from both of these sources, I want to find a more personal definition. I also want to articulate two simultaneous truths: The first being that everything can and should be accessible to everybody regardless of their sex, orientation, gender, or any other aspect of their identity. The second is that there are things that make me, a bisexual cisgender woman, feel more in touch with my femininity. These are things that I want to explore, articulate, and with which I want to build a conscious connection. I hope they bring you as much joy as they’ve brought me x
Love + Safety
I have broken my understanding into Maslow’s Hierarchy, and the fundamental aspect of my femininity lies in the variable combination of love and safety: I am safe in the knowledge that I am loved. I love myself and am devoted to my safety. I feel safe in the love I have for others. I could go on for days. I am unable to express or feel any greater aspect of my femininity unless I am doing so from a place of both internal and external love and safety. As an extension of this - I’ve spent years working on developing better boundaries, my female friendships fill my cup in a way that nothing else does, and writing this has made me want to learn how to throw a better punch.
Expression
My mother once made the point that so much of feminine expression is associated with the artificial or the cosmetic dimension, and - although she said this from an exclusionary point of view - she’s not wrong that a lot of feminine consumerism is dependent on a cosmetic ideal, and informed by a singular mainstream idea of beauty. However, this isn’t something I want to completely cast aside. I painted my nails last week, the first time I’ve done so in years, and I feel so pretty. I feel feminine. I feel like I could kill a man with these hands and look good doing it. So I’m endeavouring to find balance between aesthetic and creation, and each can be articulated in my ability to express myself - the second tier in my Maslow’s Hierarchy of Femininity.
Expressing myself means having a full range of emotions: Joy is feminine, anger is feminine. Beauty is feminine, ugliness is feminine. I feel feminine when I express my intelligence, and when I’m filled with spite, when I am conscious about my choices, when I write and make shitty art. And then there’s the aesthetic dimension of expression. I curate beautiful things and love hunting for clothes on depop. I wear makeup, dye my hair, and paint my nails. I go to the gym, partly because I genuinely do care about my mental health and mobility, but also because I am an animal being constantly told that my body is wrong and it’s hard to be fed those messages and not be affected by them. Sometimes, I will co-exist with those messages - I know that part of my desire to exercise comes from the want to be thinner, but I also want the dopamine and the strength, so I’ll keep going and try to stay aware of my motivations - and sometimes I won’t. Hair is an interesting aspect of expression. Keeping my hair long and artful has fuck all to do with my femininity, however yes, I shave. That’s my choice, but not one I think I would make of my own volition. I see women with hairy legs and I feel envious, I see women with hairless legs and I feel envious. Some messages are harder to disengage with than others and I’m not sure why that is, but I know for certain that I feel more feminine with a buzzcut than I do with hair down to my waist.
I express myself in a way that feels authentic to myself and it makes me feel feminine, and I will do my best to not be driven absolutely buck wild by that one Margaret Atwood quote:
Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it's all a male fantasy: that you're strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren't catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you're unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.
The Body
Meaning less the physicality of the body, and more so its use and treatment. My femininity is inextricably linked with myself as a corporeal being, and the decisions I make when it comes to what my body does, how and under what circumstances it is touched, and how I treat it. The body is also connected to appetite, and the mindset of indulgence over rejection while still maintaining empowering boundaries. Within this exists ritualised practices of self-care, the practical components of expression, and the seemingly never-ending work of reorienting the lens through which I see my physical self to adhere to the female gaze. To my gaze.
Cosmos + Nature
The second tier explains itself - for me, femininity comes from having a connection with nature and the greater cosmos. Ocean swims, sunrises, golden hours, rolling around in the literal mud as a girl… Feeling in touch with nature brings me closer to myself. Femininity is in both cleanliness and filth. And the greater cosmos I mean in both a literal and figurative sense. Stars, moon, sun, but also the concept of communicating with the universe in some way, through astrology or tarot or signs. Woo woo or not, it’s an avenue for self-reflection and meditation. And who hasn’t daydreamed about being a witch?
Madness
Madness!! The peak of femininity! Femininity means relentlessly, optimistically, madly telling the story of myself until it becomes true. I’m feminine when I’m wine-drunk, when I’m weird, when I laugh, when I rage, when I treat myself the way I would a goddess or a daughter, when I talk in my sleep, when I sing in the kitchen, when I’m starving and I eat, and when I feel the bacchante spirit rising then frankly everything else can go fuck itself.
Femininity and feminine expression are utterly subjective. We have shared ideas based on decades of patriarchal consumerist propaganda, and these do - consciously or unconsciously - inform our own opinions of femininity, but it's a beautiful thing to interrogate these assumptions and figure out what works for us. I will never win this game if I keep playing by someone else's rules. So I will forgive myself for continuing to shave my skin without being quite sure why, and I will keep working on coming to terms with an idea of femininity that feels like my own.
B.
Continue Reading:
I loved this discourse on femininity and identity. I have had my own struggle with identity, which I will be writing soon. I am a transgender woman. So, identity has been a complex struggle for me. But I have realized that identity is personal and my femininity is sacred. Its something that no one else can touch or corrupt. Its constant, concrete, forever.
My womanhood is sacred and molded out of a struggle, so it is all the more sacred. This post inspires me to write a post detailing on my struggle with identity and femininity as well. Thank you.
Love this Ramble. I see myself