Reclaiming and Redefining Femininity

By Paige Auxier

I’ve loved Princess Diana for several years, but when asked as to what drives and maintains my admiration for her, I find myself struggling to generate a response. 

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In the past, I’ve chopped it up to her style alone, and while I would consider her to be one of my greatest sources of fashion inspiration, I’m drawn to elements outside of her aesthetic as well. After thinking it over, I determined that these traits were her timeless elegance, poise, tenderness, empathy and compassion. Through this, I realized that I admire these qualities in all things. I love fictional characters like Jane Bennet in Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” and Anne Elliot, another one of Austen’s characters, in her novel “Persuasion,” because they, like Princess Diana, exhibit grace and compassion. 

I also found evidence of my high regard for elegance in my style preferences. One thing I will always advocate is that fashion is never neutral and, in turn, always political. When choosing to dress yourself a certain way, you’re aiming to send a message about who you are or, at the very least, who you’d like to be. My love for timeless fashion pieces, like ballet flats, pearl necklaces, sleek black skirts and dresses, crisp white t-shirts, leather handbags, cardigan sweaters, high-waisted trousers and simple denim, reflects my desire to be and to be seen as a carrier of these traits. Upon realizing this, I started to question where my interest in these qualities originated and what that interest says about me as an individual. 

The delicate traits I admitted to idolizing are typically associated with the socially constructed and heavily antiquated concept of femininity, which has been used for centuries as a tool to perpetuate power dynamics in society, which place women below men and subject them to subservient roles. Teaching women that to be feminine is to be graceful, elegant, understanding, gentle, and obedient conditions them to submit to authority without protest and to be modest both in appearance and personality. So, by praising these qualities in others and attempting to forge them within myself, was I perpetuating a system I was so decidedly against? If I strive, as a woman, to be elegant or gentle, am I inadvertently making myself part of the problem? This consideration led me to a state of disturbance born from a dissonance in my values, and I sought to mend my discomfort, as I always do, by thinking too heavily on the matter. Through that I determined that to value these qualities in a way I felt good about, I must reject this socially constructed view of femininity, reclaim it for myself, and then define on my own terms what it means to be feminine as well as what it means to be a woman (the two, I will note, are not one in the same, for the state of being masculine/feminine isn’t specific to one gender alone). My pursuit of elegance, poise and compassion is not driven by a desire to live and behave “like a woman should” but rather as I, a person, would like to. 

Women are capable of having a wide array of valuable qualities, some of which are at odds with those I’ve centered this piece around, and that fact doesn’t make them lesser women by any means. It simply means that their definition of what being a woman entails may differ from my own. I would also like to argue against the widespread notion that the traits I’ve mentioned thus far, like poise, tenderness, compassion and composure, signify fragility and weakness. Those who use the concept of femininity to perpetuate power dynamics associate womanhood with these traits as a way to belittle them because they supposedly signify weakness. Conversely, those who reject the socially constructed concept of femininity may perceive these traits poorly for the same reasons, as they believe they’re used to define women as fragile. I would, however, vouch for the opposite. To articulate this point, I will use ballet as an example. I’ve loved watching ballets since I was a child, and as I’ve grown up, I’ve realized that it's the meticulously curated elegance of the art form that I find so intoxicating to observe. A ballerina's motions are fluid and gentle, yet fiercely controlled. To make such strenuous and complex motions appear poised and effortless is an incredible feat. This, to me, serves as a metaphor for the fact that the gentlest of qualities require a fierce sort of strength to be maintained through life’s natural turbulence, in a world that teems with infinite sources of anger and evil. I strive to be gentle, not because I feel pressured to as a woman, but instead because I admire the strength that goes into having and sustaining such a trait.