Owning Our Femininity

     It’s Saturday morning on a holiday weekend, so when I met my friend at a local coffee shop I wasn’t surprised to see her show up in ratty jeans and a baseball cap.  What surprised me was that when she got closer I could see she had cut her hair. Think Annie Lennox with a Hispanic twist. 

My friend is owning the aging process and has decided to stop coloring the gray; 

cutting it short made the process less awkward for her.

     

I felt it a bold move to cut her hair so short. As we spoke about her decision, she said she didn’t feel feminine anymore. I get that, but it just seems messed up to me. I started thinking about our society and why I have never had the courage to cut my hair “too” short. As a society we revere lush, flowing hair. I don’t think it’s too extreme to say that there are many of us out there who directly correlate our femininity with hair. Which, quite frankly, is bullshit. Being feminine is so much more than the length of your hair. I would argue it’s not even related to one’s gender. It’s a state of mind, an internal knowing. It’s the tilt of a head and a soft smile when you spot your lover gazing at you from across the room at a party. It’s the way one’s skin smells after a luxurious soak in a bath filled with lavender sea salts. It’s getting all snazzed up in something that makes you feel pretty, 

earrings falling on a long, elegant neck.

     

All of these things and so much more make up our femininity. It’s up to each one of us to own both our masculine and feminine sides without allowing society to put parameters on us. I have always wanted to be as bold as my friend. Someday I hope to go all Buddhist monk on the world, but I’m not there yet.