Lately, as I become aware, for the umpteenth time of the media’s attempts to define what it means to be a woman today, I am appreciating the diversity among women as never before. I am not talking about color, ethnicity, age, class, or size. I am talking about degrees of what society has identified as “femininity.” There goes a heterosexual woman looking quite comfortable in loose jeans and a sweat shirt. There goes a homosexual woman looking like a model. There goes my granddaughter in four inch heels and my other granddaugther in sneakers, and another in bare feet. Wait a minute, its the same granddaughter. In fact, all of my granddaughters, and daughters-in-laws for that matter, have their own multiple unique looks. Female all.
And there goes a friend who has transitioned from male to female and she is woman now too.
I used to worry about being feminine. Being heterosexual, I was sure no man would love me if I wasn’t and I felt my own self image would flounder if I didn’t conform to the latest sexual image of woman. Today, I just accept the fact that I am a woman and I can define that in any way I want to. Its been a journey.
I Remember when my sister and I got our first pairs of ice-skates, hers were white and mine were black. I wanted white skates too! Did my parents think I was a boy? Of course they didn’t. But they might have thought that I was more “boyish” than she was and I hated that. What even did “boyish” mean to me then?
I think about these things now because I have a feeling that young women are once again under pressure to prove their femininity. Dressing up can be fun. Experimenting with make-up can be fun too. But its all surface stuff. A girl is a girl and a woman is a woman in whatever way she chooses to express that. There is no one style fits all.
Those black skates did not end up defining me. I learned to skate in them and did quite well inspite of their color…in my boyish-girlish way.
I hear Sojourner Truth’s words, “And ain’t I a woman?” echoing in my brain and resounding in my heart. I wish we could all have known her, all five feet eleven of her. And I wish we could have been at the Women’s Right’s Convention when she said those words, declaring that she is woman even though no man ever waited on her, though she was a slave, and though now, with all her strength dared to proclaim and work for equality for women and freedom for blacks.
The point is, no one can define for any of us what it means to be a woman, or a man for that matter. Each of us discovers, uncovers, defines ourselves…. and, hopefully, celebrates who we are in all of our complexity.