Today's topic is femininity and why I'm not sure I feel it. Or maybe I feel it but don't understand what the feeling is. Don't get me wrong, I wear enough make up, own enough dresses and have the stereotypical fetish with shoes to "qualify" as a woman. (Please, please note the tongue in cheek use of quotation marks.)
This weird turn of mind comes about, because recently I've had friends of various ages talk to me about their femininity or their womanhood or their essential feeling of femaleness. After listening to them I don't think I have this.
One of my friends is a much older lady. She has been through menopause and come out the other side, but for various reasons she's about to undergo a total hysterectomy. They're taking everything and she was quite upset about this and telling me that she's not sure she'll feel feminine or female after they take the bits that represent that, out of her. I didn't understand completely where she was coming from. You see, she's a grandma and she definitely wasn't using those bits anymore. I don't mean she doesn't have a fulfilling, raunchy, hang-from-the-sex-swing-in-your-rafters sex life with her husband of 40 years, what I'm saying is that babies were a highly unlikely result from said sex life. So how could she feel less womanly? I kept these thoughts to myself, because obviously she was feeling very strongly about this and hugs were far more appropriate. I'm not judging her on her feelings by the way, I'm judging me on mine.
Another friend has been through breast cancer. She's very close to getting the one that was "lopped off" (her words), reconstructed and she was excitedly telling me that she'll feel like a woman again. I didn't think that she wasn't anything other than one of the strongest women I've ever met and I've never seen or thought of her as less than. So why did she?
Are we, as women designed or educated to feel that our bodies are the only way of expressing our womanliness? Or is that exactly how we are supposed to express it? With our bodies?
I don't think about my body that way. I don't equate my girly bits with well...being a girl. In fact when I stop and think about myself, I don't even think about myself in girly/female/womanly terms. I am simply Bec. This made me wonder if that's normal? (OH HELL - WHAT EVEN IS NORMAL???) But you get my drift, right?
There are people out their struggling with gender identity, there are people out there struggling with faulty reproductive systems, cancerous jiggly bits and I wonder if we as human beings are only designed to suddenly ponder gender when faced with any difficulties with it. In the grand scheme of things is that how we work? Do we only consider a problem when we are faced with it?
I'm not even sure I think about it when I think about sexy times. My focus is on the connection I have with the other person. That connection to the soul, the eyes, the brain, the intellect, the emotion is what I feel then. So I'm guessing I missing something here. Or maybe I do feel it - I just don't use gender terms in my head when I do.
What does it mean for you?
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