I Denied My Femininity

So I wouldn’t have to deal with objectification.

I distinctly remember that one day in high school.

I remember reveling in the strong muscles of my legs. These were legs that resulted from my 6 years of martial arts training.

I made a solemn vow to myself I would never bleach my hair blonde, or get breast implants, or join a sorority. I never wanted to learn how to cosmeticize a smoky eye or subject myself to what I perceived as the many painful tortures women went through for beauty.

I never wanted to owe anyone my attempts at being beautiful, because I didn’t want to have to be beautiful to be accepted, desired, or loved.

The sensations inside of me that day were strong, powerful, and compelling.

I felt called to live life with a larger purpose than chasing superficial beauty or serving as the decoration in someone else’s real life.

These promises to myself made me feel strong and independent.

I was getting ready to leave central Pennsylvania and to head to Los Angeles to attend school at the University of Southern California. This sounds goofy in retrospect, but the Pauly Shore film Son in Law had come out the year before, and I felt like leaving small-town PA for Los Angeles required me to get really grounded in who I wanted to be before putting myself under the influence of the City of Angels.

Ah, the wisdom of being seventeen.

That day seems like it was ages ago, but in some ways, I can still identify with the young girl I was then. I wanted to forge my OWN path, and not let outside influences tell me who I should be. I wanted to live a life of self-determination.

But looking back, I can now see that my desire to project strength and intellect was actually just my attempt to avoid being objectified.

I didn’t want to be treated like all those OTHER women. The ones who primped and painted and preened in a pathetic attempt to draw positive attention to what they (falsely) saw as their only strength — beauty.

I didn’t realize it back then, but I was buying into the gendered ideas of the patriarchy. It was a kind of bass-ackwards buy-in, but a buy-in nonetheless.

I didn’t really understand how my rejection of femininity and my idea of beauty as weakness was programmed into my mind by the environment all around me.

I didn’t see that the world had falsely taught me that strength — of ideas and of mind — was FAR more important and worthwhile than the dark and mysterious grace and wild beauty of being a woman.

I had no idea that the woman I would become would eventually want to embrace ALL of herself in a true rebellion against the domination mindset of the patriarchy.

Fast forward 26 years, and finally, I’m ready to embrace the mystery and creativity of being fully feminine for the first time in my life.

I don’t know if it has been motherhood, or my marriage, or just the general cultural awakening that has wormed its way into my soul. But something deep inside of me has begun to change for me in the last year or two.

This awakening started happening for me when I started writing for real here on Medium.

There’s something about the process of putting words to feelings that sheds light on the darkest parts of one’s soul.

Being into sports, eschewing makeup, and not bothering much with my hair or clothes — these have been my defaults. I have told myself that I was just one of those kinds of women. Strong. Independent. Fuzzy hair, don’t care.

In all of this, I’ve never questioned my cis-gender, mostly heterosexual, slightly kinky way of being me.

But I realized recently that in having made my choice to be a diehard tomboy, I had unintentionally amputated a part of myself to avoid feeling the pain of that part of me. The pain of being a woman in the world.

It hasn’t been all bad. At least with the way I’ve chosen to live so far, I’m COMFORTABLE in my own skin. And for this, I’m extremely grateful. I know many people can’t say this about themselves.

So I guess if I was going to have to screw up the way I show up in the world, I’m ok with the fact that I’ve been less reliant upon society to find self-approval, rather than more.

There are, I suppose, worse mistakes to make in life.

But feminism has cleared my vision.

What I realize now, here, in 2019 is that it wasn’t about me at all. This process wasn’t about me embracing my strength or my brain. It was about me rejecting my desire to be pretty, to be graceful, to be attractive, to be sexual.

I wasn’t clear back then but having had a few more decades to think about it all, and many more real-world experiences, I now see what it was about the world that I was objecting to.

Those promises I made to myself when I was seventeen were more about my rejection and denial of the system’s repression of the true feminine experience.

I (inaccurately) thought I could get away with living as a masculinized, strong, overintellectualized version of myself — in order to avoid feeling the pain of how our culture lacks proper valuation for all things feminine, and for women themselves.

I was not willing to subscribe to a system that affords both men and women certain kinds of identities and prohibits them from having others.

But instead of fighting the system, I was fighting my own nature. I self-censored my femininity by the way I chose to cultivate (or not cultivate) my physical appearance.

I’m finally ready to express all of who I am now.

I this past week, I’ve had meetings with both a brand photographer and a personal styling expert. I’m working on putting together a website and social media presence about the work I do, and I know how important authenticity is in this process.

Translating one’s authentic self into imagery, words, and digital content is a psychological firewalk of sorts. You have to believe strongly enough in yourself and the value of your gifts to be able to walk over the burning coals of self-examination and the challenges of self-expression to get to the other side of the walk without burning yourself.

Writing to process feelings has been one part of my personal journey. And getting clear on what my gifts are and what value I bring to the world is another.

What has become more and more obvious is that in order to truly succeed and be big in the world, I’m going to need to bring ALL of me to the table. Not just the parts I think the world will easily value, love, and accept.

I can see that I’ve unwittingly self-objectified myself by denying the parts of me that I didn’t understand well enough to love. I didn’t understand these intrinsic parts of myself well enough to nurture them or to let them grow.

I’ve focused on the parts of me that, while valid, were the easy parts to know.

So it’s time. Time for me to embrace my own mystery. Time to embrace the hormones, the fading eyesight, the potent emotions, and the deep longings for something more. To write poetry if I want to. To feel powerfully sexy in that animalistic, free, and feral way that great women through the ages have always been able to express.

I can still be a professional. I can still be a geek. I can still workout and appreciate my physical body for her strength. I can be grateful for the parts of me that are represented by the elements of air and fire.

But I can also sink my proverbial feet in the mud, paint my face, don my bells and jingles and feathers and sparkles, and let the water of femininity run over my body as I dance to the primal drumbeats of ancestral ritual. I don’t have to understand where it comes from, or why. I can just be all of who I am. Without apology.

Can you?

Kaia Tingley is a writer, artist, podcaster, digital strategy nerd, and sometimes hot-tempered supernova with a wild, free soul. You can find her on Instagram here or on LinkedIn here.