This has been a subject that comes up time and time again both in conversation and with myself. Interestingly its also associated with my traveling and staying for longer time in different cultures where femininity means something different for the natives than other places i have visited. Often when we are at  meal with friends chilling out after a gorgeous meal. Feminism has had a huge impact on some cultures while leaving others in the dark. Some cultures went so far with certain aspects of the charge to only alienate men into a place of not knowing how to relate to the women in their lives. While i am truly thankful for the freedoms the feminist movement made for women, i mourn the impact its had on a large number of men who have been left emasculated.

Femininity is often associated with feminism. Someone close to me was strongly feminist when i was growing up, sharing firm beliefs about the differences between men and women. After a while i needed to protect myself as i could see that to not do so would result in me as a young child taking on too many of these ideas. Partly because they seemed to be more about the individual tellers insecurities and history, and partly i suspected men weren't that terrible and women were just as bad. On top of this though i felt for myself that feminism was more focused on the differences between men and women and often putting a bad light on men, and less concerned with the strength of women. Maybe feminism went too far in some areas, creating a new generation of emasculated men and i feel its really important to thank of those women who created many of the freedoms i enjoy today. But are the women of today really making the most of it?

Feminism has also set up this polarity between men and women, maybe its a reaction to a polarity already existing from earlier times. This movement somehow creating a need that woman are equal to men and therefore need to act like men in order to get further in this world. This polarizing meant that there is some underground internal fight that keeps us continually wondering if we are man enough, or women enough and nowadays not really knowing what we are fighting about.  While we are all vying for the same space of being equal in success and doing this in a perceivably masculine manner, there isn't enough space for everyone to reach this goal. Women aren't playing to their strengths and only enforcing the idea of a mans world.

So again I ask, what is femininity? My take on this is playing to the strengths of my personality and body. I don't think men and women are so different in our basic needs and we can all do a little learning where being true to ourselves is concerned. But there is a big difference in our bodies and its something to not be ashamed of. I openly admit i am not as strong as a man in lifting boxes or pushing broken down cars. I have more energy and endurance than most men i have met. Women are more flexible than men on average and better able to maintain physical endurance than many men. There are many differences than physiological ones and some people go as far as to say that women are more socially able due to the extra x chromosome they have. Mixing my bodies unique capabilities with my personality its an able cocktail of ingredients but it this alone feminine? I feel that there is something extra and it could be that femininity is the mark society leaves on us as girls growing up and is a bit dated. I feel surely that its about empowering myself by harnessing the power i have as a women to get things done and this includes bringing elegance into my life. Being aware of my body language and what this means to others, using it to my advantage in business and help me in social situations. When i am feminine i am intelligent, social, elegant, enticing and playful like a child

In the end we each have to decide what this means to us and how we wish to embody it. Its an intriguing subject to introduce here. For the men too, what does it mean to be a man in this world. If any of you guys out there would like to write an article on this i would love to post here. This is a start and i hope to revisit this topic soon and in more depth.

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Some great blogs i read before writing this article: http://running.competitor.com, http://thoughtcatalog.com, http://www.wired.co.uk

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