On Being Feminine

by Kylee Walton

I grew up on the edge of gender identity. That is to say, I grew up in a constant state of confusion about my own gender expression.

My father raised me within male traditions. I grew up hunting alongside him and my grandfather, playing sports, barbecuing, etc. These things by themselves are not strictly for men, but within my family, it’s mostly men that participate in them. I remember being told by someone (my sister, or maybe even my dad himself) that my father wanted a son. As I approached my pre-teens, presenting or participating in anything feminine made me severely uncomfortable. The thought of makeup or wearing a dress or having a boyfriend made me want to peel my skin back. I felt ostracized from the other girls in school. I was not one of them as a girl, I couldn’t assimilate into their groups. I wasn’t appealing as a masculine individual, I couldn’t be attractive to them because, at the end of the day, I was a girl. I was in a different space.

I think a reason for this—why I felt so strange all the time—was because I was a repressed lesbian surrounded by different ideals about gender and sexuality. When I came out halfway through high school, I stared at all the options in front of me. All gender expressions, all of the expectations of lesbians, of sexuality. 

What sort of lesbian am I?

There are many answers to this question. Initially, and for a long time, I classified myself as a masculine leaning, androgynous lesbian. I saw androgyny as a complex, alluring beauty (and still do). Androgyny is something I struggle to define with mere words. Is it the blend of all gender expressions? Or the absence of preconstructed gender expressions? Either way, it’s what I gravitated to and wanted to be. I wanted to be an androgynous woman, and I became that. I believe I still am that. Despite this, I strayed from femininity and leaned more into masculinity. My nails stayed clear and short, my hair stayed short, I reached for masculine clothing silhouettes. I was still afraid to touch femininity, I still felt that uncomfortableness for years later and into college.  

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I’ve recently fallen for femininity.

This is a recent event, and I’m not exactly sure what sparked it. I remember scrolling Pinterest over the summer and seeing pictures of women with long, painted nails. I grew attached to the look of them, the thought of them. It made me wish to grow out my nails and paint them too. Then, I found pictures of women standing in the wind wearing auburn, moody lipstick. I zoned in on this, and looked for more. 

I have many memories, as a youth, of staring at televisions, and the proud, soft women on the screens, and yearning for them. This initially yearning, I believe, stemmed from romantic and physical attraction. Now when I see femininity, I am attracted to it romantically, physically, and attracted to it as an extension of me. I am attracted to femininity for myself.

There was a shift with my identity, both physically and spiritually. I embraced more feminine traits; wearing makeup, painting nails, growing out my hair, etc. I felt warm, I felt beautiful.

I’ve noticed that since this shift into clearly defined femininity, I’ve been catcalled more while walking down the street by men of various ages. All I do is stand and stare at them, in both confusion and mockery. I’ve never looked at men with the eyes they use to look at me. Whenever this happens, I’m brought back down to the reality of the ground I walk on. It’s something I’ll be endlessly confused about.

Is this the price of femininity? 

As I write this, I realize that I’m presenting my shift into femininity as this glowing, mystical thing. Femininity cannot be boiled down to just this, a thing. Femininity feels like a more tricky line—is what I’m doing and saying about femininity secretly misogynistic? Am I bending to the patriarchy by embracing femininity? Isn’t thinking like that, though, misogynistic in its own right? In the world that we live in, many things cannot exist on their own—femininity included. At the same time, that just makes it more fluid and more compelling.

I’ve been in the middle for a long time, wrapped around both masculinity and femininity. I’ve condemned both and loved both. Been both, been neither. I feel as though I’ll never settle; the fluidity of femininity is what compels me most right now.