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Accepting My Femininity

Can a woman be powerful and feminine?

By Kendra Felicity WheelerPublished 6 years ago 5 min read
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Summer 2017 via @kendriisayshello on Instagram

Three years ago, I wouldn't be caught dead wearing the color pink.

Three years ago, I was scared to be labeled as a "girly girl."

Three years ago, I had a revelation.

Picture a stereotypical five-year-old girl. You probably picture a girl with long hair, wearing some sort of frilly dress, wants to play with dolls and play dress-up. (If not, good on you! That means you don't have the stereotypes of what it means to be a girl ingrained in your mind!) When I was a little girl, though, that stereotype was exactly who I was. I loved playing pretend with my Barbie dolls, I collected stuffed animals, and I wanted to be a fairy when I grew up. I knew exactly who I was from the time I was born, right up until I hit puberty. I was a girl who liked "girl things" according to gender stereotypes. (Which I knew nothing of at the time.) I was adamantly a "girly girl."

Something happened around age nine or ten when I started gaining weight on my hips and I started developing breasts. I was told that I was an early-bloomer and I hated it! I was the first girl in my grade to wear a bra, and the first to start using deodorant. I got picked on relentlessly in the gym class change rooms...

"Why are you wearing a lacy bra?""I don't stink, so I don't have to use deodorant!""Why don't you change in the bathroom stall instead of wearing a bra?"

"Boys, boys, boys!"

My friend and I in 5th grade.

Keep in mind, this was fourth grade. Kids can be cruel, and they will pick on each other for any slight difference they see. I was visibly different from a lot of the girls in my class, and they attacked me for it.

This was the age when I started wanting to do anything I could to hide the fact that I was a girl. I also started noticing the not-so-subtle ways authority figures in my life treated the girls differently from the boys. Our teachers would always say they needed a few "strong boys" to help them move tables and chairs, and our gym teacher got the boys to try harder exercises in class. This bothered me. At ten years old, it bothered me. It still bothers me to this day.

In seventh grade, all of my female friends and classmates started having crushes on boys, and dating boys, and dreaming about boys. Boys, boys, boys! I remember the moment when I realized that everything they wanted with a boy, I wanted with a girl.

Here's the moment I knew I was a lesbian: I was at a busker's festival on a chilly August evening. I was standing around with a few friends watching a few buskers who were juggling, eating fire, hoola-hooping... Everything clicked for me when I saw this gorgeous petite woman light her hoola-hoop on fire. Her eyes sparkled. She turned on the song "Sex Bomb" and danced while hoola-hooping a ring of fire on top of a ladder...

I had never felt so attracted to someone before that moment.

"I never openly discussed the fact that I was gay with my classmates."

Me at fifteen with short hair. I like to call this my "baby butch" look.

After this realization, I fought with the thought of coming out of the closet. On one hand, I wanted to shout it to the world! On the other hand, I was terrified that my classmates who had mocked me my whole life would beat me to pieces. I came out to my friends and family at age thirteen, and I decided not to hide any more. Except I still hid.

I never openly discussed the fact that I was gay with my classmates. Instead, I decided to make them figure it out on their own. I cut off all my hair, I started wearing pants and button-ups with ties, and I wore rainbow bracelets hoping someone would notice and ask about my sexuality. I wanted so badly to talk to someone about it! I just wanted to scream it from rooftops! But I was too scared.

I struggled with wanting to show the world my identity until I was in university. Right up until I moved away from home, I felt the need to physically display the fact that I was a lesbian. I thought having short hair and acting more "butch" was the way to do that. I was very wrong.

In my first semester of university, after meeting a diverse group of people at the LGBTQ+ centre, I started to realize that I didn't need to be butch to be a lesbian. I didn't need to act more masculine to be a strong woman. I was a lesbian because I was a girl who liked girls! I was allowed to be a woman who was strong, who had opinions, and I was allowed to do it wearing a skirt and lipstick.

"Women can change the world."

Me in 2017. Via @kendriisayshello on Instagram.

I didn't need to prove myself to anyone. I was strong, I was a woman, I was queer, and I was going to kick up a fuss if people didn't take my word for it!

We tell women that they have to be more like a man in order for them to be taken seriously, but I beg to differ. I think that an articulate woman who speaks her mind can be taken just as seriously as a man. (In the right circumstances, that is. I don't doubt the awful power the patriarchy has to push us aside.) It doesn't matter whether they're wearing a pantsuit, or an evening gown, women are powerful. Women are magical. Women can change the world.

From such a young age, I was made to believe that femininity was inferior to masculinity. I spent years of my life acting like someone I wasn't so I could make the world believe that my identity and my ideas were valid. I thought that pretending to be someone I wasn't would get me further than being an honest and authentic person. Wow, was I wrong!

It was in my first year of university that I went shopping alone one day. I saw a pink dress that I normally would have ignored completely. I decided to try it on.

I liked it.

I bought it.

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About the Creator

Kendra Felicity Wheeler

Kendra is a 24-year-old music major studying voice at Memorial University of Newfoundland. She's an aspiring singer and actor, and likes to write in her spare time. She has a growing Instagram following at @kendrafelicitywheeler .

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