When you enter your twenties, a quiet kind of awakening takes place. It doesn’t arrive all at once,
but rather unfolds slowly like a stretch of morning sunlight. One day you catch yourself looking in the
mirror, not in an attempt to fix anything, but more so to understand who you’ve become. Somewhere
between the teenage dreams and adult realities, between heartbreaks and small victories, we begin to
wonder what it really means to be feminine. And we soon realize that the answer comes only from
ourselves.
Growing up, we were always told femininity had rules. That it was all about toning ourselves
down, being poised, polished, and soft in ways that were all too constraining. That to be feminine was to
be delicate but not weak, confident but not intimidated, expressive but never too emotional. It was about
standing out, but never ever taking up space. We were taught to be pleasant and likable; to be everything
but not too much. Or maybe we were never taught this. Maybe this is something we all unconsciously
adopted and now want to shed away. Femininity is not a performance, but rather a pulse. One that beats
differently in every woman, shaped by the stories she’s lived and the battles she’s fought to know herself.
In your twenties, femininity begins to change shape. It starts to look less like what you wear and more like
how you carry yourself through uncertainty. It’s in the way you speak your mind, even when your voice
shakes. It’s in the tears you let fall when the world becomes too heavy, and the laughter that follows when
you realize you’re still standing. Femininity becomes less about pleasing others and more about
embodying yourself; wholly, truthfully, without apology.
Femininity is not this or that, or even either or. It’s boundless. It is the soft, quiet power of
empathy, the ability to listen, nurture, to care deeply in a world that leans towards indifference. It’s the
sweet courage to remain open, even after heartbreak and hardship. Femininity is also fire. It’s drive,
ambition, and the refusal to shrink for anyone’s comfort. It’s the sharp and sure edge of a woman who
knows her worth and protects it fiercely. That is the beauty of femininity. It is both. Both silk and steel,
softness and strength, all woven together in a way that defies simple defining terms. It is not either or. It is
anything we say it is. It’s realizing you don’t need to be smaller to be loved or quieter to be respected. You
can be emotional, ambitious, messy, radiant, complicated, and still entirely, undeniably feminine.
True femininity never asks you to dim your light; it asks you to see it clearly. It exists in your
presence, not your appearance; in the way you move through the world with grace. In the way your hips
sway and the way your hair falls. It is the way you rebuild yourself after life falls apart, and most
importantly, the way you speak kindly to your own reflection. It’s not about being perfect; only being
whole. In our twenties, femininity becomes an active and intentional act of becoming. It’s not a static
process that you achieve once and keep forever. It continues to evolve around you; as you fall in love, as
you lose, as fail, as you grow. It’s fluid and changes with each version of yourself that you meet and learn
to love. It is knowing that you can be gentle and fierce in the same breath. As we all walk across this
campus, as each of our stories unfold, we learn just that.
For a long time, I myself hid. Not in the obvious way, but in the subtle ways. I made myself
smaller in conversations, quieter in rooms, and pushed myself into a box. I confused being invisible with
being safe. But somewhere along the way, I got tired of disappearing. I started speaking up, wearing what
made me feel alive instead of what made me blend in, moving through the world with the kind of
confidence I thought I would never find again. It felt like waking up in my own skin for the first time. The
more I stopped trying to be palatable, the more feminine I began to feel; not because of how I looked, but
because I finally felt connected to myself. Femininity stopped feeling like a performance and started
feeling like home. So femininity is rooted in the ability to inhabit your voice, your body, and your choices
without apology. It’s being aware of your strength and softness and trusting that both are sacred. It’s in
finding beauty in the parts of yourself that are still uncertain and the parts that you’re still learning.
Finally, it’s giving yourself permission to change and to grow, and to be whoever you need to be next.
So here’s the truth: femininity isn’t a set of traits, it’s a relationship; one you build with yourself
over time. And like all relationships, it deepens when you stop pretending. When you let yourself be
messy and radiant and real. When you forgive yourself for the moments you didn’t know better. When
you stop comparing your rhythm to anyone else’s.
To be feminine is to be whole. To be whole is to be free. And to be free, that’s the most feminine
thing of all.