Haven’t you heard? We’re in the era of celebrating womanhood and all the beautiful experiences that come with it.
For this, we can thank the viral Tik Tok sound “how I love being a woman” that was started by @starlingblue after posting the audio from Anne with an E over a montage of our favorite cinematic female characters. The virality of the Tik Tok sound has subconsciously pushed an entire wave of romanticizing the shared experiences girls have, and I am so here for it.
Thank you, TikTok for focusing aestheticism on womanhood. We’re finally getting a modern-day visual representation of just how poetic it genuinely is to be a woman. I mean, I think we get caught up in all the injustices we experience as women (which we should talk about), but when’s the last time we bonded over the beautiful shared experiences girls have rather than all of our grievances? Being a woman is like participating in small pieces of art throughout our day. Womanhood is poetic; TikTok told me so.
TikTok told me there is art in the way my desk is cluttered with makeup that makes my cheeks look perfectly rosy like a lover blushing, or sparkles on my eyes like a fairy, or my lips are as red as a million kisses.
There is something so poetic about the diaries we keep where we write big words about strangers we decide to love. There is something so beautiful about the way we pull our sleeves over our hands when we’re cold and the way we decorate our spaces with small trinkets and plants we’ve made names for. There is something so beautifully feminine about floral patterns, lace trim, and the way we reapply lipgloss and collect everything in the color pink. There is something that makes me feel like art when I drink hot tea from a cute little mug or reveal my shoulders when I put my hair into a claw clip.
When I catch these parts of my day that look like womanhood, I feel like this divine being, like the leading female character in a novel that was written by a woman. Thank you, TikTok for helping me fall back in love with girlhood.
How I love being a woman! Truly, I do. And another thanks to TikTok, because they did it again! They did it with another trend that is currently melting my heart, “we were girls together“.
And what a sweet sentence that is, to be able to understand what it means to share girlhood.
We have all these moments as girls that we get the privilege to experience with each other. It’s the selfless exchange of a hair tie from one’s wrist during P.E. and the way we share clothes and then end up gifting them to our friends because “it was definitely made for them.”
Being girls together is greeting each other with a squeal and a hug like we’ve been apart for years (it’s only been two days).
It’s the chaos of getting ready together and debriefing the night, talking about the way that guy was definitely into you. It looks like french braiding your bestie’s hair or painting her left hand’s nails because it never looks as good as doing the right. It’s the “what are you wearing tonight” texts or the strong sound of “you’ll never believe what just happened!” It’s the way we dance carelessly together at the club like nobody is watching us, like there’s no one to impress because all you care about is this moment.
Being girls together sounds like contagious giggles, it feels like nurturing hugs, smells like sharing your favorite vanilla perfume before leaving the car, it tastes like gossip with a side of mimosas.
Oh, how I love being a woman!
I am grateful, to say the least, for what TikTok has done for me.
The funny thing I’ve experienced with feminism is that I think in order to try and prove my strength and capabilities to others I ended up neglecting my most feminine self and tapping more into my masculine energy (which there’s nothing wrong with).
But I like pink! I like having my nails painted and dotting my i’s with hearts!
And what I’ve learned is, these intricate parts of me that make me feel feminine are worth celebrating, not hiding. Tapping into feminine energy and appreciating being a girlie does not make us any less of anything. Our power and strength can co-exist with femininity without neglecting one another.
Womanhood is powerful in itself. It’s something that nobody can take away from us, it is something we will teach our daughters, it is a divine concept that will continue to shape poems and paintings, and romance literature. There is so much romance hidden in every small thing we do as women. I implore you today, to romanticize your day and see how many things there are that you love about being a woman.