Error: Not Feminine Enough!

Disclaimer: Not a Feminist blog post, rather a turmoil within to justify the word, Feminine.

My blog calls into question what is the actual definition of the word ‘Feminine’. I googled the word ‘Feminine’ one day, and to my surprise, the words related to it were gentle, soft, tender, sensitive. Not making any sense, right? My purpose to pen down my thoughts is not to raise a voice for gender equality or neutrality, rather accepting each person for who they are. 

My name is Yashaswini Nischal, and, I am not joking at all when I say that everyone, be it in school, UG and now in PGDM know or recognize me due to my outlandish personality in sync with THEIR definition of ‘Feminine’. 

I can’t actually recall the day when I started to observe that there is a serious terminology error with people’s idea of the ‘It’ word. But just to share the snippets of over the years I could say that, till date I have been surrounded with few people in every stage of my life who are somewhat not comfortable with the idea that a female can possess bold personality attributes just as a male can do. 

Although I go through these kinds of hurdles almost every 3^rd day in my life, I would connect a few dots for you by sharing a very petty incident. It was a regular day for me where I was attending a session and towards the end of it, due to some formalities boys were asked to leave the venue first and girls were required to stay, but suddenly a voice appeared from nowhere which very mockingly said, ”Hey Yashaswini! why are you sitting, boys are supposed to leave right?”. 

That day I didn’t feel hostile, rather felt sorry for that person, as to how wrongly they have deduced the true meaning of ‘Feminine’. 

Considering one’s compelling and undaunted perceptions as a fault in their identity is not a recent progression rather a system beheld since ages. 

Why is a female’s noticeable voice not applauded and more readily termed as an exception of being less womanly?

Why a male’s soft speaking skills made fun of and gets the tag of a spineless man?

You see that there is no problem in oneself, it’s fairly a loophole in our society’s predefined interpretation of what a male is supposed to come out as and what a female is supposed to take care of. But with the growing awareness and opposition about this differentiation, still there is a point of error which is resisting this change. Surprisingly, it is our today’s tech-savvy world whose audience is just a few seconds away from googling what attributes the word ‘Feminine’, ‘Female’, ‘Womanly’, ‘Delicate’ hold and what attributes does the word ‘Manly’ behold.  This is the moment you know that our dearest search engines are not true at all! 

Let us all break the shackles and start accepting the person  for who they are, rather mocking and pushing them down because they  have the courage to bring forward their distinctiveness from what the society and the terminologies of personality traits ought them to be. 

Yashaswini Nischal

Section C