Power Fem - WWAKE
When @wwake prompted me with the question “what is femininity?” I went back to one of my earliest experiences. As a child I liked to play dress up in my mother’s closet. There’s one memory in particular that I can’t seem to erase. It’s the type of memory that follows you into adulthood, far after its expiration, and still makes you cringe when you think about it.
The memory goes like this: I’m six years old, standing in the center of my mother’s closet staring up at the densely disorganized haven of garments hanging before me. I touch silk, and my mother’s nightgown effortlessly dances off the hanger into my hands. I put it on and feel the floral fabric sway across my hips. The dress was simple and understated, as most nightgowns are. 6-year-old me knew the obvious next step was to dress the look up with a hot pink stiletto heel. I put the heels on and swiveled on the ball of my foot, looking at myself in a full-length mirror.
“Divine!” The imaginary (and relentless) paparazzi shouted. I had achieved a chicness comparable to Rihanna exiting the nightclub (sans wine glass) circa 2016. I felt free to be pretty—a word that was never used to describe me. But more important than that, I was unbound by the gender binaries I would soon be made to care so much about.
I left the closet and fumbled down the stairs, struggling to balance before walking outside to debut my look in front of my parents and neighbors standing out in broad-day lit suburbia. The big man with the red face took one look at me and let out a booming laugh. He pointed at me and looked at the other men who joined him laughing. I quickly understood that being “fem” was only celebrated for a select few, and I wasn’t one of them. I ran upstairs and changed.
My story isn’t unique. If you don’t fit the narrow definition of what society sees as feminine, you aren’t celebrated. Because in a masculine-driven world, femininity is suppressed across all spectrums. This inspired me to create POWER FEM—a series of images celebrating people for putting their femininity forward.
