“How to dress in a way that embraces your femininity…”
“Ways to play into your traditional roles…”
“How to attract a man using feminine allure…”
The internet constantly spews rhetoric about what it means to truly be feminine, with self-proclaimed “femininity coaches” on TikTok and YouTube benevolently guiding young girls towards a future with a “masculine” husband and a life of softness, docility, compliance, and ultimately, silence. These often white cis-gendered women somehow hold the unspoken rules of what can or cannot be feminine. Bantu knots, cornrows, locs, any hairstyle that stands out, is too loud, and is not the natural state of a white woman’s hair, is not feminine. Thus, many Afrikan femininity coaches who have been shaped by standards of beauty that oppose their very culture are never seen without a silk press. Modesty is feminine, and so are simple, solid-colored dresses that fall below the knees, light jewelry, and dainty earrings. And one must never be vulgar or have an attitude; many femininity coaches will take this moment in their videos to act out a caricature awfully similar to the Sapphire trope–exaggerated head and hip movements, one eyebrow always quirked up, and an overall emphasis on sass. In setting up these rules of femininity, Afrikan women do not simply fall into the category non-feminine, but anti-feminine. They are the antithesis of these ideals that our eurocentric society purports that all women should aspire to. Afrikan women are then a monolith of “otherness”—they are sapphires, jezebels, caricatures of beings pretending to be women.
This is not to say that Afrikan women wanting to present in a feminine way is inherently bad and contributes to systems of oppression; it is saying that maintaining of an extremely narrow view of femininity and judging those who do not fit into that ideal is harmful and continues to place power in the hands of the oppressor. Thus, it is important to recognize femininity as something variable and largely self-defined. The modesty and elegance associated with “traditional” femininity are just as valid as the Afrikan feminine ideals set by the Ghetto Fabulous movement of the late 90s to early 00s, which is just as valid as feminine ideals brought by Afrikan women from their home country, which is just as valid as any way in which Afrikan women choose to visually present themselves. Divestment from and decentering of binarism of gender identities and categorizations gives us the freedom to be free within our humanity and honor our ancestral roots. This is the key to reconstructing “femininity” in a way that will be sustainable and helpful in crafting a revolutionary, liberated future. Afrikan women should not be seen as enemies to femininity as they have been portrayed time and time again since slavery to the modern day. We are free to express what we believe makes us feminine and embrace those parts of our culture that have been deemed otherwise.