Having only been in this world only 17 years, I have not seen or experienced the things my elders have, but my parents raised me with values that they were raised with and therefore taught me the world as they have learned it. They taught me how to be kindly to people, be honest, and what I can do to be a chivalrous gentleman to women. There was one thing that my dad could not teach me, however, and so my mother taught me what exactly what femininity is. She did not teach me by words, because she taught me just by me being around her. Sitting back and actually thinking of my mother's actions and values, I can say that femininity is the ability to make oneself beautiful and sexy yet still refined as to not look overdone or over make-upped. Femininity is also the ability to take control, to stand up and take action, and to have fun at times, too. This definition of femininity is quite different than what Susan Brownmiller thinks in her essay "Femininity," because she sees "femininity as a desperate strategy of appeasement" in which a woman has to understand the "feminine principle" is a "great collection of compromises." Brownmiller also claims masculinity and femininity as a sort of "yin and yang" that someone cannot have both of. Sorry, Susie, but everyone has both, just like a yin and yang. As time passes, that femininity is not lost, just the balance between masculinity and femininity can be weighted differently.
In this world today, self-expression is at an all time high. People can show their true colors and not get looked down upon by society for their beliefs, intelligence, race, sex, clothes, anything, because they are themselves and no one can take that away, nor can it be forced upon them, either. This individuality that everyone is entitled to is new to society and people are starting to lose the values that were there, years before the Women's Lib, the Civil Rights Movement, and other occurrences that were aimed towards equality, which has now been abused to defend how one acts as their rights.
