I have never been a traditionally feminine woman. This is not a revelation I arrived at through deep introspection, feminist theory, or a particularly enlightening internet quiz, this was information my body communicated early and loudly, mostly by fighting for its life every time my mum tried to put me in a dress.
I cannot explain why, I didn't have the language. I was a small child. I just knew that dresses and skirts felt wrong on me in a way that went beyond preference, like an allergy but for swishy hems. Floral patterns filled me with a quiet rage and anything floaty made my skin itch. It was entirely a vibe, and I had absolutely no way of articulating it other than screaming, stiffening, or collapsing dramatically on the floor like a Victorian child at bath time.
To her eternal credit, my mum clocked this fairly quickly and stopped trying. She was the one dealing with the tantrums, the negotiations, the emotional hostage situations in changing rooms, and eventually we reached a peaceful agreement. When we dressed for parties or Christmas, a new dress never appeared. No “just try it on”. No “you’ll like it once it’s on”. I am deeply grateful to her for that.
It turns out not forcing your child into clothes that make them feel wrong is a solid parenting move, who knew.
When it stops being a quirk and starts being a problem
For a long time, this wasn’t framed as a problem, it was just how I was. An oddity, maybe. A tomboy, as people used to say, as if it was a phase you outgrow like believing in Santa or enjoying dry Weetabix.
The problem arrived in my teenage years, as problems often do, uninvited and carrying opinions.
I remember one moment particularly clearly. My dad and I were driving home together from somewhere ordinary, the sort of drive where nothing is supposed to happen. He asked me why I didn’t wear more dresses.
I still don’t know what he meant by it. Maybe he was tired of his daughter being mistaken for his son. Maybe he thought he was helping. Maybe he was genuinely curious. There was no malice in it, but it landed anyway.
To his credit, he never asked again. But the question did not disappear, I just found myself thinking I need to apologise.
As I moved from childhood to teenage years strangers , acquaintances and sometimes friends picked up the mantle. Sometimes it arrived as a direct question or sometimes it was just a look. Sometimes it was an offhand comment delivered with a smile that said this is casual but also I am judging you quietly. The judgement was always there, hovering, implied, like damp.
This is often how femininity works. It is not enforced by one authority figure with a clipboard. It is enforced socially, sideways, by accumulation.
School uniforms and the first taste of relief
In 1991, my first year of secondary school, something quietly radical happened. The school offered girls the option to wear trousers instead of skirts.
This does not sound revolutionary now, but at the time it was huge. I hated school, it felt like survival of the fittest. I wanted to keep my head down, blend in, pass through unnoticed because standing out felt dangerous.
Two girls chose trousers immediately. I was in awe of them, especially one of them. She was sweet and kind and carried herself with a kind of calm confidence that read as “I am me, so fuck off”, which is an incredible energy to have at eleven.
I did not join them straight away. I watched and I waited. I assessed risk like a small anxious soldier. Popping my head over the parapet to see if those girls got there heads blown off. They didn't.
Then, the next year or maybe the next term, I switched. I put on trousers and never looked back. Neither did a lot of other girls, once the world didn’t end.
That was my first real taste of the social relief that comes from not performing femininity correctly. It was small, but it was there. A loosening and a sense of alignment. My body and my clothes were finally having the same conversation.
Adulthood and the lie that it gets easier
There is a persistent myth that once you are an adult, you are free, that the rules loosen and that no one cares anymore.
This is only partially true.
My first job was in a shop in 1996, and the women had to wear skirts. There was no discussion (I was too afraid to ask for trousers). No alternatives. Just skirts, fucking skirts!
I was thrown so far out of my comfort zone I could see the earth from space.
There is something uniquely cruel about compulsory femininity in the workplace. It frames discomfort as professionalism and treats compliance as maturity. You are not allowed to opt out without being labelled difficult.
I wore the skirt and hated it.
This is the thing about performing femininity, you can do it. Most of us can. That does not mean it does not cost you something.
Social situations and the performance intensifies
If work is bad, social situations can be even worse, because at least work pays you.
Hen dos. Themed parties. Lingerie nights out. These are presented as fun, compulsory fun, the most confusing kind.
I particularly struggled with a lingerie night out my girlfriends planned. I tried. I genuinely did. I wore a pink corset and jeans, a compromise outfit if ever there was one, and still felt deeply uncomfortable, like I was wearing someone else’s costume to a play I hadn’t auditioned for.
Everyone else seemed fine. On reflection I can guarantee they weren't all feeling fine (for varying reasons) but in the moment I felt so specifically alone in this situation.
This is where the relief of not performing femininity becomes less theoretical and more urgent. You start to realise how much energy you are spending on appearing correct rather than feeling okay.
All I wanted was to be with my friends and be part of the group.
The invisible marking scheme of femininity
Femininity comes with a marking scheme no one ever shows you, which is rude, because I would like to know what I’m failing.
Be feminine, but not too much. Confident, but not intimidating. Attractive, but not confusing. Be yourself, but the right version.
I was always particularly terrified of being mistaken for a man. Not because I think being a man is bad, but because it felt insulting in a very specific, disorientating way, like being told you’ve failed an exam you didn’t know you were sitting.
I am a woman. I love being a woman. I have been a woman this whole time. And yet I also have a masculine presence. When I walk, I stomp, I do not glide. My mannerisms lean masculine. The way I sit sometimes leans masculine. My voice can drop quite low, especially when I’m mad, which adds an unnecessary bass line to any disagreement.
This is deeply confusing for me, because part of me would like to be more feminine. Not as a performance. Just quietly, privately. And yet it never quite suits me. When I try, I feel like a fraud, like I’m doing drag badly.
“Man in drag” has been mentioned to me more than once. Never kindly.
Attraction, shame, and who gets to be desirable
I’ve never felt like I was in the wrong body. I just feel like I’m not attractive enough to fully occupy any of the available categories.
I don’t want to go fully masculine. That’s not me. I live somewhere in the blurred lines, and those lines are not rewarded, they’re tolerated at best.
No one really knows what to do with you, you cause chaos in people's brains as they try to fit you into a box.
For a long time, I thought that meant something was wrong with me.
Social media, unexpectedly, helps
I did not expect TikTok and Instagram reels to be the thing that softened this. And yet.
Seeing women across the feminine masculine spectrum mattered more than I realised. Women who looked and acted like me. Women who didn’t. Women confidently occupying spaces at the edges.
Representation matters enormously if you live outside the middle. I might be peripheral, but I still resonate and vibrate as a woman.
I think this is why I love lesbian art, queer art, and sapphic art. It's always held space for my reality even if not directly. Bodies that don’t explain themselves and expression without apology.
Sexuality, signalling, and confusion as a lifestyle
I’m still not sure how much my sexuality comes into play here. Maybe it’s inseparable, maybe it’s merged, I don't know the science.
Sometimes you dress to attract a mate. The LGBTQ community is beautifully varied in how it presents itself as clothing becomes a language and hair becomes punctuation.
Maybe I lean into masculinity now because I’m signalling intent. Maybe I feel more at home because representation exists now in ways it didn’t before. Maybe it’s both.
The relief, finally, but not really.
I am 45 years old and I still don’t have a full grasp on who I am. That used to feel like a failure, now it just feels normal. I will never have a full grasp on who I am, as I am not the same person as I was a week ago. Let alone the sort of person I will be next year.
And that's ok.
I just know the relief of not performing femininity correctly is not about rejecting womanhood. I love being a woman. It’s about refusing a narrow version of it that never fit.
And let’s not even get started on the hair….
If this all resonated, the stomping, the opting out, the loving being a woman without performing it correctly, you might enjoy my shop. I make art about queer women, bodies, and existing comfortably in the in-between, including a frankly unnecessary amount of boobs. Not sexy boobs, not polite boobs, just honest, solid, proudly-here boobs. If you like your femininity a bit sideways, your humour dry, and your art unapologetically bodily, you’ll probably feel at home there.