Want to Be “In Your Feminine Energy”? Try a Coma.
Being a woman, in all it entails, is not an aesthetic. It’s not graspable. It doesn’t have steps or how-to’s.
Women and men are different, and pretending otherwise is sacrilege—an insult to your “divine feminine.” At least, according to the internet, where there is a correct way to be a woman: soft, receptive, nurturing, intuitive. Men are providers, protectors, and if you’re being a woman correctly, you’ll attract the “right kind of man”—which, honestly, sounds like a misnomer to me.
I was in the sixth grade when I became a virago. I believe it was recess, and it was raining, so our teacher let us play inside. A ball was involved. One of my male classmates wasn’t letting the girls play, and for reasons I can’t explain, my face got hot, a rock formed in my chest, and my knees started shaking. “FUCKING MACHISTA!” (Which translates to “FUCKING SEXIST” in English, though it sounds spicier in Spanish.) Maybe I didn’t even fully understand those words as I said them, but the room went silent. In my school, we were all pretty well-behaved, and I was a fairly unassuming kid. I didn’t know my teacher was sitting at her desk, hiding behind a huge newspaper. My mom got called in and I got in trouble for profanity. My parents didn’t care one bit. Reprimand-free, my stinky-icky-little classmate probably went on to continue being a sexist—and rewarded for it.
Domineering, ill-tempered, shrew, violent, termagant, a loud, overbearing woman. These are some of the words that pop up when you look up the meaning of virago. Basically, a woman who exhibits "manly" attributes and virtues, which, of course, we know is very unbecoming to the general public. But the archaic and original meaning of virago was female warrior.
I grew up being called bad-mannered for standing up for myself, irritable because I couldn’t tolerate certain injustices and power imbalances I observed within my family and the world, even at a very young age. Today, it’s my greatest honor to be called ill-tempered or difficult because, in that moment, I know I am on to something important.
You see, in the process of true individuation, abandoning qualities like outspokenness and strength will not protect you. You will not be “in flow” and “in your divine feminine energy” by yielding and becoming soft, arguing that “nature demands it.”
It’s worth questioning why these movements have such mass appeal. “Tradwives.” “Divine feminine energy.” The “femosphere.” Why are hyper-traditional roles trending and being repackaged as empowerment? Why are women re-embracing full dependence—especially financial dependence—on men?
Some women, with undeniable ingenuity, have realized that hating the player and not the game is futile. Instead, they’ve started playing men’s games—leveraging economic privilege, navigating existing power structures, and, in some cases, turning those structures against themselves. Movements like “femospace” reflect this sharp awareness: if the system is rigged, why not extract what you can from it? And yet, no matter how well you play, it’s still not your game. It’s a workaround, not a remedy.
Women today yearn for relief from the pressures of modern feminism, which demands almost superhuman levels of self-sufficiency. We are tired, no doubt. It feels like an impossible balancing act, a relentless pursuit of more—more independence, more success, more proof that we are enough on our own. But retreating into an aestheticized 1950s housewife fantasy is not empowerment. Being a woman, in all it entails, is not an aesthetic. It’s not graspable. It doesn’t have steps or how-to’s.
Let’s call a spade a spade: these movements are surrender dressed up as wisdom—and worse, as spiritual enlightenment.
We suppress parts of ourselves at our own peril. In the process of true individuation, the task is not to sink further into gender essentialism but to integrate all aspects of ourselves—“masculine” and “feminine". Rejecting our inherent assertiveness, ambition, and capacity for power under the guise of being “soft” will keep us further fragmented as individuals.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés knew that there are parts of women that are untamed—that can’t and shouldn’t be domesticated. A woman is wild, raging, deeply knowing. She doesn’t wait to be chosen; she hunts. To live in softness is to betray her, to clip the cat’s claws, and silence her voice.
The irony of the divine feminine trope is that it positions femininity as something that must be proven or performed. You have to be enough of -insert some type of arbitrary quality here- to attract the right circumstances to thrive, to secure a future, a foundation, a husband.
Divine feminine rhetoric insists on difference, as if softness and passivity were virtues intrinsic to being a woman. But men can be these things too, and that is what we should aspire to—to be whole. Fire, hunger, power and creativity, sensitivity, vulnerability— for both women and men.
This isn’t about opposing or rejecting men and their institutions outright. It’s about creating spaces that allow for something beyond adaptation—where we can grow into something fuller, beyond the rigid roles we’ve been given.
A possible remedy? Community.
We don’t need to further prove that we are enough on our own, that clearly isn't feasible long term. Women have always found ways to work around established systems—sometimes subtly, sometimes by brute force, and sometimes by swearing off sex entirely and becoming the most powerful women in Rome like the Vestal Virgins. Being buried alive if they had sex was quite the damper though, I’ll give you that. Funnily enough, now a days many women are absatining from sex all together anyway so… we’re half way there.
Being a good feminist within a community isn’t about whether or not you “gatekeep” your favorite vintage store. It’s about using whatever skills, knowledge, and resources you have to build something real—something that allows others to thrive. Individuation isn’t a solo project. It requires both looking inward—deeply knowing yourself—and looking outward—seeing yourself reflected in others. The solution can’t be to retreat into an aestheticized past or to fight for a better seat at a table that was never designed for you. It’s to build something entirely new—together.
The truth of all of this is likely somewhere in between: extremes never allow for true self-actualization. Instead of choosing between hard independence and performative fragility, perhaps the real challenge is to integrate both—to be soft when it serves and unyielding when it matters, and that’s soooo virago.