F*CK The Divine Feminine. I Want To Be My Divine Self.

Sophia Leon S.
56 minutes ago
7 min read

I am saying fuck the performance, fuck the prescription, fuck the endless instructions on what femininity is supposed to look like and what we need to “tap into” more. Fuck the idea that becoming your highest self requires softening, silencing or cutting off the parts of you that don't fit someone else's definition of feminine.

I don't actually remember the first time someone told me I wasn't behaving "like a girl." I just know I heard it so often that it eventually became background noise.

"Sit properly." "Close your legs." "Don't climb that." "Behave like a lady." "That's not very feminine."

Most of those corrections naturally came from my mother. Looking back now, I don't blame her, not even a little… She wasn't trying to erase me, she was just trying to prepare me for the world she knew. She grew up in a generation where femininity wasn't simply an identity, it was survival, protection. To her, teaching me to become "more like a girl" wasn't criticism, It was love.

"As a little girl, believe me, I wasn't interested in sitting elegantly…"

I wanted to move. I was incredibly close to my brother growing up. Wherever he went, I wanted to go. Which naturally meant I spent far more time running around with him than sitting quietly playing with dolls. We climbed, we raced, we wrestled, we built things. If there was a tree, I'd climb it. If there was something to jump off, chances are I already had.

I came home with scraped knees, dirty clothes, and enough energy to do it all over again the next morning. My poor mother tried everything, but there simply wasn't a way to scrub the tomboy out of me.

If you'd asked little Sophia who her heroes were, there wasn't a princess in sight. Well... besides Mulan. But then again, she wasn't exactly waiting around in a castle either. I was completely obsessed with women who could save themselves and fight. Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft, Jessica Alba in Dark Angel, Peta Wilson in La Femme Nikita… Man... I thought those women were the coolest people on Earth. They were intelligent, fearless, strong, they climbed buildings, they fought, they bled, they led. They didn't sit around waiting for someone to rescue them.

Looking back now, it's actually quite funny how the world started telling me those were exactly the parts of myself I needed to soften. Nobody had taught me masculinity, nobody had taught me femininity. I was simply being a child, and I was happy.

Then I had to grow the fuck up. The corrections became quieter, suddenly they came in the form of tiny comments, small hints, sudden remarks… And they no longer came only from my mother. They came from teachers, aunties, friends, society, magazines and eventually… You guessed it, fucking algorithms.

"The message barely changed, only the messenger did. As a child, I was told, "Behave more like a girl." Twenty years later, Instagram tells me, "Tap into your feminine energy." Different language and distribution, surprisingly similar instruction, no?"

Every couple of months the internet invents another version of the perfect woman;

The clean girl, the soft girl, the Pilates princess, the trad wife, the "high-value woman.", the divine feminine. Every trend arrives with its own instruction manual; Wake up at five, drink chlorophyll (or something else that's green.) Wear linen (which I love btw..) Receive, don't chase, speak more softly, smile more, manifest, surrender. I mean we’ve heard it all, just “be more feminine” is the bottom line…

And every time another reel pops up explaining why women need to "heal their masculine energy," I can't help but fucking laugh, my God! And hey, I am not saying femininity is ridiculous, I am not arguing against femininity, but you better believe I am arguing against performative and forced femininity.

"Believe me, I LOVE being a woman. If life gave me a thousand chances to come back, I'd choose to be a woman every single time."

I love being tender, I love being compassionate, I love being empathetic. I cry during films, I tell my friends I love them far too often, I love nurturing the people around me. Those parts of me are deeply real.

But so are the others; I love fighting for injustice and for the weak, I love negotiating, I love leading, I love responsibility, I love taking risks, I love making difficult decisions, I love hanging from bars until my hands hurt, I love Muay Thai. Actually, side note… Muay Thai gave me more peace than yoga ever did, and yeah, I know that's probably not what the algorithm would want me to say.

But for years, without even realising it, I started negotiating with myself. Every time I wanted to say something directly… I'd soften it. Every time I wanted to take up space… I'd make myself smaller. Every time I felt too ambitious… I'd wonder whether I should tone it down. Every time someone told me I was intimidating (which has been far too many times)... I'd apologise, not out loud, but internally. Slowly, almost without noticing, I started editing myself. I stopped climbing, jumping. I moved my body in ways that looked more graceful than they felt natural. I chose things because they looked like the kind of things women were supposed to enjoy, not because they actually made me feel alive. I spent years trying to become the kind of woman I thought I was meant to be. Looking back now… I don't think I was becoming a better woman, whatever the fuck that means. I actually think I was becoming a quieter version of myself, a dimmed one.

"The interesting thing about abandoning yourself is that it rarely happens all at once. It happens in tiny little decisions, tiny compromises, tiny apologies. Until one day you wake up and realise you don't quite recognise the person you've become."

Then, the last time I was in Bali, one afternoon I walked into a Muay Thai class at the gym. I didn't go because “I wanted to reconnect with my inner child.” Or “heal my nervous system”. Or “rebalance my feminine and masculine energies.” I just wanted to try something that looked fun and I always felt compelled to do.

Somewhere between learning combinations, almost getting punched in the face, and laughing at how terrible I was… What happened was that, for the first time in YEARS… I wasn't thinking about how I looked, I wasn't wondering whether I seemed feminine enough, or graceful enough, or soft enough. I was completely present (I mean, if not, you’d actually get punched). And then I recognised the feeling, I'd felt it before. Almost twenty years earlier, hanging upside down from monkey bars, running after my brother, coming home covered in dirt. And I couldn't stop smiling.

Little Sophia would've absolutely lost her mind! The same little girl who spent hours watching Lara Croft, Dark Angel, and Nikita, convinced those were THE women! She would've looked at me, wrapped up in hand wraps, bruised, sweaty and learning how to throw a proper punch… And thought, "We actually became one of them."

Okay fine, I am not saying I became an action hero, or that I suddenly knew how to fight. But because I'd finally stopped apologising for wanting to feel strong.

That made me realise… The little girl hadn't disappeared, she'd just been waiting patiently for me to come back. I hadn't spent years trying to become a better woman. I'd spent years trying to tame the wildest, happiest parts of myself.

And the funny thing is… The moment I finally stopped trying to tame that “animal”… I started feeling like myself again.

People keep asking women whether they're operating in their masculine or feminine energy. And you know what I fucking think? That we're asking the wrong question. What if I don't actually want to choose. What if I want both?! I am both.. I want to build companies in the morning… AND cry because my best friend sent me a beautiful message in the afternoon. I want to lead, AND I want to nurture. I want to compete, AND I want to comfort. I want to protect, AND I want to be protected sometimes too. I don't see those things as contradictions, I see them as being fully human.

Carl Jung wrote about the animus and the anima, the masculine and feminine that exist within every one of us. Not as opposing forces, but as complementary ones.

Not choosing any sides.

Yin and yang.

Animus and anima.

WHOLENESS, you know?

Somehow, one of the most beautiful psychological ideas ever explored has been reduced to thirty-second IG reels, telling women to become less of one thing and more of another. What if we've completely misunderstood the assignment? What if the goal was never becoming more feminine? Or more masculine? What if the goal was just becoming more ourselves?

I started writing this essay convinced it was going to be about masculine energy versus feminine energy. Then, I realised I'd been asking the wrong question all along. Because this was never really about women, or masculinity, or femininity. I'm not even trying to defend women. I'm trying to defend individuality, authenticity...

I'm defending the little girl who climbed trees because climbing trees, lying on rooftops eating cherries straight from the branches, and coming home covered in dirt made her unbelievably happy. The little boy who loved ballet before someone told him it wasn't masculine enough. The woman who genuinely feels most alive in a boardroom. The woman who genuinely feels most alive raising children. The girl who loves dresses. The girl who lives in oversized shirts and ties. The one who finds peace in Pilates. The one who finds it in Muay Thai.

"I'm defending every person who's slowly started editing themselves because someone, somewhere, convinced them there was a "correct" way to exist."

I don’t think freedom is becoming the woman the algorithm approves of. I am starting to believe it's finally giving yourself permission to become the person you already were. When I think back to who I was before the internet started telling me who I should become… I wasn't trying to embody feminine energy, or masculine energy. I was just living, being. I followed whatever made me feel alive. Nobody looked at that little girl and said, "She's operating in her masculine." They most likely just simply said, "She's having fun."

So no… I don't want less masculine energy, I don't want more feminine energy. I don't want next month's trend telling me what the ideal woman looks like. I want more of myself. The little girl who loved climbing trees, the woman who loves building her own thing, the one who writes until two in the morning because she can't stop thinking. The one who cries over beautiful conversations. The one who loves oversized shirts and tailored suits. The one who still believes people are fundamentally good. Not the convenient parts, not the socially acceptable parts. All of her.

So I'll leave you with one question;

What did you love doing before the world started correcting you?

Because maybe the greatest act of self-love isn't becoming someone new.

Maybe it's remembering who you were before everyone told you who you were supposed to be.