Regardless of what anyone has ever told me, I believe every woman is feminine by the virtue of being a woman.
However, there has always been a major emphasis on etiquette and elegance in traditional femininity and I've always wondered why. As much as it attracted me as a practice, it used to seem quite superficial to me at one point. I am someone who needs to know the reason behind every practice, ever, and not just because 'it's socially acceptable/traditional'. I used to think etiquette served absolutely no purpose except for aesthetics at the cost of making small, unnecessary sacrifices. These sacrifices, however, as I have found, lead to material success.
I, for one, LOVE the material plane.
Especially since I live in my head most of the time and it's so foreign- and therefore, fascinating- to me.
I slowly started practicing proper etiquette... you know... just to see what happens. I started eating slower, became more aware of my body and movements, put in effort every single day to dress up, followed up with people without fail, etc. Honestly, I wish I could tell you what the 'grand initiation' looked like, but it was, simply put, just quite attractive to me as a practice so I slowly started doing it. It was something I did willfully, without feeling forced to change into someone I was not, and I absolutely loved it. I loved the delicacy, and I definitely loved how ethereal it made me feel.
I have read and observed too many things about how wonderful having good manners looks on the outside, but there is one major beneficial impact that I have noticed in my own life. My God did it slow my entire system down. There was no rush anymore. I gradually started breathing slower. It felt like I suddenly had forever and a day to experience everything.
While patiently making a 3-course meal, even if it was 'just for me', and while making sure every color on the plate stood out, time became an illusion and my world was now physically more beautiful. I truly believe patience is a virtue so lost in the modern world. What is the point of having so many dresses and shoes if you never deeply feel the blissful enjoyment of having them and get bored with them after wearing them once? Do we ever feel grateful for them? Do we ever stop and ask ourselves 'where exactly do I feel happiness in my body when I wear these clothes?' or 'what does my duvet feel like on my skin?' or 'on which part of my tongue do I feel this ice-cream?'
These seemingly mundane or pointless things that you experience through your body in real life, help to make your internal world way richer than reading a book containing someone else's experience ever would.
One thing that I believe isn't talked about enough in today's world is how pursuing men harms women deeply. It just does not work- biologically, sexually, emotionally, any which way- and I cannot emphasize that enough. Another thing I cannot stress enough is how slowing down materially helps to cool off our sexual centers, and teaches us to wait. It teaches us to wait for the best things in life (and the fact that they take time to reach), rather than settling for mediocrity just because it comes easy; it teaches us to wait for a strong masculine influence to come to us rather than frantically going after every man we know just because he happens to be within a 5 meter radius. I don't believe making our own world abundant and 'luxurious' is always about setting a standard for others and expecting them to treat us a certain way, and getting aggravated when they don't.
The goal is to be internally so opulent that others treating us inadequately neither affects nor satisfies us anymore. No, it's not a paradox if you really think about it.
Do I think the notion of 'elegance' is always perfect in the modern (or even olden) times? Absolutely not.
I do feel there is a lot of judgement in those circles with long list of rules about what society does or does not consider acceptable, on either sides of the argument. Most of the time it's things like "You must absolutely never wear those clothes because no classy man would ever like them!" or "You must never do A because people would think of you as a B (no pun intended)". I definitely believe any kind of real 'levelling up' must come from a place of compassion and understanding.
Everyone has a different story and you must change because you WISH TO and truly believe something could be beneficial to you, not because of others labelling your current situation as something disgraceful. Sure, everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but one must understand that even if you consider yourself 'above' everyone and take that as a pass to call people 'trashy' (I've seen a lot of those), you are creating the rebellion. No matter how right you are, people will never listen to you if you tell them to change for others or society, because believe it or not, humans love thinking they're "different" and they'd do anything to prove that. It creates hate for certain ideas as a whole when people are asked to stop doing something because of someone else forming a negative opinion, rather than telling them it's for their own welfare.
No matter what your morals are in life, bashing and labelling can never lead to anything positive. However, being on the receiving end of it, it is also essential to have discriminatory abilities and form a fair judgement on things rather than doing something just to rebel.
There are so many versions of what femininity truly is. It's not clothes, or makeup, or hair, but the one thing that binds all women in feminine grace is patience. We must learn to wait, and wait, before we settle for anything less than the best. I'm not saying having proper etiquette and slowing down materially is the only way to do that. For some, it could also look like reading scripture or whatever religion you follow. That being said, I wholeheartedly trust that the butterfly effect that material beauty, grace, and elegance creates, is unparalleled.
There is nothing more spiritual than physical beauty.
Love,
Shicuki <3
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