Naturally

"The holier a woman is, the more she is a woman." -Leon Bloy

Some have established the position that womanhood happens naturally; they consider gender to be so tailored into the fabric of our being, which makes it unnecessary to reflect on at length. I agree that part of what gives womanhood its charm is the way it springs up inherently in little girls and shines out of old women who pin their hair every morning—for beauty. I agree that part of the process does unfold naturally, like a flower that leans into the sun or opens to the rain. And it seems like it should be that way.

I was supposed to be a boy according to the ultrasound, but sonar imaging was poor quality in the eighties, and it turned out that I was a girl— the second-born of four actually. I’m just as ‘female’ as I was twenty years ago, but I like to think that I am becoming more feminine. That is one of the foundational ideas in this book on womanhood: that there is a difference in being a female genetically, and growing in feminine qualities. I will always have the feminine chromosomes sketched into every cell of my body, but there is something deeper that I can grow in specifically as a woman. It is an amazing moment when you believe, perhaps for the first time, that God was glorified, and the world, somehow bettered, because you were born a little girl. Considering gender as something to be celebrated— everyday— not just on the first day, of a person’s life, is meaningful because it is a testimony that the depths of God are deep and wide and that His image was diverse enough to spill from Adam’s ribcage and into Eve.