My girlness

My girlness has offended as long as I can remember.

Is there any right way to be a girl?

There are certainly messages. Ones I’ve received my whole life.

Too girly.

Too breasty.

Likes Barbies too much.

Hair is cut too much like a boy.

Too tempting.

Not tempting enough.

Tempting for whom?

My girlness has offended other women.

It has offended, and triggered, men.

Don’t appear to like hair, makeup, and fashion too much, because it intimidates or challenges.

I don’t know much, I just like what I like. I grew up in a home with sisters and a mom, creativity and Clinique.

I like Spice Girls. I like Twilight.

I like shooting guns and I like Tom Petty.

I like building forts and building stories.

I like love songs.

Too sexy.

Don’t wear your shirt that way. Don’t wear your pants like that. Don’t be.

Don’t be.

You’re the girly one and we’re the tomboys.

Tomboys are the coolest kinds of girls.

Tomboys look and act like a certain thing.

You are not that thing.

Get a pink slip from a teacher (they are standing above) because they could see down my shirt (I am sitting below) and saw the curvature of my breasts.

My breasts now sustain growing babies.

Too much. Until utilitarian. Then too unattractive.

I have always been extremely proud to be a girl.

Proud.

Proud of my femininity and proud of my grit.

Proud of my creativity and proud of my humor.

Proud of the fun I can have dreaming and being silly.

I’ve always liked being a girl.

I’ve never felt helpless.

I’ve felt smart and capable.

I have also felt taken advantage of, preyed upon, commoditized, and misunderstood.

That is the plight of having a girl body.

Now, somehow, in these days, I feel like my right to like my girlness, my womanness, offends.

Maybe because it’s seen as excluding.

We cannot deny, there is feminine and masculine.

We cannot deny the varying venn diagrams of those qualities in us all.

And in God.

I am a woman.

I am sexy.

Sexy does not get to be something we are, but are shamed for, until we reach a certain life stage.

Sexy does not get to be something we should be, but can’t be anymore, because we’ve reached a certain life stage.

I am strong. Unbelievably strong.

Even when I’m tender. Even when I’m quiet. Even when I’m wrong.

I am in a body of womanness that I am trying to love and honor.

That is my challenge and my right.

Girlness, womanness, the thing God crafted in me and said,

“It is very good.”