Flirting with Femininity
Last week, I hosted a neighborhood drag show and also dressed up like a trad wife during snack time. Surprisingly, these two experiences felt connected.
While I’ve always looked conventionally feminine, not fitting neatly into the “feminine” quadrant of gender has been a subtle theme throughout my life:
Growing up as a tomboy, I always opted for competitive sports at recess and was confused when watching girls chatting on the benches.
In my twenties, I operated in male-dominated spaces while studying industrial design and teaching in an engineering department.
While dating, I often assumed my athleticism would win a guy over and was delighted when my now-husband enjoyed my semi-regular initiations to wrestle.
Even today, when surrounded by dad friends at soccer, I find myself mimicking their posture with a widened leg stance and broadened shoulders.
I’ve become increasingly interested in how these patterns live in my body. There is a masculine version of me that feels strong, capable, and clear. It’s a broad-chested feeling that knows how to lead, solve problems, and take charge. I genuinely appreciate this part of myself and it has served me well in my corporate career.
But over the last few years, as these chapters of my career have faded, a softness has appeared that I hadn’t fully experienced before. I would describe the sensation as presence and joy. In my body, I experience it as a stillness of the mind and a fluttering of the heart.
I consider it a spiritual process to tune into these feelings and an act of devotion to follow what wants to unfold.
And what has been unfolding is a desire for more interdependence. Interdependence with my community. And in my marriage, the question has emerged: how can I live more interdependently with my husband?
For most of our relationship, my unspoken philosophy has been focused on independence. A very “you do you, I’ll do me,” vibe.
And to be fair, this approach has worked quite well, especially while raising young kids. We split responsibilities evenly, and I’m genuinely grateful for how capable and self-sufficient my husband is.
But as our kids get older and more self-sufficient, I find myself with more space to turn toward my husband, not because he needs me to, but because I want to.
So this weekend I ran a tiny experiment.
I wore a dress I knew my husband would love. I leaned into a version of myself that felt a little playful, a little old-fashioned, and yes, perhaps a little “trad wife.”
Hosting the drag show had me thinking about gender as something we don’t just inherit, but actively explore. In that sense, dressing like a trad wife felt like a form of drag in its own right, an opportunity to try on a different expression of myself and notice what felt true.
We both knew it was partly a joke.
But something interesting happened: I enjoyed it.
Not because I was becoming less independent. But because I was intentionally bringing joy to someone I love. And perhaps even more interestingly, he seemed to respond in kind.
The dishwasher I’d been asking him to fix for nearly a year was suddenly repaired.
It was as though my act of care invited an act of care from him. Not a transaction, but simply a joy of showing care to one another.
I’m grateful to live in a world where I can build a career, wrestle my husband, facilitate workshops, and wear a dress, all in the same lifetime.
But I also find myself curious whether some traditional expressions of femininity contain forms of wisdom that I’ve historically overlooked.
I’m not drawing any grand conclusions.
I’m simply exploring.
And for now, what I’m discovering is that after years of developing independence, I feel ready to explore interdependence.