10/08/2026
A note on the use of the word FEMININE.
I often use the word ‘feminine’ in my work. The word has a combination of both simple and complex meanings. In its Etymological Origin, the word "feminine" originates from the Latin fēminīnus, simply meaning "pertaining to a woman," which derives from fēmina (woman). Only later did society attach stereotypes, aesthetic standards, and submissive personality traits to it.
My use of the word is intended to honor the full experience of being a woman through my own eyes. It is not just loving herbs and flowers, but inhaling their very essence and aura into my blood. It isn’t just wearing a favorite piece of clothing, it is loving the way the soft fabric caresses my skin. It is not just tasting something sweet, it is the pleasant rush of endorphins that come with the delight of a creamy cacao truffle so tantalizing on my palate that it makes me want to spin around in wide-eyed delight. It isn’t just hearing a good song, it is feeling the nostalgia of it in my bones and letting my entire soul move with it. It is not just loving being outside and taking a walk, it is looking all around in amazement at the wonder of nature: the trees, the birds, the feeling of a misty rain on my skin, the smell of fresh earth after a rain. Every bit of it is Petrichor to me.
It is honoring my true and complex emotional spectrum to flow whenever the heck it pleases, without silence, shame or compromise. It is a primal scream toward the horizon from the edge of the ocean where earth meets water, for my own damn reasons, and not looking around in embarrassment. It is being so deeply bonded with my dogs that my soul feels lost without them, and not accepting any nonsense about them being a subordinate species who have no feelings or intelligence. It is closing my eyes and being able to express a thousand thoughts in my heart without being able to translate them into words. It is recognizing that we are complex creatures filled with so much more than can be put into words or descriptions.
And yet I am aware of the shadows of the usage of the word that have been used by the dominant culture as part of a system of control. To take words that should positively be ours—Girl, Lady, Feminist, Matriarch, Wild and even WOMAN—and weaponize them as pejoratives and shame us in an all-too-successful attempt to subjugate us into a devastating realm of negative embodiment and self-objectification.
To be FEMININE is to hold all of it, and to choose to live the elevated, truly matriarchal end of it with all of its sensory delights and generational sorrows which make us so different. Our capacity to feel deeply isn't a barrier. It is carpe diem, to live our beautiful wild lives and continue using the word with collective HEAD HELD HIGH.
-Michelle
wildwomenhawaii.com
