Over the past year, there’s been an influx of Youtube videos, Instagram posts, tweets and other forms of media that discuss and advocate for divine femininity. The concept has become a rising trend among women and videos typically get thousands of views and comments.
Although divine femininity became more popular in 2020, the idea isn’t a new concept. Though its definition slightly varies among different creators and spirtualists, the message generally remains the same. According to Bustle, the divine feminine refers to the face of the divine spirit that represents the part of our consciousness that connects us to ‘feminine qualities’ like intuition, feeling, nurturing, receptivity, and interconnectedness. It strongly rejects and discourages women from adopting what it deems ‘masculine traits’ such as leadership and ambition.
As you can probably already tell, it’s incredibly problematic.
Self-proclaimed experts say that divine femininity is not about gender though and explain that it’s an energy that exists within all of us that allows us to step into our true selves. While that may be true, the recently resurfaced trend is heavily marketed, produced and consumed by women alone.
It’s hardly surprising.
The patriarchy has done a good job of manipulating, brainwashing and keeping women in a state of mind where we believe that to be the ideal woman, we have to be constantly changing things about ourselves to make us more appealing to men. When women are taught that compliance and submission are positive traits to have, it creates an environment that discourages us to have agency over our lives and consequently pushes us to desperately cater to the male gaze at all times; which is the direction the divine femininity trend has taken.
On TikTok alone, the hashtag #divinefemininity has garnered 1 billion views, and its counterpart #divinefeminine, has over 630 million views. The majority of these videos under these hashtags were made by women and they routinely stress the importance of upholding ‘feminine traits’ that promise to help get you the dream job, relationship or money that you desire.
These viral videos also receive thousands of approving comments with some asking how they can step into their feminine energy. Some videos answer this question and many of the responses range from questionable (massaging your breasts with oil) to absolutely ridiculous (never giving a firm handshake).
The divine feminine is also soft, sensual, expressive and nurturing. If these characteristics sound familiar, then it is because they also belong to the misogynistic playbook of what a woman should be. While we always will encourage women to #doyou, there’s a problematic undertone that arises when these videos, guides and content tell women that this is what we need to be.
Women are born into a society that already has expectations for what we should look like and how we should act. These expectations become ingrained in us and the patriarchy offers solutions like this to make women feel liberated and empowered while simultaneously imprisoning us.
In short: it’s a scam.
Partaking in the divine feminity trend can also quickly become incredibly cumbersome due to the laundry list of strict dos and donts you need to adhere to. Maintain the perfect posture, smile with your front teeth, flirt lightly, and don’t talk about your job, are just some of the recurring points I’ve watched prop up in these videos. All this to make yourself more palatable and ultimately bag the mystery high-value man. Men, on the other hand, do not have to do these things by virtue of their existence alone.
There are also financial implications.
Advanced courses that teach women how to step into their divine feminine energy typically range from £29 to £99 and in these courses, women are ultimately taught ways to submit to the desires of men.
Make no mistake about it, this is plain old misogyny. It might be advertised as empowering you to get anything you want from a man, but of what use is it if you have to bend yourself into his twisted version of what being a woman is? Is it really worth it if you lose your personality in the process? I think not!
Any changes that you make to yourself should be because you wholeheartedly want to. Not for the male gaze, not because a stranger on the internet said you should and definitely not because you think it will help you bag a man.
These trends aid in the sexualization and objectification of women, something that we’ve been fighting against for a long time. Masculine and feminine traits are social constructs that have been put in place to justify power imbalances at work, at home and even in sex, negatively hampering our emancipation. It’s boring but more importantly, it’s a scam.
